A foundational goal of deliberately designed educational experiences is for learners to acquire
and to retain knowledge and thinking skills. Common modes of assessment such as exams
administered during the semester may measure students’ short-term achievement of learning
objectives. However, they do not identify the underlying knowledge gaps, misconceptions, or
thought processes responsible for students’ errors. In addition, such tests do not yield
information on students’ retention of skills beyond the conclusion of the course. Such limitations
make it difficult to optimize learning activities for long-term retention of concepts and skills that
are crucial to problem solving activities in engineering courses. Think-aloud interviews provide
rich qualitative data about students' thought processes in verbal form that are not available from
multiple-choice or free-response type of assessments. In this work-in-progress paper we present
a set of think-aloud interviews with senior-level mechanical engineering students as they take a
concept inventory assessment on introductory fluid mechanics and mechanics of engineering
materials. Participants took these two courses in their junior year, at the end of which they took
the same concept inventory tests, but not in a think-aloud format. We explain how our interview
data is used to identify students’ knowledge gaps or misconceptions.
Soheil Fatehiboroujeni received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Merced in 2018 focused on the nonlinear dynamics of biological filaments. As an engineering educator and postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University, Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Soheil worked in the Active Learning Initiative (ALI) to promote student-centered learning and the use of computational tools such as MATLAB and ANSYS in engineering classrooms. In Spring 2022, Soheil joined Colorado State University as an assistant professor of practice in the department of Mechanical Engineering. His research is currently focused on the long-term retention of knowledge and skills in engineering education, design theory and philosophy, and computational mechanics.
Matthew J. Ford (he/him) received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from the University of California, Berkeley, and went on to complete his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Northwestern University. After completing a postdoc with the Cornell Active Learning Initiative, he joined the School of Engineering and Technology at UW Tacoma to help establish its new mechanical engineering program. His teaching and research interests include solid mechanics, engineering design, and inquiry-guided learning. He has supervised undergraduate and master's student research projects and capstone design teams.
Hadas Ritz is a senior lecturer in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and a Faculty Teaching Fellow at the James McCormick Family Teaching Excellence Institute (MTEI) at Cornell University, where she received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering. Among other teaching awards, she received the 2021 ASEE National Outstanding Teaching Award.
Elizabeth M. Fisher is an Associate Professor in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell. She received her PhD from U.C. Berkeley.
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