Using poetry-writing and poetry-analysis to enhance student learning in engineering education

该项目旨在通过将技术诗歌写作作为一种积极的学习体验，提高学生在工程教育中的学习成果，从而为国家利益服务。沟通是信息和思想的交流，在STEM教学中起着至关重要的作用。教材帮助教师向学生传达内容知识，而评估工具帮助学生向教师传达他们对内容知识的理解。在当今信息丰富的环境中，需要新的方法来帮助学生理解这些信息。技术诗歌写作可以提供一种积极的学习练习，使学生能够综合各种来源的信息，并通过构建技术准确的诗歌来为自己理解内容。本计画将教导学生如何写及分析包含科技工程内容的诗歌。期望这些写作和分析活动能够提高学生的想象力，加深他们对技术内容的概念理解，并发展他们的沟通技巧。将为佛罗里达大学的STEM教师和工程教育相关国家会议的工程教师开发讲师培训讲习班。讲习班将广泛宣传利用以诗歌为基础的活动提高学生学习的潜在好处，并就如何将这些活动纳入高级技术课程提供培训。该项目的总体目标是为在本科工程教育中使用诗歌作为提高学生学习的机制开发一个全面的框架。具体的项目目标是：(1)创建基于诗歌的课堂活动和家庭作业，并评估这些活动和作业对学生学习的影响；(2)开发以诗歌为基础的补充教材，并评估其对学生学习的效果；(3)建立一个培训工作坊，以帮助指导其他教师将基于诗歌的活动作为一种吸引人的教学策略纳入其他工程课程。诗歌写作作为一种学习工具是建立在建构主义学习理论的基础上的，该理论支持积极学习经验的必要性。指导研究的问题是：诗歌写作是否提高了学生对技术材料的概念理解？学生如何通过写关于技术内容的诗来体验想象力的运用、对技术概念的概念性理解的丰富以及沟通技巧的发展？该项目预计将产生新的数据和见解，以了解如何使用诗歌写作和诗歌分析来提高学生对技术材料的概念理解。除了采用标准化测验来评估技术知识外，还将通过开发新的分析方法来评估学生的学习情况，以衡量技术内容的丰富程度、技术内容的准确性以及学生写的诗歌中所表现出的认知过程水平。此外，通过对学生自我反思数据的现象学分析，我们将更深入地了解诗歌写作如何以及为什么有助于影响学生的学习。NSF IUSE: EHR计划支持研究和开发项目，以提高所有学生STEM教育的有效性。通过参与学生学习轨道，该计划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 improving student learning outcomes in engineering education using technical poetry writing as an active learning experience. Communication is the exchange of information and ideas and plays a critical role in STEM teaching and learning. While educational materials help an instructor communicate content knowledge to students, assessment tools help students communicate their understanding of the content knowledge to instructors. In today’s information rich environment, new approaches are needed to help students make sense of this information. Technical poetry writing can provide an active learning exercise so that students can synthesize information from various sources and make meaning of the content for themselves by constructing poems that are technically accurate. This project will provide students with instruction on how to write and analyze poems with technical engineering content. It is expected that these writing and analysis activities will increase students’ imaginative capacities, deepen their conceptual understanding of the technical content, and develop their communication skills. An instructor training workshop will be developed and offered to STEM faculty at the University of Florida and to engineering instructors at engineering education related national conferences. The workshop will broadly disseminate the potential benefits of using poetry based activities to enhance student learning and provide training on how to incorporate these activities in upper-level technical courses.The overall goal of the project is to develop a comprehensive framework for the use of poetry as a mechanism for improving student learning in undergraduate engineering education. The specific project objectives are to: (1) create poetry-based in-class activities as well as homework assignments and evaluate the impact of such activities and assignments on student learning; (2) develop poetry-based supplemental teaching materials and evaluate their effectiveness on student learning; and (3) develop a training workshop to help guide other instructors to incorporate poetry-based activities into other engineering courses as an engaging instructional strategy. Poetry writing as a learning tool is grounded in the constructivist learning theory, which supports the need for active learning experiences. The guiding research questions are: Does poetry writing improve students’ conceptual understanding of the technical material? How do students experience the utilization of their imaginative capacities, the enrichment of their conceptual understanding of the technical concept, and the development of their communication skills by writing poetry on technical content? This project is expected to generate new data and insights as to how poetry writing and poetry analysis can be used to enhance students’ conceptual understanding of technical material. In addition to employing standardized quizzes to assess technical knowledge, student learning will be assessed through new analysis methods developed to measure the richness of technical content, the accuracy of technical content, and the level of cognitive process demonstrated in student-written poems. Further, a deeper understanding of how and why poetry writing helps to impact student learning will be gleaned from a phenomenological analysis of student self-reflection data. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the 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.