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An Assessment of Blended Learning in Mechanics of Materials

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Conference

2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Columbus, Ohio

Publication Date

June 24, 2017

Start Date

June 24, 2017

End Date

June 28, 2017

Conference Session

Learning and Assessment in ME 1

Tagged Division

Mechanical Engineering

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

31

DOI

10.18260/1-2--27553

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/27553

Download Count

784

Paper Authors

biography

Ana Dyreson P.E. University of Wisconsin, Madison

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Ana is a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the Solar Energy Lab. Ana began work as an engineer before moving into graduate school. Her graduate work has included a range of renewable and sustainable energy technologies, most recently focusing on low-water cooling for thermoelectric power plants. Ana is interested in research-supported teaching methods that create active classrooms that are inclusive to a diverse student body. Ana has taught mechanics of materials and is team-teaching a new graduate course with the theme 'teaching a diverse nation'.

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Corinne R. Henak University of Wisconsin, Madison

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Abstract

Instructors are often uncertain if their efforts to design a blended course are warranted by improved student outcomes compared to a lecture-based course. The first goal of this study was to find out if students benefit from a blended course compared to a traditional course in our mechanics of materials class. The average exam scores were the same in two cohorts we studied, but we found that simply comparing averages ignored effects of major, year in school, and gender. Such student characteristics are important to consider when measuring the outcome of a course redesign. The second goal was to assess students’ progress in Bloom’s taxonomy in the blended course. The results suggest that students quickly learned how to solve problems, but did not understand fundamental concepts following lecture and online reading assignments. A final goal was to understand students’ perceptions of the blended course. We found that most students thought that the format was effective.

Dyreson, A., & Henak, C. R. (2017, June), An Assessment of Blended Learning in Mechanics of Materials Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--27553

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