2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released their report on New Directions for Chemical Engineering [1]. In this report, a section on curricular reform included recommendations “that would help students understand how individual core concepts merge into the practice of chemical engineering” and “include earlier and more frequent experiential learning through physical laboratories and virtual simulations” as well as other recommendations.

In previous surveys, some undergraduate chemical engineering seniors at the authors’ institution have expressed the importance of the lab courses in understanding theory and a desire for incorporation of diverse learning styles including earlier hands-on experiences within core classes. A number of papers have advocated for inclusion of the student voice within higher education curricular development [2,3]. Upper-level students have a unique viewpoint as they understand challenges that they and their classmates faced in understanding topics and intimately know the content and structure of courses taught within the department.

With these viewpoints in mind, the authors have implemented a student-led product design project focusing on development of products/modules for hands-on or experiential learning, which can be integrated into core chemical engineering courses. At the authors’ institution, product design is a full-year senior capstone course which includes a prototyping lab and serves as an alternative to the traditional process design capstone course. The students working on the project self-selected into this topic and are being mentored by the authors whose diverse backgrounds encompass instruction of several core ChE courses, research within the engineering education domain, and experience within experiential learning. This paper will detail the full-year process of a student-led curricular development project focused on hands-on or experiential learning within a senior capstone product design course, including student feedback on the experience.