Episode 30 – Student Learning on Display: Spinach-Powered Solar Cells
In an effort to better understand student learning, particularly deep learning, as it occurs at Vanderbilt, the CFT is producing a special series of podcasts highlighting student projects across a variety of disciplines.
In this episode we join CFT Director Derek Bruff as he reports on-location from the floor of the poster session at the School of Engineering’s Senior Design Day. He talks with chemical and mechanical engineering students about what they learned while collaborating on their senior design project, one that resulted in a spinach-powered solar cell. The project has earned the team a Marketplace Innovation Award and $90,000 of development funds from the EPA. For more on the team’s projects, see the School of Engineering’s recent press release.
http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/59/cftpodcast/ep30_spinach.mp3 [MP3, 6 min 55 sec]
That’s student Paul McDonald on the left, one of the members of the spinach-powered solar cell team, showing off his periodic-table tie.
For more perspectives on project-based learning, see Derek’s ProfHacker post, “Motivating Students with Application Projects and Poster Sessions” and listen to podcast episode 17, “Guil Gualda on Student Projects in Google Earth.” And stay tuned to the podcast throughout the summer for more on-location reports on student learning.
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