2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Since Froebelian time, tangible objects have been used in education to facilitate learning of concrete and abstract phenomena. The efficacy of humanly made artifacts in educational settings are widely studied in art, communications, and more recently in STEM education. In engineering education, the benefits of tangible objects have been predominantly studied in subjects like design. Engineers are surrounded by physical artifacts throughout their education and work-place environments. Our research project addresses the effectiveness of such interventions for engineering design, problem solving, including conceptual understanding of abstract and difficult concepts. Further, the study explores the relationship of mechanical objects and mechanical engineering students when learning abstract and difficult concepts related to thermodynamics.
This work-in-progress presented study is part of a larger project (mentioned above) that looks at students’ mental models when objects are present in problem-solving activities. Participants in the larger study are (N=160) undergraduate junior students, enrolled in a semester-long thermodynamics class. Prior to the start of the semester, students were asked to complete a concept inventory. During the course, students were provided with 3 conceptually difficult and abstract problems (as identified by literature): work and heat, psychometric applications, and entropy. The control and experimental group took place in two different sections of the course, taught by the same instructor. While the control group was provided with only the problem description, the experimental group was also given mechanical objects related to the problem at hand. Students’ solutions were graded by two mechanical engineering graduate students who were blind to the treatment, and the improvement on student performance on the final exam was assessed. In addition, since the students took the concept inventory at the end of the course, the gains in conceptual understanding was also analyzed.
In order to identify cognitive processes involved in solving engineering related problems, the current study investigates how students engage in problem- solving and attempt to use mechanical objects. Participants were selected based on their grades on the three problems and invited to participate in a think aloud protocol study. To ensure that all students have the opportunity to participate in the study, everyone was invited and those who identified interest were invited to the study. The researchers also ensure participation from students in the categories of low, average and high performance on the three problems. Using a think-aloud protocol, 60 selected participants (30 from the control group and 30 from the experimental group) were observed about how they verbalize their thoughts during the problem-solving activity. We will present the initial coding procedure and initial emerging themes in the work-in-progress paper.