Strategies to Enhance Learning in a Large Engineering Economics Course: Including Students’ Perceived Values in the Instructional Redesign Process

Purposeful implementation of technology in instructional design presents opportunities to increase institutional efficiency while simultaneously improving instructional quality. This paper presents findings from the implementation of a hybrid/buffet approach in an undergraduate Engineering Economics large course. A Design-Based Research (DBR) approach informed the instructional redesign and measured its effectiveness through multiple iterations, or macro-cycles, of implementation. Overall, pedagogical structure and specific technology solutions applied to each course component are described, as well as preliminary measures of effectiveness and student perception from a pilot offering of the hybrid/buffet course. Encouraged by positive preliminary results, a second implementation informed further study of students’ perceived usefulness, value, and overall impact on their learning of WileyPLUS online tools and their predictive power on students’ overall course performance. These two DBR macro-cycles created a baseline to analyze the impact of future strategies to improve student learning in this course

A Design-Based Research Approach to Refining Pedagogy in Engineering Economics Online Learning

With the implementation of technology in education, educators accept responsibly for ensuring new approaches and tools add value to students’ learning. In this study, we follow a series of design-based research macrocycles (1,2) to monitor the impact of specific technology solutions implemented in the course and their perceived usefulness and value to students. Baseline findings indicated that value and usefulness of Reading assignments, the primary source of content delivery in the digital text, was limited. Since then modifications to both the course assessment structure for reading assignments and digital text itself were implemented. This research will explore the impact of changes to the reading-related assignments and resources. The Reading assignments for each Module remained the same, offering links to specific sections of the digital text. However, we added for each Module a graded multiple-choice Reading Quiz to assess conceptual topics covered in the Reading assignment. Further, the digital text itself was enhanced to include interactive resources beyond the static textual content. Resource enhancements include hyperlink key terms, video lessons, and video examples. Key terms within paragraphs of the digital text are highlighted in blue, and clicking on the blue term displays a definition of the term in a popup window. Video lessons, appearing as a link at the beginning of most text sections, present a brief mini-lecture covering the topics of that text section. Finally, video examples are linked to select text example problems. The example problem is presented in static text form on the screen, and clicking a link opens a video detailing the solution process. Video examples demonstrate the solution process with audio narration and often include multiple solution approaches. Preliminary intermediate results showed that the number of students that used the reading resources significantly increased from 70% in Fall 2012 to 82% in Spring 2013 and to 86% in Fall 2013, X2 (3, N=529) = 11.4, p \u3c .05. However, the perceived mean values for usefulness of readings increased only from 1.8 to 2.1 (with 5 being very useful), which was not a statistically significant increase. On the other hand, the changes tied to practice activities had a statistically significant increase in the perceived usefulness, with an increase of the average values from 3.1 to 3.4, F(3,525) = 2.9, p \u3c .05

Ion-induced kinetic electron emission from HOPG with different surface orientation

Total electron emission yields for impact of \chem{H^+}, \chem{{H_2}^+}, \chem{C^+}, \chem{N^+}, \chem{O^+} and \chem{Ar^+} ions (impact energy 2–10\un{keV}) on clean highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) have been measured. An enhancement in the electron yield of more than a factor of 2 is found when comparing results for differently oriented HOPG surfaces (orientation of the graphite layers with respect to the surface). By analyzing these data we elucidate the influence of electron transport on kinetic electron emission and derive direction-dependent mean escape depths for low-energy electrons

Molecular projectile effects for kinetic electron emission from carbon- and metal-surfaces bombarded by slow hydrogen ions

7 páginas, 3 figuras, 2 tablas.-- et al.Total yields for kineticelectronemission (KE) have been determined for impact of hydrogen monomer-, dimer- and trimer-ions (impact energy <10 keV) on atomically clean surfaces of carbon-fiber inforced graphite used as first-wall armour in magnetic fusion devices. The data are compared with KE yields for impact of same projectileions on atomically clean highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and polycrystalline gold. We discuss KE yields for the different targets if bombarded by equally fast molecular and atomic ions in view to “projectilemoleculareffects” (different yields per proton for equally fast atomic and molecularions), which are expected from calculated electronic projectile energy losses in these target materials.The work was supported by Kommission zur Koordination der Kernfusionsforschung in Österreich (project no. 2000/1) and Austrian FWF, and in part by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnologia (BFM2001-0076). R.D.M. acknowledges financial support by the Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia (Gipuzkoa Fellows Program), and HP.W.Peer reviewe