The studies of effective teaching and learning methods in Chinese engineering education

Abstract

Research studies discover a number of teaching and learning methods and these methods can be used to develop student's ability in critical thinking, logic reasoning, and problem solving. Student's learning outcomes are greatly impacted by these teaching and learning methods. It is hypothesized that properly selected teaching and learning methods can be applied in student's learning and knowledge development to help students with different culture backgrounds yield better learning outcomes. This research study selects three teaching and learning methods for an experiment in a software engineering class. These methods are tightening connections between learning objectives and outcomes, a repetitive learning model to improve student learning results, and a new measurement for student team project. A hypothesis testing is designed to verify effectiveness of these methods in developing student's learning outcomes. An experiment was conducted in two software engineering project management classes with a group of seventy Chinese engineering students. Main purpose of the experiment is to test a hypothesis - whether or not the three newly modified teaching and learning methods can significantly improve student's learning outcomes. Sample data is collected from the experiment and is then analyzed by proper statistical methods. Statistical analysis of a small sample of data helps accept the original hypothesis. Due to the limitation of study and particularly small sample size a proposal is made that the same experiment will continue in a larger student population. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.