{"id":1576,"date":"2012-10-24T01:54:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T05:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mitcet.mit.edu:443\/?p=1576"},"modified":"2024-12-19T17:02:25","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T22:02:25","slug":"aeronautics-and-astronautics-16-20-16-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mitcet.mit.edu\/2012\/10\/24\/aeronautics-and-astronautics-16-20-16-90\/","title":{"rendered":"Aeronautics and Astronautics: 16.20 & 16.90"},"content":{"rendered":"
Moving from lectures to interactive class sessions while enabling remote student participation<\/div>\n

The opportunity:<\/h3>\n

Two trends drive a growing interest for creating more flexibility in the Aero\/Astro curriculum. First, undergraduate students can participate in an increasing number of valuable academic opportunities beyond the campus, but most required courses are for residential students only. Second, Aero\/Astro faculty increasingly consider the use of \u201cactive learning\u201d methods in class to be an effective pedagogical technique.<\/p>\n

In recognition of these trends, Aero\/Astro faculty hypothesized that \u201ca learning model, emphasizing active student-instructor engagement, coupled with student preparation, can be effective for achieving subject learning objectives for students both on-campus and of-campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

The experiment:<\/h3>\n

In Spring 2012, two Aero\/Astro courses (16.20: Structural Mechanics, and 16.90: Computational Methods for Aerospace Engineering) implemented several significant changes to the typical lecture-homework model. The experiment has just concluded and evaluation by the Teaching and Learning Laboratory is on-going.<\/p>\n

Faculty oriented class activities around mini-lectures, focusing on topics that proved to be challenging to students, and collaborative sessions, in which students worked on problems or programming assignments together. Students were expected to review course notes before attending class. Students were also given the option of attending class remotely.<\/p>\n

Areas of innovation:<\/h3>\n

Participating faculty from both courses felt that the experiments exceeded their expectations.<\/p>\n

Participants agreed that increased interactivity made the class sessions more valuable learning experiences. Typical student comments noted that: “Every class is like office hours with the professor\u201d and \u201cThe class knocked down barriers. If I don’t get it, I can ask”.<\/p>\n

The use of embedded quizzes within the online pre-class material in 16.90 provided a dual benefit:<\/p>\n