Session F4C

Materials Science for the Twenty-First Century Active and Engaged Students
Kathleen L. Kitto
Associate Dean and Professor, Western Washington University, CST and Engineering Technology,
Bellingham, WA 98225 Kathleen.Kitto@wwu.edu
Abstract - Substantial changes have been made to our
Introduction to Engineering Materials course to actively
engage students, energize their learning environment, and
enhance their educational outcomes. While it is sometimes
difficult to keep students engaged in the necessary basics
for the course (crystallography, dislocations, phase
diagrams), it is less difficult to keep them engaged using
different active and learner centered strategies
including: case studies, innovative demonstrations, concept
thinking/questions, and problem based learning. Active
opportunities used are: materials, design and in-service
considerations in the Alaska Airlines Flight 261 accident,
viscoelastic Silly Putty, materials issues in the collapse
and redesign of the World Trade Center buildings,
snowflakes, recycling of plastic and aluminum containers,
the evolving role of materials in modern bridge design, and
evolving materials choices for automotive components.
Three of these opportunities are described here. The
paper includes course content delivery changes, basic
assessment information, and future plans.
Index Terms - Active Learning, Case Studies, Engaging
Students, Materials Science and Engineering
INTRODUCTION
The interdisciplinary nature of any introductory Materials
Engineering course is challenging for students since in that
course it is often the first time in their academic program
where students must integrate their knowledge of
mathematics, chemistry and physics to solve a wide variety of
complex and, at times, abstract problems. Finding new
methods to teach and deliver the course content in order to
more actively engage students is equally challenging for
instructors. On the other hand, active learning also presents
new opportunities in the class room to engage students in their
own learning in new ways that are different from the
traditional lecture/test format. It is important that students
share ownership of their educational experience. The National
Research Council (NRC) has completed an in-depth study and
reported on successful learning strategies [1]. The NRC uses
the term learner centered to refer to environments that pay
careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs
that learners bring to the educational setting [1]. Similarly,
active learning is any strategy that involves students doing
things and thinking about the things they are doing [2].
Increasing student interest and involvement, especially in a
large lecture class, is the key concept behind our modifications

to the delivery of this course because this promotes the very

way that students construct their own understanding of content
listening, discussing, reading, and writing.
A similar concept is Problem Based Learning or PBL.
The difference between active learning and PBL is often
obscured because faculty use combinations or hybrids of these
strategies as they adapt what combination of strategies works
for them in their own classroom. The basic feature of PBL is
that content is introduced in the context of real-world
problems. In PBL students must identify what they know,
what they don't know, and what they must learn to solve a real
problem [3]. Obviously, a case study that is a real-world
problem, presented in context, is both PBL and active
learning, and accomplishes the basic goal of engaging students
deeply in their own learning. Carefully selected materials
forensic case studies have these hybrid characteristics. The
interdisciplinary nature of materials engineering/science
creates appealing alternatives for new delivery opportunities.
In our Materials Engineering class at Western Washington
University, I have found that there are subjects that are best
presented in the traditional lecture format (stacking sequences,
for example) and that active learning, hybrid activities
provides a class atmosphere that excites the students about
Materials Engineering and engages them more thoughtfully
and more deeply in their own learning.
Concept questions, like those described by Mazur [9], are
also used throughout the course and have proved useful to the
students and to me during open ended problem solving and
discussions. It is much easier for me to gauge student
comprehension and misperceptions. Since they have been so
effective, more use of concept questions is planned for the
future, as is the addition of peer instruction. During the next
academic year I will have classrooms with computer based
personal response systems, so I can easily gather data on the
effectiveness of each concept question and link it to peer
instruction effectiveness. Mazurs work [9] has demonstrated
that for a concept question to be effective, about 50% of the
students should know the correct answer. If too few students
know the answer, then little peer teaching can occur. If
everyone knows the answer, there is little to be gained from
asking the question in the first place. Mazur has found this to
be true because it is easier for a more confident student to
convince a less confident student of the correct answer [9]. I
have already set the stage in the materials engineering course
for more use of concept tests and peer instruction, by
instituting reading quizzes before most class sessions. The
approach here is simple. If you lecture less, then you must ask

0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE

October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN
35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
F4C-4

Session F4C
percent wider to allow two people to exit at the same time and
the landings are big enough for a person in a wheel chair to
wait for assistance without blocking traffic flow (design, WTC
1,2, also doesnt minimize materials use). The stairs meet at a
common intersection point and exit onto four different
locations on the street; these stairwells are pressurized. Other
improvements include redundant fire systems (what types of
materials can suppress fires?), enhanced lighting in the
stairwells, enhanced connections between the core and the
columns (design of steel connections), and hardened columns
in the lobby and loading docks (what does it mean to harden?).
Fireproofing on the steel has been designed with consideration
for bond strength and impact resistance (how might this be
done with ceramic materials?).
Photo-luminescent paint
guides are used on exit routes and stairs (what type of material
is photo-luminescent and what accounts for this property?).

my office to chat about the why of materials science (Silly

Putty being the leader), or bring items like a failed Lycoming
engine cylinder, piston and value to me and then to class. This
approach also seems to reach a different student population,
although I do not have specific data on this. The students seem
to be more engaged in the subject and are enjoying thinking
about it more. Since I have taught the class in different styles
previously, I do have reasonably good benchmarks and data.
The scores improved by 15-20% (plus or minus 5%) on some
conventional test problems; the most notable changes being on
whether the elastic constant goes up or down with an increase
in temperature and viscoelastic materials concepts. Once the
context is provided, the students seem to be able to make the
transition to more conventionally worded problems since they
understand the basic concepts better.

