variations on the exact definition ofinquiry based instruction exist. The NRC4 identifies five critical features of inquiry that extendacross all K-12 levels:1. Learners are engaged by scientifically oriented questions.2. Learners give priority to evidence, which allows them to develop and evaluate explanations that address scientifically oriented questions.3. Learners formulate explanations from evidence to address scientifically oriented questions.4. Learners evaluate their explanations in light of alternative explanations, particularly those reflecting scientific understanding.5. Learners communicate and justify their proposed explanations.Minner et al5 performed a meta-analysis of 138 studies to examine the impact of inquiry basedinstruction
), Boresi and Schmidt (2000), Beer and Johnston (2015), Meriam and Kraige(2015), Shames (1996), Bedford and Fowler (2007), Soutas-Little and Inman (1999), Tongue(2009), and Gray, Costanso, and Plesha (2012)) are organized with an almost identical orderingof topics [1]-[9]. This ordering is generally particle kinematics, particle kinetics, rigid bodykinematics, rigid body kinetics, 3-D kinematics and kinetics, and finally vibrations. The currentbroad use of the kinematics-before-kinetics ordering could be due to historical acceptance andfamiliarity (current professors learned in this way), but there is no empirical research to supportthat ordering as preferable.At Rose-Hulman, kinetics principles are introduced in the larger context of
benefits, including reducing overhead associatedwith student requests to change sections and keeping class sizes more uniform. It was alsohoped that by improving consistency and sharing outcomes- what was working, what was not-all students would do better and have an increased appreciation for the importance of statics asthe foundation for future engineering classes.For the Fall 2017 semester, Statics Sections 1 and 2 met three times a week for 50 minutes;Section 3 met twice a week for 75 minutes. Prior to the semester, the instructor team agreed uponcourse flow, timing and content of exams, the relative weighting of exams and homework, acommon homework grading rubric, and which homework problems would be assigned. Duringthe semester, the
appropriately in various problem solving and designcontexts. Streveler [1] summarizes the importance of conceptual knowledge to engineeringproblem solving and identifies conceptual knowledge as “critical to the development ofcompetence in engineering students and in practicing professionals.” Our work to designlearning activities that emphasize conceptual knowledge; however, can run counter to students’desire to focus on reproducing problem solving procedures presented to them in workedexamples by the instructor and/or in the textbook. Litzinger [2] examined student analysisstrategies and found that even the highest-performing students do not consistently applyconceptual knowledge within their problem solving strategies, instead relying on
class [1], many faculty are turning to online homeworkbased systems (Pearson’s Mastering, Wiley Plus and/or McGraw Hill’s Connect). These systemsprovide content, grading and assessment of student work, and feedback to the students whilesolving problems. One of the things that is missing from all of these tools is the capability toassess the student’s communication of their thought process as they progress through a problem.Most problems in these systems provide step-by-step guidance where students are asked to “fill-in-the-blanks” with their answers. They do not allow for independent thought for the students toanalyze and solve a problem in a manner that might make sense to themselves. In addition, theydo not allow for analysis of that thought
multiple ways to get admitted to a University ofApplied Sciences; this makes the students as a group more inhomogeneous. The most commonway to enter the HSKA is by earning the so-called “Abitur”, which denotes graduation foruniversity-preparatory high schools (this is the highest level of secondary education in Germanyand typically takes 12 years of school). The percentage of students graduating with an Abitur hasbeen growing over the past decade, as shown in Figure 1. Other school students may decide toleave school after finishing 10th grade of secondary school and do a professional apprenticeshipin industry, which usually lasts 3 years. After successfully completing an apprentice program,these students can go another year to a secondary
complex structural systems. Experimental modal analysis has beenconducted on bridges traditionally using single-input multiple-output (SIMO), multiple-inputmultiple-output (MIMO), or output-only methods, where inputs refer to dynamic excitation byimpact or harmonic forcing and outputs are displacements or accelerations generally measured ata resolution necessary to accurately describe a mode shape. The most popular methods use aninstrumented hammer, impactor, or harmonic exciter and an array of wired or wirelessaccelerometers [1].Cole McDaniel and others at Cal Poly [2,3] have long used electromechanical shakers todemonstrate principles of dynamic structural response in the classroom and in full-scalebuildings. Hopfner et al [4] described how
