A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF AN ENGINEERING PROFESSORS TEACHING DIFFICULTIES: AN ACTION RESEARCH APPR

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A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF AN ENGINEERING
PROFESSORS TEACHING DIFFICULTIES AN ACTION
RESEARCH APPROACH

• Fei-Ching Chen, Tse-Liang Yeh
• National Central University
• Taiwan, R.O.C.

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Problem Identification

• 1.What have been the changes of college students
  in the past few years?
• 2.How do the professors perception of teaching
  and teaching goals affect hisquality of
  teaching?
• 3.How do the professor the students look upon
  learning?

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Outline

• Problem Identification
• Data Collection
• Accounts of Professor Aliang
• Dialogue Reflections
• Self Awareness and Conceptual Growth of
  Professor Aliang
• Knowledge on Teaching Engineering. Courses

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Data Collection

• 1.Classroom observations and the observers
  journal.
• 2.Interactive communications through the WWW.
• 3.Questionnaires .
• 4.Triangulation of the collected data.

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The Accounts of the Professor (1)

• Prof. Aliangs Teaching Principles Teaching
  The Workable(1)
• 1. All that is learned must be workable.
• 2. Students must do application problems.
• 3. Students must start to deal with engineering
  problems in their work
• environment.

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The Accounts of the Professor(2)

• Prof. Aliangs Teaching Principles Teaching The
  Workable(2)
• 4. Theoretical description must match
• reality.
• 5. The design of course materials goes by the
  principle of aim high,
• shoot low.

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The Accounts of the Professor(3)

• Overview of Students Learning
• Difficulties
• 1. They do not know how to take notes.
• 2. They do not know how to deal with
  application problems.
• 3. They only know how to do
• problems with numbers.

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The Accounts of the Professor(4)

• Overview of Students Learning
• Difficulties
• 4. They are not used to studying on their own.
• 5. They do not try different ways of solving
  problems.
• 6. They give up a course easily, once they find
  it difficult to pass.

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The Accounts of the Professor(5)

• Overview of Students Learning
• Difficulties
• 7. Three types of problems that frightens them
• - different from text book exercises,
• - involving more than two concepts, and
• - those with only literal descriptions
• without formula.

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Dialogues and Reflections (1)

• Lab Manual of Aliang
• I think that our professors manual contends
  too many confusing things!! If he can consider
  using some reference books available in the
  market and then adding to it complementary
  information, it will be much easier for us to
  study. ( student 0304).

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Dialogues and Reflections (2)

• Purpose of Exam
• If you do not try, you will not know what to
  do when I ask you to examine whether or not your
  results have served the purpose of the
  experiment. It is an open-ended problem, a
  really practical one ( by Aliang).

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Self Awareness and Conceptual Growth of
Professor Aliang.

• Insistence, Compromise And Transformation In
  Aliangs Teaching.
• Knowledge On Teaching Undergraduate
  Engineering Courses.

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Insistence, Compromise Transformation In
Aliangs Teaching.

• 1. He must go easy on the first step for the
  students to climb on his ladders.
• 2. He insists that frustrating experiences are
  precious learning.
• 3. Complex theories should come after the
  students have acquired hands-on experience in
  the lab.

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Insistence, Compromise Transformation In
Aliangs Teaching.

• 4. Lab should be designed to establish the
  students sense of achievement.
• 5. It is necessary to ask experts of teaching
  methodology for assistance.

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Knowledge on Teaching Engineering. Courses

• 1. Teaching methods and textbooks need to be
  better adjusted.
• 2. Help students relying on their own trials
  and observations.
• 3. Be aware that students have starting
  points different from what the teacher have
  expected.
• 4. Unsettled dilemma

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Conclusion

• 1. The expectation on education as
• perceived by teachers students can
• be disputed forever.
• 2. Follow-up
• the effectiveness of the modification of
• the engineering professors teaching
• performance after his reflection
• reported in this paper.