Alternative Energy Teaching Internship Sparks Publication's Interest
Katherine Friedrich

After using fuel cell technology to teach electrochemistry at Madison Area Technical College (MATC), Delta Program intern Matt D'Amato and his colleagues recently published their results in the Journal of Chemical Education.

"Everybody's got their eyes on alternative energy sources right now," MATC chemistry professor Kenneth Walz, a coauthor of the article, observed. "Alternative fuels are a really big topic currently because energy prices are high."

Although renewable energy is growing in popularity, many college students are not familiar with the way that fuel cells work. D'Amato and his colleagues developed a combination of Web-based tutorials and hands-on lab projects to teach students about the chemical processes that generate electricity within fuel cells.

"It's a challenge for students to visualize a chemical reaction," said Walz, whose class participated in the project. In response to this challenge, the team developed an online learning object called The Heart of a Fuel Cell, which is part of a series of fuel cell web animations.

The web site introduces students to the issues facing the engineers developing fuel cell technology. An animation allows students to look at the chemical reactions taking place inside the fuel cell that aid or impede the process.

The success of the project, D'Amato said, rested on its appeal to students of different learning styles. This appeal was due to the combination of the online learning object with a lab and lecture. "We developed a lab where the students constructed a fuel cell and. used it to power a small electrical circuit," Walz explained.

"We were able to prove. that it helped different styles of learners," D'Amato said. Through CIRTL's Delta Program, D'Amato's exploration of teaching-as-research for students with diverse learning styles has now led to a part-time teaching position at MATC.

The project was a collaborative effort of UW materials science graduate students D'Amato and Kenneth Lux and MATC faculty, students and staff, including Kenneth Walz, Holly Walter Kerby and Barbara Anderegg. It was sponsored by CERET - the NSF-funded Consortium for Education in Renewable Energy Technologies.

Delta interns work with MATC faculty frequently. Since MATC is a teaching institution, and UW-Madison has a strong research emphasis, these collaborations are mutually beneficial. "The Delta students bring a lot of new knowledge to the campus," said Walz.

February 22, 2007

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