The Use of Industrial Visits to Enhance Learning at Engineering Courses

Industrial visits represent important activities in any engineering undergraduate programme that contribute to the achievement of various essential learning outcomes and programme objectives. This paper reports on an attempt to make the industrial visit an integral part of the course. This is achieved through identifying learning outcomes and a suitable industrial site to achieve them. In this case a thermal power plant was identified as a site to be visited by chemical, electrical & electronic and mechanical engineering first year students. The visit is planned to help the students achieve the following: 1. Recognise the process units – Boiler, Pump, Condenser, Steam turbine, Generator, Electrostatic precipitator, Pulverizer, Reclaimer etc. & generate the process flow diagram. 2. Identify the input and output for different processes. 3. Experience the importance of working safely. 4. Understand the concept of thermal energy conversion & estimate overall efficiency of power plant. 5. Understand how does the product of the plant interfaced to the world. The industrial visit planning started by contacting the power plant management and obtaining the plant diagram (which is shown in Figure 1) and preparing a series of questions related to the learning outcomes. The students were asked to answer pre visit questions that are related to the plant diagram. Answering these questions prior to the industrial visit was aimed at priming the minds of the students and providing a mental framework to acquire the intended knowledge. After completing the visit, a set of questions, that is related to the visit and the power plant, is served to the students. This set of questions includes questions aimed at gauging the level of satisfaction of the students. The same set of post visit questions is served to the students on the last week of the semester in order to assess the level of retention of knowledge after few weeks of t he visit. Students found this method very useful and they were able to remember a fair bit of information at the end of the semester. Our assessment of this exercise is that it has achieved its objectives.