Structured and Harmonized E-learning-Support in Engineering Studies

Heinz-Dietrich Wuttke1, Sabine Fincke2 and Karsten Henke1

1Technische Universitaet Ilmenau /Fakultaet Informatik und Automatisierung, Ilmenau, Germany2Technische Universitaet Ilmenau /Zentralinstitut für Bildung, Ilmenau, Germany

Abstract—A project called “BASIC Engineering School” offers new possibilities to reorganize teaching and learning styles in the first two semesters of engineering studies. The paper describes the main changes of the reorganizing, the e-learning support accompanying this new study form and the first results of these changes.

Index Terms—Engineering education, assessment systems, blended learning, interactive learning environments, M-learning, Web-based assessment

I. INTRODUCTION

Studying in the engineering courses (Bachelor and Master) at the Ilmenau University of Technology (IUT) is currently (still) oriented on face-to-face lectures but unless that fact, the integration of e-learning and e-assessment elements in the learning and teaching scenarios has a more than 10 years tradition [1].

A number of integrated basic services - such as the deployment and central management of the learning management system (LMS) “moodle” with its specialized learning rooms- are provided by the computer center and thus a part of the universities’ infrastructure. In addition, a students’ association named FEM e.V. (Research association of electronic media) [2] supports the digital course recording. In the past the used materials and tools were very heterogeneous in relation to technology, storage location, usage scenarios, and interfaces.

The internet portal www.bildungsportal-thueringen.de [3, 4] with catalogs, newsletters and its collection of e-learning materials conveys an impression of the diversity of the used material at the IUT. The largest part of the materials and tools was initiated and developed in the faculties and departments within the framework of national and international project activities. They are designed for a further common usage across the college and in cooperation with other universities.

Currently the research and development tasks associated with the e-learning usage are focused on:

Evaluation, quality assurance and further development regarding personalized content, technology and organization, Investigations of special educational scenarios to support innovative teaching and learning in engineering education, for example in the framework of the project “Basic Engineering School” [5],Further development of cooperation in national and international networks such as the e-content sharing network “edu-sharing.net” [6].

Aims of these activities are:

to increase the sustainable availability of relevant technologies and proven content, transparency about existing materials and best practiceexamples,to support the exchange of experiences, services and cooperation possibilities,to support an efficient organization of cross-college vocational international and national offers as well asto increase the flexibility in teaching and learning scenarios by offering a “media mix", adapted to specific needs of special learner groups,to encourage self-learning competencies, andto offer a collection of use cases and tools for personalized electronically supported assessment and feedback scenarios [7, 8].

In this paper we will focus on the last 3 goals: the flexibilization of teaching/ learning scenarios, methods to encourage self-learning and tools for a personalized feedback and assessment support.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In the next section we will present the concept of the “Basic Engineering School”, section 3 describes a tool that supports a metadata based generation of examination questions as well as the adaptive tool “askMe!”, which indicates a personalized feedback about the actual knowledge of a learner related to problem solving competencies. Section 4 reports first evaluation results of a test of this tool and section 5summarizes the findings and discusses future developments.

II. BASIC ENGINEERING SCHOOL

In the context of the “Basic Engineering School” of the IUT teaching and learning has been modified for special assembled, representative groups of students, so called “model groups”, during the first two semesters. Goal of these modifications was to increase the study motivation and studying ability by introducing a teaching and learning model, which is more interdisciplinary, more application-oriented and more flexible. Figure 1 shows the changes from the old system to the new practice and application-oriented teaching model, called “System BASIC”.

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Old System

Change Premises & Guidelines

System BASIC Abilities / Goals Type of Teaching

Apply

- Teach applicable knowledge - Show research perspectives Apply

Applicable knowledge for a constructive thinking and acting

- Hands on training- Excursion- Trainee programs- Construction workPractice

Learn

- Increase hands on training - Give practice oriented tasks - Raise research questions - Guide in discourses

Practice

Interdisciplinarycooperation focused on special subjects or objects

- Seminar- Tutorial- e-Learning suite- Web based training

- Structure and concentrate the teaching style

- Increase the efficiency - Communicate the educational goals

- Show the perspectives of practice and research

- Minimize direct teaching

LearnInterdisciplinary basis knowledge of engineers

- Structured and harmonized lectures

- e-Learning support

Figure 1:Practice and application-oriented teaching model in the BASIC Engineering School

Main difference is a shift from a presentation oriented system with a huge part of traditional lectures and seminars to a more problem-based teaching style. To involve the students in real problem solving processes,starting at the first semester, three main changes in the study program were necessary to implement:

1. Changing the traditional approach to engineering studies (where e.g. mathematics is presented “as a whole” and the students can only apply this knowledge after hearing it all i.e. after the third semester) to a “harmonized approach”, where e.g. mathematical methods are taught synchronized with the requirements of topics in mechanical and electrical engineering.

