Dr. Blunck's Teaching Pedagogy
I saw firsthand the value of experiential learning as a co-advisor for Engineering Projects in the Community Service (EPICS) team at Purdue University.  I advised teams of students who designed, built, and evaluated engineering projects focused on providing service to the community.  For example, one team built an automated diorama which illustrated the four seasons as the earth rotating around the sun.  The project taught an interdisciplinary team of engineering students design principles, problem solving, project management and reinforced concepts learned in the classroom about electrical engineering. Perhaps the greatest outcome was the students gained confidence in their abilities to become practicing engineers.

I consider learning as a process of acquiring knowledge and then understanding how to apply the knowledge to solve problems.  Formal classroom instruction helps students to establish a framework for understanding information.  Experiential learning then helps students to apply the knowledge to real life applications. Moreover, experiential learning reinforces the relevance of the information and can improve retention.  I seek to enable experiential learning opportunities through providing demonstrations in the classroom or my laboratory, having students work practice problems during class time, requiring term projects, and allowing undergraduate and high school students to perform research with my group. 

My objective with the demonstrations (see link in the Heat Transfer tab) is to create a bridge between formal classroom instruction and experiential learning.  By visualizing the phenomena described in the videos, hopefully abstract concepts become clearer.  I hope that you enjoy the videos and they further your experiential learning experience.