Title: A Case Study of Student-Community Interaction through an Education-First Assistive Device Design Class
Assistive device design classes are popular and often incorporate local community members in projects as stakeholders, or need-knowers. It remains important to generate best practices to improve student-stakeholder interactions in these service-based classes, particularly those that focus on the early product design stages like need-finding and feels-like prototyping. This study is performed across two offerings of the new class “Augmenting Human Dexterity” at the University of California at Berkeley; it serves as a case study of the lessons presented, and resulting perceptions of its instructors and students. In the class project, students participate in need-knower identification and recruitment processes. In this preliminary study, we ask: what can students learn through this process? Given only a small handful of student groups produce a physical device that can be given to the need-knower at the end of the term for daily use, we ask: how do students portray this expectation? With the lessons provided, students expand their understanding of disability and accurately communicate expected deliverables to the need-knower at the time of recruitment and interview. This preliminary work must be followed by further studies in order to establish generalizable results. Regardless, we present potential methods for managing projects in assistive device classrooms that focus on early product design stages. more »« less
Singh, R.; Nieves, H. I.; Barno, E.; & Dietiker, L.
(, Proceedings of the Psychology of Mathematics Education - North American Chapter)
Olanoff, D.; Johnson, K.; & Spitzer, S.
(Ed.)
How does the design of lessons impact the types of questions teachers and students ask during enacted high school mathematics lessons? In this study, we present data that suggests that lessons designed with the mathematical story framework to elicit a specific aesthetic response (“MCLEs”) having a positive influence on the types of teacher and student questions they ask during the lesson. Our findings suggest that when teachers plan and enact lessons with the mathematical story framework, teachers and students are more likely to ask questions that explore mathematical relationships and focus on meaning making. In addition, teachers are less likely to ask short recall or procedural questions in MCLEs. These findings point to the role of lesson design in the quality of questions asked by teachers and students.
Shannon, Amy; Hammer, Jessica; Thurston, Hassler; Diehl, Natalie; Dow, Steven
(, Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems)
Peer feedback systems enable students to get feedback without substantially burdening the instructor. However, current systems typically ask students to provide feedback after class; this introduces challenges for ensuring relevant, timely, diverse, and sufficient amounts of feedback, and reduces time available for student reflection. This paper explores the current landscape of peer feedback tools and introduces a novel system for in-class peer review called PeerPresents where students can quickly exchange feed-back on projects without being burdened by additional work outside of class. Through an exploratory study with Google docs and a preliminary evaluation of PeerPresents, we find students can receive immediate, copious, and diverse peer feedback through a structured in-class activity. Students also described the feedback they received as helpful and reported that they gave more feedback than without using the system. These early results demonstrate the potential benefits of in-class peer feedback systems.
Yanik, Paul; Ferguson, Chip; Kaul, Sudhir; Yan, Yanjun
(, American Society for Engineering Education)
This research is motivated by the need for students’ early exposure to work readiness skills that promote effectiveness in dealing with complex open-ended technical problems as may be encountered in senior capstone projects or professional practice. This paper presents preliminary work in the use of building Rube Goldberg machines as student projects to foster some of these skills. Design of Rube Goldberg machines may be employed in a number of settings as a vehicle for teaching basic engineering skills. These designs require students to creatively consider a variety of unconventional approaches to solve simple problems. The Rube Goldberg paradigm allows students to communicate and to advance their ideas in a low-pressure environment where brainstorming is highly valued and where prior technical expertise affords no specific advantage. As such, projects based on Rube Goldberg machines are an effective way for freshmen and sophomore students, who may lack extensive technical skills, to acquire greater proficiency in some of the non-technical skills. This research gives results from a pilot study in project management using the Rube Goldberg model. The goal of this study is to determine the perceived efficacy of a proposed teaching vehicle for project management concepts that could strengthen the early stages of an existing series of Project Based Learning (PBL) oriented undergraduate engineering courses at the host institution, which currently make use of more closed-ended and single-solution design projects. In the study, a cohort of 27 engineering and engineering technology students participated in a sequence of extracurricular sessions in which they undertook progressively challenging open-ended project assignments. Each project introduced new constraints that required the students to address additional aspects of project management. Results from an end-of-year survey show that the participants had strongly positive impressions of their experiences related to these exercises. A majority of students felt that they had enhanced skills that would be valuable in professional life (96%), improved their leadership skills (92%), and had gained appreciation for the value of project planning (100%) and technical documentation (96%). It is anticipated that lessons learned from the project sequence will provide the framework for cross-disciplinary freshman and sophomore assignments in host institution’s PBL curriculum in the future.
Nieves, Hector I.; Singh, Rashmi; Dietiker, Leslie
(, Mathematics Education Across Cultures: Proceedings of the 42nd Meeting of the North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education)
Sacristán, A. I.; Cortés-Zavala, J. C.; Ruiz-Arias, P. M.
(Ed.)
