Students' Confidence Levels in Technical Concept Knowledge with Model Eliciting Activities
- Conference
- Location
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San Antonio, Texas
- Publication Date
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June 10, 2012
- Start Date
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June 10, 2012
- End Date
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June 13, 2012
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Educational Research and Methods
- Page Count
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20
- Page Numbers
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25.1196.1 - 25.1196.20
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--21953
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/21953
- Download Count
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413
Paper Authors
Nora Siewiorek University of Pittsburgh
Nora Siewiorek is a graduate student in the Administrative and Policy Studies Department in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh, where she also received her M.S. in information science. Her research interests include engineering education and educational assessment and evaluation. Her K-12 outreach activities are organizing a local science fair and a hands on workshop in nanotechnology. Her other research interests are higher education administration, comparative, and international education.
Larry J. Shuman
University of Pittsburgh
orcid.org/0000-0001-6884-7070
Larry J. Shuman is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and professor of industrial engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on improving the engineering education experience with an emphasis on assessment of design and problem-solving, and the study of the ethical behavior of engineers and engineering managers. A former Senior Editor of the Journal of Engineering Education, Shuman is the Founding Editor of Advances in Engineering Education. He has published widely in engineering education literature, and is co-author of Engineering Ethics: Balancing Cost, Schedule and Risk - Lessons Learned from the Space Shuttle (Cambridge University Press). He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in operations research and a B.S.E.E. from the University of Cincinnati. Shuman is an ASEE Fellow.
Mary E. Besterfield-Sacre University of Pittsburgh
Mary Besterfield-Sacre is an Associate Professor and Fulton C. Noss Faculty Fellow in industrial engineering. She is the Director for the new Engineering Education Research Center (EERC) in the Swanson School of Engineering, and serves as a Center Associate for the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. Her principal research is in engineering assessment, which has been funded by the NSF, Department of Education, Sloan Foundation, Engineering Information Foundation, and the NCIIA. Besterfield-Sacre’s current research focuses on three distinct but highly correlated areas pf innovative design, entrepreneurship, and modeling. She is an Associate Editor for the AEE Journal.
Natasa S. Vidic University of Pittsburgh
Karen M. Bursic University of Pittsburgh
Karen M. Bursic is an Assistant Professor and the Undergraduate Program Director for industrial engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. Prior to joining the department, she worked as a Senior Consultant for Ernst and Young and as an Industrial Engineer for General Motors Corporation. She teaches undergraduate courses in engineering economics, engineering management, and probability and statistics in industrial engineering as well as engineering computing in the freshman engineering program. Bursic has done research and published work in the areas of engineering and project management and engineering education. She is a member of IIE and ASEE and is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Pennsylvania.
Scott Streiner University of Pittsburgh
Jeffrey Coull
Abstract
Students’ Confidence Levels in Technical Concept Knowledge with Model Eliciting ActivitiesAssessing engineering students’ technical knowledge is an important concern in engineeringeducation. One result is the development and standardization of concept inventories for many ofthe disciplines. As part of a larger NSF funded project focused on developing, incorporating andassessing Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs), we examine how students performed on aknowledge test (KT), a subset of concept inventories that is more focused but lesscomprehensive, which also includes a self-assessment of their level of confidence inanswering each question. In particular, we used MEAs to determine if students in a Statistics forEngineers course performed better on a KT compared to students in a comparison section whowere not exposed to MEAs. Although MEAs were originally designed to improve theunderstanding of technical concepts, our experience shows that while MEAs may onlymarginally increase students’ level of knowledge compared to more traditional methods, they doprovide improvements in students’ problem solving skills. In this paper we provide an in-depthinvestigation of how measuring both students’ performance as well as their confidence isaffected by exposure to MEAs. Specifically, we ask the following: is there a significant gain instudents’ knowledge from the beginning to the end of the semester?; are students who are mostconfident in their answers also correct in their responses?; is there a gender difference? And dodifferences exist between sections that used MEAs versus those that did not?
Siewiorek, N., & Shuman, L. J., & Besterfield-Sacre, M. E., & Vidic, N. S., & Bursic, K. M., & Streiner, S., & Coull, J. (2012, June), Students' Confidence Levels in Technical Concept Knowledge with Model Eliciting Activities Paper presented at 2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, San Antonio, Texas. 10.18260/1-2--21953
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