Homework Methods in Engineering Mechanics, Part Two

Abstract

University of South Florida in 2012. He is committed to developing his courses to apply and develop best practices from the scholarship of teaching and learning. Outside of course development, his primary research interests are in biomechanics, rehabilitation, prosthetics, and robotics. His current research projects include robotic methods modeling and predicting human motion, the functional evaluation of a variety of prosthetic devices, and the creating of low-cost virtual reality systems for stroke rehabilitation. His goals are to offer the best possible education to his students and to increase the mobility and manipulability of persons with disabilities.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2016 Homework Methods in Engineering Mechanics, Part Two AbstractIn a previous paper, "Homework Methods in Engineering Mechanics 1 ," the authors proposed the use of daily class quizzes to assess students' understanding of homework assignments. The results of that one semester study suggested that this change had a minimal impact on overall performance. In the continuous effort to determine what will enable students to learn through solving homework problems without causing an overly burdensome grading effort to the faculty, the authors turned to Pearson's Mastering Engineering. To quote from the Pearson website "Mastering Engineering is the world's leading collection of online homework, tutorial, and assessment products designed with a single purpose in mind: to improve the results of all higher education students, one student at a time 2 ."The authors have turned to this model to determine if it could be successful in encouraging students to perform better by encouraging students to complete assigned homework problems, and providing rapid feedback of performance. These Mastering Engineering assignments allow instructors to select problems and then by using randomized numbers, each student must complete a different solution. The problems are graded by the Mastering Engineering software while providing the students multiple attempts at getting the correct answer. There are some tutorials and coaching activities that can also be assigned. This paper will provide an assessment of student performance on exams compared to previous semesters where Mastering Engineering was not used, a summary of students' perceptions concerning Mastering Engineering and a summary of lessons learned using Mastering Engineering in an Engineering Mechanics course. This study will be continued for an additional two semesters and the results will be reported in a follow-on paper in 2017.

Students – Ask Them to Eat Their Vegetables!

“…With many schools turning towards online homework systems as a method for assigning homework and assessing students, it is worth asking the students if they value it, and if they value it with respect to how it is being used. Certainly, there is literature backing both sides of the coin; for and against, online systems and traditional homework methods [3], [4], [7]- [9], [11]. Students however, are clearly asking for both, and indicate that both will probably be helpful.…”

“…There has been a lot of work assessing and analyzing the correlation between student performance on online homework assignments and exams [4]- [7]. A longitudinal study shows online homework leads to better student performance [8].…”

Homework Methods in Engineering Mechanics: Part 3

“…Thus far we have concluded that the use of traditional hand-written homework, frequent assessment via quizzes [1], or the Pearson Mastering Engineering [2] software for formative assessment did not have a significant impact on students' performance on exams. It was also observed that neither traditional nor online homework scores correlated well with exam scores, however in-class quizzes did correlate with final exam scores.…”

“…Over the current and previous study [1,2] durations, data from 12 sections of an Engineering Mechanics (Statics and Dynamics) course, over a period of 3 years were collected. Data were taken from one section of Fall 2013, and Spring 2014, and two sections each from Fall 2014, Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016, and Fall 2016.…”

“…Student were assigned to complete homework problems using the Mastering Engineering software, and the number of in class quizzes was reduced to 7 in statics and 4 in dynamics. The evaluation of the Mastering Engineering platform was the primary focus in the second paper in this series [2].…”