44 research outputs found
Work in Progress: Rigorously Assessing the Anecdotal Evidence of Increased Student Persistence in an Active, Blended, and Collaborative Mechanical Engineering Environment
This work in progress describes an ongoing study of an active, blended, and collaborative (ABC) course environment used in a core mechanical engineering course. This course has built on the growing body of literature citing active learning (Freeman et al., 2014), blended structures (Bowen & Ithaka, 2012), and collaborative engagement (Jeong & Chi, 2007) as positive influences on college and university science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outcomes. For the last six years, “Dynamics”, a core mechanical engineering course at a large public university, has utilized in-class activities, frequently-watched problem-solving videos, and a collaborative blog space to realize an ABC environment.
On one key metric of course success, the rate of students who drop, fail, or withdraw from (DFW), the course has experienced near-constant improvements since the ABC structures were introduced. In this study, the authors utilize rigorous longitudinal methods to determine whether this drop in DFW rates can be directly attributed to increased implementation of ABC features. The authors hypothesize that as instructors become accustomed to the ABC environment and increase the level of in-class activity, use of blended resources, and collaboration, the likelihood of DFW in each subsequent year would drop. However, in the same time period, each subsequent class entered with higher levels of performance on proxy measures for prior knowledge.
We therefore build a logistic regression model to predict individual-level DFW and determine whether the anecdotal drops in DFW that we observe can be attributed to the expansion of the ABC environment. More specifically, we predict likelihood of DFW based on students’ prior knowledge (grade in the preceding course, SAT math score), key demographics (gender, race/ethnicity), the semester and year they took Dynamics, their instructor, their year in school, and their major. We test for year fixed effects {year_t, t = 1, 2, ..., 7} to determine whether odds ratios for DFW consistently and significantly decrease over time. We also test for instructor effects, in particular for differences between the instructors who were involved in the design and development of the ABC environment and more independent instructors who only partially implemented the ABC course components. We anticipate results that will provide more rigorous, less biased, and efficient estimates for the individual- and class-level components that explain variance in DFW rates. These results would provide immediate implications for the next phase of our work, as we assess the next on-term implementation of the course in 2016. Our findings would also have long-term significance for other classes in mechanical engineering and related disciplines and for classes at other institutions that are considering implementing a comprehensive ABC learning environment
Transforming a Dynamics Course to an Active, Blended, and Collaborative Format: Focus on the Faculty
Mechanical engineering programs are increasingly applying educational research by transforming courses to be more interactive and to use a blend of online and face-to-face materials. However, the process of an existing course adopting these new practices is not well studied, and even less is understood about the faculty experience from on-boarding to delivery of a new curriculum or pedagogy. In this study, we follow the translation of an active, blended, and collaborative (ABC) curriculum for a core dynamics course from a large public university (where the ABC curriculum was developed) to a small private university. We use interpretive phenomenology to focus on the lived experience of the instructor newly implementing these course materials, format, and pedagogical approach. Specifically, we address the following research questions: (1) What is the lived experience of a mechanical engineering instructor at a different institution as she adopts and adapts the provided materials and format? (2) How does the experience of this instructor evolve throughout the semester? We use rich qualitative data to understand the experience of the instructor, who taught this course in its prior format and, in Fall 2015, taught the “off-term” core dynamics course via the new ABC structure. Through weekly reflection prompts, pre- and post-semester interviews, and supplementary process data (e.g., notes of weekly meetings between the new implementer and ABC team at the large public university), we describe and characterize the multi-faceted instructor experience. This includes her experience learning about the curriculum and online tools, implementing the class and adjusting her teaching practices, and assessing her students’ engagement with the course and understanding of dynamics concepts. Our findings suggest further areas of inquiry for studies of faculty practices around curriculum adoption, including probing opportunities for cross-institutional collaborations to share materials and transform courses, interrogating variation in mechanical engineering department and student cultures, and studying sources of faculty development and support throughout the course transformation process
Analyzing an Abbreviated Dynamics Concept Inventory and Its Role as an Instrument for Assessing Emergent Learning Pedagogies
The Dynamics Concept Inventory (DCI) is a validated assessment tool commonly used to evaluate student growth within core, gateway-level mechanics courses. This research explored the evaluative use of this tool within the context of Freeform – an emergent course system that buttresses active class meetings with blended and collaborative virtual learning environments, themselves founded upon extensive multimedia content and interactive forums – at Purdue University. The paper specifically considers a number of related issues including: (i) the thoughtful development (via expert content validation) and statistical reliability of an abbreviated DCI instrument, which is more amenable to in-class implementation than the much longer full DCI; (ii) the correlation of abbreviated-DCI performance with exam scores and final course grades for a dynamics course using the Freeform framework with an emphasis on both conceptual understanding and traditional problem-solving skills; and (iii) various inter-section performance metrics in a preliminary study on how an implementation of the abbreviated-DCI may help elucidate the impact of the instructor within the Freeform framework. The results of these analyses supported the validity and reliability of the abbreviated DCI tool, and demonstrated its usefulness in a formal research setting. The preliminary study suggested that the Freeform framework might normalize differences in instructor pedagogical choices and student performance across class sections. These findings indicate that the abbreviated DCI holds promise as a research instrument and lay the groundwork for future inquiry into the impact of the Freeform instructional framework on students and instructors alike
LSST Science Book, Version 2.0
A survey that can cover the sky in optical bands over wide fields to faint
magnitudes with a fast cadence will enable many of the exciting science
