Teodoriu Continues to Utilize New Approaches for Classroom Success

Since joining the faculty of MPGE last year, associate professor Catalin Teodoriu has been transformative in his classroom techniques. Rather than using straight lecture, Teodoriu encourages his students to explore through hands-on projects that enhance their learning, and has even added a gaming element to it by obtaining corporate sponsorship for in-class contests. This past semester, two of his graduate courses, PE 5430 Horizontal Well Technology and PE 5970 Advanced Drilling Technology, formed teams and competed against their peers in presenting their projects.

For PE 5430, students were asked to form teams, choose a topic, divide duties among members of their team, and apply the topics from the course to build small-scale models to support their proposal. Each team was given a budget of $100 and had to submit proposals that included economical and technical factors, in a manner similar to the industry, prior to building their models. Despite the intensity of the work, participants were excited to use their course content in an engaging, dynamic and fun manner. The top finishers were Starving Drillers and Tremor Drilling, however, all four teams’ models will be used in this fall’s undergraduate drilling courses.

For the PE 5970, the aim of the competition was different. The course was the first of its kind at OU that was designed around the NOV Drilling Simulator, and it ended with a workshop where student teams presented their views on the role of simulation, virtual environments and future expectations in regards to emulation of drilling operations. First prize for presentation was awarded to Rock Crushers.

MPGE would like to acknowledge and thank Hunting International‘s Titan Division and Paul Horn GmbH for their gracious sponsorship of these student activities and for recognizing that the more our students experiment and grow their knowledge, the greater the industry will be.

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