Development of a Concept Inventory for Functional Reasoning

功能推理概念量表的开发

• 批准号: 1504851
• 负责人: Michael Scott
• 金额: $ 19.99万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1504851&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Development; Concept; Inventory; Functional; Reasoning

This project at the University of Illinois at Chicago will help to improve the ability of engineering students to design technological products by creating and testing a means to assess functional reasoning capabilities. Functional reasoning is the ability to conceive of a task required in an engineering design problem as accomplished by a set of steps or functions. Functional reasoning allows engineers to decompose a mechanical system and correctly analyze it in terms of the functions performed by its subsystems and features. This project will develop a validated method to assess student understanding of function. Assessment of functional reasoning ability will improve engineering education and increase retention of students in engineering by helping faculty to more precisely determine the nature of the difficulties some students have in developing functional reasoning skills. The work will include a collaboration between faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago and faculty at community colleges.This work will develop and validate a concept inventory for functional reasoning as a means to help promote thoughtful and effective teaching of functional reasoning to undergraduate students. Project personnel will apply accepted best practices in the development of the concept inventory. The approach will use Delphi study methods as a structured means to solicit information from experts in the content of functional design methods. While engineering function is often covered in senior-level engineering courses, this project will consider the teaching of functional reasoning in the context of design courses for first year engineering students. The project team anticipates that facility with functional reasoning may correlate with certain demographic variables; and a diverse and well-educated pool of engineers will depend upon a thoughtful, considered approach to teaching and learning about function. The project team includes engineering faculty with expertise in engineering design methodologies as well as collaborators from the learning sciences. The outcome of the work will be a concept inventory to assess functional reasoning ability in engineering students.

芝加哥伊利诺伊大学的该项目将有助于提高工程学生通过创建和测试评估功能推理能力的方法来设计技术产品的能力。功能推理是能够通过一组步骤或功能完成工程设计问题中所需的任务。功能推理允许工程师分解机械系统并根据其子系统和功能执行的功能正确分析它。该项目将开发一种经过验证的方法来评估学生对功能的理解。 评估功能推理能力将通过帮助教师更精确地确定某些学生在发展功能推理技能方面遇到的困难的性质，从而改善工程教育并提高学生在工程领域的保留。这项工作将包括伊利诺伊大学芝加哥大学的教职员工与社区学院的教师之间的合作。这项工作将开发和验证功能推理的概念清单，以此作为帮助促进知识和有效的功能推理的一种手段，以使学生本科生。 项目人员将在概念清单的开发中应用公认的最佳实践。该方法将使用Delphi研究方法作为一种结构化手段，以从专家那里征求功能设计方法内容的信息。 尽管高级工程课程通常涵盖工程功能，但该项目将考虑在第一年工程专业学生的设计课程中进行功能推理的教学。 项目团队预计，具有功能推理的设施可能与某些人口统计学变量相关。多样化和受过良好教育的工程师池将取决于一种周到的，被考虑的教学方法。 该项目团队包括具有工程设计方法专业知识的工程学院以及学习科学的合作者。 工作的结果将是评估工程学生功能推理能力的概念清单。