Conference Session

Understanding the Student Experience in Mechanics Courses

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Milad Rezvani Rad, University of Southern Indiana; Julian Ly Davis, University of Southern Indiana

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

Paper ID #41747Exploring Student Perceptions of Learning Experience in Fundamental MechanicsCourses Enhanced by ChatGPTDr. Milad Rezvani Rad, University of Southern Indiana Dr. Milad Rad is an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Department at the University of Southern Indiana. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta in Canada. Besides his specialization in functional thermally sprayed coatings, he explores innovative AI-driven approaches to enhance student engagement in the classroom.Dr. Julian Ly Davis, University of Southern Indiana Jul Davis is an Associate Professor of

Conference Session

Teaching Mechanics: Modes and Methods

Collection

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christopher Papadopoulos, University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

, culminating in a recent fundamental change (Fall 2022) to teach statics in a “Studioformat” characterized by cooperative and experiential learning. My account will provide bothqualitative and quantitative data to indicate that the Studio format is effective and worthy ofcontinued use and refinement.1. Background Narrative.My first era of teaching, starting midway through my graduate studies in Theoretical and AppliedMechanics (T&AM) at Cornell University in 1997-2000, and continuing from 2001-08 in theDepartment of Civil Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, wascharacterized primarily by direct lecturing in front of a board. Indeed, with little formal training,my teaching modeled how I was taught (Felder & Brent

Conference Session

Applications and Computational Tools for Mechanics Education

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Giancaspro, University of Miami; Diana Arboleda, University of Miami; Seulki Jenny Chin, University of Miami; Liping Yang, University of Miami; Walter G Secada, University of Miami

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

engineering mechanics courses where the fundamental concepts arecritical to solve advanced problems involving static and dynamic equilibrium.Educators are cognizant that students must be able to understand and apply vector mechanics tobe successful in physics and mechanics courses, and to advance through higher-level courseworksuch as those found in civil and mechanical engineering curricula. Since students often struggleto learn vector mechanics [4], educators have used a variety of instructional methods includingtraditional textbook-based learning [7], spreadsheets [8], personalized adaptive learning [9],interaction simulations [10], virtual reality [11], and augmented reality [4]. The latter is thefocus of this paper.Augmented reality (AR) is a

Conference Session

Problem- and Project-based Learning in Engineering Mechanics

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amir H. Danesh-Yazdi, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Aimee Monique Cloutier, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Sean Moseley, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

effectively through a memo, utilizing standard writing conventions, to make relevant claims, supported by valid reasoning and specific evidence. • Demonstrate the ability to work in a team to meet goals and accomplish tasks.Technical DetailsO BJECTIVE The objective of this project is for students to design a lightweight and safe link for a prototype of a landing gear mechanism, whose schematic is shown in Figure 1, that will allow the landing gear to safely retract to a specified angle.R EQUIREMENTS FOR A SUCCESSFUL DESIGN The link must meet all of the following constraints for it to be considered it a successful design: • It must assemble to the landing gear mechanism via two 0.25-in-diameter shoulder

Conference Session

Keeping It Real: Real World Examples and Systems Thinking

Collection

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Waterloo Tsutsui, Purdue University, West Lafayette ; Daniel DeLaurentis, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

system is challenging, SoS engineers streamline theapproach to obtain the results. This section discusses the two fundamental concepts necessaryfor implementing the SoS-inspired framework in structural mechanics education: 2.1 Define,Abstract, and Implement (DAI) and 2.2 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).2.1 A System-of-Systems Inspired Framework: Define, Abstract, and Implement (DAI)SoS engineers work on “messy” problems. The engineers create a framework to define andformulate problems based on a chaotic system that appears to be unpredictable. Complexityarises from interactions among the system components, especially when the interactions arenonlinear. SoS engineers use mathematics to model the systems. Then, based on the initialconditions

Conference Session

Understanding the Student Experience in Mechanics Courses

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Phillip Cornwell, United States Air Force Academy

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award in 2019 from the Mechanics Division of ASEE. He was one of the developers of the Rose-Hulman Sophomore Engineering Curriculum, the Dynamics Concept Inventory, and he is a co-author of Vector Mechanics for Engineers: Dynamics, by Beer, Johnston, Cornwell, and Self. ©American Society for Engineering Education, 2024 Work in Progress: The Effect of a Required Core Mechanics Course on Student MindsetAbstractIn this study, we will be examining how a required engineering course, Mechanical Engineering220 – Fundamentals of Mechanics (ME 220), at the United States Air Force Academy influencesstudent mindset. ME 220 is the

Conference Session

Student Self-assessment in Mechanics Courses

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amie Baisley, University of Florida; Chiranjeevi Singh Marutla, University of Florida

