Accelerated learning and assessment in engineering mechanics: Designing an interactive tool to support students' learning

Abstract

Repeated deliberate practice in problem-solving practices is known to be beneficial in increasing students' overall understanding of targeted concepts. Additionally, when students receive frequent formative feedback, they are able to identify problematic areas of their reasoning and can correct their underlying cognitive frames of reference. However, many undergraduate engineering courses are not designed to provide students with repeated practice and targeted feedback by use of educational interventions. This project was designed to: 1) iteratively develop the innovative problem delivery and assessment system and evaluate its effectiveness in meeting specific learning and assessment goals in engineering mechanics, 2) systematically study how this technology-rich problem-solving interface can enhance the learning, teaching, and assessment of complex knowledge, and 3) critically evaluate opportunities and barriers to scaling and transferring the innovation across educational contexts. By focusing on the development of strong analytical problem-solving skills characterized by rich conceptual knowledge, this project directly responds to demands from both industry and the federal government for colleges and universities to develop complex problem solvers for the workforce. Overall, this project aims to assist engineering faculty and students through the development of an open-access problem-solving interface that will accelerate learning and enhance assessment, which along with a growing body of practice exercises, could be widely adopted in engineering mechanics education. The project seeks to develop an interactive online system for solving problems in introductory engineering mechanics courses for an undergraduate degree program. Our system aims to provide a feedback-based, exploratory environment for students to work on different problem instances and variations to explore key concepts of mathematical problem solving through developing equations for a target solution. This poster will present the current implementation of our system and discuss the different features for problem solving, feedback, and tracking of student activity and progress.