WEEK 1
And now, we are given the task to design a membrane reactor. What an excitement! Have been waiting for this since the semester’s beginning. Briefing by Dr Raihan and Dr Tazli was short but very useful for us to understand the case. Basically, we have to design a reactor that can produce 30000 ton/ year of hydrogen gas through steam reforming of methane. The first day we were instructed to do mind map on the task. One Mahjong paper for Problem statement (where we define the problem) and another for the table where we list out what we know, have to know and the learning issues. This was a great idea since we get the bigger picture in a short period of time. We were given the important reading materials to refer in order to complete the task. It would have been great if the answer was given, but what would be the time since this is an open ended assignment. So, yeah. Problem Based Learning starts!
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In the first week of PBL, Dr Tazli gave briefing on what is PBL and what we have to do. He had uploaded the question and the materials that we need to refer on facebook group. During this week, we read the question and tried to understand it by paraphrasing based on our understanding and we also did KNK (Known and Unknown) Table to show what was known and unknown from the question. After 30 minutes, each group took turn to present what they had written on mahjong paper. I felt like more problems will come as we proceed with PBL through this session. However, this class session help me to understand what we need to consider and calculate to get a good reactor design. I also felt small in the class as I could not grab some parts that were shared by other groups. I thought after this class, I need to do more readings on the topic or asked the groups directly to explain to me.
During first week of PBL, honestly speaking i don’t know what to do. Lecturers just give us the question with the end product and require us to design a membrane reactor that can perform the desired product. I just think that this is too much for me in the beginning. Then, I act like nothing happened and I just ignore this assignment for a week because I am truly clueless. But luckily at then end of first week my peer group had a meeting and we start dividing task between us. I got an article about catalyst to read. Then only I understand a little bit what is this all about.
In this first week of PBL, dr tazli was the lecturer that give explaintions about the details in PBL that are important, and give the flow in how doing the PBL process. Its quite nice and little difficult because we cant get the idea in how doing the pbl things. However, the hel per from the articles are very great helps in understanding the problems as keywords in solving them.