street and who was in charge of the university’s studios refused to let my students
use his professional equipment. However, he would be pleased to teach each team
how to exploit television and then to direct their presentations. They now were
learning from a pro instead of from watching commercial television.
This author was walking past one of the rooms in the university library that had a
video player and saw a dozen of his students overflowing the room and howling with
laughter. They were joking and commiserating in a friendly way with those
appearing on the screen. Feedback after graduation told that the term project had
had inspired them to excel at job interviews and at their initial technical reporting to
their employers or at their postgraduate institutions when that was their choice.
Perhaps it was a mistake to try another idea, and assigning two term projects
seemed to be overkill. The new term project was to stop complaining and to do
something about improving their education by forming teams with not more than
three classmates to author web pages on any topic in the course that piqued their
interest. In those days, many of the students asked how to code a web page and were
told by this author to learn by themselves by finding a web page on the internet and
cutting out its content and pasting in their own. Today there are few students who do
not already know how to design and implement a web site.
Being thanked by a number of students for the web page assignment was a unique
experience. The instructions were to devote 8 or 10 hours to the term project, but
many students spent upward of 30 hours. One student said that her parents were
delighted by her sequence of web pages and had commented that they were getting
their money’s worth for her college expenses. The various projects ranged in quality
from good to outstanding, and the best ones were edited (with attribution) for
inclusion in a textbook. Hyperlinks to material on the internet enhanced most of
the term projects.
A third experiment was based on what many professors were already doing.
Students in a laboratory course were required to use PowerPoint and to take turns
presenting it. One difference was constructive criticism immediately afterward.
Several students said that they had never before been graded on poise, word choice,
fluffs, demeanor, and enunciation.
Expectations were high for favorable student evaluations of these courses, but
few students were enthusiastic. Perhaps a professor should be content to earn
reasonably good course evaluations at a university with far more than its fair share
of prominent professors. What really had happened was that students were learning
from each other, and using the internet was to them nothing special. Increasing
student involvement and developing their teaching skills is in its infancy, and the
approaches mentioned here are primitive.
Other computer programs for presentation are not dependent on the internet.
Smart spreadsheets should be handy tools for all engineering students, and solving
problems with calculations in a spreadsheet can be useful throughout a career as a
template for more complicated problems or as a routine solver that accommodates
new input data. It would add no extra effort for the instructor and would challenge
the students to require that homework with calculations be submitted as the printout
9 Environmental Engineering Education in the Modern Era
381
use his professional equipment. However, he would be pleased to teach each team
how to exploit television and then to direct their presentations. They now were
learning from a pro instead of from watching commercial television.
This author was walking past one of the rooms in the university library that had a
video player and saw a dozen of his students overflowing the room and howling with
laughter. They were joking and commiserating in a friendly way with those
appearing on the screen. Feedback after graduation told that the term project had
had inspired them to excel at job interviews and at their initial technical reporting to
their employers or at their postgraduate institutions when that was their choice.
Perhaps it was a mistake to try another idea, and assigning two term projects
seemed to be overkill. The new term project was to stop complaining and to do
something about improving their education by forming teams with not more than
three classmates to author web pages on any topic in the course that piqued their
interest. In those days, many of the students asked how to code a web page and were
told by this author to learn by themselves by finding a web page on the internet and
cutting out its content and pasting in their own. Today there are few students who do
not already know how to design and implement a web site.
Being thanked by a number of students for the web page assignment was a unique
experience. The instructions were to devote 8 or 10 hours to the term project, but
many students spent upward of 30 hours. One student said that her parents were
delighted by her sequence of web pages and had commented that they were getting
their money’s worth for her college expenses. The various projects ranged in quality
from good to outstanding, and the best ones were edited (with attribution) for
inclusion in a textbook. Hyperlinks to material on the internet enhanced most of
the term projects.
A third experiment was based on what many professors were already doing.
Students in a laboratory course were required to use PowerPoint and to take turns
presenting it. One difference was constructive criticism immediately afterward.
Several students said that they had never before been graded on poise, word choice,
fluffs, demeanor, and enunciation.
Expectations were high for favorable student evaluations of these courses, but
few students were enthusiastic. Perhaps a professor should be content to earn
reasonably good course evaluations at a university with far more than its fair share
of prominent professors. What really had happened was that students were learning
from each other, and using the internet was to them nothing special. Increasing
student involvement and developing their teaching skills is in its infancy, and the
approaches mentioned here are primitive.
Other computer programs for presentation are not dependent on the internet.
Smart spreadsheets should be handy tools for all engineering students, and solving
problems with calculations in a spreadsheet can be useful throughout a career as a
template for more complicated problems or as a routine solver that accommodates
new input data. It would add no extra effort for the instructor and would challenge
the students to require that homework with calculations be submitted as the printout
9 Environmental Engineering Education in the Modern Era
381