2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This full length, empirical research paper investigates undergraduate engineering students’ emerging conceptualizations of torsion-related concepts for the relations between the functions and behaviors of materials to their structures, both observable and unobservable. While cognitive processes are unavailable for direct inspection, advances in the Learning Sciences show that learning in collaborative contexts creates favorable conditions for communicative displays of students’ reasoning and knowledge in transition via speech and co-speech gestures. Analytic tools such as Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) provide visualizations of these conceptual transitions and calculate the degrees to which these changes show statistically reliable evidence of learning. Moreover, ENA can elucidate ways in which traditional engineering assessments often are insufficient- namely, that they: (1) rely primarily on single snapshots of students’ knowledge at a single point in time, thereby neglecting the developmental nature of students’ emerging conceptual understandings; (2) over-emphasize the importance of verbalizable and symbolic ways of expressing knowledge. In effect, this can exclude the nonverbal and embodied ways students express emerging knowledge of complex, dynamic phenomena.
The current study explores the potential of this approach by considering how gestures and speech during collaborative discourse can reveal transitions in mechanical engineering students’ understanding of structure-function relationships governing torsion. Qualitative and quantitative analyses focused on four students (two dyads) from a Mechanics of Materials lab course that offered a hands-on environment to observe, physically experience, and mathematically model torsional loads. Data were obtained from videos during a pre-lab assessment as well as a collaborative torsional testing lab activity.
Within a grounded and embodied cognition framework, we applied ENA to students’ collaborative, multimodal discourse about the mechanics of torsion. We hypothesized (H1) that analysis of students’ collaborative discourse will reveal frequent use of gesture alongside speech that describes the underlying structures that give rise to functions and behaviors during torsion. We also hypothesized (H2) that in collaboration, students’ reasonings will shift from expressing the underlying structure towards functions and behaviors, evidenced by their gesture and speech.
ENA results from coded transcripts showed changes in students’ conceptualizations, emphasizing the importance of including both gesture and speech as a means for accurately assess students’ emerging understandings. In support of H1 (argumentation and negotiation) and H2 (common ground), student reasoning initially depicted and described the structure (i.e., static) of torsional loads, and after establishing common ground, students’ reasoning demonstrably shifted towards a focus on functionality (i.e., dynamic), revealing a shift in their epistemology.
This pilot study offers a theoretically operationalized approach for improving formative assessment practices in engineering education. Together, ENA’s use as a formative assessment of students’ multimodal expressions of their understandings during collaboration provides a more comprehensive evaluation of students’ reasoning and learning than traditional forms of assessment. We identify initial limitations, future work, and provide promising guidelines for improving formative assessments of students’ emerging conceptual understanding of complex engineering phenomena.