2009 International Conference on Engineering Education (lCEED 2009), December 7-8, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Innovation of College Speciality Experimental

Instruction

Xudong Pan, Guanglin Wang, and Tongfei Ma

School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering Harbin Institute of Technology

Harbin, China

Abstract- The college seniors are going to learn their specialty

courses, and specialty experimental courses make important roles

on mastering their specialties, expanding knowledge structures,

and improving practice abilities. According to the instruction experience of the novel specialty experimental courses-"Eighteen periods innovation experimental courses" of Harbin Institute of Technology, this paper discusses the importance of experimental

instruction for training innovative person, and provides a new method which integrates instruction and scientific research,

transforming the scientific research processes and achievements to instruction resources.

Keywords-experimental instruction; scientific research; instruction resource

I. INTRODUCTION

The teaching of undergraduate students and the cultivation of their quality and accomplishment make up an important section to realize the college education. In the cultivation goal for undergraduate students of Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), a clear requirement has been brought out that students should be competitive elites or the leading people in all walks of life, having the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, possessing the ability of invention and engineering practice, being patriotic and dedicated to their jobs, of great enterprise, pragmatic and having physical and mental health. Experimental instruction is an indispensability section of great importance during the cultivation of the innovation specialists, an important segment to train their spirit of integrating theory with practice and enhance the practical ability and the spirit of innovation.

Innovation is the soul of the survival and development in all walks of life. We should make innovation on teaching method continuously, treat the education with a developing eye, and guide the teaching with the latest achievement of scientific research. Then, we can cultivate the innovative specials. Some people even think that innovation delayed is innovation denied [1]. Many departments and universities have their own opinions on innovation. Martin Frost [2] asked to make a comfortable environment to the innovation; John Heywood [3] enhances the quality of the practical teaching through the research of classroom teaching; B. O'Connor [4] introduces the innovative features of project-type courses in the special engineering programme, develops the problem-solving abilities and decision-making skills of students through their active participation in task or project courses of different kinds.

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Daniel Obuobi [5] introduces the function of innovation in the education and education technology to meet the demands of the 21 st century.

Many colleges have summed up their experiences on experimental teaching and cultivation of innovation and bring forward that we should combine the scientific research with experimental teaching, promote the teaching through scientific research, cultivate the consciousness of innovation [6], use the method of opening experimental teaching [7], construct the innovative laboratory [8], apply the information technology such as multimedia teaching, virtual laboratory and web laboratory [9]. All of these methods have achieved good effects.

This thesis discusses how to exert the promoting effect of scientific research in the aspect of teaching level and enhance the innovation ability of undergraduate students, backing on the teaching work and experience of the " Assembling and Testing of Pneumatic Measurement System ", one of the series courses "Eighteen periods innovation experimental courses" established by the School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in HIT.

II. INNOVATIVE EXPERIMENTAL COURSE

Innovative experimental course aims at exploring and establishing the teaching mode whose essence is question and task, advocates the reform of innovation experiment centering in the undergraduate students, brings the students' initiative and innovation into play, stimulates the students' innovation of thinking and consciousness, acquires the method of thinking and solving problem, and enhance their innovative and practical ability. It can lead students acquire the training of scientific research and invention, change the actuality weak in practical teaching and practical ability, transform the infusing teaching method, extend the teaching method of researching study and personalized training. This course insists combining the teaching and scientific research, promoting the reform of teaching with scientific research, establishing the teaching system centering in ability, introducing the advantage resource into teaching, leading students to attend research and activity of innovation. The implemental principle of this course is interest driving, self-experiment and emphasis on process. "Eighteen periods innovation experimental courses" consists of several submodles, and one of these is "Assembling and Testing of Pneumatic Measurement System".

2009 International Conference on Engineering Education (ICEED 2009), December 7-8, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Pneumatic measurement is one of the common methods of measuring the quality of parts processed in machinery manufacturing. The measuring medium is compressed air. Dimension and displacement of the parts can be measured by the change of flowrate, velocity or pressure of the compressed air flowing through the part. Its outstanding advantages are non-contacted, low measuring force, high measuring accuracy, structure of measuring head is simple, and measuring head is difficult to abrade.

"Assembling and Testing of Pneumatic Measurement System" experiment course enables students to understand the fundamental principle of pneumatic measuring, master the basic method of pneumatic measuring, and learn to ascertain the basic parameters of the measuring head and design special measuring heads for different measured parts.

