Breaking Ground: Improving Undergraduate Engineering Projects through Flipped Teaching of Literature Search Techniques

This paper describes the use of flipped teaching for information literacy instruction in a new course, Drill, Blast, and Excavate, within the mining option for geological engineering (GeoE) students. These students will enter the mining industry with less discipline specific knowledge than a student that graduated with a degree in mining engineering, yet on the job training provided by the employer will fill in most of the technical gaps. With the internet connectivity readily accessible, engineers in the workplace do not need to rely solely on co-workers, short courses and conferences for upgrading their knowledge. With this in mind, we developed a flipped teaching assignment to teach students how to effectively and efficiently access electronic information. The course included a research project that allowed the students to practice these information retrieval and evaluation techniques, so as to better prepare them for the working world. These students were very engaged in learning and applied these techniques successfully in their written report and oral presentation.