Using Students-Generated Concept Maps to Assess Students’ Conceptual Understanding in a Foundational Engineering Course

This paper reports some results of an ongoing engineering education project funded by the NSF TUES-Type 1 program. Research has shown that conceptual understanding plays a critical role in students’ problem-solving performance. Assessing conceptual understanding is important in order to design the most appropriate pedagogy to improve students’ problem-solving performance. The conventional way to assess conceptual understanding is to conduct assessment tests (such as the Concept Inventory Test) and/or interviews. In the present study, which involves student learning in a foundational engineering dynamics course, conceptual understanding was assessed through student-generated concept maps. Guided by active learning theory, students developed their own concept maps after they had learned an engineering dynamics theme (i.e., a chapter in a dynamics textbook). Student-generated concept maps were closely examined. This paper presents a representative set of concept maps generated by students who took an engineering dynamics course in a recent semester. The results show that student-generated concept maps provide a significant amount of information on students’ understanding and/or misunderstandings of relevant concepts, and can be used as a supplemental tool to assess students’ conceptual understanding in this foundational engineering course. Importance of conceptual understanding in engineering dynamics Engineering dynamics is a sophomore-level, foundational course that plays a crucial role in many undergraduate engineering programs such as mechanical, aerospace, civil, biological, and biomedical engineering programs. Extended from college physics mechanics courses, the course covers numerous fundamental concepts; for example, displacement, force, velocity, acceleration, mass momentum of inertia, work, energy, impulse, momentum, the Principle of Work and Energy, the Conservation of Energy, the Principle of Impulse and Momentum, and the Conservation of Momentum. Engineering dynamics, however, is also widely regarded as one of the most difficult courses to succeed in. Many students use phrases such as, “much harder than statics,” “extremely difficult,” “very challenging,” and “are afraid of it,” to describe their perspectives about this course. It was reported that on the standard Fundamentals of Engineering examination in 2009, the national average score on the dynamics exam was only 53%. 4 One of the primary reasons that students performed poorly in engineering dynamics is that students lack a solid understanding of fundamental concepts involved in this course. 6 For example, students do not comprehend the difference and relationship between the Principle of Work and Energy and the Conservation of Energy. When given a dynamics problem that involves friction, students mistakenly choose to apply the Conservation of Energy for problem solving. In another example, students do not understand that a rigid body not only has mass but also has a mass moment of inertia. When calculating the kinetic energy for a rigid body P ge 26684.2 undergoing a general plane motion, students consider only the translational component and miss the rotational component of the kinetic energy. To improve students’ performances in engineering dynamics, it is necessary to first assess their conceptual understanding, and misunderstandings as well, so that appropriate pedagogy can be subsequently designed or chosen to address identified issues. The conventional way to assess students’ conceptual understanding is to conduct assessment tests (such as the Concept Inventory test) and/or student interviews. Gray et al. have developed a Dynamics Concept Inventory that consists of a set of multiple-choice questions to assess 11 concepts and misconceptions in engineering dynamics; for example, “different points on a rigid body have different velocities and accelerations, which vary continuously;” “if the net external force on a body is not zero, then the mass center must have an acceleration and it must be in the same direction as the force;” and “angular velocities and angular accelerations are properties of the body as a whole and can vary with time.”