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Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Student Performance on Exams in a Dynamics Course?

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Miscellaneous Mechanics: Covid and Free Body Diagrams

Tagged Division

Mechanics Division (MECHS)

Page Count

10

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43169

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43169

Download Count

129

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Paper Authors

biography

Julian Ly Davis University of Southern Indiana

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Jul Davis is an Associate Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana. He received his PhD in 2007 from Virginia Tech in Engineering Mechanics where he studied the vestibular organs in the inner ear using finite element models and vibration analyses. After graduating, he spent a semester teaching at a local community college and then two years at University of Massachusetts (Amherst) studying the biomechanics of biting in bats and monkeys, also using finite element modeling techniques. In 2010, he started his career teaching in all areas of mechanical engineering at the University of Southern Indiana. He loves teaching all of the basic mechanics courses, and of course his Vibrations and Finite Element Analysis courses.

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biography

Andrew Jason Hill University of Southern Indiana

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Jason Hill is an associate professor of engineering and director of civil engineering at the University of Southern Indiana. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from Tennessee Technological University. His research interests include rainfall-runoff modeling, stream restoration, and wetland hydrology.

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Abstract

During the COVID19 pandemic many faculty switched to a completely online mode of teaching and assessment for the 2020-2021 academic year. To prepare for this new mode of assessment, old exams from previous years of teaching became a collection from which to pull problems to create the online exams for the new COVID19 academic year. In this analysis we compare the results of the online exams (administered during the COVID19 academic year) with the same problems collected from pre-COVID exams. The online Dynamics exams: • Covered three to four topics per exam (Same as previous semesters) • Each topic had an option of 2-3 different problems that were randomly assigned to each student • Each problem had randomized numbers for certain variables within the problem This made every exam unique from one-another either in terms of problem and or numbers, while covering all the same topics. This is the beginning of a more detailed comparison of student performance on pre-COVID and during-COVID exam problems. Our prediction is that students will perform worse in the online exams when compared to those same sets of problems that have been worked out on previous exams due to the extra stresses associated with pandemic issues and online courses. Contrary to our expectations, students showed a marginal improvement in exam performance during the COVID19 pandemic when compared to exam problem performance from pre-COVID exam problems. However, it may be difficult to identify single variables that could have affected performance of students taking exams during the COVID-19 pandemic versus those before the 2020-2021 academic year.

Davis, J. L., & Hill, A. J. (2023, June), Did the COVID-19 Pandemic Affect Student Performance on Exams in a Dynamics Course? Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43169

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