What impact, if any, do interesting lessons have on the types of questions students ask? To explore this question, we used lesson observations of six teachers from three high schools in the Northeast who were part of a larger study. Lessons come from a range of courses, spanning Algebra through Calculus. After each lesson, students reported interest via lesson experience surveys (Author, 2019). These interest measures were then used to identify each teachers’ highest and lowest interest lessons. The two lessons per teacher allows us to compare across the same set of students per teacher. We compiled 145 student questions and identified whether questions were asked within a group work setting or part of a whole class discussion. Two coders coded 10% of data to improve the rubric for type of students’ questions (what, why, how, and if) and perceived intent (factual, procedural, reasoning, and exploratory). Factual questions asked for definitions or explicit answers. Procedural questions were raised when students looked for algorithms or a solving process. Reasoning questions asked about why procedures worked, or facts were true. Exploratory questions expanded beyond the topic of focus, such as asking about changing the parameters to make sense of a problem. The remaining 90% of data were coded independently to determine interrater reliability (see Landis & Koch, 1977). A Cohen’s Kappa statistic (K=0.87, p<0.001) indicates excellent reliability. Furthermore, both coders reconciled codes before continuing with data analysis. Initial results showed differences between high- and low-interest lessons. Although students raised fewer mathematical questions in high-interest lessons (59) when compared with low-interest lessons (86), high-interest lessons contained more “exploratory” questions (10 versus 6). A chi-square test of independence shows a significant difference, χ2 (3, N = 145) = 12.99, p = .005 for types of students’ questions asked in high- and low-interest lessons. The high-interest lessons had more student questions arise during whole class discussions, whereas low-interest lessons had more student questions during group work. By partitioning each lesson into acts at points where the mathematical content shifted, we were able to examine through how many acts questions remained open. The average number of acts the students’ questions remained unanswered for high-interest lessons (2.66) was higher than that of low-interest lessons (1.68). Paired samples t-tests suggest that this difference is significant t(5)=2.58, p = 0.049. Therefore, student interest in the lesson did appear to impact the type of questions students ask. One possible reason for the differences in student questions is the nature of the lessons students found interesting, which may allow for student freedom to wonder and chase their mathematical ideas. There may be more overall student questions in low-interest lessons because of confusion, but more research is needed to unpack the reasoning behind student questions.
Engineers need to develop professional skills, including the ability to work successfully in teams and to communicate within and outside of their discipline, in addition to required technical skills. A collaborative multi-disciplinary service learning project referred to as Ed+gineering was implemented in a 100-level mechanical engineering course. In this collaboration, mechanical engineering students, primarily in the second semester of their freshman year or first semester of their second year, worked over the course of a semester with education students taking a foundations course to develop and deliver engineering lessons to fourth or fifth graders. Students in comparison engineering classes worked on a team project focused on experimental design for a small satellite system. The purpose of this study was to determine if participating in the Ed+gineering collaboration had a positive effect on teamwork effectiveness and satisfaction when compared to the comparison class. In both team projects, the five dimensions of the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) system were used as a quantitative assessment. The five dimensions of CATME Behaviorally Anchored Ratings Scale (BARS) (contribution to the team’s work, interacting with teammates, keeping the team on track, expecting quality, and having relevant Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities - KSAs) were measured. Additionally, within the CATME platform team satisfaction, team interdependence and team cohesiveness were measured. ANCOVA analysis was used to assess the quantitative data from CATME. Preliminary results suggest that students in the treatment classes had higher team member effectiveness and overall satisfaction scores than students in the comparison classes. Qualitative data from reflections written at the completion of the aforementioned projects were used to explore these results.
Stuart, Hannah, Torres, Wilson, and McPherson, Andrew. A Case Study of Student-Community Interaction through an Education-First Assistive Device Design Class. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10586359.
Stuart, Hannah, Torres, Wilson, & McPherson, Andrew. A Case Study of Student-Community Interaction through an Education-First Assistive Device Design Class. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10586359.
Stuart, Hannah, Torres, Wilson, and McPherson, Andrew.
"A Case Study of Student-Community Interaction through an Education-First Assistive Device Design Class". Country unknown/Code not available: 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10586359.
@article{osti_10586359,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {A Case Study of Student-Community Interaction through an Education-First Assistive Device Design Class},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10586359},
abstractNote = {Assistive device design classes are popular and often incorporate local community members in projects as stakeholders, or need-knowers. It remains important to generate best practices to improve student-stakeholder interactions in these service-based classes, particularly those that focus on the early product design stages like need-finding and feels-like prototyping. This study is performed across two offerings of the new class “Augmenting Human Dexterity” at the University of California at Berkeley; it serves as a case study of the lessons presented, and resulting perceptions of its instructors and students. In the class project, students participate in need-knower identification and recruitment processes. In this preliminary study, we ask: what can students learn through this process? Given only a small handful of student groups produce a physical device that can be given to the need-knower at the end of the term for daily use, we ask: how do students portray this expectation? With the lessons provided, students expand their understanding of disability and accurately communicate expected deliverables to the need-knower at the time of recruitment and interview. This preliminary work must be followed by further studies in order to establish generalizable results. Regardless, we present potential methods for managing projects in assistive device classrooms that focus on early product design stages.},
journal = {},
publisher = {2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition},
author = {Stuart, Hannah and Torres, Wilson and McPherson, Andrew},
}
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