Author: Daniel Knight

Daniel Knight is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.

Contact: dwknight@uci.edu

What course/lab are you planning?

CBE 140: Chemical Engineering Senior Laboratory

What are the main instructional goals?

In CBE 140 A and B, students gain experiential learning opportunities in a class colloquially known as “unit operations.” Here, students observe how their prior coursework comes to life in several projects involving momentum, heat, and mass transfer, reaction engineering, separations, and controls.  Teams of four work together to characterize the behavior of a unit operation and summarize their findings in a written report and an oral presentation. This is repeated for a total of eight projects per team across two quarters, out of twenty projects available for study. Along the way, students develop skills in experimental design, data analysis and statistics, communication, team management, and engineering ethics.

What steps are you taking to achieve these goals during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Typically, student teams work together to collect experimental data, as pictured in Figure 1. To allow for physical distancing, each team will now elect one representative to control the apparatus while other teammates observe and provide guidance via Zoom videoconferencing. All students are encouraged to serve as their team’s experimentalist at least once per quarter. Rooms have clearly marked areas for each project, allowing ample distancing. Newly recorded introductions to each project will be provided, allowing students to familiarize themselves with the apparatus and its operation prior to entering the lab. (We acknowledge Chevron Corporation and its University Partnerships and Association Program (UPAR) whose generous donation has allowed acquisition of dedicated videoconferencing hardware.)

Several safety precautions are being taken: Students typically don safety glasses, gloves, lab coats, and now also face masks and shields. Plexiglas barriers are installed between lab bays, mitigating airflow between workstations. Students conduct symptom checks prior to entering the lab, including a temperature check at the door, and work areas are sanitized at the beginning and end of each shift.

There are many unique challenges to overcome entering this academic year, but we are confident the changes implemented allow for maximal achievement of the course learning outcomes while ensuring fulfillment of the paramount course outcome—student safety and wellbeing.

What’s one thing you would want other instructors to know based on your experience?

An overlooked aspect of lab courses is that students translate theoretical knowledge into real-world intuition. To illustrate: graduates can describe the practical meaning of “steady state,” identify the sound of a pump being overloaded, and understand how a manometer makes possible the measurement of a pressure differential. When other instructors are adapting hands-on instruction under the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, I would recommend that instructors identify these specific outcomes so that lab protocols can be designed with appropriate technologies to safely support their attainment.