Concept Based Instruction And Personal Response Systems (Prs) As An Assessment Method For Introductory Materials Science And Engineering

Personal response systems (PRS) are gaining in use as a method to engage students in large science and engineering lectures. Faculty pose questions to the class mid-lecture and receive immediate feedback via remote-control “clickers” as to whether students understand the underlying concepts necessary to solve problems on homework and exams. Thus, the pace of the lecture can be adjusted accordingly to focus on the most difficult concepts. This method has been thoroughly developed for introductory chemistry and physics courses. Pioneers have developed ConcepTests, or multiple-choice questions that focus on conceptual understanding, rather than calculation. These questions encourage peer interaction, as instructors allow students to vote a second time after discussing their initial answer with classmates. Introductory Materials Science and Engineering shares many characteristics of the courses in which this method has been successful; lectures are often large, the course is required, and many students are non-majors. In this paper, we share our experience in applying this method to an introductory materials science course. We will present data on student responses, test scores, demographics, and comparison to previous semesters without the response systems. Plans to develop a common bank of materials ConcepTests, building on existing concept inventories will also be discussed. Practical details about the equipment and software will be shared as well. Introduction Concept inventories, or multiple-choice exams focusing on 20-30 major concepts of a specific field, have recently experienced a surge in development as assessments independent of high-stakes testing. In recent years, concept inventories have been developed and tested for reliability in such fields as physics (mechanics), statics, fluid mechanics, materials, and chemistry. In developing these inventories, faculty focus on concepts and reasoning over computation, using varying degrees of rigor to distinguish between the two. In many cases, the developers make use of open-ended responses from current students to develop distractors based on common misconceptions. Reliability is tested by analyzing individual test items or administering the entire assessment to multiple groups of students. P ge 10334.1 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education As a separate development, similar conceptual questions are being used in large lectures of introductory science classes such as chemistry and physics. Faculty pose questions to the class mid-lecture and receive immediate feedback via remote-control “clickers” as to whether students understand the underlying concepts necessary to solve problems on homework and exams. Thus, the pace of the lecture can be adjusted accordingly to focus on the most difficult concepts. Faculty members observe improvements in student learning (grades or passing rate), attitude, and class participation. Few combine concept inventory questions with in-class activities, and even fewer publish analysis evaluating the effectiveness of this type of instruction. In this paper, we present an example of how remote-control personal response systems (PRS) can be applied to an introductory Materials Science course using conceptual questions. Data analysis is provided to begin to evaluate the effectiveness of this method, and future work collecting more detailed data and combining concept inventories with lecture sessions is discussed. Course-Specific Background and Motivation Table 1 outlines the topics included in University of Southern California (USC) MASC 110, Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering. Unlike many introductory materials science courses, this course includes significant chemistry content and substitutes for the first-semester chemistry requirement for aerospace, mechanical, electrical and industrial engineering majors. A chemistry textbook is used, and materials science concepts are introduced through laboratory activities and lectures later in the semester. Table 1. Topics included in Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering course discussed in this paper. The course substitutes for first-semester chemistry for aerospace, mechanical, electrical and industrial engineering majors. A chemistry textbook is used. Syllabus (Lecture) Topics Laboratories Atoms and Molecules Atomic bonds Gas, liquids and solids Chemical reactions, equilibrium and kinetics Crystals, crystal defects and symmetry Thermodynamics Electrochemistry Water Organic Compounds Polymers Minerals Metals Ceramics and Semiconductors Biopolymers Determination of Avogadro's Number Atomic Spectroscopy Thermal Reduction of Copper Ore to Copper Metal Crystal Structures of Metals Crystal Structures of Ionic Solids Microstructure of Metals Corrosion Hardness Polymers Phase Equilibria This course shares many characteristics with courses in which personal response systems have been successful; lectures are large, the course is required, most students are nonmajors, and the content is chemistry-focused. Although the graduate program provides teaching assistants, USC does not offer an undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering (a minor is offered). Therefore, none of the students in the course are majors. P ge 10334.2 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education The course is taught twice a year with approximately 75 students in fall and 50 in spring. The Fall 2004 class that was studied contained 69 students. Method InterWrite PRSTM “clickers” by GTCO CalComp (previously Educue) were made readily available to students by the textbook publisher. Many large textbook publishers provide one or more types of these systems at a significant discount when bundled with studentpurchased book. In this case, the PRS clickers would have cost up to $30 each if purchased by the university or department, but the publisher bundled them with the student textbook and lab manual for just $10 additional cost to students. Free receivers and software were also provided by the publisher for each 40 textbooks sold. A bank of ConcepTest questions for chemistry available on a web site maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Madison was used as a starting point. The instructor created other questions as needed. Sample questions used in class are listed in Table 2. The purpose of these questions was to test whether students understand concepts shortly after they are presented in lecture. As the emphasis is on conceptual understanding, the questions require minimal calculation. The response devices (detailed below) limit the format to multiple choice questions. Exam questions for this course test these same concepts, but are often in the format of numerical calculations. An example final exam question is also included in Table 2. Students have the opportunity to practice applying course concepts to problem-solving in homework assignments (problem sets), which are similar in format to the exams. Table 2. Example conceptual questions posed to students in lecture and the response rates for each multiple-choice answer. Correct responses are in italics. A sample exam question is also included to illustrate the more computational nature. In-Class Question or Prompt Multiple-Choice Answers and Student Responses (Correct responses in italics) Gold, silver, copper and platinum have positive reduction potentials. True 61% False 39% Of the following metals which will not show a ductile-brittle transition temperature: Al, Mg, Ti, Cu and Fe? Al and Ti 51% Mg and Cu 7% Al and Cu 23% Cu and Ti 19% Albite is a feldspar which is a network silicate with one fourth of the silicon replaced with aluminum. It also has Na. What is the empirical formula for Albite? NaAlSi3O8 18% Na5AlSi3O10 15% Na7AlSi3O11 22% Na9AlSi3O12 12% NaAlSi3O6 33% Related Final Exam Question: For the mineral Ca2Mg4Fe(Si4O11)2(OH)2 give the oxidation state for each atom. The software used was TurningPointTM (Turning Technologies), which allows questions to be posed within PowerPoint. Once a question is posed, TurningPoint displays a countdown for the time allotted, and a small grid of numbers at the bottom or side of the screen lets students see if their response has been recorded. After the time is up, a histogram of responses is immediately generated. In many cases, students were encouraged to discuss their answer with a classmate before answering the same question P ge 10334.3 Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education a second time. If a significant number of students answered incorrectly, the instructor led a discussion of the correct answer, including what was wrong with the incorrect answers. Using a web site set up by university computing technology groups, students registered the serial number of their clickers to their student ID numbers. Attendance and participation in class, as measured by responses using the PRS clicker, counted toward 5% of students’ final grades. Between 2 and 6 questions were posed during almost every 50-minute lecture. The receivers are small, relatively mobile devices, so it is possible to store them on a portable cart along with an instructor computer. However, one receiver is required for every 25-40 students, so for large lectures it is far easier to mount them distributed across the front and sides of the room. For this course, we negotiated with an instructor from an unrelated department to teach in a physics classroom already equipped with receivers. The physics and materials science instructors brought their own laptops and plugged into a stationary instructor console linked to the receivers. A second and final difference between Fall 2003 and Fa