2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The Power of Movement: Exploring Gestures as Tools for Engineering Students Conceptualizing Statistics

This proposed full paper will present the results of empirical research. This study employs a multiple-case study approach that examines first-year engineering students’ conceptual understanding and associated gestures for central tendency, variance, and linear regression, which are critical concepts in statistics and engineering education. Prior research has demonstrated that statistics education is fundamental to both STEM and Non-STEM careers and is relevant to peoples’ everyday lives including personal choices and workplace success across professions. However, people tend to struggle with interpreting, communicating, and applying statistics in professional settings and their daily lives. One way to address this is to design opportunities where students’ learning of statistics is meaningful and connected to their personal experiences. The embodied learning literature shows increasing evidence that gestures are particularly useful in accomplishing this and promoting learning, transfer, and retention. Importantly, a handful of studies have documented the benefits from both instructors’ and students’ gestures in learning statistics. However, these studies do not focus on the fundamental statistical concepts of central tendency, variance, and linear regression or specifically on how engineering students conceptualize these concepts. Additionally, education in the post-pandemic age is no longer limited to in-person learning, but rather capitalizes on the advantages of accessibility, reach, and flexibility that online and asynchronous methods offer in higher education. The challenge lies in bringing the benefits of effective embodied design practices used in in-person educational settings to remote and asynchronous learning. There is sparse research on how students leverage their body movement and actions when reasoning about statistical concepts and even less on how to apply these into online and asynchronous settings. This study uses video recordings of semi-structured interviews that focus on conceptual understanding of the target concepts. Thematic analysis will be used to identify key themes that emerge across and within topics from the qualitative data. Students’ spontaneous gestures will be coded using gesture categories in combination with their speech to connect gestures to themes and identify students’ representations of their understanding of central tendency, variation, and linear regression. These results will seek to inform future studies on the development of gesture-based Digital Video Learning Environments to support engineering students' learning of statistics. This future research aims to identify how students respond to cueing and changes in their conceptual understanding.

Authors

Mr. Junior Anthony Bennett http://orcid.org/https://0009-0004-6441-3805 Purdue University at West Lafayette (COE) [biography]

I am a Graduate Research Assistant, and Lynn Fellow pursuing an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Engineering Education majoring in Ecological Sciences and Engineering (ESE) at Purdue University, West Lafayette IN. I completed a Bachelor of Education in TVET Industrial Technology – Electrical from the University of Technology, Jamaica, and a Master of Science in Manufacturing Engineering Systems from the Western Illinois University. I am a Certified Manufacturing Engineer with the Society for Manufacturing Engineers and has over a decade professional experience in higher education across Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
Karle Flanagan University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign [biography]

Karle Flanagan is a Senior Instructor of Statistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has taught introductory statistics to thousands of students at UIUC since Spring of 2014. She also serves as the MS advisor for the statistics dep
Prof. Michelle Perry http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4422-0454 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Professor Michelle Perry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Michelle Perry is Professor of Educational Psychology and Affiliate of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her
Dr. Jason W. Morphew http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5971-214X Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI) [biography]

Dr. Jason Morphew is an assistant professor at Purdue University in the School of Engineering Education. He serves as the director of undergraduate curriculum and advanced learning technologies for SCALE and is affiliated with the INSPIRE research institute for Pre-College Engineering and the Center for Advancing the Teaching and Learning of STEM. He serves as the course curator for the Freshman semester engineering design course that serves over 2,500 freshman engineering students every year. His award-winning teaching has been recognized for his teaching in the First Year Engineering program and is the Dr. Morphew has also recently taught courses focused on the pedagogy of integrated STEM and educational research methodology. Dr. Morphew's research focuses on the application of principles of learning derived from cognitive science and the learning sciences to the design and evaluate technology-enhanced learning environments. More specifically, his research examines the impact of technologies such as augmented-reality, gesture-based digital environments, microelectronics, and artificial intelligence on learning, interest, identity, motivation, and decision making in STEM. His research views learning through self-regulated learning, constructivist, and embodied cognition lenses.
Tiffany Reyes-Denis http://orcid.org/https://0009-0005-5608-149X University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Sourabh Garg University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Mx. Logan Hillary Lauren http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2158-4706 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign [biography]

Logan is a doctoral student in Curriculum and Instruction. Their research interests include equity in science education, sign language and cognition, embodied learning, and epistemologies of marginalized identities including people who are deaf/disabled and/or transgender. They have a bachelor's and master's in biology and a certificate in graphic design and digital illustration. They have over ten years of experience in content development for science classrooms, zoos, educational games, and freelance writing and design.
Shereen Oca Beilstein
Robb Lindgren University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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