, competitionand cooperation. This paper will document our past and planned efforts to integrate robotics intohigh school math curriculum. Our goal is to build low-cost robots that can be purchased or builtincrementally to manage budgetary restrictions. These robots should be reliable, robust, andmost important of all, be customizable for the specific needs of the teacher and the student teams.Furthermore, we integrated the robots into math lessons.The results indicate that students in our robotics program benefited from the use of robots. Welooked at a problem that students solved using the Pythagorean Theorem and then analyzed theresults of the robotic simulation. The students correctly interpreted both the mathematicalproblem and the real world error
referred to as work in progress and is designed to be shared and discussedwith multiple audiences. When these kinds of examples were used, students demonstrated betterunderstanding of difficult, abstract concepts and praised the approach. Based on similarexperience that was gained and assessed by the author in other STEM subjects (Control Systems,Digital Signal Processing, Computer Algorithms, Algebra, Calculus, Statics, Thermodynamics,Statistics, and Physics), it is believed that the approach has promising potential. The planned assessment will focus on the effect of the new content on learning outcomes.It will emphasize concept comprehension and student interest in the topic. Clearly, using avariety of assessment methods provides a more
Page 14.1382.7 more materials and bring in examples and samples to class when explaining instead of just saying it orally would make a big difference to my learning. (B. Al-M.)Another student with a mixed-right, visual superlink not only analyzed why she liked fractals butalso planned to use them in a project she was working on: . . . I think these fractals above are very beautiful in many ways. The shape and color. The movement of these fractals are very beautiful as if it is dancing in slow motion, and very romantic feeling to it. These shapes can be very inspiring, in color schemes and shap [sic]. Personally, I love spiral shapes and the effect
3 persons. On Tuesday and Thursday the classes met in a standard lecture hall classroom, andexams were always administered on either Tuesday or Thursday. Some Tuesday and Thursdayclass meetings of CALC-II-2T meet in a new ALC on campus. 59% of the students in CALC-II-1T also took CALC-III.3.2 The Flipped Class Redesign PlanAfter reviewing literature on flipped classes, specifically Talbert16 and Bishop and Verleger14 theinstructor set about developing a flipped classroom redesign plan for CALC-II and CALC-III.Content and learning objectives already existed for these courses and were familiar to instructor.What remained was to establish a structure for the courses that followed the flipped class model.Content was divided into units, and
. At this time more faculty participation is necessary to fix such learningbottlenecks.We close the present discussion with one example which illustrates how much effort is currentlyspent in exploring possible connectivity of mathematical topics. In a mechanical engineeringprogram, students have an added advantage of observing applied examples and verifyingmathematical models by experiments. Beginning with Statics, mathematical traces are recalledall the way to upper level courses such as ideal flows. Dynamics receives a pivotal importancefor this purpose. This final example also points out a new trend [1] that is developing in studentperformance (which defies our concerted planning efforts).One of the difficult conceptual areas that students
general plan as was used for Calculus I. We then present the results ofapplying the full toolkit to the new Calculus II course. Pass rate and GPA improvements inCalculus II were evident immediately after scale up in the spring of 2016. Sufficient time hasnow passed so that we can apply the full set of assessment tools built for Calculus I to measurethe effectiveness of the Calculus II transformation on academic performance in post-requisitecoursework and on student retention in STEM. Page 1 of 151.0 IntroductionThe grade earned in mathematics courses is critical when considering student retention inengineering and in STEM majors. For example, the work by Budny
notcontacted. We pick the February date to send the letter to allow students sufficient time to bettermake plan for their summer and to register in time for the Algebra II course at a communitycollege.]In 2015, such a letter was sent to the parents of 400 admitted students that were placed inAlgebra II. Of the total contacted, 333 did not attend our institution in Fall semester. Of thosewho attended our institution, 20 were “bumped” into Pre-Calculus in Fall semester because theypassed Algebra II at a community college with a grade of B or higher. There were 47 enrolledstudents who either did not take an Algebra II course at a community college or passed with agrade of B or higher. This is correlated to 29.9% of incoming students who were placed by
