An Ethnographic Study of Student Use of Online Resources to Improve Student Learning Outcomes

University Of Maryland, College Park, College Park MD

Investigators

Abstract

This project addresses an important and timely topic in undergraduate STEM education, namely, how students should use online resources appropriately to support student learning. Helping students to develop good problem solving skills is an important part of engineering education because it prepares them for careers in the engineering workforce. Technological advances have provided undergraduate engineering students with new ways to collaborate and access online resources. These changes have also created unintended consequences such as the use of online homework solutions that are accessed directly and shared person-to-person. Using solutions inappropriately can create barriers to student learning. The significance of this issue, which has continued unabated with the emergence of new technologies, points to the need to approach this issue from a new direction. This project will use new methods to study how and why students use solutions when studying or solving engineering problems. These research findings will inform the development of instructional interventions and policies that help support engineering students’ learning. The scope of the research and intervention activities includes the study of two high-enrollment introductory engineering courses, mechanics and thermodynamics, that reach a large number of students in every subfield of engineering. The project will use innovative qualitative research methods to advance the field’s understanding of how and why students use homework solutions and to study the efficacy of instructional interventions and policy changes aimed at reducing inappropriate use of solutions. It is expected that these interventions and policies will improve student learning outcomes. The project team will collect data through student interviews as well as audio and video journals to develop rich descriptions of students' experiences getting through coursework. Ethnographic methods will be used to study how students navigate the cultures of the courses and the broader engineering programs they encounter, which will help elucidate patterns in students’ justifications for using solutions and how students use them to learn. These patterns will inform instructional interventions co-developed with instructors and potential policy changes at the institution. The research findings, instructional interventions, and new policies will be disseminated to engineering faculty at other institutions through a workshop and publications so that other institutions will be able to adopt similar interventions and policies. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.