Congratulations to University of Utah chemical engineering graduate student Kyle Branch for winning “Best Poster” in the Chemical Engineering Division at the 2018 American Society of Engineering Education National Conference.
Branch’s poster, “Development and Usage of an Online Homework System in a Chemical Engineering Curriculum,” details an online, open-source system to administer a variety of course materials to students, including homework assignments, lab safety training quizzes, course surveys, and simulated laboratory experiments.
The homework assignments have been designed to randomly generate many parameters in each homework problem in order to give students a unique problem and minimize cheating. The assignments are automatically graded and allow students multiple attempts in order to reduce the grading commitment on instructors.
The curriculum also includes awards which students can obtain by doing well on homework assignments, through training on laboratory equipment, and from collecting high-quality data on laboratory experiments.
Branch will be graduating with his doctorate degree in chemical engineering in August and will start his career as a professional track faculty in the Departments of Metallurgical Engineering and Chemical Engineering at the University of Utah.