Collaborative Research: Curricular Materials and Methods for Student Conceptual Understanding in Mechanics of Materials

评估/研究（91）工程-土木（54）这个项目的目标是调查学生对材料力学的概念理解。该项目将调查学生对材料力学学习的误解和特征，以开发课程材料和教学计划来提高学生的概念理解。拟议的工作建立在两个领域的研究基础上——理论认知研究，解释学生概念困难的原因，以及行动研究，描述克服这些挑战的成功方法。该项目旨在解决学生先前对内容和学习的信念，这些信念会干扰他们概念理解的发展。该项目采用访谈和分析方法，模拟了物理教育研究人员早期的工作，这些研究人员表明，为了实现概念理解，改变学生对内容和学习的信念是可能的。该项目还采用经过验证的方法来开发课程材料和教学策略，以消除误解，加深对概念的理解和学生的参与。

Assessment/Research (91)Engineering - Civil (54)The goal of this project is to investigate student conceptual understanding in Mechanics of Materials. The project will investigate student misconceptions and characterize student beliefs about learning in Mechanics of Materials in order to develop curricular materials and an instructional plan to improve student conceptual understanding. The proposed work builds on research in two areas - theoretical cognitive research that explains causes for students' conceptual difficulties, and action research that describes successful methods for overcoming these challenges. This project addresses students' previous beliefs about content and learning that interfere with their development of conceptual understanding. The project is employing interview and analysis methods that model earlier work by physics education researchers who have shown that it is possible to change student beliefs about content and learning in order to enable conceptual understanding. The project is also employing proven methods for developing curriculum materials and instructional strategies to address misconceptions and deepen conceptual understanding and student engagement.