Training Engineering Students to Ask Better Questions

本计划旨在增进学生在本科工程课程的学习，以服务国家利益。具体而言，该项目将调查培训学生提出更好的问题是否能改善STEM学习成果，如课程知识、自己的学习意识以及他们在未来课程中提出更好问题的能力。认识到自己的困惑并提出问题以消除这种困惑的能力是支持独立学习的基本思维技能。来自小学和中学环境的研究证据证实，学龄儿童可以接受训练，提出更复杂的问题。此外，更有限的大学水平的研究将提出更好的问题的能力与更好的阅读理解能力联系起来。然而，研究结果并没有揭示提出更好问题的能力是否能更好地理解课程材料和/或改善思维过程。这个项目旨在训练工科学生如何写问题，从而引发更高层次的思考。它还将研究这种训练是否会提高内容知识和思维过程，如元认知。该项目将为本科生提供工程静力学课程，训练他们如何写出高质量的问题。该项目还将衡量培训对学生STEM学习成果的影响。帮助工科学生提出好的问题将有助于学生在工程项目中的学业成功，并在他们的工程职业生涯中支持终身学习。该项目将把培训材料和干预措施整理成工具包，方便其他学生和教师使用。干预组的学生将接受训练和练习，写出高质量的问题，解决他们在工程静力学课程中的困惑。将采用定量、定性和混合方法来探讨这种干预对内容知识和元认知知识的影响，以及改进的问题质量与这些学习成果之间的关系。该项目将有助于展示如何在工程课程中有效地教授提问，并了解学生提出更好的问题所带来的可衡量的学习成果。通过确定STEM教育者关心的对学习成果的影响，干预措施应该对许多其他STEM教师有用。此外，为了方便教师和学生分发，干预措施将被打包成工具包，设计成可扩展和可适应的，这样干预措施可以在其他工程教室和其他学科中实施。该工具包将包括来自教育文献的背景信息、评价问题质量的培训材料以及开展培训课程的指导方针。本项目由美国国家科学基金会改善本科STEM教育计划：教育与人力资源项目支持，该项目支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。该项目处于“参与式学生学习”轨道，通过该轨道，IUSE: EHR项目支持有前途的实践和工具的创建、探索和实施。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to serve the national interest by enhancing student learning in undergraduate engineering courses. Specifically, the project will investigate if training students to ask better questions improves STEM learning outcomes, such as course knowledge, awareness of their own learning, and their ability to ask better questions in future courses. The ability to recognize one's own confusion and to ask a question to dispel that confusion is an essential thinking skill that supports independent learning. Evidence from studies in primary and secondary school settings confirms that school children can be trained to ask more sophisticated questions. In addition, the more limited college-level studies link the ability to ask better questions to better reading comprehension. However, the results do not reveal whether the ability to ask better questions can lead to better understanding of course material and/or improvements in thinking processes. This project aims to train engineering students how to write questions that lead to higher-level thinking. It will also study whether this training results in improved content knowledge and thinking processes, such as metacognition. The project will provide undergraduate students an engineering statics course with training in how to write high quality questions. The project will also measure the effects of this training on the students’ STEM learning outcomes. It is expected that helping engineering students to ask good questions will contribute to the students’ academic success in engineering programs and support lifelong learning throughout their engineering careers. The project will organize the training materials and interventions into toolkits that can be used easily by other students and faculty.Students in the intervention group will be provided training and practice in writing high quality questions that address their own confusions in an engineering statics course. Quantitative, qualitative and mixed method approaches will be used to explore the effect of this intervention on content knowledge and metacognitive knowledge, as well as the relationships between improved question quality and these learning outcomes. This project will contribute to demonstrating how question-asking may be taught effectively within engineering courses and to understanding the measurable learning outcomes that result from students asking better questions. By determining the effect on learning outcomes that are of concern to STEM educators, the intervention should be useful to many other STEM faculty. Further, for easy distribution to both faculty and students, the intervention will be packaged into toolkits that are designed to be scalable and adaptable, such that the intervention can be feasibly implemented in other engineering classrooms and other disciplines. The toolkits will include background information from the educational literature, training materials for rating question quality, and guidelines for conducting training sessions. This project is supported by the NSF Improving Undergraduate STEM Education Program: Education and Human Resources, which supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. The project is in the Engaged Student Learning track, through which the IUSE: EHR program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.