A New Web-Based Outreach Platform for Classroom Projects: An Application Example in Geoenvironmental Remediation

摘要

Graduate level courses commonly include a class project. Typically, these projects involve a report that is corrected by the instructor and may include an oral presentation in the classroom. Recent research studies on education and learning indicate that students learn better when their class projects are reviewed by a broader audience rather than merely the instructor of the course. A web-based platform that allows instructors and students to host student class projects online was developed and is presented. The platform was used in the Winter 2013 semester to support a web-based class project as part of a graduate level course on Geoenvironmental Engineering at the University of Michigan. Students selected a topic on geoenvironmental remediation and submitted their report online using the web-based platform. The student reports were made available to professionals for review. Practitioners as well as experts on geoenvironmental remediation were notified about this initiative and were invited to submit online questions, and comments or request clarifications from the students. Students were required to respond to the technical review comments and make the necessary improvements and clarifications to their final report. On the basis of the comments by visitors and the instructor, students finalized their report and prepared a video that was also made available online. The student reports remain online as technical reference to geoenvironmental engineering professionals. Professionals welcomed the opportunity to become involved in student learning; each class project was visited by 400-1000 practitioners within the two-week review period. The impact of this student-learning experiment was also assessed. Students' self-assessment survey results indicated that students were more motivated to submit a quality project, were excited to receive feedback from practitioners and felt that their work made a greater impact to the Profession compared to submitting a "conventional" class project report to the instructor only.