Microfluidics in the First-Year Classroom: Understanding the Foundation

摘要

As previously published by The Ohio State University, the early introduction to microfluidics and computational fluid dynamics at the first-year level can be extremely effective , providing students with a visual-based understanding of simple fluid dynamic elements as well as a visualization tool they can use throughout their engineering education. However, while there is no question that the inclusion of computational methods is essential in the engineering and science curriculums, there is little understanding of the pedagogical mechanisms that make the introduction of fluid dynamics - especially computational fluid dynamics - successful at any level. Of course, many case studies exist illustrating the ability of students to understand and solve complicated fluid dynamics problems but how early can computational fluid dynamics be introduced? And how well do first-year students intuitively understand fluid dynamics, based solely on their introductory physics classes and high school experience alone? The Ohio State University has developed a course, which introduces computational fluid dynamics as part of a cornerstone microfiuidic design project taking place at the end of the first year for engineering honor students. During the course, data has been collected to assess the fluid dynamics understanding of the students before their introduction to computational fluid dynamics software. In addition, students were asked to evaluate their overall course experience at the end of the course. These results have been used to adapt the pedagogical approach to microfluidics in the classroom, spending more time on concepts with which the students are unfamiliar and less time on concepts that are more intuitive.