 |
To help students develop deep levels of understanding, students need sufficient time and resources to solve a relevant, in-depth problem. Most students will not master these deep levels, but educational psychologists now understand that all learning is developmental (it requires practice). Unless students are guided through methods for solving the types of problems that can build deep understanding and problem solving abilities, they will never develop these. Since learning is developmental, students who are exposed to the type of problem solving ES21C creates early and repeatedly will be more likely to develop as creative and innovative engineers.
The Importance of Structuring Courses Around Problems
The approach taken by ES21C is similar to a well known technique called Problem-Based Learning [62-65], or PBL. In this curriculum reform project solving the problem is explicitly broken down into two steps-verifying knowledge (design) and applying knowledge (building)-to explicitly teach the process of problem solving. The design phase, where teams submit a proposal and get feedback on their understanding, helps students develop metacognition [18]. Metacognition is being able to monitor your own level of understanding and recognizing when you don't understand something. By giving feedback on whether students correctly apply knowledge to the problem, the design proposal helps students recognize when they do not understand concepts well enough to apply them. While this can also occur in more traditional courses, students often do not take the time to review graded tests and homework.
The task of constructing a solution to the problem and evaluating how good the solution is also critical to student learning. Constructing a project in the laboratory confronts students with an ill-defined problem [63] (a problem that does not have a single or clean solution). This type of problem helps create a knowledge-centered environment [18]. A knowledge-centered environment avoids teaching isolated facts or concepts, and emphasizes the interconnection between knowlege. Another reason in-depth problems need to be given to students is that trisk-free environments, where training proceeds in an orderly manner, result in better short term learning, but less transfer [66].
Transfer
Transfer is the ability to take what has been learned in one context, and extending it or using it in a different context. Transfer is what many faculty call "problem solving". There are two types of transfer: near transfer and far transfer. Near transfer simply means using information in similar contexts while far transfer is using it in an unrelated context. Many, if not most, experts argue that far transfer does not exist; the ability to transfer what you know to new situations occurs through many small intuitive leaps rather than one large jump. If this is true then the one of the cornerstones of the OSU engineering program, pre-professional school, is invalid. For example some faculty argue that by taking dynamics, students will be able to apply the mathematical techniques to electric circuits. This is far transfer since the contexts of the problems are very different.
The Importance of Project Reports
Having the majority of students' grade based on a portfolio of their work (written report) helps make the problem authentic [16] and demonstrates a direct relation between coursework and future careers. The report requires students to quantify and explain their solution through measurements in order to let students evaluate the utility of what they have learned. Traditional courses often do not have any mechanism by which students can judge for themselves what course concepts are most useful to them (metacognition again). A written report that includes both team and individual contributions increases learning since students are required to self-explain [67] and reflect on the learning experience. Reflection, or having students look back on experiences after the fact and ask themselves if they could have done better, is currently a hot topic in education and some experts feel that it is vital to professional development.
Why is it Important to use a Case Study?
It is clear that to develop deep learning students need to be able to make connections between what they know as well as transfer that knowledge to new situations; and they need to practice these skills. Educational psychologists have found that these interconnections and transfer can only occur if a student has a framework or scaffold to relate the knowledge to. Everyone has such a scaffold that is built from their prior experiences; since all students are unique individuals with different experiences, each scaffold is different. For example, a student who missed several days due to illness in a microprocessor class when the stack was discussed may have much more difficulty learning recursive programming in a later class than other students. It is also known that it is very difficult to correct misconceptions that occur when a student learns something that is either wrong or transfers knowledge to an inappropriate context.
Addressing questions through a case study creates a scaffold around which knowledge will structured before learning occurs; remember that creating a scaffold is critical if you want your students to learn since it is extremely difficult to restructure knowledge [44]. The case study is effective at creating a scaffold since it provides intent [45] (i.e. the student knows the knowledge will be used) and makes knowledge relevant [46, 47]. One of our co-PI's, an expert in case studies, has found that using a case study before teaching concepts improves learning [48] more than using it afterwards. Since students identify with the characters in the case study (it is easy to put yourself in a similar person's position), the case study helps students to identify with the learning goals of the course. The case study places their work in a context that they can relate to their prior experiences. It is known that placing knowledge in context [49] enhances transfer [18, 50].
The case study and in-class discussion also help to set up the problem in terms of familiar schemas. A schema is a chunk of organized knowledge; being able to think in terms of schemas is one characteristic of an expert. For example, an electrical engineer can look at a large circuit schematic, and identify the individual components shown below as a unity gain summing amplifier. Someone without this schema would have trouble understanding the function of the whole circuit. Not all students in a class will have the exact same schemas. The advantage of using a case study is that in class discussion students will begin to recognize differences between their individual schemas, develop a group schema for the project, and identify areas they have low proficiency. That metacognition thing again.
