2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

A common challenge in engineering education is that students frequently struggle to see the connections between concepts taught across different courses within the curriculum, making it difficult for them to develop a cohesive understanding of their specialized discipline. Often, it is not until their final year that students begin to integrate and synthesize knowledge from earlier courses. Additionally, overlapping content presented in varying contexts across multiple courses can create confusion, or, worse, contribute to unnecessary workload rather than reinforcing core concepts. Ours goal are (1) to address the former issue by highlighting the connections between courses in the undergraduate Chemical and Biological Engineering (CHBE) program, and explore if explicit links and integrated assignments/assessments can cultivate stronger perceptions of connectedness, and (2) to explore if a streamlined Y2 curriculum with integrated course content can enhance student learning by reinforcing key concepts throughout the program.

To achieve this goal, we start by breaking each course in the Y2 curriculum into its core topics. This was done through a process of compiling and organizing class notes from each course chronologically and aligning them with class days over the thirteen weeks of each of the two terms in the academic year. For each course, we systematically listed the concepts covered in each day and then overlaid these on the standard timetable of each term. This enabled us to see what topics students were learning in different classes on a given day or across a given week. Each topic was colour-coded to more efficiently identify overlap or repetition in different courses and throughout the term. Instances of repeated topics were then investigated to assess if a topic was being progressed, reinforced or unnecessarily overtaught.

This systematic approach to assess the Y2 curriculum provided the data required to then begin exploring opportunities for integration and alignment. In one example, we integrated aspects of two second-year courses: CHBE 241: Material and Energy Balances, and CHBE 263: Introduction to Chemical and Biological Engineering Laboratory Practice. Material and energy balances are part of nearly every experiment in CHBE 263, though the data analysis calculations and theory from the lab manuals are not aligned with how these are taught in CHBE 241. As both CHBE 241 and 263 are Term 1 courses, we symbiotically leverage both courses to reinforce fundamental chemical engineering concepts and key learning objectives in situations where the context is real and the data is collected by students themselves. Through an integrated assignment, the experimental procedure, data collection and report writing are assessed in CHBE 263, and material and energy balance calculations and analysis assessed in CHBE 241.

This proposed presentation will discuss the methodology applied to review the Y2 curriculum as well as introduce the integrated assignment as an example of how integration may improve efficiency and reduce excessive student workload.