need to focus on better training for the students and the professors. Students enjoyedthe Scrum class more than they did the less innovative second half of the semester. Overall, thissmall pilot showed some promise as a way of teaching mechanical engineering with greaterstudent ownership of learning. Agile methodologies hold considerable promise especially forhigher-level classes such as mechanical senior design.Introduction: Student Engagement vs Student OwnershipIn 1987 Chickering and Gamson published their famous “Seven Principles for Good Practice”which codified what many good teachers have always known: a good teacher must engage thestudents in their own learning [1]. Education research has made great strides towardsencouraging greater
guidelines have been followed for the past 12 years. Details of the assessment may befound in references [1 – 3]. An important difference of ESCC from traditional curriculaelsewhere is our program is student-centered. All difficulties in concepts have been researchedand presented below from a student’s learning point of view.Modern computational focus requires mastery of analytical thoughts to properly understand andimprove computational models. There are some mathematical bottlenecks in achieving this featwhich are discussed separately in another paper [4]. The approach requires reinforcingmathematical understanding in parallel with engineering applications. Many examples andattractive demonstrations are necessary before and during active learning
insubsequent courses.The pressing need to reform the teaching and learning Statics has been established in the pastdecades. To enhance teaching and student learning in Statics, researchers at various institutionshave explored various methods for teaching Statics, such as developing concept map andquantifying students’ conceptual understanding [1, 2, 3], developing on-line homework orlearning modules [4, 5], peer-led-team-learning [6, 7], project-based learning [8], emporium-based course delivery [9], etc. Among them, the flipped-classroom method [10, 11, 12] hasbecome popular in the recent years. In a flipped classroom, the class time is devoted to guidedinstruction where students work through problems with the instructor present to provideassistance
are often considered the most foundational for engineering students.Yet, these courses have become impenetrable from changes in content and pedagogy and areoften abstracted from any human or societal context. One reason for this abstraction may be dueto the understandably prolific use of the “engineering problem-solving method” (EPS) or“engineering as problem definition and solution” (PDS), which teaches students how tomethodically approach a technical problem and produce easily checked solutions [1]. However,the EPS method has perpetuated the dominance of mathematical problem solving as the highestvalue in engineering [2], often unintentionally reinforcing the worldview that technical rigor ismore important than the context in which
exam provides evidence of the assessment’s validity as ameasurement instrument for representational competence. We found a positive correlationbetween students’ accurate and effective use of representations and their score on the multiplechoice test. We gathered additional validity evidence by reviewing student responses on anexam wrapper reflection. We used item difficulty and item discrimination scores (point-biserialcorrelation) to eliminate two questions and revised the remaining questions to improve clarityand discriminatory power. We administered the revised version in two contexts: (1) again as partof the first exam in the winter 2019 Statics course at WCC, and (2) as an extra credit opportunityfor statics students at Utah State
study design paired twosequential rigid-body motion topics in Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics to test the effect offlipped vs. traditional lecture on both student learning and engagement. We alternated instructionalmethodology (traditional lecture + flipping) between the two sections of Dynamics in spring 2018.The traditional lecture sessions were taught with hand-written note lectures (with limited activelearning) and completed two typical numerical homework problems per topic. For the flippedsessions, students watched instructional lecture videos prior to class, worked through a hands-onin-class activity, and completed analytical questions related to the in-class activity whichsubstituted for 1 of the 2 homework problems on each topic. Paired
(FGCU). Success in this course is critical to success in follow-up mechanics coursesand upper-level engineering courses. Data has been collected on students’ performance onhomework, quizzes and exams, and also on the students’ thoughts on learning and coursedelivery. Thus far, we have concluded that the use of traditional hand-written homework,frequent assessment via quizzes [1], or the Pearson Mastering Engineering [2] software forformative assessment did not have a significant impact on students’ performance on exams. Itwas also observed that neither traditional nor online homework scores correlated well with examscores; however, in-class quizzes did correlate with final exam scores. Most recently, using theMastering Engineering Online system
Number:1565066. c American Society for Engineering Education, 2019 Experiments in Community Building within Classrooms of Commuter Students. Part I: The Case of StaticsIntroductionA commuter student has been defined as “a college student who does not live in an on-campusinstitutionally-owned/approved housing, such as a residence hall or a fraternity or sorority house[1]. Using this definition, it has been estimated that approximately 85% of today’s students in theUSA commute to campus [2].The lives of commuter students have three separate parts: life at home, life at work, and life atschool. Juggling the responsibilities from those three aspects of their lives is challenging [3]. Inmany