Paper ID #22569Using Concept Maps to Assess Student Learning in a Multi-Section Introduc-tion to Engineering CourseDr. Kristen L. Sanford Bernhardt P.E., Lafayette College Dr. Kristen Sanford Bernhardt is chair of the Engineering Studies program and associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lafayette College. Her expertise is in sustainable civil infrastructure management and transportation systems. She teaches a variety of courses including sustainability of built systems, transportation systems, transportation planning, civil infrastructure management, engineering economics, and Lafayette’s
calculus.This, the first in a set of three papers, is planned to provide the concepts of pre-calculus visuallyand intuitively in order to reveal the intrinsic ultimate simplicity of calculus and spare a studentfrom having to read the entire 500 pages of conceptually cluttered verbose, disorganizedconventional text in order to acquire an overview. My hopes are that by providing a focus ofstudy, specifically algebraic and transcendental curves, and by providing intuitive and visualdefinitions, while maintaining an organized topic structure and by delaying the proofs, we cancreate a conceptual environment where more students and teachers will gain insight relativelyquickly into the nature of calculus. The plan is to interpret the concepts of calculus
content. Further, there will be evidenceto examine the extent to which students are prepared in mathematics to begin a core engineeringscience course. Finally, the paper will also present changes that some faculty members made inthe course plans to apply what they learned about the extent of their students’ mathematicspreparation near the beginning of the course.IntroductionMathematics and science are vital parts of an engineering curriculum as evident by therequirements of ABET1. ABET Engineering Criteria require that at least twenty-five percent ofthe credits for an engineering program be taken in mathematics and science courses. At least onestudy2 has shown that success in the first mathematics course is useful in predicting persistencein an
. Threesections of the course contained a total of 36 students. The University is co-educational, so mostclasses are a combination of a few males and predominantly females ranging from freshmen toseniors. Most of the students are non-native English speakers from diverse countries, and all ofthem are, or plan to become, design majors. Course Activities. Over the past several years, the teaching strategies and assignmentrequirements for MATH 131 have evolved to accommodate students‟ generally non-Americancultures, their English-as-second-language (ESL) needs, and their individual learning andinformation-processing preferences. After administering and evaluating learning style preferenceand brain hemispheric preference tests, the professor uses
East Hartford, CT as well as Crash Safety located in East Hampton, CT. Both of these experiences has helped him strengthen his knowledge in data analytics and optimization. One of Michael’s biggest interests in Ergonomics and Human Factors which he plans to purse later in his career. American c Society for Engineering Education, 2021 Analysis of STEM Students’ Ability to Respond Algebra, Derivative, and Limit Questions for Graphing a Function 1 Emre Tokgöz, 1Samantha Scarpinella, 1Michael Giannone 1 Emre.Tokgoz@qu.edu, 1 Samantha.Scarpinella@qu.edu
rate for this course is 36%. In response tothis repetition rate, engineering design as an epistemic practice was introduced. Epistemicpractices are vital to student success when learning discipline-specific skills and knowledge [3-5]. Epistemic practices are systems of processes for generating and evaluating knowledge used todevelop epistemological understandings. In this case, an engineering design framework serves asan epistemic practice to better understand calculus concepts [4]. The ability to generate, evaluatecalculus knowledge and then plan an approach to use engineering to solve calculus problems aretwo major categories of developing epistemic understanding.To engage students in engineering design as they learned calculus, calculus
learner-centered e-based environment, making it ready for largescale dissemination. Examples of calculus concepts that the author and his team plan to developand integrate include: (a) games, (b) puzzles and teasers, (c) animations, (d) visual and intuitivedaily-experience-based examples, (e) movies and short video clips, (f) demonstrations, (g)hands-on activities (including those based on virtual reality and augmented reality), (h) teamingand communication exercises, (i) small-scale inquiry-based research, (j) presentations, and peer-based teaching/learning, (k) visual click-based e-book, (l) community and social engagement,and (m) challenges beyond the basics.The main idea As mentioned earlier, this paper focuses on introducing three
such as geology and chemistry also take MATH 310 even though it is not required Page 13.1157.3for their degree. These students are highly motivated as they plan to pursue a graduate programin their field of study. Therefore, they influence the classroom dynamics in a positive manner asstrong players. Mechanical Engineering Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering
