2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

It is common knowledge that engineering mechanics courses in Statics and Dynamics often serve as “gatekeepers”, delaying or preventing many students from progressing towards an engineering degree. In Fall 2019, to address unfavorable DFW rates, the department implemented a one hour lab session in each course to provide additional practice on key concepts. Within the lab section, faculty lead directed problem solving to supplement the weekly lessons. Additionally, an upperclassman Student Instructor is assigned to the course to provide a second person in the classroom to assist during the problem solving assignments.

In Fall 2021, mastery based assessments were introduced in Statics to switch from using primarily exam assessments to using a series of weekly implemented mastery based assessments. Mastery based learning has seen growing adoption in higher education and is recognized as a culturally responsive pedagogical approach. Mastery based assessments were also used in Dynamics during the Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters.

In Spring 2022, experiential learning modules were introduced to both Statics and Dynamics labs to provide hands-on experiments to aid students’ comprehension of select problems. The implementation builds upon previous work of using adaptive 3D coordinate models to facilitate hands-on experiential problem-solving in group laboratory sessions. In the first phase of the project, the authors sought to develop and construct the physical units to use in the modules and to identify the topics in the courses the modules should cover. In the second phase of the project, the authors have worked with other faculty teaching the courses to implement the experiential learning modules. These experiential learning modules have continued in the Statics course and have been used intermittently in Dynamics.

The following paper will document assessment results over the last 9 years from the beginning of the Statics course at the institution through the subsequent implementation of the (i) additional lab, (ii) mastery based assessments, and (iii) experiential learning modules. Departmental data from Statics will be reviewed for student success rates. Course equity data will be presented using a proportionality index to see if these changes have led to disproportionate improvements for underrepresented students, particularly for Latinx/é students at a Hispanic Serving Institution.