2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Using Concept Maps in an Undergraduate Heat Transfer Course

Presented at MECH - Technical Session 1: Foundations of Engineering Education

Concept maps are widely used in foundational non-engineering science courses to help students express their own understanding of course material. By creating a concept map, students are able to visualize the relationships between different course topics. In recent years, the use of concept maps in fundamental engineering courses has gained growing attention. They have been reported to be very effective in providing students with an interactive learning experience by leveraging constructivist pedagogy. This work reports the effectiveness of integrating concept maps as a learning tool in an undergraduate Heat Transfer course for students majoring in Mechanical Engineering. Over the course of the semester, students were asked to create two concept maps: one for thermal conduction and one for convection. The students worked on the concept maps in small groups at regular intervals in class, and they grew as new material was covered. After student groups developed their own concept maps, instructor-created concept maps were also shared with the class immediately before exams, to serve as an exam study tool. A survey was conducted at the end of the semester to gauge student perceptions of using the concept maps. Qualitative and quantitative results from the survey are presented. The classroom approach to creating and using the concept maps was refined after the first round of student feedback data was collected. Concept maps were found to be a useful, constructive learning tool for visually connecting and organizing course topics for both students and instructors. The results are limited to a single, primarily undergraduate institution with small class sizes. Future work will seek to expand the data set by including multiple institutions. This paper provides instructions on running the classroom activity to encourage students to build their concept maps, provides examples, and presents qualitative and quantitative student feedback from multiple offerings of the course.

Authors

Dr. Najmus Saqib Marian University [biography]

Dr. Najmus Saqib is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Marian University. He has been teaching in his field since 2017. Saqib is passionate about student learning. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines, focusing on "Optical Diagnostics of Lithium-Sulfur and Lithium-Ion Battery Electrolytes using Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared Spectroscopy". At Mines Saqib was a member of the MODES Lab, led by Dr. Jason M. Porter. His work on Li-S batteries was the first of its kind to use quantitative infrared spectroscopy for operando polysulfide measurements. He has also applied operando spectroscopy to improve the understanding of electrolyte decomposition mechanisms in Li-ion batteries. In addition to his current research interests of developing diagnostic tools for electrochemical storage of renewable energy, Saqib is also interested in the Scholarship of Teaching of Learning (SoTL) and Engineering Education in particular.

Prior to joining Marian, Saqib was one of the founding faculty members of the Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Indianapolis. He served as the program coordinator, undertaking major curriculum development, and led the program through a successful initial ABET accreditation review. He received multiple research grants, he coordinated the campus-wide Research Fellows programs, and his dedication to teaching was recognized through the UIndy Teacher of the Year nomination in 2023.

In the classroom, Saqib likes to challenge his students to tackle real-world engineering problems. He likes to use innovative pedagogical techniques and Entrepreneurial-Minded Learning (EML) to facilitate student learning. Beyond the classroom, he has a passion for mentoring students and helping them achieve their educational and professional goals.

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