that students need to have to succeed in senior capstone projects orin professional practice. APM is used to respond to students’ struggles with PBL’s projectmanagement. APM is an iterative approach with ability to respond to issues as they arisethroughout the course of the project. In this approach, students performed a series of agile ritualssuch as showcases, retrospectives, stand-up meetings and iteration reviews.2. IntroductionThe implementation of Project-Based Learning (PBL) in science, technology, engineering, andmathematics (STEM) education has gained much interest in recent years [1-3]. PBL is a dynamicclassroom approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and acquire deepcontent understanding by taking over the
data on the extent of video viewing(coverage) of pre-class videos in three flipped undergraduate engineering courses (numericalmethods for engineers, fluid mechanics and engineering statics) as an initial step towardsimproving engagement with pre-class resources.Literature ReviewWhile the literature on flipped classes is extensive [1]-[3], studies on student engagement withpre-class materials are fewer, especially those related to viewing of pre-class videos designed toprimarily substitute (not supplement or review) traditional in-class lectures and instructor-ledproblem-solving sessions. Initial studies on engagement with pre-class videos were based onstudent self-reports that suffer from usual self-reporting biases and only recently have
hydraulic vibration machine at IIT Madras, for Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Tumba. In US he worked for the R&D departments of Computer, ATM and Railway Industry. He then resumed teaching at several US academic institutions. He spent two summers at NASA Kennedy Space Center as a research fellow. He received awards for academic, teaching and research excellence. His teaching experience ranges from KG to PG. After his return to India, Dr. Malladi taught his favorite subject ”Engineering Mechanics” at a few en- gineering institutions and found a need to 1. simplify the subject 2. create a new genre of class books to facilitate active reading and learning and 3. reform academic assessment for the sure
different professors taught sections EngineeringStatics in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with no common syllabus or commonassignments. Drop, withdraw, fail (DWF) rates varied from 2% to 78% – students picked theircourse section based on grade expectation. Over the years between 2005 and 2013, I taught moreand more of the offered sections, effectively reducing course drift and enforcing a common set oflearning objectives.Figure 1. Total Enrollment in Statics Total as taughtinby Enrollment Howard Statics, Fall and Spring Author's sections, Other faculty's
include papers discussing software tools to help students draw FBDs,papers on the assessment of FBDs, and papers on techniques to help students draw FBDs.Tools that have been developed to help students draw FBDs include an app [1], and animatedGIFs to guide students in a step-by-step procedure for drawing FBDs [2]. Free-body diagramerrors that have been reported include ones that demonstrate a misunderstanding of the physicssuch as forces drawn at the centroid [3], incorrect or missing friction forces [3, 4, 5], andincorrect direction of the weight [4, 5]. Other errors in drawing FBDs include missing arrows[6], missing axes [4], and misaligned or unlabeled vectors [7]. Davis and Lorimer [8] developeda rubric for assessing FBDs in six separate
resources, whilealso contributing to a growing body of knowledge on complex and resource-rich learningenvironments. To accomplish this goal, we have focused our efforts on understanding howstudents use a set of nine, commonly employed support resources. This list includes a variety ofdigital, physical, and collaborative resources, and all are part of students’ experiences in theFreeform environment. Table 1 below contains a brief description of each of these resourceswith citations to literature which has helped in their design or subsequent analysis. In most of our recent studies, we have examined students’ self-regulated learning usingHelp-seeking behaviors (HSB) theory as a conceptual framework19. Help-seeking behaviors referto the ways
the course4. A concept map is essentially a mental web of connected terms or topics,where the centermost term is the primary learning focus and lines are used to connect relatedconcepts. This results in a web of interconnected concepts that reflect the way studentsassimilate the new information. The three main questions guiding the study reported here are: 1) How can we decode the variety of ideas and structures that students include in their concept maps? 2) How can we use discoveries from this decoding to make lectures and labs more effective? 3) What improvements can be made to the way students are assigned drawing concept maps to further increase the usefulness of concept maps in capturing their learning? The