FUTURE PLANS

[1] National Research Council Commission on Behavioral and Social

Sciences and Education, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and
School, Commission of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education,
Washington, DC, National Academy Press, 2000 (on-line free access,
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309070368/html/).
[2] Bonwell, C. and Eison, J., Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the
Classroom, ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report Number 1, The George
Washington University, School of Education and Human Development,
Washington, DC, 1991.
[3] http://www.udel.edu/pbl/
[4] Felder, R. M., and R. Brent, "Navigating the Bumpy Road to StudentCentered Instruction", College Teaching, 1996, pp. 43-47.
[5] Hake, R. R., "Interactive-Engagement vs. Traditional Methods: A SixThousand-Student Survey of Mechanics Test Data for Introductory Physics
Courses", American Journal of Physics, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 64-74, 1998.
[6] Raju and Sanker, Teaching Real-World Issues through Case Studies,
Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 88, No. 4, pp. 501-508, 1999.
[7] Smith, C., Student Written Engineering Cases, International Journal of
Engineering Education, Vol. 8, No. 6, pp. 442-445, 1992.
[8] Richards L. G., Gorman M., Scherer, W. T., and Landel, R., Promoting
Active Learning with Cases and Instructional Modules, Journal of
Engineering Education, Vol. 84, No. 4, pp. 375-381, 1995.
[9] Mazur, E., Peer Instruction: A Users Manual, Prentice Hall, New Jersey,
1997.
[10] Ellis, G. W., Mikic B., and Rudnitsky, A. R., Getting the Big Picture in
Engineering: Using Narratives and Conceptual Maps, Proceedings of the
2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and
Exposition, Nashville, TN, 2003.
[11] Ellis, Scordilis, and Cooke, New Pedagogical Approaches in
Engineering Mechanics Yield Increased Student Understanding, Confidence
and Commitment, Frontiers in Education Conference, 2003.
[12] Huba, M.E. and Freed, J. E., Learner-Centered Assessment on College
Campuses: Shifting the Focus from Teaching to Learning, Allyn and Bacon,
Boston, MA, 2000.
[13] Bloom, B.S., Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of
Educational Goals: Handbook I, Cognitive Domain, Longmans, Green, 1956.
[14] http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blsillyputty.htm
[15] http://www.answers.com
[16] http://web.mit.edu/astein/sillyputty.html/structure.html
[17] http://www.campoly.com/notes/sillyputty.pdf
[18] http://www.emporis.com/en/wm/bu/cs/?id=170407
[19] http://www.intelligentbuildanddesign.com/projects/world_trade/
[20] Flynn, Mary Kathleen, Rebuilding After 9/11, ASEE Prism, p. 20,
February 2005.
[21] http://plc.cwru.edu/tutorial/enhanced/files/polymers/therm/therm.htm.
[22] http://www.ntsb.gov/events/2000/Aka261/default.htm
[23] Krause, S., Decker, C., and Griffin, Using a Materials Concept
Inventory to Assess Conceptual Gain in Introductory Materials Engineering
Courses, Frontiers in Education Conference, 2003, T3D-7.

In the future, I plan to use more concept questions and peer

instruction techniques modeled after Mazurs work [9]. The
eventual goal is to have a complete set of successful questions
for every topic (about 50% of the students should know the
answer before the peer learning activity, Mazur [9]). Success
here will be measured if more students know the answer after
the peer instruction activity. Peer interactions will allow me to
take a more in-depth investigation of actual student learning
gains. A computerized personal response system will allow
me to monitor these details and gather specific data for each
question. I would also like to use two more group problem
solving activities where students work in class in small teams
(3-5 students) to solve a problem where they have to
synthesize information learned earlier in class to solve a PBL
or case study. Each student will have to take a turn at being
group reporter. I would also like to incorporate more student
narratives where the students write about the big picture of the
course and how each new concept relates to the big picture of
the course. End of course narratives also seem to help the
students place what they have learned in perspective. The
next process will be to evaluate student outcomes using a
Materials Concept Inventory. In addition, since I have a
personal response system that is linked to the concept data
base and to individual students, I hope to gather data to see
whether these techniques do indeed more effectively serve
different student populations. Thus, much work remains as
effectively enhancing student learning is indeed complex.
CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

It is often difficult to measure with any degree of certainty

improved student learning over the short term. However, it is
known that if students are more engaged in their own learning
and if students are more interested in the subject, that learning
is improved. A type of student engagement is how many
times the students stay after class to learn something more.
Many more students stay after class if there is an active
learning activity. The overall student satisfaction with the
course has also risen slightly (about 5%). Students come to
0-7803-9077-6/05/$20.00 2005 IEEE
October 19 22, 2005, Indianapolis, IN
35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
F4C-9