The Design and Experimental Evaluation of a Scaffolded Software Environment to Improve Engineering Students' Disciplinary Problem‐Solving Skills

Abstract

Background Introductory gateway engineering courses are notorious for their high attrition rates. Deficiencies in students' problem‐solving processes may contribute to their failure in these courses. In an empirical study of student problem solving, we observed that students struggle because of misconceptions regarding the basic syntax and semantics of disciplinary diagrams and corresponding mathematical equations. Purpose(Hypothesis) We hypothesize that a scaffolded software environment that provides dynamically‐generated feedback on the syntactic and semantic correctness of students' evolving disciplinary diagrams and mathematical equations can improve engineering students' problem‐solving abilities. Design/Method We iteratively developed ChemProV, a software environment to assist chemical engineering students in solving material balance problems. To evaluate ChemProV's effectiveness, we performed two between subjects experimental studies. The first study compared a preliminary version of the ChemProV to pen‐and‐paper. The second study compared a redesigned version of ChemProV with dynamic feedback to the same version of ChemProV without dynamic feedback. Results While it did not uncover any significant differences, the first study provided insight into how to improve ChemProV's dynamic feedback mechanism. The second study found that the “feedback” version of ChemProV promoted a statistically‐significant advantage in problem‐solving accuracy, significantly more time‐on‐task, and a transfer‐of‐training to an unscaffolded problem‐solving situation. Conclusion A scaffolded software environment like ChemProV can serve as a valuable aid in helping students learn engineering problem‐solving skills. Its software design approach can be used as a model for designing educationally‐effective software environments for other engineering disciplines.

The Role of Representations in Engineering Practices: Taking a Turn towards Inscriptions

“…Like other practitioners, engineers are surrounded by materials, many of which serve as tools for producing representations to help guide the work of engineers (Stevens, ). Whether constructed through the use of computers (Hundhausen, Agarwal, Zollars, & Carter, ) or paper and pencil (Taraban, Craig, & Anderson, ), the creation and use of representations is critical in engineering, and multiple representations – graphs, charts, and other visuals – are common among engineers in their work, teaching, and learning (Johri & Lohani, ; McKenna & Agogino, ). The nature of representations – whether abstract, contextualized, or both – affects student cognition (Reisslein, Moreno, & Ozogul, ), and poor spatial ability skills, for example, negatively affect student success in engineering (Onyancha, Derov, & Kinsey, ).…”

Reasonable or Ridiculous? Engineering Intuition in Simulations

“…Some studies have found that including instructional software emphasized lower-level cognitive processes, 9 but a larger number report learning gains when implementing technology in the classroom through virtual experiments or online instruction. [10][11][12][13] Additionally, incorporating simulations into the classroom can increase visualization and problem-solving processes, 14,15 as well as show positive gains in student selfefficacy with respect to engineering skills. 16 Virtual experiments offer an opportunity to provide students with valuable experience at a low cost (no laboratory space or consumables, only computer facilities, required), high flexibility (can be performed outside of class, does not require direct supervision, safety is not a direct concern), and great breadth (some disciplines may have experiences that are not feasible to provide to students directly, but can be simulated).…”

Use of Studio-based Learning in a Material/Energy Balance Class

“…As shown below, the use of ChemProV did result in improved problem solving. 14 The group that solved their first problem using the full version of ChemProV (labeled "Feedback First") had a statistically significant improvement in solution accuracy when compared with the group using ChemProV without the feedback messages (labeled "No Feedback First"). When the group that did not have the full version of ChemProV now solved the second problem, using the full version of ChemProV, the accuracy of their solutions also showed a statistically significant improvement in accuracy.…”