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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Longitudinal Success Of Calculus I Reform, Doug Bullock, Kathrine E. Johnson, Janet Callahan
Longitudinal Success Of Calculus I Reform, Doug Bullock, Kathrine E. Johnson, Janet Callahan
Janet M. Callahan
This paper describes the second year of an ongoing project to transform calculus instruction at Boise State University. Over the past several years, Calculus I has undergone a complete overhaul that has involved a movement from a collection of independent, uncoordinated, personalized, lecture-based sections, into a single coherent multi-section course with an activelearning pedagogical approach. The overhaul also significantly impacted the course content and learning objectives. The project is now in its fifth semester and has reached a steady state where the reformed practices are normative within the subset of instructors who might be called upon to teach Calculus I. …
Revealing Student Misconceptions And Instructor Blind Spots With Muddiest Point Formative Feedback, Cindy Waters, Stephen J. Krause, Janet Callahan, Barry Dupen, Mary B. Vollaro, Peggie Weeks
Revealing Student Misconceptions And Instructor Blind Spots With Muddiest Point Formative Feedback, Cindy Waters, Stephen J. Krause, Janet Callahan, Barry Dupen, Mary B. Vollaro, Peggie Weeks
Janet M. Callahan
Of interest to all engineering disciplines, well-designed formative feedback has the potential to enhance both instructor teaching and student learning. Delivering fundamental courses year after year, can ultimately lead faculty to use stale notes or slides from past years. This approach may save time, but does not meet the shifting needs of our students who have high expectations from their instructors. One simple method to improve teaching is to employ muddiest point reflections. Muddiest point reflections involve simply asking students to anonymously reflect on what was “muddy”, i.e. confusing, during class and to rank their level of confusion which not …
Evolution Of A First-Year Engineering Course, Noah Salzman, Janet Callahan, Gary Leroy Hunt, Carol Sevier, Amy J. Moll
Evolution Of A First-Year Engineering Course, Noah Salzman, Janet Callahan, Gary Leroy Hunt, Carol Sevier, Amy J. Moll
Janet M. Callahan
The first-year engineering course at Boise State University has evolved significantly over the past decade as a result of continuous improvement with a particular focus on student retention. The course was originally created in 1999-2001 as an “Introduction to Engineering” course in order to recruit students to one of the fields of engineering, by introducing those fields of engineering as topics across the semester. Over the first ten years, the course continued that introductory-to-field focus while also introducing a significant design element solving openended engineering problems. As a result of a five-year grant aimed toward improving first-year retention, the first-year …