When recalling university life, Zhang Jing, a graduate of Tianjin University, still clearly remembers the “Heat Transfer” course, which she took as a junior student. In the first lesson, her teacher unexpectedly proposed an open topic: solving a problem about thermal management for an electric vehicle company and providing the underlying data for the project. This meant that students without any theoretical knowledge of the discipline had to independently put forward feasible programs in 130 days or so.
Since that year, a group of “post-1980s” young teachers and their "post-1990s" students became participants of a teaching reform project called "Tianjin University’s New Model of the Talent Cultivation in Energy and Power Engineering". According to Zhang Jing, "At that time, a group of elder 'fanatics' spared no effort to transform their students into younger 'fanatics' and to inspire their enthusiasm for learning and exploration”.
Starting from a professional basic course
Tian Hua, a 28-year-old teacher from the Department of Energy and Power Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering at Tianjin University, taught students the “Heat Transfer” course as soon as he graduated from Tianjin University and became a teacher. “Heat transfer” was one of the three basic courses of Energy and Power Engineering. It’s very difficult to do well in the course and the passing rate for the examination was not high.
Before that time, the teaching style of the course in universities was similar to that of high school education: teachers explained and asked questions and students did exercises. “By only doing exercises, after a year how much knowledge would you still remember after your graduation from school?” To answer his question, Xi Hui, the “post-1970s” Director of the Department, and several “post-1980s” young teachers like Tian Hua, Jiao Kui and Wang Xun wanted to make some changes.
After brainstorming again and again, the reform group was set up. A team of more than twenty people set its reform goal: "We are trying to cultivate comprehensively developed, international, and innovative technology leaders rather than just scientists or skilled workers.”
The reality is that it’s difficult for college students to obtain internships, and this was recognized as one of the toughest problem during higher education. The problem had a disastrous impact on engineering students who needed to pay more attention to practical ability training. Xie Hui asked: “Why do companies show little interest in students’ internship program? Is it because the school education can’t meet their need? We want to explore a way to solve the problem."
So Zhang Jing received her subject of scientific research when she took the class for the first time. As a result, the time spent in teaching students the theory of heat transfer was reduced by half in order to make room for students to directly answer questions posed by companies.
There were 3 classes of 90 students in the Department. Each class set up a virtual company technology bidding team. Each team need to independently make judgments and explore the problem, establish models and put forward technical solutions. Project counseling teachers and students’ instructors would answer the questions that students encountered in practice. Engineers from many companies would also participate in the project mentoring and reviewing each project. Each student’s final score was based on both the results of the final examination and the outcome from his/her project.
In each technology bidding team, there was a general manager, two chief engineers, and five or six project groups which were led by a project manager. Each team was provided with $ 1,000 as its activity fund. Finally, the winning team would receive more funds to support its follow-up research and to participate in national competitions.
There were two "node reports" during the program. Students needed to give their report in English the first time, and in Chinese the second time. The third report was “Enterprise-oriented Report”, and enterprise engineers would join the jury to make their judgment on each team’s program.
“Knowledge "lying" in books now "stands up"
Tian Hua, a project counseling teacher, in the beginning worried that students may not adapt to the changes in the curriculum. But soon he found it was unnecessary to worry about this. The challenging goals successfully inspired students to realize their full potential.
The most obvious change was that the attendance rate of students in class increased rapidly, reaching more than 95%. In addition, the state of students in class also changed. Students who had not listened carefully in class began to take the initiative to request counseling. "Often early in the morning, some students who did not sleep all night would call me for academic counseling", Tian Hua said.
At the age of 27, Jiao Kui became a teacher of Tianjin University after he received his Ph.D. abroad and returned to his alma mater. During that period, he said he was under much pressure. "Every night I wouldn’t leave my office until 11p.m., because I needed to read over dozens of design proposals and revise the reports written in English by all the students from the three classes.
From following rules docilely to thinking independently and valuing practice, these young teachers and younger students felt the pressure brought by the curriculum reform, but also were inspired to unleash their tremendous creativity.
Zhang Jing, as the "chief engineer" of her team, together with her classmates fully concentrated on their research goals. They diligently looked up learning material and spent their own money on books. As the program went on, these students found that their original fragmented knowledge gradually formed a complete system related to their research goal. “Knowledge ‘lying’ in books now ‘stands up’.”
At the end of the semester, these teachers were very satisfied with the results of the final exam. "Being allowed to apply what they have learned, the students all have achieved an excellent result!" In addition, according to a survey on curriculum reform involving more than 130 students and more than 30 graduates, more than 90% of the students felt that the new arrangement of the courses clearly contributed to their understanding and mastery of basic theoretical knowledge; more than 98% of the students believed that the teaching reform provided them with a chance to improve their ability to communicate and collaborate with others, which made them feel less anxious about working in companies.
After the project was finished, the creativity of the students was also stimulated. Zhang Jing and her teammates won a national third prize and two university-level awards for their design work, then they published a high-level SCI paper and applied for a patent for an invention.
To impart knowledge and educate people
Hou Guofeng, a graduate from the Department of Energy and Power Engineering, once hated to be recognized as an "engineering boy", because he thought that meant being a dull and ineloquent person. However, after the curriculum reform, everything changed. By being able to communicate with the directors of enterprises, working with his students to solve problems, and even standing in front of the public to promote his own ideas, not only made him more confident but also helped him quickly adapt to his new role in the workplace.
Xie Hui said: "The curriculum reform allows students to receive a completely different knowledge system, which makes their ways of thinking and ability to solve problems completely different from the past. Even if they may forget the knowledge they have learned, they can still benefit a lot from it."
Once one of the world's top 500 companies encountered thermal management problems in engineering machinery. To help the company solve these problems, students from Department of Energy and Power Engineering provided a lot of valuable basic data concerning the company's three kinds of construction machinery. These students’ proposals for an optimized configuration of the air outlet for air conditioning were adopted by the company.
When the students possess the practical ability to discover problems, study problems and solve problems, it’ll become easy for them to obtain internships.
For the young teachers who are in a critical period of their careers, although educating students brings them a sense of great achievement, they have to face the real criteria for their teaching performance. Teaching reform puts forward specific requirements on the teachers, but the reward system can’t be established as, the results of the curriculum reform can’t be quantified. Whether teachers can be promoted still depends on their achievements in publishing research papers. Many teachers in the reform group are also the elite of the national key laboratories. How to keep the balance between teaching and scientific research is a difficult problem for them.
The problems in institutions and the mechanisms need to be solved by the further reform. For these teachers, to push forward curriculum reform, they need not only have passion but also dedication, enthusiasm and a sense of responsibility to educate people.