, students are very unlikely to follow through with the training modulesunless this activity is a required part of their course; voluntary or suggested participation hasproduced low participation rates. Fourth, and most importantly, TIMES participation produces ameasurable and significant improvement of student performance in freshman engineeringcourses. Examination of the effect of TIMES on student retention rates in our engineeringmajors is planned as one of the next steps of our study.AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank the Arizona Board of Regents’ Learner-Centered Education Programand the NAU Hewlett Engineering Talent Pipeline, sponsored by the William and Flora HewlettFoundation’s Engineering Schools of the West Initiative, for
mathematics for mathematicians, engineers and natural scientists - at the TU Berlin in 2001, as a research assistant at SFB609 in Dresden from 2002-2004, and is now part of the Team of the MuLF (Center for Multimedia in Education and Research) at the TU Berlin). In the past three years, Olivier Pfeiffer focused on the organization and coordination of the involved teams and contributed to several other eLTR related projects. He is also involved in the planning and application of future eLTR projects at the Berlin University of Technology and the local coordinator at the TU Berlin of the EMECW3 project. His research interest focuses on the development of interactive mathematical objects
gradually from concrete thinking with the use of visual aids and hands-onexperiments to mathematical modeling and abstract thinking through its sequence of questions.Beginning modules at the lower level may be more concrete than beginning modules at a higherlevel that may start at a higher level of abstraction. Authors will contribute computationalexpertise to introduce applications through textual-graphic representations. The authors believethat the combination of mathematical rigor and visual intuitiveness will facilitate students’comprehension of complicated problems and retention of the underlying mathematical concepts.Sample module lesson planModule 1: Given below is a teacher’s lesson plan for a sample module at the algebra levelfollowing an
AC 2008-2167: A NEW LOOK AT UPPER-LEVEL MATHEMATICS NEEDS INENGINEERING COURSES AT UABGregg Janowski, University of Alabama at BirminghamMelinda Lalor, University of Alabama at BirminghamHassan Moore, University of Alabama at Birmingham Page 13.72.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2008 NEW LOOK AT UPPER-LEVEL MATHEMATICS NEEDS IN ENGINEERING COURSES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAMAbstractA four semester-hour course is being designed to follow Calculus II, with the intention ofreplacing Calculus III and Differential Equations in the engineering curricula at the University ofAlabama at Birmingham. As part of the planning
, University Administration required departments to develop programoutcomes. This would be general objectives for each program that would be assessed each year. Thisrepresents a paradigm shift in assessment, since in previous cycles, assessed outcomes were directlylinked to the university strategic plan, and now assessed outcomes are linked to the needs of a program.Each program must develop a list of three to five program outcomes and choose one to three of these, tobe assessed each year. At the time of this task the department offered six degree programs, so potentiallythere could be thirty program outcomes and eighteen of them to be assessed each year. Therefore, in orderto simplify the job of assessing program outcomes, the Assessment Committee
Problems in Matlab”. He has been working in several eLearning projects at the TU Berlin, beginning as a student assistant in the Mumie project - a platform using new pedagogical concepts to support teaching of mathematics for mathematicians, engineers and natural scientists - at the TU Berlin in 2001, as a research assistant at SFB609 in Dresden from 2002-2004, and is now part of the Team of the MuLF (Center for Multimedia in Education and Research) at the TU Berlin). In the past three years, Olivier Pfeiffer focused on the organization and coordination of the involved teams and contributed to several other eLTR related projects. He is also involved in the planning and application of
course here. As was discussed in this earlierpaper, this course was designed to provide a structured set of engineering applications tosupplement specific mathematical topics covered in College Algebra and Trigonometry. Thepilot course met once per week for 50 minutes. The course included six planned experimentsplus numerous lectures to help address specific topics1. The topics are outlined in Table 1.Lecture or Class Topic Math Topic Engineering TopicExperiment(Assessment)Lecture Introduction Problem Solving Problem Solving(In-Class) Units
maydiffer from the table that was originally proposed. This roadmap will serve students similarly intheir study of arithmetic.In every well-planned course, only one thing is studied. In arithmetic, the subject is numbers andso the word 'numbers' is placed at the top of the roadmap. At the end of the course, a studentshould know the kinds, forms, operations, properties and uses of numbers. In our society, thisstudy takes a few years and is often disorganized. It should not be surprising that a young studentmight become confused and disenchanted. At the end of the course, the strategy should bereviewed so that the student can see what has been learned about numbers and how numbers areused and what remains for future study.This roadmap suggests that
