2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Objectives: Current techniques for teaching and learning free-body diagrams are insufficient and outdated. This study examines the potential for an app that gamifies learning how to visualize, draw, and analyze FBDs. The particular value of this innovation for women, who tend to rate their spatial skills and STEM self-efficacy lower than their peers who are men, was examined to assess the app’s potential as a tool for retaining women in engineering.

Methods: This study uses an experimental design to assess the efficacy of a new app. Participants included 245 first and second year students in three sections of Statics at two universities (Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Bucknell University). Another 197 WPI students who took Statics before the app was created serve as a comparison group. Of the participants, 37% are women and 14% BIPOC. Data were collected using the retrospective Student Assessment of their Learning Gains - an NSF-funded and validated survey that asks students how much they learned for each of a set of learning objectives and the extent to which they attribute their learning to specific learning activities. Items were combined to construct measures of growth in self-efficacy related to statics, content mastery, and willingness to seek help. Independent sample t-tests and hierarchical multiple linear regression were used to assess learning outcomes and differences across genders and app use.

Results: Students who had the app available and completed half or more of the games reported significantly greater gains in their ability to draw appropriate FBDs for given systems than those who did not have the app available to them. In a second set of analyses with the students who completed at least half the games in the app, using the FBD app was a significant predictor of content mastery after controlling for the influences of demographics, the professor, self-efficacy, attending lecture, listening to and participating in class discussion, and group project work. Other significant predictors included attending lecture and self-efficacy. Women who used the app reported greater gains in self-efficacy related to Statics and willingness to seek help than men; there were no gender differences in content mastery. Multiple linear regression models indicate that these gender effects remain after controlling for BIPOC status, the professor leading class, the influences of attending lecture, listening to and participating in class discussion, group project work, and using the FBD app; among those who did not use the app, women reported fewer gains in self-efficacy than men after these controls.

Implications: Each year, more than 600,000 students enter engineering programs in the United States (Roy, 2019). These students plan to master a challenging skill set that requires them to understand how to model and analyze real world problems. Frustrating core course experiences can dissuade students from continuing to pursue an engineering degree and subsequent career (Geisinger & Raman, 2013). These findings provide emerging evidence that gamifying learning can be useful for all students taking Statics, but particularly for women.