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Enhancing Engineering Education Through Metalearning and Threshold Concepts Approach

This presentation from the Faculty of Science/EAIT Showcase outlines innovative strategies to improve learning outcomes in engineering education. Key objectives include making students' learning behaviors visible and promoting ownership of their learning success through a focus on metalearning. By identifying threshold concepts, educators guide students in mastering essential ideas necessary for advanced learning. Findings reveal that a significant portion of students found reflective activities beneficial, highlighting the impact of understanding over rote memorization in their studies, leading to effective learning practices.

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Enhancing Engineering Education Through Metalearning and Threshold Concepts Approach

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  1. Enabling Visible and Effective Learning in Engineering Teaching and Learning Week Faculty of Science/EAIT Showcase 31 October 2012 Dr David Knight, Dr David Callaghan, A/Prof. Tom Baldock, A/Prof. Mehmet Kizil, Prof. Erik Meyer, Dr Liza O’Moore

  2. Project Elements • Focus on Metalearning • Goal: Make learning behaviours visible for students so they can take more ownership of their own learning success • Threshold Concepts • Goal: Identify the concepts within courses that students must first understand so they can apply that knowledge to address more advanced, end-goal concepts of the course

  3. Metalearning Approach • Administered metalearning instrument in: • ENGG 1400 (n=169, class=423) • MINE 2105 (twice) (n=97, class=143) • CIVL 3130 (n=138, class=277) • CIVL 3140 (twice) (n=204, class=276) • Collected written student reflections in: • MINE 2105 (n=60) • CIVL 3140 (n=147) • Lesson: Tie the activity to some form of assessment

  4. MetalearningActivity

  5. Metalearning Findings • Course level • High variation in students’ approaches to learning • Saw consistencies across cohorts and across disciplines • Student level • 84% who wrote reflections found the activity useful • “It opened my eyes to how important it is to understand a topic rather than struggle with it and just memorise the topic to get by.” • “It has definitely shaped how I listen and take notes in class as well as how much repetition of course work I do in order to understand the content.”

  6. Metalearning Next Steps • Lessons learned • Need a follow-up visit to class to explain interpretation • Students indicate the activity would serve them best if done in Year 1 or early Year 2 • Encourage academics to support learning strategies focused on understanding rather than memorisation

  7. Threshold Concept Approach Academics Analysis of Concepts in a Course Assessments Students

  8. Threshold Concept Approach • Engage academic staff to identify threshold concepts • Two instructors of CIVL 3140 • Develop concept maps • Identified critical flow as a threshold concept

  9. Threshold Concept Approach • Ask students to identify threshold concepts and report on how they learned • Student written reflections (n=147); Hour-long focus group • Concept mapping activity • Learned critical flow in many ways • Variation between learning the concept versus preparing for assessment • Students identified gradually varied flow, hydraulic jump, other/multiple flow types, math as being difficult to grasp • More advanced forms of learning (e.g., linking back to previously understood concepts) for gradually varied flow relative to other concepts

  10. Threshold Concept Approach • Analysis of previous assessments • Completed for CIVL 3130 (n=253) and CIVL 3140 (n=225) • Score distributions • We expect a normal distribution of scores • Bimodal or skewed distributions may suggest that a threshold concept is embedded in a question (some students “get it” and others do not)

  11. Threshold Concept Approach • Analysis of previous assessments Concepts: Critical Flow Channel Choking Rapidly Varied Flow Concepts: Rapidly Varied Flow Hydraulic jump Exam Total

  12. Threshold Concept Approach • Analysis of previous assessments • Multiple choice responses • Group these according to concepts • Result from this: individual feedback on MC questions

  13. Threshold Concept Approach • Analysis of previous assessments Momentum Energy Physical Modelling Channel Flow Total Exam Score Inlet Control Gradually Varied Flow Outlet Control Bridges

  14. Threshold Concept Approach • Analysis of previous assessments Channel Flow Channel Flow Gradually Varied Flow Bridges

  15. Threshold Concept Approach • Analysis of previous assessments • Linked in-semester assessments to various concepts on the exam and adjusted accordingly • Learning analytics: Performance on specific concepts could be used to predict performance on later assessments, and that information could be provided directly to students.

  16. Top-Down + Bottom-Up Approach ACADEMICS Threshold Concepts Curriculum–Assessment–Feedback Improved Teaching and Learning STUDENTS Metalearning Metacognition

  17. Enabling Visible and Effective Learning in Engineering Teaching and Learning Week Faculty of Science/EAIT Showcase 31 October 2012 Dr David Knight, Dr David Callaghan, A/Prof. Tom Baldock, A/Prof. Mehmet Kizil, Dr Liza O’Moore, Prof. Erik Meyer

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