Nurturing faculty-student dialogue, deep learning and creativity through journal writing exercises

One of the most difficult endeavors in the engineering curriculum is encouraging students to develop creative, independent thought and a deep level of understanding. To achieve these results, we incorporate journal writing exercises into the curriculum of a core chemical engineering course, ChE 363 (Unit Operations II: Separations) at the University of Texas at Austin. Students receive weekly prompts to develop analogies or thought experiments to describe fundamental concepts prior to discussion in lecture. This motivates students to learn material independently and deeply as they are required to link concepts to common life experiences. The instructor identifies three to five of the most creative and accurate analogies and presents them to the class. The class votes for the best one, which earns the student extra credit. The journal writing exercises promote dialogue between the instructor and the students, generating in-class discussions that often extend well beyond the scope of the journal prompt.