Students graduating with a two-year technical diploma from vocational colleges are entering a new Energy Engineering Program in Spring 2015 Term at Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary. The program provides a path for students with hands-on skills to pursue an engineering bachelor degree. The need to reduce the program completion duration and to provide mathematics courses with sufficient practical aspects has led the School to design a second-year course that combines ordinary differential equations with rigid body dynamics. This course, named ENER 340, has a prerequsite of another course, ENER 240, which combines differential and integral calculus with particle dynamics. We - the ENER 340 instructor team - find that even with such prerequisite course that exposes the students to more elementary concepts of particle dynamics and calculus, students struggled with developing problem solving skills further to solve rigid body dynamics. We find that teaching ordinary differential equations is much easier than teaching rigid body dynamics due to clear logical procedures for solving the former. Students also find it easier to learn the former. We consider several topics that can help blend the two course subjects better based on our teaching experience. We also find that such course blending initiative requires slower teaching and learning speed to allow students to digest the course material better. In addition, a more dedicated textbook that combines both topics is required.
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