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

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，并且必须及时有效地参与这些活动。然而，先前的研究表明，在入门工程课程的学生往往没有充分投入到他们的学习。本项目将研究两种旨在解决这一问题的基于计算机的干预措施。第一种干预被称为仪表板系统，它将为学生提供关于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，以及他们提前开始做作业的程度）。第二种干预措施被称为绩效徽章系统，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河滨分校（UCR）的两个大型本科工程课程中使用和评估。加州大学洛杉矶分校是加州大学系统中种族最多样化的校园，是美国最多元化的主要研究机构之一，也是一所西班牙裔服务机构。许多学生都是第一代大学生。了解如何改善这些不同学生的学习过程，旨在提高学生的成功，并为传统上代表性不足的群体的学生创造更多机会，使他们在STEM职业中取得成功。这个项目是基于这样一种假设，即为学生提供关于他们完成学习任务的详细反馈，将增加他们的参与度，从而改善学习成果。两项拟议的干预措施将为学生提供反馈，让他们了解用智能笔和平板电脑捕捉到的参与行为指标。智能笔将记录家庭作业活动和笔记，以时间标记的笔划。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，使计算参与度成为可能，例如学生在特定学习活动上花费的时间以及他或她什么时候这样做。仪表板系统将提供这些参与措施的直接反馈。荣誉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度。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。

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.