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

foundations of equilibrium that will be applied in manylater courses. At a large R1 university in the southeast students take the course in a flipped,mastery-based classroom environment. The mastery-based approach is employed for theassessments where students are evaluated for how they demonstrated the course mastery objectiveson each assessment in the course. The students solve a single assessment problem every other weekwhere they are asked to organize their solution following the mastery objectives. The masteryobjectives are the key pieces of the solution solving process for every statics problem. The studentsare required to write, draw, or include equation(s) for each objective for each problem, but thework is unique to the type of problem being

Conference Session

Problem- and Project-based Learning in Engineering Mechanics

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Xiaobin Le, Wentworth Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

course offered in senior year in our mechanical engineering programhas 3-hour lectures per week without lab in a 15-week semester. It is typically arranged as two-80-minute lectures per week. The textbook used in this course is “Mechanical Vibrations, 6thedition” by S.S. Rao. The topics covered in this course and their sequence are: • Chapter 1 Fundamentals of Vibration • Chapter 2 Free Vibration of Single-degree-of-freedom Systems • Chapter 3 Harmonically excited vibration • Vibration isolators (Part of Chapter 9 Vibration controls) • Chapter 4 Vibration under General Forcing Conditions • Chapter 5 Two-Degree-of-Freedom systems 2 • Vibration absorbers (Part of Chapter

Conference Session

Unique Pedagogies for Mechanics Education

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joshua Gargac, Ohio Northern University

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

mastery skills were developed: 12 for rigid body dynamics and six for theory ofmachines. While not the focus of this paper, this initial MBL scheme is included in Appendix 1 for thepurpose of comparison. Resulting post-course evaluations indicated the MBL approach was a success.Statistically significant (p<0.05, T-test) improvements were observed across all post-course evaluationprompts when compared to the previous three-year average (Tab. 1; ‘20). The flipped classroomenabled better feedback to students as they completed coursework. The multiple opportunities to testmastery skills resulted in a greater understanding of fundamental course skills.Table 1: Changes to average post-course evaluations with the adoption of a flipped classroom

Conference Session

Teaching Mechanics: Modes and Methods

Collection

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Phillip Cornwell, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Ioan Feier; Nicholas J. Marco; Danielle Ozment

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

is typically delivered asynchronously before class via videos, and the in-class activitiesare redesigned to be more active. In this paper, we will be discussing the flipping of a requiredsophomore level engineering mechanics course, Mechanical Engineering 220 – Fundamentals ofMechanics (ME220), at the United States Air Force Academy, and in particular, its effect onstudent performance and their attitudes towards flipped courses. Every student at USAFA isrequired to take this course regardless of their major. In the Fall of 2022 there were 18 sectionsof this course with four of the sections taught by three different instructors using a flippedstructure. In general, there was no statistical difference in student performance on commonlygraded

Conference Session

Unique Pedagogies for Mechanics Education

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Marguerite Matherne, Northeastern University

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

fundamentals of solidmechanics. It has a separate lab corequisite, and most students are either sophomores or juniors.Each section met every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday for 65 minutes, one at 9:15 am andthe other at 1:35 pm. In Fall 2023 the 9:15 class had 51 students enrolled and the 1:35 class had49 students enrolled, for a total of 100 students.The summative assessments for this course largely focus on problem-solving. The final coursegrade is based on weekly homework problem sets (10%), weekly 15-minute quizzes (35%), onemidterm exam (20%), and one final exam (35%). Formative assessment is largely performedthrough active learning in class, such as think-pair-share, polls, and small group work.Warm-up assignments were part of the homework grade

Conference Session

Teaching Mechanics: Modes and Methods

Collection

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Phillip Cornwell, United States Air Force Academy; Matthew Snyder; Michael Anderson, P.E., United States Air Force

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

. The flipped format is a much more efficient way todeliver fundamental content so that we can spend class time on more interesting cases andapplications. I suppose that is the intent of having students read the textbook, but I found thatstudents were much more willing to engage with a video lecture than they are with a book.I have one caution about the flipped class. There’s a big difference between struggling with aworkout problem yourself and watching someone else do it in a video. Therefore, I think theexample problem videos are somewhat problematic because they can potentially create a falseconfidence in the students. The students often reported easily understanding the video examples,then having no idea how to start the homework problems

Conference Session

Student Self-assessment in Mechanics Courses

Collection

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Huihui Qi, University of California, San Diego; Isabella Fiorini, University of California, San Diego; Edward Zhou Yang Yu, University of California, San Diego; Richard Eugene Vallejo Jr, University of California, San Diego; Zongnan Wang, University of California, San Diego; Trevor Keoki Oshiro, University of California, San Diego; Changkai Chen, University of California, San Diego

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

literature review as well as manuscript writing and editing. In addition to research, Edward spends his time on campus building rockets at the UCSD chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, where he designs, simulates, and manufactures structural components. Edward plans on pursuing a PhD in a structures-related field, which he hopes to leverage in the development of more cost-effective and useful space vehicles. In his free time, Edward enjoys watching films and picking up a good book.Richard Eugene Vallejo Jr, University of California, San Diego Richard Vallejo is a third-year undergraduate student at UC San Diego majoring in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Controls and Robotics