Work-In-Progress:Tools for Creating Variable Parameter Homework Problems

John Eric Wagner; Amanda Portis Malefyt; Jon D Koch

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Work-in-Progress Oral Session
Tagged Division: Chemical Engineering
Page Count: 12
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--29192
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/29192
Download Count: 472

Paper Authors

biography

John Eric Wagner Trine University

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John Wagner is a Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering at Trine University. He has degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Colorado and Rice University and has worked for Shell Oil.

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Amanda Portis Malefyt Trine University

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Amanda Malefyt is currently Chair and Assistant Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical & Bioprocess Engineering at Trine University. Her research interests include engineering education and nucleic acid therapeutics.

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Jon D Koch Trine University

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Abstract

Analytical numerical problems and exercises are foundational to the education of engineers. These problems were traditionally assigned to the students as homework problems. These types of problems had the advantage of being more in depth than examination questions, required the students to document their solutions, and promoted student collaboration. This method of instruction has been degraded in recent years by the abundance of easy to access solutions manuals. Many professors have responded, by some combination of (1) deemphasizing homework in the course grade (2) making up their own problems or modifying those from textbooks, or (3) adopting a publisher created web-based programs that give students different problems.

None of these tactics are without problems. In particular, making up homework problems is error prone and time intensive while the publisher products typically come at an additional fee for the students, are not available for all subjects and tend to tie a course to a specific book.

A centralized crowd source homework repository available currently at www.ExcelProblemPedia.org has been initiated to address some of these shortcomings. This repository, while in its infancy, is freely available for educators to query and download both static and variable parameter problems for use in their course. When the variable parameter problems are chosen, and distributed, each student solves a different version of the same basic problem. The student interface provides students with immediate feedback, allows for multiple tries, and provides a common, no-credit base-case to promote student collaboration. In addition, the instructor can easily add reflective and metacognitive questions to promote higher level thinking. Students submit their documented work along with the machine graded output. Students rate the problem difficulty and effectiveness along with their problem-solving performance. One big advantage for users of the repository is not having to commit to an entirely new system. These problems can supplement any homework system currently in use. Critical to this homework repository is a standardized method for creating variable parameter problems. An Excel template has been developed for this function. Excel was chosen as the development tool because of its familiarity, ubiquity and flexibility since most commercial engineering packages have developed modules to pass information to and from Excel. Therefore, problem contributors can either develop their solution solely in Excel or use Excel as a front and back end utilizing other more appropriate packages such as MATLAB for solving the problem.

Developing these variable parameter problems with the aid of the template involves • Selecting and entering information about the problem (the problem meta-data) • Entering the problem statement, and identifying the variable parameters • Setting the range of each of the parameters • Solving the problem using Excel or an auxiliary program • Running macros to generate files that can be uploaded to the repository

Over seventy-five variable parameter problems have been developed and used in a Material and Energy Balance course in Chemical Engineering using various forms of the template. The solution to these problems were all performed with-in Excel. A limited number of problems have been developed for Mechanical Engineering Thermodynamics where MATLAB was used with Excel. Initial, student feedback is overwhelmingly positive with a rating of over 4.5 out of 5 on both their like and perceived effectiveness of the problems. Faculty grading time while not eliminated is much less than half of that of a traditional homework assignment.

Citation
Format

Wagner, J. E., & Malefyt, A. P., & Koch, J. D. (2017, June), Work-In-Progress:Tools for Creating Variable Parameter Homework Problems Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--29192

TY - CPAPER
AB - Analytical numerical problems and exercises are foundational to the education of engineers. These problems were traditionally assigned to the students as homework problems. These types of problems had the advantage of being more in depth than examination questions, required the students to document their solutions, and promoted student collaboration. This method of instruction has been degraded in recent years by the abundance of easy to access solutions manuals. Many professors have responded, by some combination of (1) deemphasizing homework in the course grade (2) making up their own problems or modifying those from textbooks, or (3) adopting a publisher created web-based programs that give students different problems.

None of these tactics are without problems. In particular, making up homework problems is error prone and time intensive while the publisher products typically come at an additional fee for the students, are not available for all subjects and tend to tie a course to a specific book.

A centralized crowd source homework repository available currently at www.ExcelProblemPedia.org has been initiated to address some of these shortcomings. This repository, while in its infancy, is freely available for educators to query and download both static and variable parameter problems for use in their course. When the variable parameter problems are chosen, and distributed, each student solves a different version of the same basic problem. The student interface provides students with immediate feedback, allows for multiple tries, and provides a common, no-credit base-case to promote student collaboration. In addition, the instructor can easily add reflective and metacognitive questions to promote higher level thinking. Students submit their documented work along with the machine graded output. Students rate the problem difficulty and effectiveness along with their problem-solving performance. One big advantage for users of the repository is not having to commit to an entirely new system. These problems can supplement any homework system currently in use.
Critical to this homework repository is a standardized method for creating variable parameter problems. An Excel template has been developed for this function. Excel was chosen as the development tool because of its familiarity, ubiquity and flexibility since most commercial engineering packages have developed modules to pass information to and from Excel. Therefore, problem contributors can either develop their solution solely in Excel or use Excel as a front and back end utilizing other more appropriate packages such as MATLAB for solving the problem.

Developing these variable parameter problems with the aid of the template involves
• Selecting and entering information about the problem (the problem meta-data)
• Entering the problem statement, and identifying the variable parameters
• Setting the range of each of the parameters
• Solving the problem using Excel or an auxiliary program
• Running macros to generate files that can be uploaded to the repository

Over seventy-five variable parameter problems have been developed and used in a Material and Energy Balance course in Chemical Engineering using various forms of the template. The solution to these problems were all performed with-in Excel. A limited number of problems have been developed for Mechanical Engineering Thermodynamics where MATLAB was used with Excel.
Initial, student feedback is overwhelmingly positive with a rating of over 4.5 out of 5 on both their like and perceived effectiveness of the problems. Faculty grading time while not eliminated is much less than half of that of a traditional homework assignment.

AU - John Eric Wagner
AU - Amanda Portis Malefyt
AU - Jon D Koch
CY - Columbus, Ohio
DA - 2017/06/24
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Work-In-Progress:Tools for Creating Variable Parameter Homework Problems
UR - https://peer.asee.org/29192
DO - 10.18260/1-2--29192
ER -