The Effectiveness of Weekly Supervised Homework Sessions in an Aerospace Structural Mechanics Course

Abstract

AAE 35200 is an aerospace structural mechanics course for third-year students majoring in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at Purdue University. In AAE 35200, students were given the opportunity to attend weekly optional one-hour supervised homework sessions instructed by a graduate teaching assistant (TA) during the Fall 2015 semester. The contents of the supervised homework session included the theoretical background and technical details about the assigned homework problems, knowledge beyond the original context of the problems, and alternative approaches to solve the problems. In this study, we investigated the effect of the supervised homework sessions on students' homework and exam scores. We found that the supervised homework sessions had the most influence on the homework scores of the students with low native ability. Also, as the byproduct of the study, we investigated the effect of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)-Math scores on students' academic performance. We found that the SAT-Math score was not correlated with the exam score. In order for us to rigorously study the effect of student attributes (independent variables) on the academic performance (dependent variables), we performed an analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) on the experimental data, controlling for student attributes. We found that the attendance and interaction between SATMath and attendance were the two terms that influenced the homework scores the most.

Brief Discussion of the Teaching Reform Research in Application-Oriented Colleges--A Case Study of Introduction Class of Structural Mechanics

“…In order to improve the comprehension, application and engineering practice ability, the practical training such as structural design contest and bending moment diagram competition are introduced in extra-curricular teaching [8,9]. For the structural design contest, students are required to use the specified materials to make structure according to the requirements of the proposition.…”

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“…In order to improve the comprehension, application and engineering practice ability, the practical training such as structural design contest and bending moment diagram competition are introduced in extra-curricular teaching [7,8].…”

A System-of-Systems Inspired Framework to Enhance Aerospace Structural Mechanics Education

“…When we observe students in the ZPD domain, as opposed to the top tier, the ZPD group often contains students with lower native problem-solving abilities [25]. This is an empirical observation during the structural mechanics course's recitation sessions (i.e., instructor-led problem-solving sessions) [26]. Moreover, while working with students during the recitation sessions [27], we observed that a clear and systematic approach, as observed in SoS problems, is essential for those in the ZPD as they struggle with the steps in solving mechanics problems.…”

“…It creates a synergetic learning environment where students are encouraged to collaborate, share ideas, and solve problems. Thus, this will create healthy collaboration among the learners and between students and instructors [26], [27]. Finally, by providing the appropriate level of subject matter based on the ZPD, students can challenge themselves (and the level of challenge is appropriate).…”

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