Dupen, B. (2014, June), How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--20567

\bibitem{asee_peer_20567}
  Dupen, B. (2014, June), \emph{How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students}
  Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana.
  10.18260/1-2--20567

Barry Dupen.  "How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students".  2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2014.  https://peer.asee.org/20567 Internet.  24 Apr, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_20567}
  Barry Dupen.
  "How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students".
  \emph{2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2014, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2014.
  https://peer.asee.org/20567 Internet.  24 Apr, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_20567
author = "Barry Dupen"
title = "How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students"
booktitle = "2014 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2014"
month = "June"
address = "Indianapolis, Indiana"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/20567}
number = {10.18260/1-2--20567}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -        How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology StudentsAbstractStrength of Materials is the hardest course in the first two years of the Mechanical, Civil, andArchitectural Engineering Technology programs at ____; consequently it has the highest dropand fail rate (between 18% and 30% per semester). A previous ASEE paper described the processfor creating a new textbook designed to help students learn better and pass the course in largernumbers. The textbook is free, available online as a 2 MB pdf file. This paper focuses oncontinuous improvement of the textbook. While commercially-produced textbooks are updatedonce every four to ten years, the new textbook is updated every semester based on studentfeedback. In the first semester of the new textbook's use, feedback was optional and worth extracredit points. Unfortunately, only the most desperate students participated, and the quality of theresponses was inadequate. Subsequently, feedback was incorporated into the homeworkassignments as a course requirement, with better than 90% participation. Feedback must be bothspecific and actionable: “this chapter is confusing” does not meet these criteria, whereas “I don'tunderstand how to solve the moment in Example 6, page 45” meets both criteria. A student maynot know what to change, but can easily identify the confusing parts of a text.This paper presents an analysis of the quality and quantity of feedback responses, with examplesof positive effects on the textbook over the past three semesters. Although the topic of the bookis Strength of Materials, this paper discusses techniques that can be applied to a variety ofundergraduate engineering textbook topics.
AU  - Barry Dupen
CY  - Indianapolis, Indiana
DA  - 2014/06/15
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/20567
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--20567
ER  -