LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR BASIC CONCEPTS OF MECHANICS IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEGREE PROGRAMS. MEXICAN EXPERIENCE

У цій статті представлені результати педагогічного дослідження, метою якого було встановлення обсягу концептуальних карт, здійснених за допомогою CMapTools під час вивчення основних понять класичної механіки студентами-металургійними інженерами в Національному політехнічному інституті Мексики та визначення шляху як такі поняття засвоюються. Автор виявив, що студенти, створивши концептуальні карти з основними поняттями механіки за допомогою CMapTools з гарною якістю контенту, оціненого за допомогою рубрики семантичної оцінки, покращили своє розуміння цих понять згідно з опитувальником Force Concept Inventory (FCI) та підвищили свою мотивацію. вивчати ці аспекти механіки. Тому створення концептуальних карт за допомогою CMapTools позитивно впливає на значне вивчення основних понять класичної механіки.

Relevancy of Force Concept Inventory and Mechanics Baseline Test in Excerpting Conceptual Understanding of High-Performing Students

In the topics of mechanics, readily available instruments such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Mechanics Baseline Test (MBT) have been extensively used to assess students’ conceptual understanding, especially for high school and undergraduate students. In this paper, the relevancy of these two instruments in excerpting conceptual understanding of high-performing students was examined and the results were elaborated. The findings in this paper suggest that the FCI and MBT are indeed effective to show students’ basic conceptual understanding in mechanics but should not be used to assess improvement after learning intervention or to differentiate students’ conceptual understanding in a population of high performers. More advanced assessments, such as those that comprise higher order thinking questions, should be used for such purposes.

Can Peer Discussion Reduce Students’ Mistakes in Conceptual Physics Questions?

In this work, we tried to check whether students can overcome their mistakes in conceptual physics questions by peer discussion. For this purpose, we administered Force Concept Inventory to high school students and university students. Our study showed that high school students and university students could not overcome their mistakes in the conceptual physics questions by peer discussion. We separately found out that males are better than females at conceptual physics questions.

INCREASED STUDENT PERFORMANCE ON PHYSICS CONCEPT INVENTORY TEST AFTER STUDENT-CENTRED APPROACH IN UNIVERSITIES OF LATVIA

Education research has repeatedly shown that active learning in physics is pedagogically more efficient than traditional lecture courses. Widespread application of the active learning is slowed down by the lack of data on the performance of the active learning in widely varying circumstances of different educational systems. We measured the level of understanding of basic physics concepts using Force Concept inventory for students who enrol at different universities in Latvia in calculus-based and non-calculus-based groups and compared the student performance to the pre-test results elsewhere in the world. We measured the growth of concept inventory test results and studied the dependence of the growth on the teaching approach used by university lecturers. About 450 undergraduate students from 12 groups of science and engineering courses taught by 8 lecturers were involved in the study at three universities in Latvia. The Force Concept Inventory multiple-choice test was translated to Latvian and used for pre-/post-tests. The pre-test results showed that the maximum of the distribution of correct answers for non-calculus groups is around 20%, which is the value obtained by the random guessing of test answers, whereas the pre-test results of calculus-based groups was about 50% of correct answers. The test score after taking post-test confirmed that the growth of students’ tests results is closely related to the teaching approach chosen by lecturer, showing that in order to provide physics graduates with a good conceptual understanding of physics, student centred teaching approach was crucial. The use of concept inventories in undergraduate physics education to measure the progress of learning appears to be particularly important in the current situation with a small number of students in physics and a critically small number of future physics teachers, when efficiency of teaching is of crucial importance. Keywords: STEM education quality, conceptual understanding, student-centred approach

Comparing Science and Engineering Students Using the Force Concept Inventory in Introductory Physics Courses

This work is intended to analyze and compare the performance of two groups of students on the understanding of force and motion concepts using the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). The FCI test serves questions on basic Newtonian concepts where the answers inclyde the correct response and commonly misconceived alternatives. The FCI test was implemented twice as pre and post-tests for two introductory calculus-based physics courses offered at the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman for students mainly from the Colleges of Sciences, Education and Agriculture and the students from the College of Enginerring in the Spring 2017 and Spring 2018 semesters. These courses cover the traditional first-year level kinematics and dynamics in translational and rotational motions based on the same syllabus and the same textbook. Hake's normalized gain, defined as the change in class averages divided by the maximum possible increase, was used to compare the students'performances. The normalized gains for both groups of students were in the low gain category. Female students in both courses performed better on the FCI in general, but the difference was only statistically significant in the course offered to Science students.