2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Mastery learning is a pedagogical approach that has been gaining popularity in recent years, especially among courses focusing on teaching engineering fundamentals such as mechanics and thermodynamics. While it can be implemented in many ways, the defining feature of mastery learning is an approach to assessment that requires students to demonstrate thorough understanding (mastery) of key course concepts while also providing them with opportunities to re-test concepts that have not yet been mastered. For instructors, mastery learning helps ensure that students who pass the course do so with the capability to perform the most important course skills, rather than with a half-baked understanding of everything the course covers. For students, mastery learning offers clear expectations and a degree of control over their assessment schedule and ultimately their course grade.

This paper describes the implementation of mastery learning for a required sophomore-level Introduction to Materials Engineering course in the context of a general engineering degree program at a liberal arts college. Because of the unique context in which this course is offered, it differs from a standard introductory materials course in several ways. These include taking a bigger picture approach to the field (contrasting with the more traditional focus on metallurgical specifics), working from properties down to microstructures, and incorporating a course project on sustainability in materials selection. This paper discusses the motivation for these pedagogical choices and how the specific implementation of mastery learning incorporates these aspects. It first provides a review of mastery learning in engineering courses with brief discussion of its advantages and disadvantages. Then, the implementation of mastery learning in the current context is described, starting with the big picture pedagogical goals and working down from there to the determination of learning outcomes and the practical details of assessment. Finally, the course instructor offers some perspective on this approach, including student perceptions solicited through an end-of-term survey.