Mini-Lab Activities to Stimulate Students’ Conceptual Learning

Abdelrahman Atef Youssef; Shadi Balawi; Matt Pharr

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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: Mechanical Engineering Division (MECH) Technical Session 13: Lab Experiences
Tagged Division: Mechanical Engineering Division (MECH)
Page Count: 13
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--43925
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/43925
Download Count: 235

Paper Authors

biography

Abdelrahman Atef Youssef

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Mr. Youssef is graduate student in the Mechanical Engineering department at Texas
A&M University. He is interested in teaching in the areas of materials, manufacturing, and design. His interests are in the areas
Characterization, Design, Mechanics and Educational Research.

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biography

Shadi Balawi Texas A&M University

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Dr. Balawi is an Instructional Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering department at Texas A&M. He teaches in the areas of materials, manufacturing, and design. His interests are in the areas of Engineering Design for Disciplinary STEM Educational Research, Team Formation and Team Skill Education.

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biography

Matt Pharr Texas A&M University

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Matt Pharr is an Associate Professor and J. Mike Walker ’66 Faculty Fellow in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University with a courtesy appointment in Materials Science & Engineering. His scientific research focuses on mechanics of materials in areas including energy storage and conversion, soft materials, irradiated materials, stretchable electronics, coupled electro-chemo-mechanics, and materials for neuromorphic computing. He teaches classes primarily in mechanics of materials and materials science. He has received an NSF CAREER Award, the Kaneka Junior Faculty Award, a Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Young Faculty Award, the Peggy L. & Charles Brittan ’65 Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Award, a Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Scholar Award, and The Texas A&M Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching.

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Abstract

Courses and labs commonly reinforce learning through activities that explore applications, but it remains vital to promote deeper conceptual understanding. Also, with increasing class sizes, it has become more difficult to monitor the conceptual understanding of individual students. To address these issues, we have developed a framework for implementing short and individualized activities that focus on bridging the gap in conceptual understanding of a key topic. The framework involves administering a demonstration in a fun and exciting way while connecting independent concepts first introduced in the classroom. Specifically, we designed a demonstration for a mechanics and materials lab to aid in understanding a material’s behavior during loading and failure and how temperature can affect a material’s response. The demonstration requires students to think critically and draw connections in the interplay among mechanical loading, material behavior, and failure behavior, as opposed to simply assuming that failure behavior is always correlated with the material type itself. The demonstration consists of two mini activities: in the first activity students break chalk and observe failure surfaces expected for a brittle material and in the second activity a polymer is cooled with liquid nitrogen, a torsional load is applied until failure, and the failure surface is compared to that of chalk. Students’ understanding gained from this demonstration can easily be applied to other topics involving failure behavior in the course. These types of short demonstrations could be used in any lab or even as a quick way to grasp concepts during classroom lectures. Students were split into a study group (n=155) who attended the activity and a control group (n=162) who did not attend. Three assessments were conducted: an initial impression survey, a quiz on the concepts targeted, and a final extensive feedback survey. Surveys show that students had an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward the activity with perceived improvements in their learning. The study group’s performance in the quiz was found to be statistically significantly better using a one-tailed t-test with a significance level of α=0.05, t(315) =3.428, p<.001. A second demonstration using the established framework was added in the second run of the study and focused on the connection between the intrinsic coefficient of thermal expansion and the interatomic energy potentials of a pair of bonded materials. The preliminary results of the second run show comparable results for students’ initial impressions. The results demonstrate that the framework developed for implementing short, low-cost, and engaging demonstrations had a positive impact on student’s performance and learning.

Citation
Format

Youssef, A. A., & Balawi, S., & Pharr, M. (2023, June), Mini-Lab Activities to Stimulate Students’ Conceptual Learning Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43925

TY - CPAPER
AB - Courses and labs commonly reinforce learning through activities that explore applications, but it remains vital to promote deeper conceptual understanding. Also, with increasing class sizes, it has become more difficult to monitor the conceptual understanding of individual students. To address these issues, we have developed a framework for implementing short and individualized activities that focus on bridging the gap in conceptual understanding of a key topic. The framework involves administering a demonstration in a fun and exciting way while connecting independent concepts first introduced in the classroom. Specifically, we designed a demonstration for a mechanics and materials lab to aid in understanding a material’s behavior during loading and failure and how temperature can affect a material’s response. The demonstration requires students to think critically and draw connections in the interplay among mechanical loading, material behavior, and failure behavior, as opposed to simply assuming that failure behavior is always correlated with the material type itself. The demonstration consists of two mini activities: in the first activity students break chalk and observe failure surfaces expected for a brittle material and in the second activity a polymer is cooled with liquid nitrogen, a torsional load is applied until failure, and the failure surface is compared to that of chalk. Students’ understanding gained from this demonstration can easily be applied to other topics involving failure behavior in the course. These types of short demonstrations could be used in any lab or even as a quick way to grasp concepts during classroom lectures. Students were split into a study group (n=155) who attended the activity and a control group (n=162) who did not attend. Three assessments were conducted: an initial impression survey, a quiz on the concepts targeted, and a final extensive feedback survey. Surveys show that students had an overwhelmingly positive attitude toward the activity with perceived improvements in their learning. The study group’s performance in the quiz was found to be statistically significantly better using a one-tailed t-test with a significance level of α=0.05, t(315) =3.428, p&amp;lt;.001. A second demonstration using the established framework was added in the second run of the study and focused on the connection between the intrinsic coefficient of thermal expansion and the interatomic energy potentials of a pair of bonded materials. The preliminary results of the second run show comparable results for students’ initial impressions. The results demonstrate that the framework developed for implementing short, low-cost, and engaging demonstrations had a positive impact on student’s performance and learning.
AU - Abdelrahman Atef Youssef
AU - Shadi Balawi
AU - Matt Pharr
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Mini-Lab Activities to Stimulate Students’ Conceptual Learning
UR - https://peer.asee.org/43925
DO - 10.18260/1-2--43925
ER -