| Popis: |
Our three studies examine the factors of learning styles, student self-efficacy, collective (team) efficacy, attitudes, perceptions, and performance at individual and team levels. Each study addresses a different environment: (i) Individual Level—we are interested in how variability in learning styles engaged by specific exam problems may correlate with student learning styles, self-efficacy, and performance in our introductory chemical engineering course, Process Fundamentals (i.e., mass and energy or material balances); (ii) Team Level—we are interested in understanding how team composition with respect to learning styles (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous teams) may influence these factors in the upper level Unit Operations course; (iii) Combinatorial Level—we are interested in understanding how collective efficacy may influence individual self-efficacy and again if there are any correlations with learning styles and performance in the senior level Process Design and Development course. Some of the most interesting results of these studies have stemmed from the study on individual students, which has shown correlations between learning style preferences and performance in specific instances. Even more interesting, evaluating and characterizing the learning styles that exam problems engage has shown strong variations in problem types by instructor. This presents new questions regarding how these variations may affect student understanding and subsequent performance. Also included are details regarding a course developed in Technical and Professional Communication (for Chemical Engineers) that was offered Spring 2014 and Spring 2015. |
