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It has been well documented that students face difficulties in transferring their knowledge and skills learned in prior courses to other areas of the curriculum. These problems with transfer are exacerbated by foundational courses being taught outside the major, as well as the fact that many engineering courses are taught in silos, with little connection being made to the engineering curriculum as a whole. Work is needed to better enable students to see the connections between their courses and transfer the requisite knowledge and skills from prior classes to other areas of the curriculum, and in their careers. This study builds on prior work (published at the ASEE Annual Conference last year) which used a series of think aloud, problem-solving interviews to assess the barriers and challenges students face in transferring knowledge from prior mathematics courses into an applied engineering setting. In this prior work, participants were tasked with solving a rigid body equilibrium problem typical of an engineering statics course but which required integration skills, as well as knowledge of the centroid, to solve. In the course of this study it was found that participants could not solve the problem as they could not determine the centroid of the object in question. Participants cited issues such as a lack of applied problems being taught that used centroids, the use of tabulated data for centroids, and forgetting governing equations as major barriers to being able to solve the problem. A majority of participants did however believe that being shown a general equation used to calculate centroids would have improved their problem solving success. Grounded in the results of this prior study, two separate interventions designed to promote the transfer of knowledge and skills from prior courses were developed and tested with the goal of aiding students in determining the location of the centroid. In order to examine the potential effectiveness of these interventions, a series of (n=11) think aloud interviews were conducted based around the same statics problem as had previously been used. One of these interventions used a mathematical, equation-based-prompt in an attempt to promote knowledge transfer, while the other used a similar prompt but provided in a more applied, engineering context - in this case an excerpt from the notes made by the instructor of the department’s engineering statics class. Findings suggested that an equation-based-prompt was largely unsuccessful at promoting problem solving success. The applied prompt based on prior course notes was more successful in enabling participants to solve the problem and find the centroid. It was unclear however if students truly understood the equations and methods presented in this prompt or whether they were simply able to correctly interpret the prompt and copy the pattern onto their solution. Persistent problems with (English) units and a lack of utilizing a formal problem solving method were also observed. A broader analysis of the study also suggests that students do not fully understand the conceptual underpinnings of the calculations used to determine the location of the centroid of an object.
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Work in Progress: Promoting the Transfer of Math Skills to Engineering Statics
Students often face difficulties in transferring concepts, knowledge and skills between their courses. This difficulty is especially true of the fundamental math and science courses that are often taught outside the major of the student and without engineering context. At the same time, graduating engineers are moving into an increasingly interdisciplinary workplace that values the ability to work broadly across a range of contexts. More work is needed to better prepare students to adapt their knowledge and skills to new situations and to demonstrate how the various courses and concepts within their curricula relate. In this study, we ask students, teaching assistants and faculty to “think aloud” through their solution to a statics problem that requires mathematical knowledge to be transferred in order to be solved. Two faculty, two teaching assistants and seven undergraduate students are interviewed as they think aloud through the problem. Interview transcripts and solutions to the statics problem are then examined for themes and patterns in responses in order to draw conclusions about the challenges different populations face in transferring knowledge and solving such problems. Observations indicated that students could apply simple integration skills to find the area of a shape when given a curve describing its shape, but could not use integration to find the centroid. The participants did however recall being taught how to calculate centroids in the past and discussed a lack of usage of this skill causing their inability to recall it correctly. Student participants in general displayed simple approaches to problem solving based on reading the problem statement rather than following an engineering approach starting with governing equations. A potential barrier to problem solving success was identified in the varying symbols used by different research participants which could lead to a lack of understanding if these symbols are not clearly explained and defined in a classroom setting. Future work will further examine these themes, as well as developing prompts and activities to promote knowledge transfer and problem solving success.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2301341
- PAR ID:
- 10636810
- Publisher / Repository:
- ASEE Conferences
- Date Published:
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Baltimore , Maryland
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--44334
