Measuring Student Learning And Engagement In An Introductory Electrical Science Course

Does encouraging student development through projects increase engagement in a course? Can we use student performance on case studies to measure learning? These questions arose in discussions among faculty and teaching assistants in the Introduction to Electrical Science course at Oklahoma State University who perceived student engagement is less when students do not apply the skills learned in the course. The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oklahoma State University (OSU) is redesigning courses to improve student learning under a National Science Foundation (NSF) Department Level Reform projectEngineering Students for the 21 st Century (ES21C). This project seeks to develop higher levels of learning by matching course work to objectives using Bloom’s Taxonomy. The introductory electrical science course is being reformed to increase students’ ability to analyze and apply knowledge by incorporating new problem-based and active learning techniques into the course. These techniques include individual web-based pre-lecture assignments, team projects, individual and group quizzes, in-class laboratory exercises presented as case studies, and combined traditional and case analysis exams. Ideally, students will be more engaged in the course and increase their depth of knowledge. In this paper we examine changes made to the course and what we hope to measure through these changes. A preliminary Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey along with an attitude questionnaire (created by undergraduates working on the NSF project ES21C) was given to students enrolled in the introductory electrical science course before changes were made.