Faculty-Coached, Team-Based, In-Class Problem Solving in a Systematic Approach Toward Undergraduate Dynamics

This paper describes a new tool in active and participative learning that effectively teaches theory and practice in undergraduate dynamics using in-class problem solving. The proposed approach treats the entire class as a team while ensuring that all students participate in the problem-solving exercise. This approach addresses three key components that are known to be effective techniques in teaching and learning: 1) student engagement, 2) affective pedagogy, and 3) class management and assessment. As in other approaches toward faculty-coached in-class problem solving, it is built upon a certain restructuring of the course material into a systematic approach toward analysis and modeling of dynamic systems. The approach uses direct questioning, which has been shown to be particularly successful with female students in several different contexts. This paper presents discusses how to implement this approach in a sophomore level dynamics course.