2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress for Two Questions: Confusion Matrix Analysis of Student Think-Alouds during a Dynamics Concept Inventory Exam

Presented at Will This Be on the Mechanics Test? Concept Inventories and Understanding Exams

Concept inventory question results are frequently used to evaluate students' overall understanding of course material. These questions focus only on foundational concepts rather than detailed problem solving. Dynamics concept inventory (DCI) exam results were analyzed for two semesters. Students were asked to audibilize their thoughts while taking the exam and being recorded. The video recordings of students taking the exam were transcribed for two questions. Results of two independent analyses of the transcriptions were summarized statistically in a confusion matrix. The confusion matrix is a 2x2 matrix with column headings scoring student oral reasoning and row headings scoring question outcome. These results are expected to illuminate the influence of luck verses true understanding during the exam.

Authors

Dr. Julian Ly Davis http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4109-3904 University of Southern Indiana [biography]

Jul Davis is an Associate Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, Indiana. He received his PhD in 2007 from Virginia Tech in Engineering Mechanics where he studied the vestibular organs in the inner ear using finite element models and vibration analyses. After graduating, he spent a semester teaching at a local community college and then two years at University of Massachusetts (Amherst) studying the biomechanics of biting in bats and monkeys, also using finite element modeling techniques. In 2010, he started his career teaching in all areas of mechanical engineering at the University of Southern Indiana (USI). He loves teaching all of the basic mechanics courses, and of course his Vibrations and Finite Element Analysis courses.
Dr. Andrew Jason Hill University of Southern Indiana [biography]

Jason Hill is an associate professor of engineering and director of civil engineering at the University of Southern Indiana. He holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in civil engineering from Tennessee Technological University. His research interests include rainfall-runoff modeling, stream restoration, and wetland hydrology.

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