Homework problem sets allow a student to measure personal understanding and enable an instructor to evaluate individual student and overall class performance. For this study, students were asked to self-grade their homework assignments for a junior-level Fundamentals of Transportation Engineering course. Although self-grading studies have been…

While team learning within engineering classrooms has been studied, minimal work has been done examining out-of-classroom collaboration to complete individual deliverables. However, such informal peer collaboration (IPC) is common among engineering undergraduates, and some evidence exists that low levels of IPC are associated with poorer learning…

We present an educational unit to teach computational modeling, a vital part of chemical engineering curricula, through the lens of synthetic biology. Lectures, code, and homework questions provide conceptual and practical introductions to each computational method involved in the model development process, along with perspectives on how methods…

The impact of solving novel video-inspired homework problems on learning attitudes toward chemical engineering was examined at beginning and end of an undergraduate material and energy balances course using a modified Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey instrument. Mean overall attitude of participants improved by a normalized gain…

Research on impact in student achievement of online homework systems compared to traditional methods is ambivalent. Methodological issues in the study design, besides of technological diversity, can account for this uncertainty. Hypothesis: This study aims to estimate the effect size of homework practice with exercises automatically provided by…

Self-directed learning is learning in which the conceptualization, design, conduct and evaluation of new content is directed and driven by the learner itself. This is an essential skill for students in the 21st century. Many large undergraduate courses use an online homework system to engage the whole class in the course material simultaneously. A…

As more chemical engineering students enter careers beyond the field, students need more guidance in applying their problem solving skills to a challenges beyond the plant or refinery. Since Fall 2019, we have implemented case-based learning across our Material and Energy Balances course to help students practice chemical engineering thinking as a…

Student success and attempts on hundreds of online homework problems housed in a fully interactive online textbook, Material and Energy Balances zyBook, were studied over three cohorts of students (n=284). Auto-graded homework questions with randomized numbers and content can explore proficiency in the course material. Students are allowed to…

This study explores contradictions that emerge when utilizing a flipped classroom approach to university mathematics education. The work uses Activity Theory and its principle of dialectical contradiction as a theoretical framework to identify and analyse contradictions that arise in flipped mathematics classrooms for engineering students. Data…

Contribution: This article compares the predictive performance of the scores on WeBWorK homework (online) with those of standard handwritten homework. The comparison is done across six undergraduate electrical engineering classes where each of the nine instructors have used both homework modalities. Background: Online homework systems have been…

While textbooks serve as a primary source of content material and problem-solving practice for undergraduates in engineering, studies that investigate how engineering students prepare assignments based on textbook problems are limited. To examine how engineering students complete textbook-based assignments outside of class, this exploratory…

This article reports on the implementation of a programme of individualised, peer-graded homework assignments in a large-scale engineering course, with minimal resources. Participation in the programme allows students to receive grades for problem-solving work in a setting more conducive to learning than the traditional final examination. The…

Homework assignments in engineering courses are still passive learning instruments that often appear as requirements rather than learning tools. This issue arises because the teaching team usually does not have the capabilities to provide real-time feedback, or to enable students to fix errors in a timely manner. To overcome this challenge, we…

This paper studies electrical engineering learners' preferences for learning methods with various degrees of activity. Less active learning methods such as homework and peer reviews are investigated, as well as a newly introduced very active (constructive) learning method called "slectures," and some others. The results suggest that…

Time on task has been recognized as an important variable in academic learning, but self-report measures of study time are problematic. Therefore, this study employs an automated system for recording time spent reading a course textbook. College students in an introductory engineering course accessed their textbook online. The book contained pages…