Does a Review Course Increase FE Exam Preparedness?
- Conference
- Location
-
Virtual Conference
- Publication Date
-
July 26, 2021
- Start Date
-
July 26, 2021
- End Date
-
July 19, 2022
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
-
Civil Engineering
- Page Count
-
18
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--36991
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/36991
- Download Count
-
298
Paper Authors
Matthew K. Swenty Virginia Military Institute
Matthew (Matt) Swenty obtained his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Civil Engineering from Missouri S&T and then worked as a bridge designer at the Missouri Department of Transportation. After obtaining his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech, he worked at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. He is currently a professor of Civil Engineering at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). He teaches engineering mechanics and structural engineering courses and enjoys working with his students on bridge related research projects and student competitions.
Christopher R. Shearer
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
orcid.org/0000-0003-2422-9275
Dr. Shearer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. His research investigates the chemical, physical, and mechanical properties and durability performance of infrastructure materials, with a focus on sustainable concrete materials technology. He also researches new strategies to improve STEM education.
Benjamin Z. Dymond
University of Minnesota Duluth
orcid.org/0000-0002-4752-3445
Ben Dymond obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech before obtaining his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Ben is currently an associate professor of structural engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Wakeel Ishola Anthony Idewu Virginia Military Institute
Wakeel I.A. Idewu Ph.D., P.E., is a professor at Virginia Military Institute. He received a bachelor of science in civil engineering from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and a master of science in engineering science from Louisiana State University. He also earned a doctorate in civil engineering from Louisiana State University.
With over 17 years of experience postgraduate teaching and transportation engineering, Idewu is an expert in simulation modeling using the Vision platform and provides creative , economically feasible solutions to both common and uncommon transportation engineering problems. The broad scale of his work involves congestion prevention and mitigation techniques with a growing interest in the field of autonomous vehicles and its affect on the neurological response of drivers. He, along with his wife and family, is in continuous pursuit of a self-prescribed mission: Investing their God-given gifts in people and creatively using opportunities to fuel potential in every generation.
Abstract
This study evaluated the effectiveness of a Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) review course in improving student confidence and performance for FE-style test questions on reinforced concrete and concrete materials topics. Data collected from students at one university in an FE review course were compared to students at two other universities in topic-specific courses. Student confidence was determined using initial and final surveys, and performance was assessed by evaluating answers to FE-style test questions administered in their courses. The FE review course improved perceived confidence on taking the overall FE exam and on the reinforced concrete and concrete materials questions for students exposed to the technical content for the second time. However, a greater increase in student confidence on topic-specific questions was observed for students taking a course on the topic for the first time. The FE review course also improved some students’ knowledge on concrete design and materials as measured by performance on FE-style test questions. However, students in the review course performed worse than students immersed in the topic for the first time on most of the assessed test questions. For students taking the FE review course, confidence and performance on FE-style test questions were not strongly correlated. An FE review course can increase preparedness, but gains are limited compared to a topic-specific course.
Swenty, M. K., & Shearer, C. R., & Dymond, B. Z., & Idewu, W. I. A. (2021, July), Does a Review Course Increase FE Exam Preparedness? Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36991
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: © 2021 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