Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Commons^™

Nanotechnology Education—First Step In Implementing A Spiral Curriculum, Ganesh Balasubramanian, Vinod K. Lohani, Ishwar K. Puri, Scott W. Case, Roop L. Mahajan

Ganesh Balasubramanian

A nanotechnology learning module was implemented into a freshman engineering course at Virginia Tech. The novelty of our approach is that an established spiral curriculum model has been employed, for the first time to the best of authors’ knowledge, to design the nanotechnology option. The module was piloted in a freshman class (180 students) during spring ‘08. The key components included (1) a prior knowledge survey, (2) a 40-minute in-class presentation on basic nanotechnology concepts, (3) an activity that involves nanoscale image analysis and the plotting of molecular forces usingLabVIEWsoftware,and(4)apost-modulesurvey.Lessonslearnedfromthepilotimplementationwereincorporated appropriately to expose roughly 1450 freshmen to nanotechnology basics in …