Board 372: Research Initiation: Facilitating Knowledge Transfer within Engineering Curricula

Alexander John De Rosa; Teri Kristine Reed; Samuel Van Horne; Angela E. Arndt

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Conference: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Portland, Oregon
Publication Date: June 23, 2024
Start Date: June 23, 2024
End Date: June 26, 2024
Conference Session: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Tagged Topic: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--46956
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/46956
Download Count: 67

Paper Authors

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Alexander John De Rosa University of Delaware orcid.org/0000-0003-1693-4724

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Alexander De Rosa is an Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Delaware. He gained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University in 2015, where he worked on experimental combustion research applied to gas turbine engines, and his M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College London in 2010. Alex's current research focuses on the transfer of learning between various courses and contexts and the professional formation of engineers.

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Teri Kristine Reed OU Polytechnic Institute orcid.org/0000-0002-6804-9826

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Teri K. Reed is the inaugural Director of the OU Polytechnic Institute and Professor and George Kaiser Family Foundation Chair at OU-Tulsa.

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Samuel Van Horne University of Delaware

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Angela E. Arndt Tech Literacy Services

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Angela E. Arndt of Tech Literacy Services is an independent Educational Researcher and Program Evaluator serving engineering programs in higher education to improve academic success and increase diversity and inclusion.

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Abstract

It is well-established that students have difficulty transferring theory and skills between courses in their undergraduate curriculum. At the same time, many college-level courses only concern material relating to the course itself and do not cover how this material might be used elsewhere. It is unsurprising, then, that students are unable to transfer and integrate knowledge from multiple areas into new problems as part of capstone design courses, for example, or in their careers. More work is required to better enable students to transfer knowledge between their courses, learn skills and theory more deeply, and to form engineers who are better able to adapt to new situations and solve “systems-level” problems.

Various authors in both the cognitive and disciplinary sciences have discussed these difficulties with the transfer of knowledge, and noted the need to develop tools and techniques for promoting knowledge transfer, as well as to help students develop cross-course connections. This work will address these barriers to knowledge transfer, and crucially develop the needed activities and practices for promoting transfer by answering the following research questions: (1) What are the primary challenges experienced by students when tasked with transferring theory and skills from prior courses, specifically mathematics and physics? (2) What methods of prior knowledge activation are most effective in enabling students to apply this prior knowledge in new areas of study?

Here, we present a summary, to date, of the findings of this investigation. These findings are based on an analysis of the problem solving techniques employed by students in various years of their undergraduate program as well as faculty experts. A series of n=23 think aloud interviews have been conducted in which participants were asked to solve a typical engineering statics problem that also requires mathematical skills to solve. Based on participant performance and verbalizations in these interviews, various barriers to the knowledge transfer process were identified (lack of prior knowledge, accuracy of prior knowledge, conceptual understanding, lack of teaching of applications, language of problem, curricular mapping). At the same time, several interventions designed to promote the transfer of knowledge were incorporated into the interviews and tested. Initial results demonstrated the potential effectiveness of these interventions (detailed in the poster/paper) but questions were raised as to whether participants truly understood the underlying concepts they were being asked to transfer.

This poster presentation will cover a holistic representation of this study as well as the findings to date.

Citation
Format

De Rosa, A. J., & Reed, T. K., & Van Horne, S., & Arndt, A. E. (2024, June), Board 372: Research Initiation: Facilitating Knowledge Transfer within Engineering Curricula Paper presented at 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--46956

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - It is well-established that students have difficulty transferring theory and skills between courses in their undergraduate curriculum. At the same time, many college-level courses only concern material relating to the course itself and do not cover how this material might be used elsewhere. It is unsurprising, then, that students are unable to transfer and integrate knowledge from multiple areas into new problems as part of capstone design courses, for example, or in their careers. More work is required to better enable students to transfer knowledge between their courses, learn skills and theory more deeply, and to form engineers who are better able to adapt to new situations and solve “systems-level” problems.

Various authors in both the cognitive and disciplinary sciences have discussed these difficulties with the transfer of knowledge, and noted the need to develop tools and techniques for promoting knowledge transfer, as well as to help students develop cross-course connections. This work will address these barriers to knowledge transfer, and crucially develop the needed activities and practices for promoting transfer by answering the following research questions: (1) What are the primary challenges experienced by students when tasked with transferring theory and skills from prior courses, specifically mathematics and physics? (2) What methods of prior knowledge activation are most effective in enabling students to apply this prior knowledge in new areas of study?

Here, we present a summary, to date, of the findings of this investigation. These findings are based on an analysis of the problem solving techniques employed by students in various years of their undergraduate program as well as faculty experts. A series of n=23 think aloud interviews have been conducted in which participants were asked to solve a typical engineering statics problem that also requires mathematical skills to solve. Based on participant performance and verbalizations in these interviews, various barriers to the knowledge transfer process were identified (lack of prior knowledge, accuracy of prior knowledge, conceptual understanding, lack of teaching of applications, language of problem, curricular mapping). At the same time, several interventions designed to promote the transfer of knowledge were incorporated into the interviews and tested. Initial results demonstrated the potential effectiveness of these interventions (detailed in the poster/paper) but questions were raised as to whether participants truly understood the underlying concepts they were being asked to transfer.

This poster presentation will cover a holistic representation of this study as well as the findings to date.
AU  - Alexander John De Rosa
AU  - Teri Kristine Reed
AU  - Samuel Van Horne
AU  - Angela E. Arndt
CY  - Portland, Oregon
DA  - 2024/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Board 372: Research Initiation: Facilitating Knowledge Transfer within Engineering Curricula
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/46956
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--46956
ER  -