Analyzing Usage of Various Study Resources by Engineering Students

Pradeep Kashinath Waychal

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Conference: 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Publication Date: June 26, 2016
Start Date: June 26, 2016
End Date: June 29, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-68565-5
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: It’s All About the Students
Tagged Division: Engineering Libraries
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/p.26248
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/26248
Download Count: 461

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Paper Authors

biography

Pradeep Kashinath Waychal NMIMS University orcid.org/0000-0001-8142-2464

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Dr Pradeep Waychal is a founder trustee and the chair of Guruji Education Foundation that provides holistic support to the education of underprivileged students and operates on funding from friends. The foundation has recently extended its work in diverse areas such research in engineering education, youth employability and teaching computer science to adolescents. Earlier, Dr Waychal has worked at Patni Computer Systems for 20 years in various positions including the head of innovations, NMIMS as the director Shirpur campus and at College of Engineering Pune (COEP) as the founder head of the innovation Center.

Dr Waychal earned his Ph D in the area of developing Innovation Competencies in Information System Organizations from IIT Bombay and M Tech in Control Engineering from IIT Delhi. He has presented keynote / invited talks in many high proﬁle international conferences and has published papers in peer-reviewed journals. He / his teams have won awards in Engineering Education, Innovation, Six Sigma, and Knowledge Management at international events. Recently, his paper won the Best Teaching Strategies Paper award at the most respected international conference in the area of engineering education - Annual conference of American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). His current research interests are engineering education, software engineering, and developing innovative entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.

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Abstract

Engineering education – all over the world – is undergoing transformation. The rise of the Internet and allied technologies and regulatory requirement of outcome-based education that is rooted in the challenging 21st century problems are the driving forces behind this transformation. These changes are making newer study resource available as well as imperative. It is important to analyze the use of these resources so that faculty members can both educate students and plan for various resources, and librarians can provide for the required resources.

Our study was carried out in engineering and management school having two programs – four years undergraduate engineering and five years integrated management and technology. We took a random sample of 25 % students from all the three classes of all the five departments of the engineering program and from the first year of both engineering and integrated programs. We used the survey form designed by Krause, et al. It asks two questions - (1) ‘How often did you use the following resources to help you study for your exam?’ and (2) ‘Which of the following resources do you use when you encounter a confusing concept while solving a problem?’ and provides options such as, classroom notes, posted lecture slides, textbook reading, classmates / friends, instructor and Google search.

We aggregated all the responses and found that students prefer going through their classroom notes and discussing with classmates or friends the most, and utilize posted lecture notes and old exam papers and quiz questions the least for the regular study. When they encounter a confusing concept or solving a problem, the resource usage pattern appeared to be similar except their first choice was discussing with their classmates or friends instead of referring to their textbooks. There are clear variations in this pattern, especially between the first and the final year students and between various departments and also a little variation between the two first year programs. We will present the detailed analysis in our paper.

The study needs to be repeated in different settings to establish its validity. Further, we can analyze use of the resources in the context of courses, faculty and their teaching methods. We can also study the correlation, if any, between resources in use and performance at the examination.

Citation
Format

Waychal, P. K. (2016, June), Analyzing Usage of Various Study Resources by Engineering Students Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.26248

TY - CPAPER
AB - Engineering education – all over the world – is undergoing transformation. The rise of the Internet and allied technologies and regulatory requirement of outcome-based education that is rooted in the challenging 21st century problems are the driving forces behind this transformation. These changes are making newer study resource available as well as imperative. It is important to analyze the use of these resources so that faculty members can both educate students and plan for various resources, and librarians can provide for the required resources.

Our study was carried out in engineering and management school having two programs – four years undergraduate engineering and five years integrated management and technology. We took a random sample of 25 % students from all the three classes of all the five departments of the engineering program and from the first year of both engineering and integrated programs. We used the survey form designed by Krause, et al. It asks two questions - (1) ‘How often did you use the following resources to help you study for your exam?’ and (2) ‘Which of the following resources do you use when you encounter a confusing concept while solving a problem?’ and provides options such as, classroom notes, posted lecture slides, textbook reading, classmates / friends, instructor and Google search.

We aggregated all the responses and found that students prefer going through their classroom notes and discussing with classmates or friends the most, and utilize posted lecture notes and old exam papers and quiz questions the least for the regular study. When they encounter a confusing concept or solving a problem, the resource usage pattern appeared to be similar except their first choice was discussing with their classmates or friends instead of referring to their textbooks. There are clear variations in this pattern, especially between the first and the final year students and between various departments and also a little variation between the two first year programs. We will present the detailed analysis in our paper.

The study needs to be repeated in different settings to establish its validity. Further, we can analyze use of the resources in the context of courses, faculty and their teaching methods. We can also study the correlation, if any, between resources in use and performance at the examination.

AU - Pradeep Kashinath Waychal
CY - New Orleans, Louisiana
DA - 2016/06/26
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Analyzing Usage of Various Study Resources by Engineering Students
UR - https://peer.asee.org/26248
DO - 10.18260/p.26248
ER -