Promoting Second-year Engineering Students’ Epistemic Beliefs and Real-world Problem-solving Abilities through Case-Based E-Learning Resources

The purpose of this project is to design, develop, and validate a case-based e-learning module that promotes the development of second-year engineering students’ epistemic beliefs as well as the development of their abilities to deal with real-world, ill-defined engineering problems. Thirty-one second-year engineering students vicariously experienced real-world problems through a case-based e-learning module that consists of four major phases: exploring situations, constructing reality, creating solutions, and reflecting on the product and the process. The changes of students’ problem-solving skills as well as their epistemic growth were measured and analyzed. The results reveal that students’ problem-solving performances were improved when they were guided through the four phases of learning activities in the module. However, their guided problem-solving abilities failed to transfer to solve another problem without guidance. With regard to their epistemic growth, no change was observed after their completion of the learning activities in the module. The implications of designing a case-based e-learning environment to develop students’ problem-solving skills as well as to facilitate their epistemic growth are discussed.