Student Journals As A Diagnostic Tool In Quantitative Engineering Classes

Journaling is a common communication tool in English classes but not in engineering classes. However, journals can also be very productive for both students and instructors in classes emphasizing quantitative concepts. Typically, students submit journals weekly throughout the term and the content and format may vary according to what the professor needs to know. The professor reacts briefly to the journals with written comments either on a hard copy or by email. The purpose of a journal is to alert the professor as to how well a concept was understood or which students are struggling and perhaps give some prescriptive solutions. To assess the effectiveness of journaling, students at the University of Dayton were assigned weekly email journals in two introductory programming classes and an engineering economics class. The classes contain first to fourth year engineering technology students. The anticipated outcomes were to offer a quick check on the basic skill level of students, provide early intervention when a student did not understand concepts, create an informal communication with a professor so questions that might not get asked in class could be addressed informally, and finally, that writing skills would be practiced and improved. Based on anecdotal evidence gathered throughout the semester, this paper will promote journaling as a key success factor for students in engineering classes. Introduction Many engineers keep daily or weekly journals as informal project records that ultimately result in more formal status reports. Sometimes the engineer’s journal is just a personal record to help explain problems or to record agreements and lessons learned from the project. While journaling is widely used in the daily work environment, most journal writing in college is reserved for English and humanities classes. When engineering students write, it is generally in the form of a lab report. The authors’ research yielded few results that documented the results of using journals in engineering classes. The premise of this paper is that journals should be more widely used in quantitative classes, including engineering, as a way to help students learn important concepts more thoroughly. According to ABET standards, “Technically trained individuals should not be considered educated regardless of the depth of their technical capability if they cannot communicate, both orally and in writing, their technical findings, thoughts, and philosophy to others around them.”1 Writing about learning in core classes provides practice for future engineers for communicating engineering concepts. The authors surmised that verbalizing the successes and frustrations of learning quantitative concepts or as Beall calls it learning the P ge 8.035.1 “Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education” “language of inquiry”2 would also help students reach a better understanding of the material. In theory, putting their struggles and successes into words, helps them understand the material better and may even lead to an occasional “Aha!” moment. The authors of this paper decided to test whether assigning weekly journals in their classes in the Engineering Technology Department at the University of Dayton would be beneficial to student learning and, perhaps, to their own teaching methods. The journal assignments were used in two semester courses – an introductory computer class (3 sessions) that met once a week and an engineering economics class that met twice a week. Students ranged from new freshmen to graduating seniors. The computer class (SET153L), an introduction to Excel and VBA programming for Excel, was mainly made up of first year students. Engineering Economics (IET 317), an upper level class with mostly juniors and seniors, used financial and economic concepts to analyze cost related engineering decisions. In this study the journal content was not expected to be voluminous but rather to the point and somewhat reflective. The students usually had a week to respond with their journals to allow time to complete homework or unfinished class assignments. Often students found that the material that seemed clear in class became less so when applying it to new problems. At this point the emails arrived with questions or even attached worksheets asking for more help. Journal Assignment Part of each student’s final grade included points for the weekly emailed journals. Both instructors guided the content by requiring comments on the difficulty of the material, the student’s success with it, and specific questions about homework problems or in-class examples. Students were required to write professional emails (i.e., a clear subject line, good email practices, and a signature block). The instructors responded weekly by email with at least a sentence or two to each student. Some of the comments to the students were “boiler-plate,” but others were personalized to answer specific questions or comments. When a student expressed having difficulty, more emails were exchanged during the week so that the student and instructor helped solve the issue. Although some of the students had a very relaxed email style which included too many grammatical and sentence problems – especially among first year students the instructors tried to encourage more formal writing practices. Benefits of Student Journals The authors found that the journals did produce the results they had anticipated and were surprised at additional positive outcomes from the student journals. The benefits of the journal assignment and actual journal entries to support the claim are listed in this section. Student names, email subject line, greeting and closing were omitted to both save time and allow for anonymity; however, grammar and spelling errors were left in the samples to demonstrate a continuing need for writing practice. 1. The instructor is alerted that several students did not grasp a concept from the previous lesson. Knowing the problems the students had before the next class helped the instructor plan a review or example as part of the next lesson. At other times, sending a group email with more information on the issue helped all the students find success with homework that might have P ge 8.035.2 “Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education” remained undone, or done incorrectly. If only a few students had a problem, the instructor could write to the student directly with further explanation of the material in question. This week in Tech Computation Lab, I found a lot of things difficult. I didn't quite get the understanding of Histograms and Filtering. The last assignment was long...For some reason, I don't understand the work when students teache it. That is why I don't understand filtering or histograms. But after asking (you) for help, I got the concept of Histograms...But other than that, I'm fine. So far I get what is going on in class, except for the B/C ratio. For some reason I have a hard time determining what numbers go on top and what on bottom. So far I have been getting by though. I am starting to understand how to use the cash flow diagrams that we have been covering in class. I am still a little shaky on the Arithmetic Gradients, I guess I am not exactly sure how you solved 3.30. When I was working the problems I did not get the same answer as you did on Thursday. I guess I am just confused about how you broke the problem up and did it in sections. I would like to make one comment or suggestion, the emails that you send out with hints and answers make the problems easier to tackle since i have the answer to check with, cause when I get the wrong answer I can say hey no I'm not doing this correctly, and can go back and try something else, and that makes me think more and figure it out instead of just giving up and waiting until you go over it in class the next time. 2. Emailing the journals allowed students who stayed up late to do assignments to contact an instructor who operated on a different schedule. Both the student and the instructor could compose the email and send it without having to be available to talk directly. Students also could ask the question while it was fresh in their mind rather than try to remember it for a phone call at a more conventional time or for the next class. I feel pretty comfortable with the new material, but am struggling with this weekend's homework. I listened in class but there are a lot of twists that I am not sure how to deal with in the problems. I know that it is 12:15AM as I write this, but I figured that you wouldn’t mind that I remembered a couple minutes late. Sorry this email is probably a few minutes late, I hope that’s ok but I just remembered to do it as I was going to bed. Everything seems to be going ok for me in class. I seem to be understanding the material just fine, maybe a minor thing or two that I don't get but you usually clear things up in class. The project seems to be going ok, assuming I can get some numbers from work, which shouldn't be a problem. Well, that’s about all I have. See you in class on Tues. 3. Some students, especially in the computer class, had skills in an area that was being taught. The instructor could then increase the pace of instruction rather than dwell on topics that were P ge 8.035.3 “Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education” familiar. Students will often not admit in class that something was covered in high school classes, but were willing to share that through a journal. I thought this past week was pretty easy. I have programmed before in visual basic. I have never done macros in excel though, so this should be all new and pretty inter