Omur-Ozbek uses maker activity to engage CIVE 439 students
Teaching Associate Professor Pinar Omur-Ozbek teaches civil and environmental engineering faculty across the country how to be more engaging teachers, and she recently led by example in her CIVE 439: Applications of Environmental Engineering Concepts course.
Students were learning mass balances for environmental systems and were able to simulate outcomes to better understand the concepts, all while working in a team and having fun.
Omur-Ozbek attended a Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN) Maker Spark workshop in August, and was excited to implement what she learned in her classroom.
“I wanted to create a hands-on activity that would help my students not only understand the concept of mass balance but also encourage collaboration and creativity within their teams,” said Omur-Ozbek. “What I observed was incredible: students quickly grasped the engineering challenge, and the simple act of building physical models gave them a deeper understanding of their projects. It allowed them to visualize complex systems, focus their ideas, and develop a shared team vision. This activity became more than just a learning tool—it was a catalyst for team-building and innovative problem-solving.”
Student Reaction
“This activity was helpful in many ways and definitely enhanced the mass balance understanding of our project. Thinking of our inputs and our desired outputs helped me frame our project as a mass balance and gave me the real-world perspective of how mass balance shows up in engineering outside of water treatment. This time was also valuable for our team to get the ball rolling on possible solutions and understanding more of our project problem. As a team we also got to begin figuring out how each other works as individuals so that we could set up better team norms that will hopefully serve us well for the remainder of the project. Of course, another highlight was that figure creation alone as I was a nice fun brain break to my day. I also enjoyed getting to see other teams’ work as I think it inspired me in my team to think more outside the box given how creative many of the figures were. This activity also gave us practice at assigning role for a presentation to make sure that we all have a chance to talk. Overall, this class/lab activity was great for the understanding of class material, team building, and having fun while doing it all.”