Understanding Context: Propagation and Effectiveness of the Concept Warehouse in Mechanical Engineering at Five Diverse Institutions and Beyond – Results from Year 1
Understanding Context: Propagation and Effectiveness of the Concept Warehouse in Mechanical Engineering at Five Diverse Institutions and Beyond – Results from Year 1
复制标题
理解背景：机械工程概念仓库在五个不同机构及其他机构的传播和有效性 - 第一年的结果
DOI：
10.18260/1-2--35419
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发表时间：
2020
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
J. Widmann
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
B. Self;D. D. Bello;M. Koretsky;S. Nolen;C. Papadopoulos;M. Prince;J. Widmann
他是巴克内尔大学化学工程教授，也是国家有效教学研究所的联合主任。他的研究考察了一系列工程教育主题，包括如何评估和修复学生的误解，以及如何增加大学教师和企业培训师对研究型教学策略的采用。他积极地为学术和企业讲师举办教学设计研讨会。一些共识报告指出，在未来十年，迫切需要大幅增加STEM毕业生的数量和多样性。他们的结论是，需要改变以证据为基础的教学实践，例如基于概念的主动学习。基于概念的主动学习包括使用基于活动的教学法，其主要目标是使学生重视深刻的概念理解（而不仅仅是事实知识），然后促进他们对这种理解的发展。基于概念的主动学习已被证明可以提高学术参与度和学生成绩，显著提高学生在学术课程中的保留率，并缩小代表性不足的学生的表现差距。培养学生对基本概念的掌握是解决现实世界问题的核心，包括工程实践的几个要素。不幸的是，仅仅证明这些教学实践比传统方法更有效并不足以确保广泛的教学变革。事实上，改善STEM教育的最大挑战不是开发更有效的教学实践，而是找到方法让教师采用现有的循证教学法。在这个项目中，我们试图将概念仓库（CW），一种旨在促进基于概念的主动学习的技术创新，推广到机械工程（ME），并在五个不同的机构环境中研究学生使用该工具的学习情况。CW是我们为化学工程（ChE）学院开发的基于网络的教学工具。它拥有近3000个概念测试，这些简短的问题可以快速部署，以吸引学生以概念为导向的思维和/或评估学生的概念知识，以及更广泛的基于概念的主动学习工具。在过去的四年里，CW发展迅速（大约有1200个教师账户和3万名学生用户）。我们建议将CW扩展到力学和机械力学领域，从而在这个项目中影响5万名学生。虽然目前的连续工程内容是特定学科的，但其功能是通用的，并且随着内容的发展很容易转移到其他工程学科。到目前为止，我们的静态和动态团队已经分别开发了107和105个新的概念测试。问题和分类包括一个由等人开发的框架，包括利用他们的机构和学习背景以及他们的历史和信仰的看法。阶段参与者将被要求在他们的教室中部署ConceptTests，并将进行现场访问，以进行额外的访谈、教室访问和学生焦点小组。这些数据将与五所不同学校（一所大型研究型公立大学、一所小型私立大学、一所招收大量代表性不足学生的两年制学院、一所不授予博士学位的大型公立大学和一所双语研究型大学）的机构背景相结合，以确定最支持采用教育创新的条件。
Dr. is a professor of chemical engineering at Bucknell University and co-director of the National Effective Teaching Institute. His research examines a range of engineering education topics, including how to assess and repair student misconceptions and how to increase the adoption of research-based instructional strategies by college instructors and corporate trainers. He is actively engaged in presenting workshops on instructional design to both academic and corporate instructors. Abstract Several consensus reports cite a critical need to dramatically increase the number and diversity of STEM graduates over the next decade. They conclude that a change to evidence-based instructional practices, such as concept-based active learning, is needed. Concept-based active learning involves the use of activity-based pedagogies whose primary objectives are to make students value deep conceptual understanding (instead of only factual knowledge) and then to facilitate their development of that understanding. Concept-based active learning has been shown to increase academic engagement and student achievement, to significantly improve student retention in academic programs, and to reduce the performance gap of underrepresented students. Fostering students' mastery of fundamental concepts is central to real world problem solving, including several elements of engineering practice. Unfortunately, simply proving that these instructional practices are more effective than traditional methods is not enough to ensure widespread pedagogical change. In fact, the biggest challenge to improving STEM education is not the need to develop more effective instructional practices, but to find ways to get faculty to adopt the evidence-based pedagogies that already exist. In this project we seek to propagate the Concept Warehouse (CW), a technological innovation designed to foster concept-based active learning, into Mechanical Engineering (ME) and to study student learning with this tool in five diverse institutional settings. The CW is a web-based instructional tool that we developed for Chemical Engineering (ChE) faculty. It houses nearly 3,000 ConcepTests, which are short questions that can rapidly be deployed to engage students in concept-oriented thinking and/or to assess students’ conceptual knowledge, along with more extensive concept-based active learning tools. The CW has grown rapidly over the last four years (around 1,200 faculty accounts and 30,000 student users). We propose to expand use of the CW into mechanics and ME and thereby impact 50,000 students during this project. Although the current CW content is discipline-specific, the functions are generic and readily transferable to other engineering disciplines as content is developed. To date, our Statics and our Dynamics Teams have developed 107 and 105 new ConcepTests, respectively. Question and categorization has included a framework developed by et al. and includes utilizing perceptions of their institutional and learning context and their histories and beliefs. Phase participants will be asked to deploy ConceptTests within their classrooms, and site visits will be conducted for additional interviews, classroom visits, and student focus groups. These will be used in conjunction with institutional context at five very different schools (a large research public university, a small private university, a 2-year college serving a large number of underrepresented students, a large non-PhD granting public university, and a bilingual research university) to determine the conditions that are most supportive of adopting educational innovations.