Computer-based interventions to foster student engagement in introductory engineering courses

基于计算机的干预措施促进学生参与工程入门课程

• 批准号: 1612511
• 负责人: Thomas Stahovich
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: University of California-Riverside
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1612511&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Computer; based; interventions; foster; student

To be academically successful, students must devote the necessary effort to studying and completing homework assignments and must engage in these activities in a timely and effective fashion. However, prior research has shown that students in introductory engineering courses are often insufficiently engaged in their learning. This project will investigate two computer-based interventions intended to remedy this problem. The first intervention, called the dashboard system, will provide students with quantitative feedback about their level of engagement (e.g., the extent to which they read the textbook in advance of lecture and the extent to which they begin homework early). The second intervention, called the merit badge system, will provide students with virtual rewards for completing learning tasks in a timely fashion. These rewards, which are commonly used in games, will include earned points, badges, and achievement levels. These systems will be used and evaluated in two large undergraduate engineering courses at the University of California Riverside (UCR). UCR is the most ethnically diverse campus in the UC system, is one of the most diverse major US research institutions, and is a Hispanic Serving Institution. Many of the students are first generation college-attending. Understanding how to improve the learning processes of these diverse students is intended to increase student success and create increased opportunities for students from traditionally underrepresented groups to succeed in STEM careers.This project is based on the hypothesis that providing students with detailed feedback about their progress toward completing learning tasks will lead to increased engagement and, consequently, improved learning outcomes. Two proposed interventions will provide students with feedback about behavioral metrics of their engagement captured with smartpens and tablet computers. The smartpens will record homework activity and notetaking as timestamped pen strokes. An instrumented document viewer on the tablets will measure students' use of instructional materials such as e-books and lecture handouts. These technologies will provide a detailed, digital record of learning activities, making it possible to compute measures of engagement, such as the amount of time a student spends on particular learning activities and when he or she does so. The dashboard system will provide direct feedback of these measures of engagement. The merit badge system will use gamification techniques to foster engagement by motivating students to increase their measured levels of engagement. Studies will be conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of these two approaches for both fostering engagement and improving learning outcomes.

为了在学业上取得成功，学生必须付出必要的努力来学习和完成家庭作业，必须及时有效地参与这些活动。然而，先前的研究表明，学生在介绍工程课程往往是不够的参与他们的学习。本项目将研究两种基于计算机的干预措施，旨在解决这个问题。第一个干预，称为仪表板系统，将为学生提供有关他们参与程度的定量反馈（例如，他们在上课前阅读课本的程度和他们开始家庭作业的程度）。第二个干预措施，称为功勋徽章系统，将为及时完成学习任务的学生提供虚拟奖励。这些奖励通常用于游戏中，包括获得的积分、徽章和成就等级。这些系统将在加州大学滨江分校（UCR）的两个大型本科工程课程中使用和评估。UCR是UC系统中种族最多元化的校园，是美国最多元化的主要研究机构之一，也是西班牙裔服务机构。许多学生是第一代大学生。了解如何改善这些不同的学生的学习过程是为了提高学生的成功，并创造更多的机会，为学生从传统上代表性不足的群体在STEM职业生涯中取得成功。这个项目是基于这样的假设，即为学生提供关于他们完成学习任务的进展的详细反馈将导致增加参与，从而提高学习成果。两项拟议的干预措施将为学生提供有关他们使用智能笔和平板电脑捕获的参与行为指标的反馈。smartpens将记录家庭作业活动和笔记作为时间戳笔画。平板电脑上的仪器文档查看器将测量学生对电子书和讲义等教学材料的使用情况。这些技术将提供学习活动的详细数字记录，从而可以计算参与度的衡量标准，例如学生在特定学习活动上花费的时间以及他或她何时这样做。仪表板系统将提供这些参与措施的直接反馈。优异徽章系统将使用游戏化技术，通过激励学生提高他们的参与度来促进参与。将进行研究，以评估这两种方法在促进参与和改善学习成果方面的有效性。