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Student-centered educational system is needed for better educational outcomes. Technology enabled pedagogy has helped immensely during the pandemic times when rapid transition to remote learning was essential. This poster reports findings on year one of a two-year research study to utilize mobile technologies and a technology-enhanced curriculum to improve student engagement and learning in STEM undergraduate courses. This poster describes a quasi-experimental mixed methods study on implementing mobile devices (iPad and Pencil) and a technology-enhanced curriculum in an undergraduate thermal-fluids engineering course, a foundational engineering class. The technology-enabled curriculum was fully integrated in the thermal-fluids course to deliver content and to facilitate student engagement with the content, instructor, and fellow students. This approach leveraged the social-constructivist learning theory - a connected community of learners with classroom peers and co-construction of knowledge where the instructor’s role is that of a subject matter expert who facilitates learning. To examine the impact of mobile devices on student learning, in this two-year study (year one fall 2021 - spring 2022), the following research questions were addressed, hypothesizing improvements in the areas of engagement, enhancement of learning outcomes, and extension of learning to real-life engineering scenarios: (1) Does mobile device use facilitate engagement in thermal-fluid science course content? (Engagement), (2) Does mobile device use increase learning of identified difficult concepts in thermal-fluid science courses as indicated by increased achievement scores? (Enhancement) and (3) What are student perceptions of using mobile devices for solving real-life problems? This poster will provide an overview of the research plan and describe some preliminary research efforts based on year 1 of the project efforts. This work is supported by the NSF: Research Initiation in Engineering Formation (RIEF). 

A learner-centered higher education ecosystem is essential to effective educational outcomes and societal advancement. Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and tablet computers enable learning anytime and from any location, blurring the boundaries between formal and informal learning. When paired with effective pedagogy, mobile technologies can positively impact the teaching and learning experience for students in high-demand science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, increasing the flexibility and ease with which they are able to pursue their education while developing their professional identities as engineers. Student retention remains a problem in STEM programs. In engineering, many students do not even make it past their core courses. This poster reports on initial efforts of a two-year research study to utilize mobile technologies and a technology-enhanced curriculum to improve student engagement and learning in STEM undergraduate courses. This (work in progress) poster describes a quasi-experimental mixed methods study on implementing mobile devices (iPad and Pencil) and a technology-enhanced curriculum in an undergraduate thermal-fluids engineering course, a foundational engineering class. Research has indicated that engineering students’ performance in foundational courses is a predictor of future academic success. 

Physical objects help learning with both well-defined and ill-structured problems. However, in many instances, the use of physical objects in instruction can be restrictive, especially when the concepts are abstract. Thermodynamics is a subject replete with abstract concepts, which are often hard for students to understand. Many problems that students encounter in thermodynamics instruction involve ill-structured problems. Furthermore, the scale of constructed thermodynamic artifacts makes it difficult, if not impossible, for students to interact with authentic objects. This study investigates how the manipulation of virtual objects can help students translate foundational knowledge to solve ill-structured problems in thermodynamics. The virtual objects (vObjects) project will contribute to the situative learning by closely mapping the learner experience to a real-life scenario.