Work-In-Progress: Incorporating Open-Ended Modeling Problems into Undergraduate Introductory Dynamics Courses
- Conference
- Location
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Minneapolis, MN
- Publication Date
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August 23, 2022
- Start Date
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June 26, 2022
- End Date
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June 29, 2022
- Conference Session
- Page Count
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17
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--41404
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/41404
- Download Count
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239
Paper Authors
Rachel Vitali The University of Iowa
Dr. Rachel Vitali is an Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Iowa. Prior to her appointment, she was a NASA-funded TRISH postdoctoral fellow in the Industrial & Operations Engineering Department at the University of Michigan, where she also received her B.S.E. in 2015, M.S.E in 2017, and Ph.D. in 2019 from the Mechanical Engineering Department. As director of the Human Instrumentation and Robotics (HIR) lab, she leads multiple lines of research in engineering dynamics with applications to wearable technology for analysis of human motion in a variety of contexts ranging from warfighters to astronauts. In addition to her engineering work, she also has an interest in engineering education research. As a doctoral student, she led a project aimed at improving the undergraduate educational experience by systematically incorporating sensor technology into the curriculum as an engaged learning activity, for which she was awarded an ASME Graduate Teacher Fellowship.
Emma Treadway Trinity University
Emma Treadway received the B.S. degree in Engineering Science from Trinity University in 2011, and her M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2017 and 2019, respectively. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Science at Trinity University, San Antonio. Her primary research interests include human-robot interaction and haptics.
Aaron Johnson University of Michigan
Aaron W. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department and a Core Faculty member of the Engineering Education Research Program at the University of Michigan. He believes in a strong connection between engineering education research and practice, and his research leverages his experience teaching engineering science courses to bridge the gap between theoretical, well-defined coursework and ill-defined, sociotechnical engineering practice. Aaron holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Michigan, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to re-joining Michigan, he was an instructor in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Aaron enjoys reading, collecting LEGO NASA sets, biking, camping, and playing disc golf.
Jessica Swenson University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Jessica Swenson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at the University at Buffalo. She was awarded her doctorate and masters from Tufts University in mechanical engineering and STEM education respectively, and completed postdoctoral work at the University of Michigan Her current research involves examining different types of homework problems in undergraduate engineering science courses, flexible classroom spaces, active learning, responsive teaching, and elementary school engineering teachers.
Alice Nightingale University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
Nicole Ramo West Chester University
Nicole is an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. Before this position, she served as a lecturer for Shantou University's Biomedical Engineering Department (Shantou, Guangdong, China) and an instructional post-doctoral fellow for the University of Michigan's Transforming Engineering Education Laboratory (Ann Arbor, MI). Her educational research interests include the evolution of students' perceptions of biomedical engineering and career goals.
Martell Bell The University of Iowa
Abstract
This work-in-progress paper aims to document the process of incorporating open-ended modeling problems (OEMPs) into introductory undergraduate dynamics courses. Content in engineering science courses is historically challenging for students to understand and transfer to new, unfamiliar contexts. These challenges likely arise in part from pervasive traditional teaching methods that emphasize solving “textbook problems” which are not truly representative of the complex, ill-defined problems professional engineers usually engage. Subsequently and unsurprisingly, engineering education researchers and industry stakeholders alike have long lamented engineering graduates’ inability to independently and creatively solve new problems. Practicing engineers exercise what Gainsburg (2007) identifies as engineering judgment to make assumptions, discretize elements, decide how to model qualitative factors, and evaluate the reasonableness of the end result stemming from these decisions. In most engineering classes, instructors (or the textbook) usually simplify systems so much that these activities are circumvented entirely. However, our research team has previously demonstrated how OEMPs, which ask students to apply mathematical models learned in class (e.g., rigid body acceleration analysis) to real-world systems, can inspire the productive beginnings of engineering judgment in undergraduate students.
Our research team has primarily implemented and studied OEMPs in undergraduate introductory statics and mechanics of materials courses. For this current work, we formed a multi-institutional, cross-disciplinary faculty learning community with two engineering education researchers and four faculty members teaching dynamics. This paper documents the process of expanding on lessons learned from implementation of OEMPs in statics courses—as well as one instructor’s experiences with OEMPs in a dynamics courses—to more fully investigate the transferability of OEMPs into undergraduate introductory dynamics courses at multiple institutions.
This paper first describes our process for collaboratively creating new dynamics OEMPs based on formalizing guidelines and sharing lessons learned from statics OEMPs development. We discuss reflections from the faculty members about the value and challenges of designing a dynamics OEMP. We then describe how initial observational feedback was collected from undergraduates at multiple institutions who assessed the new OEMPs from a student perspective. Next, we present the OEMP assignments we created. The paper concludes by describing our plan for qualitatively analyzing interviews with students to understand how students engaged in the productive beginnings of engineering judgment while completing the dynamics OEMPs.
Implications include insights on how students approach and solve complex, ill-defined problems, develop engineering judgment, and build mathematical models. This investigation also provides the future opportunity to compare how students engage in these activities across multiple engineering science courses, institutions (including Carnegie classifications), and engineering subdisciplines. Lastly, this work will help to advance our development of general guidelines for creating and scaffolding an OEMP in any discipline.
Vitali, R., & Treadway, E., & Johnson, A., & Swenson, J., & Nightingale, A., & Ramo, N., & Bell, M. (2022, August), Work-In-Progress: Incorporating Open-Ended Modeling Problems into Undergraduate Introductory Dynamics Courses Paper presented at 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Minneapolis, MN. 10.18260/1-2--41404
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