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Reading participation and assessment of spreadsheet skills across multiple cohorts when using an interactive textbook

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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

First-Year Programs Division (FYP) - Technical Session 8: Skill Building

Tagged Division

First-Year Programs Division (FYP)

Page Count

15

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44020

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/44020

Download Count

241

Paper Authors

author page

Samantha Yanosko

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Grant Valentine

biography

Matthew W. Liberatore The University of Toledo Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-5495-7145

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Matthew W. Liberatore is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Toledo. He earned a B.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all in chemical engineering. From 2005 to 2015, he served on the faculty at the Colorado School of Mines. In 2018, he served as an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. His research involves the rheology of complex fluids, especially traditional and renewable energy fluids and materials, polymers, and colloids. His educational interests include developing problems from YouTube videos, active learning, learning analytics, and interactive textbooks. His interactive textbooks for Material and Energy Balances, Spreadsheets, and Thermodynamics are available from zyBooks.com. His website is: https://www.utoledo.edu/engineering/chemical-engineering/liberatore/

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Abstract

This evidence-based practice complete paper centers on the topics of assessment and learning technology for first-year engineering students. Spreadsheets are convenient for completing many calculations that engineering students and practicing engineers encounter. Spreadsheet programs are easily accessible and have been available for decades, including Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets; numerous formulas, functions, and other tasks are common across platforms. However, learning spreadsheet skills is usually limited to demonstration by an expert, such as numerous videos on YouTube. Here, an interactive textbook provided students the opportunity to acquire spreadsheet skills by performing spreadsheet actions. Various components of the interactive textbook apply learning theories including cognitive load, scaffolding, and deliberate practice. First, reading participation measured clicks from using interactive components, including multi-step animations, multiple-choice questions, and matching exercises. Next, students had unlimited attempts to correctly answer over 120 auto-graded, randomized problems. In addition to basic spreadsheet skills and functions, advanced topics included solver, error, statistics, and matrix operations. In total, data generated by five cohorts (> 400 students) were studied. Median reading participation was very high - over 96% of 290 clicks per student - for all five cohorts. In addition, animation view rates were as high as 118%, indicating repetitive use. Animation view rates were higher for more advanced topics, such as double interpolation, compared to the basic skills and formulas. A median completion over 94% on auto-graded problems was observed for each of the five cohorts. By examining fraction correct on specific topics, real-time misconceptions and struggle can be noted by instructors, which leads to opportunities to provide interventions and facilitate learning.

Yanosko, S., & Valentine, G., & Liberatore, M. W. (2023, June), Reading participation and assessment of spreadsheet skills across multiple cohorts when using an interactive textbook Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44020

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: © 2023 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