The content of the experiment consists of three parts: (1) Validation and application of flow pneumatic measuring principle. (2) Validation and application of pressure pneumatic measuring principle. (3) Application of pressure pneumatic measuring principle in axial fIx dimension of slide valve. This experiment involves multi-category knowledge including mechanics, electronics, pneumatic transmission, measuring and computer programming, and the application of mathematics software such as Matlab. In this experiment, students should be divided into different groups, in each group students cooperate to complete the experiment under the guidance of teachers.

III. CHANGE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO TEACHING

RESOURCE

As a multidisciplinary, opening and research-based national key university, HIT has a great many scientifIc research projects and obtain a large number of achievements. For a long period of time, the university has been paying great attention to the steady coordinated development of teaching and research, persisting in teaching and research with two hands, mutual promotion and coordinated development.

In experimental teaching, we pay attention to introduce the latest research achievement into class in time, present a number of current cutting-edge professional research directions. For

example, achievements in scientifIc research such as "QCT - I Pneumatic Measurement Comprehensive Experimental System" (Fig. 1) and "HOCT- I Slide Valve Flow Simulation Testing System (Fig. 2) have been adopted in the experiment course. These achievements were successfully developed in recent years and are the signifIcant devices in the actual production.

It is worth mentioning that, in order to exercise students' innovation abilities of scientifIc research, what is different from the traditional experimental lessons is, we not only utilize these devices for experiments in the experimental class, but also emphasize on mastering the development of the equipments. That is, culturing students' research abilities through a concrete research project. The specifIc practice is: 1) Let these equipments be in a non-normal state purposely; 2) Bring forward the development requirements in experimental class and explain some signifIcant technology and theoretical knowledge in the developing process; 3) Let students analyze

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the existing problems of devices and solution methods under the guidance of teachers, then debug and recover the devices. Make sure that students can experience the process of research and innovation, exercise their analysis and problem-solving abilities. Maximize the use of specifIc scientifIc research process to inspire and cultivate the creativity of students.

Figure I. QCT - I Pneumatic Measurement Comprehensive Experimental System

Figure 2. HOCT - I Slide Valve Flow Simulation Testing System

When drafting specifIc experiment content, we note to propose new problems combining new research projects to let students analyze and put forward solutions. So, after the recovery of experiment devices, each team of students should complete the design and manufacturing of pneumatic measuring heads independently according to their different experiment content, and put up the rational gas circuits to fmish experiment. During this process, the titles we drafted for students are not single. Students can select titles according to their own interest, or even they can draft titles themselves. Teachers don't provide defmite experimental procedures, but let students discuss to develop the steps themselves based on requirements. Of course, this way of operation does not always get correct experimental fIgures and satisfactory results. But what we emphasize in the lessons is the process of experiment, which develops the students' innovation and creativity, not results. When dealing with the fIgures after experiment, the students are required to analyze the cause correctly if they haven't gotten satisfactory results, and propose the improving approach and specifIc programs. They should learn to make research summary. We all believe experiments like this are successful.

IV. INNOVATION OF EXPERIMENTAL TEACHING METHOD

Experimental teaching has its own rules. To foster the students' innovative consciousness and ability in teaching, we must improve the experimental teaching method continuously, abandon "whole-house fIlling" and adopt the method of

2009 International Conference on Engineering Education (lCEED 2009), December 7-8, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

inspiring, exploring and guiding. In fact, we only explain the necessary theory foundation for two or three lessons of all the "Eighteen period innovation experimental courses", but leave lots of time for students themselves to do something needing minds and hands, such as searching for materials, designing and implementing experiments, using computer to process experimental data and conclude the whole experiment. In the teaching process, we encourage students to do more minds and more questions, doubt boldly, develop to think differently and divergently, and be initiative in study. Let students be always among in novelty, suspicion, difficulty and contradiction, thus leading to thought conflicting, furthest mobilizing their thirst for knowledge and enquiry mind, and also impelling them to use their own hands to solve practical problems. In the innovative experimental classes, we also focus on arrangements and guidance to students to discuss, not only between students and teachers, but also between students themselves, in order to help them establish the concept of coordination and culture their ability of coordination.

V. CONCLUSION

Specific conclusions can be drawn. In the course specific experiment, we combined the latest research achievements and used heuristic teaching method to organize the students to discuss and coordinate actively. We have achieved good results in the students' development of innovative scientific research capabilities.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors acknowledge the support from the Lab of Process Automation and Detection, School of Mechatronics Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology.

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