2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Studying the textbook is an indispensable element of learning when students are trying to understand the contents of a course. However, learning a subject should not only be limited to the contents of a textbook, but rather, should be approached with the goal of understanding the subject from a broader perception. Therefore, in order to broaden students’ perspectives with different points of view, an article related to course contents was posted weekly on the learning management system, Canvas, in both undergraduate and graduate courses in fall 2022. Students were required to read the article and leave comments by using a template. The template included a set of questions regarding their experience of reading the article. For example: Does the article include enough background information? Does the introduction begin with a hook that gives the reader insight into where the article will take you? and, does the conclusion tie back into the introduction to summarize the main points? The idea behind using a template was to provide students with directed guidance while reading the article, rather than leaving responses too open-ended. In addition, it is important to equip students with the necessary research skills to find appropriate sources when conducting independent research on a topic. Therefore, students were also asked to identify relevant articles to the course and instructed to leave comments for two reading assignments.

A questionnaire regarding the reading assignments was designed and distributed to students at the end of the semester. The purpose of the survey was to gain insight into how students felt about the reading assignments, evaluate the effectiveness of the assignments, and to locate potential deficiencies for future improvement. In the paper, we discussed our observations from the survey results.