Reading Outside of Class- Formative vs. Summative Evaluation
By using the teaching techniques we have chosen to address lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy outside of class, feedback to students is nearly instantaneous. This immediate feedback lets students develop metacognition [55], a key step in advancing to deeper levels of learning. Evaluation is educational term for the feedback that students get on their own understanding. Education experts generally classify this into two types: formative and summative. Summative evaluation is feedback after the fact. For example in a traditional course a student often doesn't know how they performed until a test or homework is returned. Often this feedback is too late to correct any misconceptions they have, or help them learn the material if they didn't understand it. Formative evaluation is feedback given while a student is learning. The feedback comes quickly enough so that students can correct their misconceptions. This would be obvious to most engineers if they were examining a machine, but they do not see the parallels with human learning.
Replacing Lecture with Active Learning
So far we have chosen an important, in-depth problem to give to our students, introduced this using a case study, and provided immediate feedback to our students when they learn the facts and equations. These individual efforts are followed by active learning in class. Active learning simply means students are actively participating in the class in some way rather that sitting and listening. Educational researchers have shown that a combination of organization and active learning gives rise to significant improvements in performance [56]. During active learning in the classroom, the new concepts students learned outside of class are integrated with those learned in previous classes to develop near transfer [57, 58]. In other words each day of class creates a slightly different context for students to apply what they have learned.
A key need for doing active learning is organization. Using active learning can signficantly reduce how much students learn if it is done poorly or class activities are not structured. This is one reason this project incorporates case studies, team building activities, and structured course web pages. Organization of your course is critical to success. Course web pages are excellent place to organize information. A web page can explicitly scaffold information from a reading assignment using a concept map [14, 53] which shows how concepts are inter-related. A web page also serves as an advance organizer [54] that tells students what they will be doing before they come to class.
In the classroom the professor can use various techniques to help students learn. For example prompting [50, 59] facilitates transfer. Prompting is giving hints to students about fruitful avenues to pursue when they solve a problem. Faculty should also be aware of discussions among the various teams so they can directly correct erroneous schemas [18], a task that is nearly impossible in lecture. Our project has a great deal of funding for graduate student support so that future faculty can help in this. However the instructor must have to courage to allow students to make some mistakes. Active learning helps change students' perception that the instructor is responsible for learning. In environments where the instructor retains control, there is more rote learning, and less deep learning [61].
Retaining Students and Promoting Diversity
Engineering is not a particularly diverse field in this country only about one in three minority students who start an engineering degree will finish. One of the reasons is that traditional science, math, and engineering courses teach in a very monolithic style and people from different cultures learn differently. The breadth of educational techniques ES21C uses should help retain non-traditional students by opening alternative pathways to success. Unlike traditional academic programs, the development-based approach addresses all three of the domains of Sternberg's process definition of intelligence [68, 69]. This is a widely accepted theory that hypothesizes three types of intelligence: analytical intelligence that is good at solving problems, experiential intelligence that essentially measures how well people perform based on experience, and practical intelligence that helps people adapt to or change their environment. By focusing a team on solving a complex, multi-dimensional problem ES21C allows team members with different strengths to support a common goal. Working in teams also should positively impact retention since competition for grades has negative consequences, particularly for women.
For example, the case study and use of teams will impact retention of women and under-represented groups by creating an environment that lets students utilize experiential or narrative [51] modes of processing information. In other words to learn difficult concepts some students need to experience how they work or talk their way through a problem. By providing positive role models who are females and minorities, the case study establishes positive expectations which are correlated with success [52].
When the instructor spends time working in class with a group to correct misconceptions or in prompting it positively impacts retention since interaction with students helps to mitigate gender differences caused by the different schemas held by females [60] and portrays the instructor as caring [61]. Active learning in the classroom has other benefits for retention. It creates an environment that permits affective learning and socialization. Affective learning involves the emotions- getting along with others, learning to work on a team, controlling one's emotions when appropriate and is probably as important to success in life as what is typically taught.
Why do we use Bloom's Taxonomy?
Bloom's Taxonomy is chosen over other developmental models such as reflective judgment [41] or thinking frames [42] for two reasons. First, Bloom's Taxonomy identifies the steps by which students become adept at problem solving. Second, Bloom's Taxonomy has been expanded to include factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive dimensions of learning needed for technical courses that include laboratories.
In Conclusion
Engineering Students for the 21st Century adopts six strategies to create an effective learning environment by structuring knowledge around how people learn, rather than structuring learning around knowledge [43]. |
