2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work in progress paper describes an early pilot of a study to investigate the process of conceptual change related to moments in an engineering statics course. Preliminary results from the pilot provide insight into the structure of novice knowledge about moments and will help inform future data collection. Most conceptual knowledge studies in engineering to date look for evidence of existing knowledge and/or misconceptions that students possess at a point in time, and in some cases, how these change over time as a result of instruction or other learning activities. Typically, these are situated in a course or discipline, though a few studies synthesize misconception characteristics that transcend courses and/or disciplines. Still, the mechanisms and processes through which conceptual change occurs in engineering are not often studied directly. As a result, the ways that students acquire and revise concepts are not well understood. Data collection for this study attempted to document with finer granularity the formation and revision of student conceptions relating to the topic of moments over time in a statics course. Short, frequent interviews were used as the primary data collection method. It is hoped that further analysis and future findings can help better characterize the structure of novice knowledge about moments and the processes by which it develops within an engineering context.