2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

For more than three decades, mechanics educators have been aware that even students who perform well on quantitative and procedural exercises often fail to demonstrate understanding of the underlying concepts (Clement 1982)(McDermott 1984)(Halloun and Hestenes 1985b, 1985a)(Mazur 1992). As a result, concept-based learning has evolved as an active-learning approach to address this situation. According to (Authors withheld 2019),

Concept-based active learning is the use of activity-based pedagogies whose primary objectives are to make students value deep conceptual understanding (instead of only factual knowledge) and then to facilitate their development of that understanding. It has been shown to increase academic engagement and student achievement (Freeman et al. 2014), to significantly improve student retention (National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine 2011), and to reduce the performance gap of underrepresented students (Haak et al. 2011).

Although concept-based pedagogies are effective, but “[c]reating effective [concept] questions is difficult and differs from creating exam and homework problems” (Beatty et al. 2006), and there is currently a lack of readily-available concept questions designed for classroom use. Existing concept inventories (CI’s), such as the Concept Assessment Tool for Statics (“CATS”) (Steif & Dantzler, 2005) consist of a relatively small number of questions (the CATS has 27), limiting the variety of questions that can be posed for a given concept. Moreover, in-class feedback and discussion threaten the overall security of the instrument. Finally, CI questions have single correct answers, limiting their use for situations with multiple possible defensible answers and interpretations.

For concept-based instruction to be scaled up, a large repository of questions that can be broadly and efficiently deployed is needed. To this end, the authors are part of a project currently funded by NSF to expand an existing online Concept Question Repository (CQR) [true name withheld] to include questions for Statics. The CQR can be used to develop and deploy questions to students via multiple modalities (in class, at home, online, offline, etc.), and it is also relatively easy for instructors to create their own questions nearly in real time. To date, approximately 80 Statics questions have been developed, and will expand to about 200 by the time of the Conference & Expo. A summary of question design philosophy, scope, and examples will be provided in the paper.

During the 2019-20 year, the CQR will be used by the authors or their colleagues at three different institutions, directly impacting an estimated 500 students. Data will be collected and reported regarding (1) the frequency of student interaction with the CQR; (2) student performance with respect to accuracy (including a comparison with other metrics, such as exam scores); (3) students’ reported self confidence in their responses; and (4) student feedback on the effectiveness of the questions. Participating instructors will also provide perspectives on their experience with the online tool and their observations of student engagement.

Bibliography

Authors 2019. Withheld.
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Clement, John. 1982. “Students’ Preconceptions in Introductory Mechanics.” American Journal of Physics 50 (1): 66–71. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.12989.
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Haak, David C, Janneke HilleRisLambers, Emile Pitre, and Scott Freeman. 2011. “Increased Structure and Active Learning Reduce the Achievement Gap in Introductory Biology.” Science 332 (6034): 1213–16. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1204820.
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———. 1985b. “The Initial Knowledge State of College Physics Students.” American Journal of Physics 53 (11): 1043–55. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.14030.
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