Assessment of Engineering Mechanics Instructional Multimedia in a Variety of Instructional Settings
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Engineering Mechanics |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Reference - Educational Research Paper |
| Media Type: |
Audio |
| Author(s): |
Ralph Flori Richard Hall Timothy Philpot Vikas Yellamraju |
| Description: | Proceedings of the 2004 ASEE Annual Conference, Session 3268. Abstract: "Students from ten schools, representing seven countries, used interactive multimedia as a part of their engineering statics classes. The software consisted of four modules, which focused on: Mohr’s Circle; Centroid and Moment of Inertia; Stress Transformation; and Structural Analysis. The students completed on-line surveys about their experience with the software. Analysis of the results indicated that students rated their knowledge of the subject matter covered in the software as increasing significantly as a consequence of using the software. However, this increase was substantially more pronounced for students in U.S. schools. Students rated the software as significantly more effective than their class textbooks, and, again, this effect was substantially stronger for students in the U.S. The analyses also indicated that the software differed little in its impact on males versus females. Ratings on a number of additional outcomes were consistently positive with respect to student opinions of the software." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| References: |
MecMovies |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(a) Apply mathematics, science, and engineering |
| Intervention(s): |
Animation Hypertext/hypermedia Interactive Multimedia Simulation Visualization tools |
| Use of Resource: |
"Considered as a whole, these survey results provide strong support for the effectiveness of this instructional multimedia. This support was almost as strong as it could be given the subjective questionnaires that were used. Students consistently rated their knowledge as greater after using the software than before, consistently rated the software better than the text, and demonstrated strong agreement with a number of other statements indicating the effectiveness of the software. Further, these effects were largely consistent across males and females, in that all but one of the analyses that considered gender did not yield statistically significant effects. There is, however, one important twist. The positive impact was manifested much more for students from U.S., as opposed to non-U.S., institutions. Although in virtually every case that location (U.S. vs. international) was considered, both groups gave more positive ratings for the software, the positive effect was much more pronounced for the U.S. students. There are a number of reasons that such an effect would occur, most of which center around the fact that the software was created at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, a U.S. University. In fact, all of the content and most of the software design was provided by professors who were born and raised in the United States. All of the written information in the software was in English written by these faculty, and for many of the students in the international universities this was most likely not their first language. This may have been particularly relevant in comparing the software and text books, where the text may not have been written in English. Beyond language, there may also be cultural difference in the way that students in U.S. vs. non-U.S. schools view and most effectively learn engineering concepts." |
| Difficulty: |
Medium |
| Interactivity Level: |
Very high |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | June 2004 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://scholarsmine.mst.edu/post_prints/AssessmentOfEngineeringMe |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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