Work in progress: combining concept inventories with rapid feedback to enhance learning

Abstract

In this project our goal is to adapt the Concept Inventory for frequent classroom use, and to implement it in a system to provide rapid feedback to students of their understanding of key concepts being presented. The feedback system acts as the focal point and catalyst to encourage students, working in pairs, to assist each other in correcting misconceptions or deepening each other's understanding of the topic at hand. Furthermore, the system allows the professor to assess the students' level of comprehension (or misconception) in a just-in-time fashion, and thus guides his or her pacing and coverage of the material. The rapid feedback is enabled through wireless-networked handheld computers. In this first year of the study, we have implemented the system in a lowerlevel, core-engineering course (engineering mechanics: statics). This paper will focus on the motivation for and the design of this project; our presentation will describe results from the first implementation.

Conceptual Gaps in Circuits Textbooks: A Comparative Study

“…Related studies have investigated presentation of specific content in textbooks [33], [34], the evolution of topics over time [35], [36], comparisons of different editions [37], and other in-depth content analyses [38]- [41]. The analysis presented in this paper draws on prior studies that have focused on misconceptions perpetuated by textbooks [42] and the effectiveness of textbooks in facilitating conceptual understanding among students [43], [44].…”

Student Reaction to a Modified Force Concept Inventory: The Impact of Free-Response Questions and Feedback

“…Given that concept inventories are generally designed to measure learning gain and hence to assess teaching methods, they do not usually give feedback to students, though this has been done occasionally with the aim of increasing student self-efficacy (Chen et al, 2004;Lawrie et al, 2013). These studies also investigated student reaction to limited feedback, provided by the modified FCI, after students had submitted their answers.…”

Confirming Self-Regulation Construct Items for Students Learning Statics

“…Students in the Mechanical and Civil Engineering programs are expected to comprehend at sufficient depth the key concepts in Statics, which is a pre-requisite to other fundamental courses in the program [1] [2]. However, the literature highlighted various challenges that students encountered in learning the course, which include the teaching approach and assessment that reward rote learning and procedural knowledge [2][3] [4].…”