Implementation of Visual Supplements to Strengthen Pedagogical Practices and Enhance the Physical Understanding of Fundamental Concepts in Engineering Mechanics

Mechanical Engineering is a discipline highly dependent on designing and implementing mechanical, thermal, or energy systems for the improvement of the human environment. Thus being a proficient Engineer involves having a strong mathematical background and a thorough physical understanding on how systems operate in order to apply analytical or numerical schemes during a design process. However, most of the students’ academic development is centered on deriving tedious equations and solving textbook problems, which are difficult to visualize and physically understand, and cloud their intuitive nature to comprehend a problem on its entirety. These conventional approaches and methods of disseminating content in the classroom have a tendency to exclude diverse learning styles of students. Thus, teaching schemes solely focused on covering themes verbatim from a textbook or paraphrasing from a slide presentation are hindering the students’ ability to understand and apply all the engineering principles in design projects. Such technical concern is observed during their senior year Capstone Design course, in which the tendency is to solely utilize engineering software to obtain calculations rather than applying rigorous mathematical techniques to validate their results. In this study, such predicament is addressed by strengthening pedagogical practices through the incorporation of visual supplements during lectures as early as the students’ first Mechanical Engineering course called Engineering Mechanics, and thus enhance the physical understanding of fundamental concepts. In particular, three visual sensor-based supplements were created: crane model, Baltimore-bridge model, and a four-cylinder engine model. The uniqueness of such models is the incorporation of a real-time monitoring system which allows the students to visualize their behavior and correlate between theoretical concepts and physical applications. In addition, results indicate that students enhance their perspective regarding design considerations, calculation requirements, sources of failure, cost reduction, and areas of improvement within the structure or mechanism

RANCANG BANGUN MULTIMEDIA BERBASIS GAME PETUALANGAN DENGAN MODEL PROBLEM SOLVING UNTUK MENINGKATKAN PEMAHAMAN SISWA SMK PADA MATA PELAJARAN JARINGAN DASAR

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengembangkan multimedia pembelajaran interaktif berbasis game petualangan dengan model Problem Solving dan mengetahui seberapa besar pengaruh penggunaan multimedia tersebut terhadap peningkatan pemahaman siswa pada mata pelajaran jaringan dasar materi topologi jaringan serta mengetahui respon siswa terhadap multimedia yang dibangun. Subjek penelitan adalah siswa kelas X TKJ SMK Negeri 5 Bandung. Langkah-langkah pada multimedia ini mengacu pada fase-fase model pembelajaran Prolem solving. Pengembangan multimedia ini dilakukan melalui tahap penelitian dan pengumpulan informasi, perencanaan, pengembangan produk, uji coba dan penilaian. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian Research and Development (R&D), sesuai dengan tujuan penelitian yaitu untuk membangun multimedia pembelajaran. Setelah multimedia dinyatakan layak digunakan, kemudian multimedia digunakan sebagai media pembelajaran pada mata pelajaran jaringan dasar, kemudian untuk mengetahui peningkatan pemahaman digunakan instrumen tes berupa pretest dan posttest yang kemudian dicari nilai gain, untuk mengetahui respon siswa digunakan angket yang didalamnya terdapat aspek rekayasa perangkat lunak, pembelajaran, dan komunikasi visual. Hasil penelitian ini adalah: 1) Multimedia pembelajaran dinyatakan layak dan di kategorikan sangat baik berdasarkan validasi ahli media dengan presentase 76% dan ahli materi dengan persentase 88,75%, 2) Peningkatan pemahaman siswa dengan menggunakan multimedia memperoleh rata-rata nilai gain sebesar 0,73 dan dikategori tinggi pengaruhnya terhadap pembelajaran jaringan dasar. 3) respon positif dari siswa dengan rata-rata presentase 83,59% yang dikategorikan sangat baik.;--- This research aims to develop a multimedia interactive learning model, adventure based game with Problem Solving model, and to determine how much does the usage of multimedia can affect to the improvement of student’s cognitive (comprehension) on the subjects matter of basic network topology of the network and to know the student’s response to the multimedia that is built. Research subjects are class X TKJ SMK Negeri 5 Bandung.Stages in this multimedia refer to problem solving learning model phases. This multimedia development process is done through careful research implementation and information gathering, planning, product development, trials and assessment. This study applies Research and Development (R & D) methods, corresponds to the goal of this research, to develop multimedia learning. After this multimedia is declared eligible to be used, then it will be applied as a medium for learning with subject: basic network. To determine cognitive enhancement of the students, we use test instruments such as pretest and posttest, which after that we determine gain value. To reveal students’s responses, we use questionnaires in which contained aspects such as software engineering, learning/educating, and visual communication. The conclusions of this research are: 1) Multimedia learning is declared to be feasible/proper and cathegorized as very good based to media expert’s validation appraisal with percentage of 76% and subject matter’s expert appraisal with percentage of 88.75%, 2) The increasing of students’s comprehension or understanding by using multimedia attained average score of gain at 0.73, and this is categorized as to have high influence on learning in basic network course. 3) Positive response from students with an average percentage of 83.59% which is considered to be very good

