2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: Refining a Rigid Body Dynamics Concept Inventory with Expert Feedback and Preliminary Student Testing

Following the initial development of a new Rigid Body Dynamics Concept Inventory (RBDCI), our ongoing efforts have focused on refining the instrument through targeted feedback collection. The two key sources of feedback include a survey from experts in the field and initial testing of the concept questions with students. The expert survey gathered feedback on the 11 proposed concepts identified through our previous efforts and the original DCI Delphi study results. Experts were asked to rate the importance of each concept and estimate the percentage of students who struggle with each one. These results provided valuable insights for refining and narrowing down the number of concepts tested in the RBDCI.

Additionally, we piloted subsets of the proposed concept questions with a diverse group of students from various universities. The students answered all questions for each subset, and for select questions, they also provided written responses, rated their confidence, and assessed the perceived effectiveness of the questions. The analysis of the student results identified areas of strength and weakness in the current questions. The results revealed misunderstandings related to problem statements and figures, and improvements were made to questions that involved multiple concepts. It was important to refine each question to effectively target only one specific rigid body dynamics concept.

The combination of expert feedback and student testing will continue to improve and lead to a finalized RBDCI that can be used by all mechanics instructors. Our current work involves further iterations of student testing with problem subsets to continue refining and clarifying the questions. This paper presents the key findings from the expert survey and preliminary student testing, highlights the changes informed by these results, and outlines the path forward toward a validated Rigid Body Dynamics Concept Inventory.

Authors

Dr. Amie Baisley University of Florida [biography]

Amie Baisley is currently an Instructional Assistant Professor at the University of Florida teaching primarily 2nd year mechanics courses. Her teaching and research interests are alternative pedagogies, mastery-based learning and assessment, student persistence in their first two years, and faculty development.
Dr. Brian P. Self California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo [biography]

Brian Self obtained his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Engineering Mechanics from Virginia Tech, and his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Utah. He worked in the Air Force Research Laboratories before teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy for sev
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. He loves teaching all of the basic mechanics courses, and of course his Vibrations and Finite Element Analysis courses.
Dr. Phillip Cornwell U.S. Air Force Academy [biography]

Phillip Cornwell is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the United States Air Force Academy and an Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1989, and his current interests include structural dynamics, structural health monitoring, and undergraduate engineering education. Dr. Cornwell received the SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award in 1992, the Dean’s Outstanding Teacher Award at Rose-Hulman in 2000, and the Rose-Hulman Board of Trustees' Outstanding Scholar Award in 2001. He was one of the developers of the Rose-Hulman Sophomore Engineering Curriculum and the Dynamics Concept Inventory. Additionally, he is a co-author of Vector Mechanics for Engineers: Dynamics, by Beer, Johnston, Cornwell, and Self. In 2019, Dr. Cornwell received the Archie Higdon Distinguished Educator Award from the Mechanics Division of ASEE, and in 2023, he was honored with the Ralph Coats Roe Award from the Mechanical Engineering Division of ASEE.
Dr. Geoffrey Recktenwald http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2003-4158 Michigan State University [biography]

Geoff Recktenwald is a member of the teaching faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University. Geoff holds a PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University and Bachelor degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Physics from Cedarville University. His research interests are focused on best practices for student learning and student success. He is currently developing and researching SMART assessment, a modified mastery learning pedagogy for problem based courses. He created a multi-year integrated system design (ISD) project for mechanical engineering students. He is a mentor to mechanical engineering graduate teaching fellows and actively champions the adoption and use of teaching technologies.

Note

The full paper will be available to logged in and registered conference attendees once the conference starts on June 22, 2025, and to all visitors after the conference ends on June 25, 2025