Making it Happen he says, adding that the students didn’t seem to be connecting to the material. He consulted with Wendy Newstetter, a learning scientist on staff at the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, who encouraged him to try some different techniques. One was problem-based learning found in medical education. So they added an hour to the 3-hour credit course to create a problem-solving supplement to the lecture. “But I quickly learned that not everyone would interact in the exercise,” Le Doux says. “Some
BEYOND NORTH AVE
of Nezafati’s TAs who took the course in fall 2015, says it’s what makes the approach most challenging. “I’d never been a fan of rigid rules, and this class has a lot of conventions in solving engineering problems,” Wang says. “But if you can’t explain something in a way that someone else can understand, then you really don’t understand it enough yourself.” If there’s a “secret sauce” to the Problem Solving Studio, it’s a concoction of collaboration and communication — working with a partner out in
PHOTOS COURTESY JOE LE DOUX
watched while others worked. That’s when I tried the desk blotters — they had to take notes on the big blotter pad.” After more trial and error, the course became entirely dedicated to in-class problem solving, with no lecture. “It used to be you really needed the lecturer because you didn’t have as much access to information as you do today,” says Joe Le Doux. “A good lecturer helped determine which facts are most important. But that lecturer can only make the material appropriate for a fraction of the students. The Problem Solving Studio allows the instructor to personalize the experience for each student.” “It definitely pushes me to think beyond how I previously thought,” says Mary Kathryn Clark, a freshman BME major. “I draw a picture of the system, because every problem requires a level of visualization. Then I ask, ‘what can I manipulate to find out something else? And how do I set up a series of equations to find that?’” To prepare for quizzes, she explains the steps of her problem solving to her roommate, whom she acknowledges “sometimes zones out.” That level of explanation and demonstration is key to the PSS approach. Cassidy Wang, one
the open, then detailing the step-by-step journey to a solution. So far, it’s shown to be effective. Le Doux says the class garners more positive feedback from students compared to traditional classes as well as a higher level of mastery of course content, as evidenced by change scores on concept inventory tests. “Plus, we looked at about 300 students longitudinally to see how they did in the follow-on course,” he says. “The PSS students, on average, do about a half-letter grade better than those who took the lecture-based version. And the biggest gains were made by students who have ‘average’ GPAs overall.” Nezafati is now one of four faculty members teaching BMED 2210 using the Problem Solving Studio approach, and the method is gaining traction within the College of Engineering and beyond. A generation from now, it may be far more commonplace in higher education. “Unlike a lecture environment, you’re constantly getting feedback about what the students know and where they are in the learning process,” Le Doux says. “And you get to know the students better, too.” ▪ Georgia Tech Engineers, Spring 2017
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