Teaching Heat Transfer in a Studio Mode

Over the past four years we have transformed our undergraduate heat transfer course from a lecture format into what we call a “partial studio model.” Two lecture hours per week are supplemented with a two-hour “hands-on” session in a classroom equipped with a computer for each pair of students. Much of the studio work revolves around a suite of teaching modules that we have developed for use in our undergraduate and graduate heat-and-mass-transfer courses. Most modules include research-based numerical algorithms which solve the governing ordinary and partial-differential equations in real time. Several of the modules may be considered “virtual laboratories,” that is, they allow students to take data from the computer screen for post-processing — much as if they were working in a real, extremely well-equipped, laboratory. Others give the option of performing dozens of “what if” calculations rapidly, thus inviting use in the design process. Each module has been custom tailored for the particular topic; inputs and outputs are limited to only those essential to that problem. Thus, unlike most industry-grade computation fluid dynamics packages, there is virtually no “learning curve” associated with software operations. For a number of these modules we have developed an accompanying desktop experiment to enhance still further the hands-on nature of the studio.