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Comparative Assessment of Student Performance on Exams when Using Online Homework Tools in an Undergraduate Engineering Mechanics Course
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Head, Monique H. Owolabi, Oludare Adegbola James-Okeke, Petronella A. |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | Engineering mechanics courses are vital to the core competencies of engineering students. The objective of this study is to analyze student success in an engineering mechanics course using MasteringEngineering® to complete online (electronic) homework as opposed to traditional (written) homework. For this study, 2 different civil engineering instructors compare student data for this engineering mechanics course taught during the spring 2012 semester and summer 2012 mini-mester (3 sessions), thereby sampling a total of 56 students. The instruments used to measure effectiveness were homework assignments and final exam grades, and their effect on the final grades for the course. The homework assignments for this study focused on 2 main topics: 1) structural analysis of trusses, and 2) construction of shear and moment diagrams. The results show that an online instructional tool that supports the facilitation of online (electronic) homework, was used compared to traditional (written) homework, final exam grades on these 2 main topics within engineering mechanics improved by 8.8% and 17.4% for Professor A and B's classes, respectively, and thusly improved final grades by 8.4% and 1.8% for Professor A and B's classes, respectively. In addition to aiding student success, MasteringEngineering® proved to be user-friendly for the instructors while providing useful data on how a problem aligned with ABET learning outcomes for assessment, how much time students spent on problems, and how many attempts it took the student to input the correct answer (multiple attempts allowed in this study), which helped the instructors identify topics that seemed to still trouble students for deeper learning and understanding of engineering mechanics concepts. Lastly, this paper reveals some of the student and instructor benefits and challenges experienced when using MasteringEngineering® in an undergraduate engineering mechanics course at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). Background Some instructors have used online homework tools as a way to integrate technology into the classroom. 1-4 MasteringEngineering®, a Pearson product, was used for the first time in the Department of Civil Engineering at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) to promote student success in an engineering mechanics course, CEGR 304. The class compositions for CEGR 304 is unique is that it is the statics course required for non-civil engineering majors, comprised mainly of electrical, computer and industrial engineering students who need this course to graduate. Given the unfortunate reputation of the course, many of these students wait until their senior year to take the course. As a means to motivate student learning and redirect the attitude for the course, the instructors decided to take a different approach by using MasteringEngineering,® which served several purposes: 1) to excite learning using technology for which students gravitate to and like, 2) to reduce timeand labor-intensive homework grading given the automate grading feature, 3) to improve turnaround time for homework feedback, and 3) to provide the students with individualized tutoring given the hints that are available when completing the online homework once a student purchases an access code. The access code enables students to complete their homework assignments online while having P ge 23308.2 multiple attempts and opportunities for hints as a form of individualized tutoring. Once a student purchase the code, the information they input when registering is automatically populated into the MasteringEngineering® "Roster" for the course. Furthermore, given the popularity of Ebooks, this also enabled the opportunity for students to also purchase online access to the textbook for their convenience and easy access. While these were the initial reasons for using MasteringEngineering®, several additional benefits and lessons learned were also discovered along the way. Course Structure The engineering mechanics course, CEGR 304, addresses several of the ABET 3 outcomes and has several primary learning outcomes: • To apply prerequisite knowledge from physics and math classes to engineering mechanics problems. • To apply vector methods to solve engineering mechanics type problems. • To construct clear and accurate free-body diagrams and use such diagrams to solve problems. • To analyze the equilibrium of a body under an action of forces. • To construct shear and moment equations and diagrams. • To calculate center of gravity, centroid and moment of inertia of an object. The course was taught by two different civil engineering professors over 4 semesters: spring 2012 semester and summer 2012 mini-mester (3 sessions), thereby sampling 56 students. Both professors taught during the summer 2012a mini-mester; one taught face-to-face using MasteringEngineering® with 8 students (Professor A's courses highlighted in pink), and the other (Professor B's courses highlighted in blue) taught the entire course online to 11 students without using MasteringEngineering®. Table 1 shows the breakdown of the courses such as grading weights of the final exam each time the course was offered by the 2 different civil engineering professors (denoted by color shading), which courses utilized MasteringEngineering®, and if the lowest homework grade was dropped. One of the instructors decided to drop the lowest homework since late assignments were not accepted, which was easy to enforce given that MasteringEngineering® would not allow students to change answers after a due date and time were set. (This is one of many advantages, where customizations per student can be made if necessary, even extensions of assignment due dates for University excused absences, for example, by adjusting the settings per student). It shall be noted that one of the instructors increased the weight grade for homework when MasteringEngineering® was used while the other instructor actually decreased it. These factors and their effect on students' final grade will be examined in the next section of this paper. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://peer.asee.org/comparative-assessment-of-student-performance-on-exams-when-using-online-homework-tools-in-an-undergraduate-engineering-mechanics-course.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
