Adopting Open-Ended Exercise and Self-Study Modes to Implement Contextual Learning Approach to Enhance Engineering Knowledge/Skills

Abstract

Contextual learning is one of the best ways to convey students the concepts that are being taught in a subject area to real industrial problems so that students are exposed to provide a real-world, product-based framework to integrate and expand the learning experiences from different courses and lab exercises and can enhance their engineering knowledge and skills. This innovative teaching learning process of Contextual Learning is being adopted in the Department of Industrial and Production Engineering for the students of third semester to eight semester and context of study is ASME #150 Gate Valve. This paper focuses on adopting this practice for third and fourth semester students in understanding the generalised design procedure and assembly of valve. Activities were carried out through an open ended experiment in Engineering Design Lab of third semester and a Self study component in Design of Machine Elements at fourth semester to convey the modelling and design concepts of gate valve. This paper concludes with the challenges encountered for the continual improvement for adopting this method of learning.g.