Understanding requirements engineering process: a challenge for practice and education

Reviews of the state of the professional practice in Requirements Engineering (RE) stress that the RE process is both complex and hard to describe, and suggest there is a significant difference between competent and "approved" practice. "Approved" practice is reflected by (in all likelihood, in fact, has its genesis in) RE education, so that the knowledge and skills taught to students do not match the knowledge and skills required and applied by competent practitioners. A new understanding of the RE process has emerged from our recent study. RE is revealed as inherently creative, involving cycles of building and major reconstruction of the models developed, significantly different from the systematic and smoothly incremental process generally described in the literature. The process is better characterised as highly creative, opportunistic and insight driven. This mismatch between approved and actual practice provides a challenge to RE education - RE requires insight and creativity as well as technical knowledge. Traditional learning models applied to RE focus, however, on notation and prescribed processes acquired through repetition. We argue that traditional learning models fail to support the learning required for RE and propose both a new model based on cognitive flexibility and a framework for RE education to support this model

Learning requirements engineering within an engineering ethos

An interest in educating software developers within an engineering ethos may not align well with the characteristics of the discipline, nor address the underlying concerns of software practitioners. Education for software development needs to focus on creativity, adaptability and the ability to transfer knowledge. A change in the way learning is undertaken in a core Software Engineering unit within a university's engineering program demonstrates one attempt to provide students with a solid foundation in subject matter while at the same time exposing them to these real-world characteristics. It provides students with a process to deal with problems within a metacognitive-rich framework that makes complexity apparent and lets students deal with it adaptively. The results indicate that, while the approach is appropriate, student-learning characteristics need to be investigated further, so that the two aspects of learning may be aligned more closely

Unifying an Introduction to Artificial Intelligence Course through Machine Learning Laboratory Experiences

This paper presents work on a collaborative project funded by the National Science Foundation that incorporates machine learning as a unifying theme to teach fundamental concepts typically covered in the introductory Artificial Intelligence courses. The project involves the development of an adaptable framework for the presentation of core AI topics. This is accomplished through the development, implementation, and testing of a suite of adaptable, hands-on laboratory projects that can be closely integrated into the AI course. Through the design and implementation of learning systems that enhance commonly-deployed applications, our model acknowledges that intelligent systems are best taught through their application to challenging problems. The goals of the project are to (1) enhance the student learning experience in the AI course, (2) increase student interest and motivation to learn AI by providing a framework for the presentation of the major AI topics that emphasizes the strong connection between AI and computer science and engineering, and (3) highlight the bridge that machine learning provides between AI technology and modern software engineering

A literature review of expert problem solving using analogy

We consider software project cost estimation from a problem solving perspective. Taking a cognitive psychological approach, we argue that the algorithmic basis for CBR tools is not representative of human problem solving and this mismatch could account for inconsistent results. We describe the fundamentals of problem solving, focusing on experts solving ill-defined problems. This is supplemented by a systematic literature review of empirical studies of expert problem solving of non-trivial problems. We identified twelve studies. These studies suggest that analogical reasoning plays an important role in problem solving, but that CBR tools do not model this in a biologically plausible way. For example, the ability to induce structure and therefore find deeper analogies is widely seen as the hallmark of an expert. However, CBR tools fail to provide support for this type of reasoning for prediction. We conclude this mismatch between experts’ cognitive processes and software tools contributes to the erratic performance of analogy-based prediction