teachers had thoroughly explored the unit materials, they spent the remaining timeat the institute crafting lesson plans for their own classrooms based on the unit that they had justexperienced. This allowed for teachers to adapt and create lessons that would work best in theirown classrooms. Teachers were able to collaborate with other teachers at their same school whoalso participated in the institute, as well as with other teachers who teach the same grade leveland same courses. The teachers took the opportunity for collaboration in creating the lessons andultimately generated creative and unique versions of the same core activities.Table 1Teachers Responded to the Three Daily Reflection Questions (1) “I am okay not knowing the answer to a
since 1999, and in that time has taught multiple different courses ranging from the freshman to graduate levels. She has been active in academic program and curriculum devel- opment from the department level to the university level, where she served as co-chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) committee that determined the academic course of actions to be taken over the next accreditation cycle to addresses critical issues related to enhancing student learning. She has re- ceived funding for her engineering education research from the Department of Education FIPSE program and from the National Science Foundation (NSF) CCLI program. She is co-Director of the Aggie STEM Center that provides professional
additional practice.Results from this study, and subsequent studies of student success in the calculus sequenceafter the 3-week program has been effect longer, will add to the data that will affect futureprogram planning. Additional student surveys will be created to learn more about studentperspectives that affect their participation and success in the program. Studies will beexpanded to include longitudinal results as the number of participants that continue throughthe calculus sequence increases. The search for the most effective program possible willlikely be an unending process as we strive to support students in engineering calculuscourses.VII. AcknowledgementThis material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under
majority of students that did not agree were neutral and only a few disagreed. Given that these were two of the main goals for the course, it is a positive sign the student perception of the course matches thedesigned intent of the course. This is backed up by student comments when asked what they likedabout the course, which included: • “Actually applying mathematics to real-world engineering situations” • “The best part about this course was mostly just learning the Calculus and engineering skills, confirming to me that this is what I want to do with my life and I want to become an engineering.” • “Covering electronic circuits because I learned about them in AP physics in Highschool and I plan to be an
and A. Nevin, "A mixed methodology analysis of co-teacher assessments," Teacher Education and Special Education, vol. 29, pp. 261-274, 2006.[3] C. L. Ritter, C. S. Michel and B. Irby, "Concerning inclusion: Perceptions of middle school students, their parents, and teachers," Rural Special Education Quarterly, vol. 18, pp. 10-17, 1999.[4] S. C. Trent, "False starts and other dilemmas of a secondary general education collaborative teacher: A case study," Journal of Learning Disabilities, vol. 31, pp. 503-513, 1998.[5] C. S. Walther-Thomas and M. Bryant, "Planning for effective co-teaching," Remedial and Special Education, vol. 17, pp. 255-266, 1996.[6] S. Budge, "Peer Mentoring in postsecondary education: implications for
GUI Interface of Vibrating String Demonstration from Wolfram Research These kinds of programs provide many benefits: improve the learning process of Page 22.1371.9students, facilitate the students in completing homework assignments and projects, enableinstructors to provide better learning environments, improve course delivery throughmore emphasis on modeling and interpretation of engineering problems, demonstrate keyprinciples and solutions interactively and visually, and many others. The author has alsostarted implementing these interactive tools and programs in the course delivery. Thefuture plan for the course include increasing usage of
. During the recent four years, Pfeiffer focused on the organization and coordination of the involved teams and contributed to several other eLearning-related projects. He is also involved in the planning and application of future eLearning projects at TUB and is the coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 AVEMPACE, a student and academic staff exchange program between the EU, Jordan, and Syria. In 2008-09, he spent four months of research at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Amman. His research interest focuses on the development of interactive mathematical objects especially supporting the visualization of complex mathematics and physics-related problems. Contact Information: Technis- che Universitt