Portland, Oregon
June 12, 2005
June 12, 2005
June 15, 2005
2153-5965
13
10.313.1 - 10.313.13
10.18260/1-2--14301
https://peer.asee.org/14301
373
Session 1139
Coach: A New System for Interactive Learning John H. Ristroph University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Abstract
Coach is an interactive learning system originally designed for engineering economics, and then extended to be useful to other disciplines. It provides professors with a comparatively easy way to implement computer-based tutorials, examples, or problem solving sessions.
Introduction
Interactive learning systems encourage active learning, but they have proven to be very difficult to implement. Professors who have developed such systems [1, 2, 3] understand the benefits to students, but the development time can be prohibitive. This paper describes an Excel-based sys- tem named Coach that uses Visual Basic for Applications to provide a single platform for both implementing and conducting interactive learning sessions.
There are two levels to the design of such a system. The first consideration is how the final end product will appear to students, and the second dimension is to provide an effective developmen- tal environment for professors. The next section shows the system from a student’s viewpoint using a fairly basic example. Then the following section explains a professor’s implementation, and provides an overview of the system. The last section provides a brief summary and discusses potential impacts of the system on engineering education.
Student’s Perspective
Students see a display area with a question followed by graphics and text, including equations using typical engineering notation. Beneath the display area are steps consisting of prompts or other instructions provided by a professor. Initially, only the text of the first step is visible, and then other steps appear as the student progresses. Students respond to these, and then feedback occurs using text, graphics, screen effects, or sound. Figures 1 through 7 on the following pages show this process. Students can revisit steps and experiment, or press Clear and start over. Press- ing Mute toggles sound effects on and off, and Help provides assistance in using Coach.
Interactive Process. Figure 1 illustrates using a dropdown box to respond to a prompt. Other re- sponse mechanisms are screen hot spots and the traditional method of typing followed by press- ing Enter. Figure 2 shows the result of a wrong answer to Step 1 in which the response back- ground becomes red and a feedback box makes a suggestion. The cursor is placed back on the incorrect response cell for another try.
Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering
Ristroph, J. (2005, June), Coach: A New System For Interactive Learning Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--14301
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2005 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015