. Page 24.1357.3The student survey was conducted at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and at the Universityof California, Berkeley during the winter quarter and spring semester, respectively, of the 2012-2013 academic year. Students in our dynamics courses were asked to first watch two screen-captured example problems, each broken into several clips. Sample screenshots from one of thescreen-captured example problems are shown in Figure 1. (a) (b) Figure 1. Snapshots of two clips from the screencast for Example 4.6 used in the study. The first clip (a) contains the introduction screen and the Problem Statement, Goal, Given, Draw, and
programs, selecting every10th program from an alphabetical list of the accredited programs. By looking at each program’scurriculum and course descriptions as published on the institution’s website, we noted whetherthat program had required classes in machine components, machine kinematics, vibrations/dynamic systems, or finite element analysis. We also looked for any other required class in solidmechanics. The findings of this study are summarized in Table 1. Table 1 Required Classes in ME Program Sample Number of Programs with Course % of Sample Required Class Machine
acquisition methods in ourstudents are needed. This task of developing judgment is made more critical given the rapidadvance of computer-based design, where failure to recognize bad outputs due to errors burieddeep in the assumptions and inputs could have tragic consequences.In an effort to address this need, and as part of a thorough revision of the mechanics curriculum 1,a series of hands-on learning activities were designed and implemented in the first mechanicscourse taken by students in the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering at the USMilitary Academy. These activities enabled and encouraged knowledge acquisition throughpersonal effort which inspires deeper inquiry and were expected to help accelerate thedevelopment of students
this school. This study will compare those predictors for the entire enrollment (14sections) of the course against those of the three sections of students subjected to the alternativegrading scheme. The alternative scheme was applied to five in-class exams unique to the threesections; the final exam was common to all sections and was graded using standard partial-creditmethods. Discussion of the particular implementation of the mastery grading scheme as well asstudent feedback will also be included.IntroductionInitially discussed by Bloom 1 in 1968, mastery learning is an instructional strategy designed tominimize achievement gaps and have all students learn well. In Bloom’s formulation, coursematerial is broken into discrete units, and
skill 1 .Specifically, the construction of free-body diagrams that are helpful and accurate takes time andpractice, and for that reason the need for computer-based drawing tools is of utmost importance.Roselli et al. 11 developed an online free body diagram assistant that allows students to constructthese drawings by inserting forces and moments using the mouse, and the ability to receiveimmediate feedback. Commercial online systems such as McGraw-Hill Connect 6 and PearsonMasteringEngineering 8 have also developed graphing questions in which students need to drawgraphs, such as a free-body diagram, using the mouse to insert objects. Unfortunately, thesesystems do not provide much feedback on the drawing features. Moreover, they mostly have
miss important points in a traditionallecture setting, which is an instructor-centered, relatively passive method of learning. Whilelecturing still remains an effective and important way of conveying knowledge, it is critical toget students engaged in active learning through activities such as solving problems, working witheach other, asking questions and getting feedback.To enhance student learning in Statics, researchers at various institutions have explored othermethods for teaching Statics, such as developing concept map and quantifying students’conceptual understanding[1, 2], developing on-line homework or learning modules[3, 4], peer-led-team-learning[5], project-based learning[6], emporium-based course delivery[7]. Among them
Undergraduate Dynamics CoursesIntroductionDynamics is historically challenging for students to understand and transfer concepts to newcontexts in future classes. It is especially difficult for students seeing the material for the firsttime to imagine motion with static illustrations. As was noted in [1], “…dynamics is the study ofmotion, but textbooks and chalkboards, the traditional classroom teaching tools cannot show thatmotion.” Furthermore, those traditional large lecture style teaching methods (i.e. note taking,book problem solving, etc.) typically only passively engage students with the material.Active learning, on the other hand, has been shown to be an effective technique to positivelyaffect the quality of education across a number of STEM
microwave circuitry.Dr. Diane L Zemke Diane Zemke is an independent researcher and consultant. She holds a Ph.D. in leadership studies from Gonzaga University. Her research interests include teamwork, small group dynamics, dissent, organiza- tional change, and reflective practice. Dr. Zemke has published in the International Journal of Engineering Education, the Journal of Religious Leadership, and various ASEE conference proceedings. She is the author of ”Being Smart about Congregational Change.” c American Society for Engineering Education, 2018 Learning to Read and Take Notes in DynamicsIntroductionABET criterion 3i states the need for students to become life-long learners [1