Improving Students’ Advanced Manufacturing Skills with Mastery Learning

Piedmont Virginia Community College, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

Mastery learning provides students with an opportunity to learn new skills at their own pace. Given sufficient time and instructional support, students can demonstrate a high level of achievement for a set of skills. Industry demand for skilled technicians in advanced manufacturing continues to grow as manufacturers adopt new technologies to improve productivity and product quality. This project will implement mastery learning in a core set of courses to address industry’s need for advanced manufacturing technicians who have the necessary foundational skills and hands-on experience to be successful in the technician workforce. A dual enrollment program based on mastery learning for regional high school students will provide a pathway for students into the advanced manufacturing program. The project team will assess the impact of mastery learning on student learning outcomes and the effectiveness of recruiting activities for high school students. Project results will be disseminated regionally through the state’s community college system to instructors in other manufacturing programs. Lessons learned from implementing mastery learning will be presented at national conferences focused on technical education. Regional manufacturers recently collaborated on identifying foundational skills for students in an existing advanced manufacturing program at Piedmont Virginia Community College. The goals of this project are to: 1) improve student learning outcomes for foundational skills in advanced manufacturing; 2) increase the number of graduates from the advanced manufacturing program; and 3) help students understand the workplace environment at regional manufacturers. Mastery learning will be implemented in six core courses using a flipped classroom approach with hands-on learning for advanced manufacturing technologies. Courses will be structured as a sequence of modules that students complete at their own pace. Each module builds on the content of previous modules while introducing more advanced concepts. Students must achieve the learning objectives for a module before moving to the next module. This project will provide professional development for high school teachers to implement the modules in four dual enrollment courses. The project team will partner with existing clubs, organizations, and programs to develop recruiting activities that will focus on broadening participation in the advanced manufacturing program. Students will have opportunities to engage with regional industry through structured activities such as site visits and job shadowing so that students can learn about workplace practices. Project results will provide insights for the technical education community on the effectiveness of mastery learning in advanced manufacturing programs. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced technology fields that drive the nation’s economy. 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.