EVALUATION OF COMPUTER SIMULATION EXPERIMENTS IN A SENIOR LEVEL CAPSTONE CHEMICAL ENGINEERING COURSE

A systematic evaluation was done on the computer simulations developed for use in the capstone laboratory course in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University. The study suggests that computer simulations fill a different role than traditional experiments; that the environment in which the simulations are implemented has a major effect on students’ perceptions of their value; and that qualitative interview data can play a vital role in understanding the effect of changes in curriculum