Teaching PSE Mastery During, and After, the COVID-19 Pandemic

The author has been teaching process systems engineering (PSE) courses to undergraduates at the Technion for more than 30 years, evolving his teaching to active learning methods, and in the last five years, to the “flipped class” model. In the spring of 2020, teaching became particularly challenging, since it was taught on-line for the first time, with students having to collaborate remotely with each other also for the detailed design work. This contribution presents the experiences and conclusions resulting from the first COVID-19 semester (spring 2020). At the time of writing, the recommendations are being implemented on two flipped courses, on process design and process control, which are being taught completely on-line in winter 2020 to the same class of 53 students. The presentation will thus summarize the lessons learned over a complete year of practice