opportunities of the next decade. The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
will have an effective aperture of 6.7 meters and an imaging camera with field
of view of 9.6 deg^2, and will be devoted to a ten-year imaging survey over
20,000 deg^2 south of +15 deg. Each pointing will be imaged 2000 times with
fifteen second exposures in six broad bands from 0.35 to 1.1 microns, to a
total point-source depth of r~27.5. The LSST Science Book describes the basic
parameters of the LSST hardware, software, and observing plans. The book
discusses educational and outreach opportunities, then goes on to describe a
broad range of science that LSST will revolutionize: mapping the inner and
outer Solar System, stellar populations in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies,
the structure of the Milky Way disk and halo and other objects in the Local
Volume, transient and variable objects both at low and high redshift, and the
properties of normal and active galaxies at low and high redshift. It then
turns to far-field cosmological topics, exploring properties of supernovae to
z~1, strong and weak lensing, the large-scale distribution of galaxies and
baryon oscillations, and how these different probes may be combined to
constrain cosmological models and the physics of dark energy.Comment: 596 pages. Also available at full resolution at
http://www.lsst.org/lsst/sciboo
A very energetic supernova associated with the gamma-ray burst of 29 March 2003
Over the past five years evidence has mounted that long-duration (> 2 s)
gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)--the most brilliant of all astronomical
explosions--signal the collapse of massive stars in our Universe. This evidence
was originally based on the probable association of one unusual GRB with a
supernova, but now includes the association of GRBs with regions of massive
star formation in distant galaxies, the appearance of supernova-like 'bumps' in
the optical afterglow light curves of several bursts and lines of freshly
synthesized elements in the spectra of a few X-ray afterglows. These
observations support, but do not yet conclusively demonstrate, the idea that
long-duration GRBs are associated with the deaths of massive stars, presumably
arising from core collapse. Here we report evidence that a very energetic
supernova (a hypernova) was temporally and spatially coincident with a GRB at
redshift z = 0.1685. The timing of the supernova indicates that it exploded
within a few days of the GRB, strongly suggesting that core-collapse events can
give rise to GRBs, thereby favouring the 'collapsar' model.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figure
Very Early Optical Afterglows of Gamma-Ray Bursts: Evidence for Relative Paucity of Detection
Very early observations with the Swift satellite of gamma-ray burst (GRB)
afterglows reveal that the optical component is not detected in a large number
of cases. This is in contrast to the bright optical flashes previously
discovered in some GRBs (e.g. GRB 990123 and GRB 021211). Comparisons of the
X-ray afterglow flux to the optical afterglow flux and prompt gamma-ray fluence
is used to quantify the seemingly deficient optical, and in some cases X-ray,
light at these early epochs. This comparison reveals that some of these bursts
appear to have higher than normal gamma-ray efficiencies. We discuss possible
mechanisms and their feasibility for explaining the apparent lack of early
optical emission. The mechanisms considered include: foreground extinction,
circumburst absorption, Ly-alpha blanketing and absorption due to high
redshift, low density environments, rapid temporal decay, and intrinsic
weakness of the reverse shock. Of these, foreground extinction, circumburst
absorption, and high redshift provide the best explanations for most of the
non-detections in our sample. There is tentative evidence of suppression of the
strong reverse shock emission. This could be because of a
Poynting-flux-dominated flow or a pure non-relativistic hydrodynamical reverse
shock.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
Manchus and Han
China�s 1911�12 Revolution, which overthrew a 2000-year succession of dynasties, is thought of primarily as a change in governmental style, from imperial to republican, traditional to modern. But given that the dynasty that was overthrown�the Qing�was that of a minority ethnic group that had ruled China�s Han majority for nearly three centuries, and that the revolutionaries were overwhelmingly Han, to what extent was the revolution not only anti-monarchical, but also anti-Manchu?Edward Rhoads explores this provocative and complicated question in Manchus and Han, analyzing the evolution of the Manchus from a hereditary military caste (the �banner people�) to a distinct ethnic group and then detailing the interplay and dialogue between the Manchu court and Han reformers that culminated in the dramatic changes of the early 20th century.Until now, many scholars have assumed that the Manchus had been assimilated into Han culture long before the 1911 Revolution and were no longer separate and distinguishable. But Rhoads demonstrates that in many ways Manchus remained an alien, privileged, and distinct group. Manchus and Han is a pathbreaking study that will forever change the way historians of China view the events leading to the fall of the Qing dynasty. Likewise, it will clarify for ethnologists the unique origin of the Manchus as an occupational caste and their shifting relationship with the Han, from border people to rulers to ruled.Winner of the Joseph Levenson Book Prize for Modern China, sponsored by The China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studie
Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861-1928
China's 1911-12 Revolution, which overthrew a 2000-year succession of dynasties, is thought of primarily as a change in governmental style, from imperial to republican, traditional to modern. But given that the dynasty that was overthrown—the Qing—was that of a minority ethnic group that had ruled China's Han majority for nearly three centuries, and that the revolutionaries were overwhelmingly Han, to what extent was the revolution not only anti-monarchical, but also anti-Manchu? Edward Rhoads explores this provocative and complicated question in Manchus and Han, analyzing the evolution of the Manchus from a hereditary military caste (the "banner people") to a distinct ethnic group and then detailing the interplay and dialogue between the Manchu court and Han reformers that culminated in the dramatic changes of the early 20th century. Until now, many scholars have assumed that the Manchus had been assimilated into Han culture long before the 1911 Revolution and were no longer separate and distinguishable. But Rhoads demonstrates that in many ways Manchus remained an alien, privileged, and distinct group. Manchus and Han is a pathbreaking study that will forever change the way historians of China view the events leading to the fall of the Qing dynasty. Likewise, it will clarify for ethnologists the unique origin of the Manchus as an occupational caste and their shifting relationship with the Han, from border people to rulers to ruled. Winner of the Joseph Levenson Book Prize for Modern China, sponsored by The China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian StudiesThe Transformation Fund of the Kenneth S. and Faye G. Allen Library Endowment at the University of Washington Librarie