Teaching programming with computational and informational thinking

Computers are the dominant technology of the early 21st century: pretty well all aspects of economic, social and personal life are now unthinkable without them. In turn, computer hardware is controlled by software, that is, codes written in programming languages. Programming, the construction of software, is thus a fundamental activity, in which millions of people are engaged worldwide, and the teaching of programming is long established in international secondary and higher education. Yet, going on 70 years after the first computers were built, there is no well-established pedagogy for teaching programming. There has certainly been no shortage of approaches. However, these have often been driven by fashion, an enthusiastic amateurism or a wish to follow best industrial practice, which, while appropriate for mature professionals, is poorly suited to novice programmers. Much of the difficulty lies in the very close relationship between problem solving and programming. Once a problem is well characterised it is relatively straightforward to realise a solution in software. However, teaching problem solving is, if anything, less well understood than teaching programming. Problem solving seems to be a creative, holistic, dialectical, multi-dimensional, iterative process. While there are well established techniques for analysing problems, arbitrary problems cannot be solved by rote, by mechanically applying techniques in some prescribed linear order. Furthermore, historically, approaches to teaching programming have failed to account for this complexity in problem solving, focusing strongly on programming itself and, if at all, only partially and superficially exploring problem solving. Recently, an integrated approach to problem solving and programming called Computational Thinking (CT) (Wing, 2006) has gained considerable currency. CT has the enormous advantage over prior approaches of strongly emphasising problem solving and of making explicit core techniques. Nonetheless, there is still a tendency to view CT as prescriptive rather than creative, engendering scholastic arguments about the nature and status of CT techniques. Programming at heart is concerned with processing information but many accounts of CT emphasise processing over information rather than seeing then as intimately related. In this paper, while acknowledging and building on the strengths of CT, I argue that understanding the form and structure of information should be primary in any pedagogy of programming

Developing digital literacy in construction management education: a design thinking led approach

Alongside the digital innovations in AEC (Architectural, Engineering and Construction) practice, are calls for a new type of digital literacy, including a new information-based literacy informed by creativity, critical analysis and the theoretical and practical knowledge of the construction profession. This paper explores the role of design thinking and the promotion of abductive problem situations when developing digital literacies in construction education. The impacts of advanced digital modelling technologies on construction management practices and education are investigated before an examination of design thinking, the role of abductive reasoning and the rise of normative models of design thinking workflows. The paper then explores the role that design thinking can play in the development of new digital literacies in contemporary construction studies. A three-part framework for the implementation of a design thinking approach to construction is presented. The paper closes with a discussion of the importance of models of design thinking for learning and knowledge production, emphasising how construction management education can benefit from them

A3 thinking approach to support knowledge-driven design

Problem solving is a crucial skill in product development. Any lack of effective decision making at an early design stage will affect productivity and increase costs and the lead time for the other stages of the product development life cycle. This could be improved by the use of a simple and informative approach which allows the designers and engineers to make decisions in product design by providing useful knowledge. This paper presents a novel A3 thinking approach to problem solving in product design, and provides a new A3 template which is structured from a combination of customised elements (e.g. the 8 Disciplines approach) and reflection practice. This approach was validated using a case study in the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) design issue for an automotive electrical sub-assembly product. The main advantage of the developed approach is to create and capture the useful knowledge in a simple manner. Moreover, the approach provides a reflection section allowing the designers to turn their experience of design problem solving into proper learning and to represent their understanding of the design solution. These will be systematically structured (e.g. as a design checklist) to be circulated and shared as a reference for future design projects. Thus, the recurrence of similar design problems will be prevented and will aid the designers in adopting the expected EMC test results

A collaborative approach to learning programming: a hybrid learning model

The use of cooperative working as a means of developing collaborative skills has been recognised as vital in programming education. This paper presents results obtained from preliminary work to investigate the effectiveness of Pair Programming as a collaborative learning strategy and also its value towards improving programming skills within the laboratory. The potential of Problem Based Learning as a means of further developing cooperative working skills along with problem solving skills is also examined and a hybrid model encompassing both strategies outlined