Measuring student engagement in thermodynamics courses

Abstract

This paper will discuss an on-going NSF-CCLI grant that addresses improvements in student pedagogy and educational materials for the engineering thermodynamics curriculum by completing development of an online material titled "Engaged in Thermodynamics". The Engaged material is a textbook supplement based on actual engineering facilities and equipment. During Fall 2012 an engagement Opinionnaire was administered in two separate, and distinct, thermodynamics courses. Results indicate a student perception that preparing better for a course leads to improved performance in the course. However, there was no correlation between students' desire to learn and the amount of questions they ask in class. Regarding student interest, the results indicated it was higher for the course that used the Engaged material. Additional data collection and student focus groups will be ongoing.

Collaborative Projects with simulation assignments in mechanical engineering thermodynamics courses

“…The surveys were developed to be able to be completed quickly, in under 5 min, and administered at multiple random points during the semester to better track the natural evolution of student perceptions, as various aspects of the CP and course were experienced. Tebbe et al, 32 in assessment of work on improvements in the delivery of engineering thermodynamics, considered use of a popular method of measuring student engagement, the National Survey of Student Engagement 33,34 but deemed it extensive, opting to instead use it and other surveys as a guide, to develop a different 5-point Likert scale survey. A similar approach was taken in crafting the assessment surveys for the present study.…”

An Attempt to Gamify a First Course in Thermodynamics

“…Since everything about thermodynamics is new to students taking an introductory course, and many of the first topics covered in the subject are not exciting (defining units, properties of pure fluids, state and control volume concepts), it is a challenge to show students that the course can be relevant to their daily lives. This has been noted by Tebbe et al in preliminary work of assessing undergraduate engineering student engagement with thermodynamics 4 . The same observation has also been noted anecdotally by numerous authors over the years, and has been the motivation for a variety of alternative approaches to organizing the content in thermodynamics, and delivery of the material in both physics and engineering classes 5,6,7 .…”