self-developed survey, followed by focus group interviewsof the students to reflect students’ attitudes toward classroom attendance and their learningefficacy under this innovative self-regulated learning. Three rounds of surveys wereconducted to examine students’ changes in attitude and preferences as well as theirperceptions of their learning efficiency. Based on students’ self-reports, the average rate ofphysical classroom attendance was 26%. More than 60% of the students preferred this“soft classroom” learning. In addition, they reported on how efficient this course was inresponse to this new learning environment. The results from the three rounds of surveysand focus group interview provided evidence of the success of the current case
attainment of the learning outcomes, whichdo not explicitly reflect SV skills, and can thus not be used to quantify improvements inSV. A further challenge is the difference in the order of topic presentation that the twoexperienced instructors favor, thereby inhibiting the development and use of a formativeassessment method to quantify the impact of the individual pedagogic measures on thestudents SV skill development. There are a number of tools that have been developed to assess SV development,with perhaps the most widely used (in the US) being the Purdue Spatial VisualizationTest (PSVT 34), of which often only the rotations section is used (PSVT:R) 35. Sorby andGorska 4 and Study 24 present a comparative of a number of available tests
learning skills. We will continue to iterate the designefforts. We will re-evaluate and re-design the project activities in order to help our studentsimprove their life-long learning skills and engineering attitudes in the upcoming semesters.Acknowledgement This material is supported by the National Science Foundation under HRD Grant No.1435073. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations presented are those of theauthors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.References1. David, R., Frischknecht, A., Jensen, C. G., Blotter, J., and Maynes, D., 2006, “Contextual Learning of CAx Tools within a Fundamental Mechanical Engineering Curricula,” PACE Forum, Provo, UT, July.2. Palaigeorgiou, G. and