Teaching and enhancement of critical thinking skills for undergraduate students in a computational fluid dynamics course

Abstract

This paper reports the recent development and implementation of three teaching modules in order to teach and enhance the students’ critical thinking skills in a level IV undergraduate/postgraduate course ‘Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for Engineering Applications’. These teaching modules include a lecture module, an online test module and a CFD project module. The lecture module introduces the importance of critical thinking skills by an example case, critical thinking definition and processes, and the application of critical thinking skills in formulation of CFD problems. In the online test module, seven online tests have been developed to enhance the students’ understanding of the contents of lectures and practical sessions. Meanwhile, students apply their critical thinking skills to work out some of the tests. In the project module, a student-driven CFD project is designed to help students to apply CFD techniques and critical thinking skills in engineering problems. In the project, students choose their own project topic and problems. They use CFD skills learned in the course and critical thinking skills to critically analyse their problems, identify the important parameters and review results. They apply the critical writing skills to finalise a project report. To the best knowledge of the author, this systematical integration of teaching and enhancement of critical thinking skills in computational fluid dynamics course is innovative. Feedback from students is quite positive shown by an anonymous survey in 2014.