An Assessment of Blended Learning in Mechanics of Materials

Instructors are often uncertain if their efforts to design a blended course are warranted by improved student outcomes compared to a lecture-based course. The first goal of this study was to find out if students benefit from a blended course compared to a traditional course in our mechanics of materials class. The average exam scores were not statistically different in two cohorts we studied, but we found that simply comparing averages ignored effects of major, year in school, and gender. Such student characteristics are important to consider when measuring the outcome of a course redesign. The second goal was to assess students’ progress in Bloom’s taxonomy in the blended course. The results suggest that students quickly learned how to solve problems, but did not understand fundamental concepts following lecture and online reading assignments. A final goal was to understand students’ perceptions of the blended course. We found that most students thought that the format was effective.