2. Individual competency evaluation and e-learning support.

3. Integrating hands on training from the beginning of the first semester in a complex project.

To implement the first change, a very intensive discussion with the Mathematics lecturers was necessary. Therefor a timetable and catalogue of mathematical requirements in mechanical and electrical engineering was developed and synchronized. That means, also the order of content presentation in electrical and mechanical

engineering were reordered in a way, that nearly the same mathematical preconditions were necessary at a point in time. E.g. if in the fifth lecture the students have to solve differential equations in mechanics, also in electrical engineering subjects were taught that requires to solve differential equations. Therefor the mathematical lectures starts in a way, that the students are able to solve differential equations in the fifth week of the first semester. That is, what we call “synchronized and harmonized teaching method in engineering studies”.Figure 2 illustrates the main topics of these harmonized courses.

The second change is an individual test for studentswhere they get an overview about their strengths and weaknesses in fields like systematical analysis analytical thinking, self-organization, managing complexity and so on. Based on that the get offers for special courses in the frame of the so called “general studies” to overcome the weaknesses.

The e-learning support for these students is anintegrated part of the organization and teaching. Thereforwe use the LMS “moodle”. To support the harmonized study program each week all lecturers document in the moodle system the topics they have taught so far. That way, the other colleagues can inform, if the necessary fundamental mathematics needed e.g. in electronics were already taught. Another e-learning support is given by assessment systems that will be described in the next chapters more in detail.

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Figure 2: Main Topics of the BASIC Engineering School

The third change is integrating practical trainings at the beginning of the first semester were the students have to learn basic manufacturing methods in hands on trainings. Additional the students have to work together in an interdisciplinary project during the whole first year to produce a real object. The challenge was to find an object that requires applying most of the engineering skills but is not to complicate for first and second semester students. The resulting object to be built by the students is a socalled “autonomous miniature transporter” (AMT).

This object contains a mechanical, an electronic as well as a computer engineering part. That way the students are enforced to think and work interdisciplinary. The task is as follows:

Built an AMT that is able to follow a black line on a white board with a defined, but programmable route.During the movement the number of left and right turns has to be counted. All parts should be designed and produced in the laboratories of the University.

Figure 3 shows a picture of the racecourse and one of the first AMTs.

The mechanical part contains on a platform two active controllable wheels and one passive turnable wheel. The electrical part has to handle the power supply as well as to transform the sensor signals in logical signals for the digital part. The digital part contains a programmable device (CPLD) where the students have to implement the control algorithm8 for the given route and the counters.

At the beginning of the 3rd semester the students have to present their AMT for the final assessment. Main topics of the assessment are functionality and modularity of the construction, correspondence between drawing and realization, correctness of the route and the exact count of the turns.

Figure 3: Racecourse for the ATM

In figure 4 the three parts are visible: The mechanical platform, the electronics board and the digital control board.

Figure 4: Autonomous Miniature Transporter

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The concept of the “Basic Engineering School” includes a step-by-step introduction of e-learning components to support the students’ competencies in a self-organized learning style.

III. ASSESSMENT TOOLS

In our contribution “Mobile Assessment Tools” [7] we have presented a concept and realization of a Web-based, database supported e-Learning Test, Examination and Assessment System, called TEASE. It can be used via Internet and is suitable for examination preparation or as entry test within lab courses.

This system is mainly produced for a use on mobiledevices and in a real examination situation. The student gets an assembled set of tasks from a database. The assemble process can be controlled by metadata of the tasks, such like grade of difficulty, expected time for solving, topic etc. At the end of the test he/she gets immediately a result of the test. That way, students can prepare for real examination sessions and test themselves.

Prerequisite is that the student has the self-organizing competence to set the parameters well and to fully concentrate on the simulated examination situation. The competence tests in the frame of the BASIC engineering school have shown that many first semester students (and also students in higher semesters) don’t have such competencies. They need a more individual support by analyzing their strengths and weaknesses.

To face this problem we have developed an adaptive test and assessment system named askMe!, where the students gets an individual feedback during a problem solving process.

With this system we have implemented a Web-application that fits assessment 3.0 features. To classify assessment systems we use 2 dimensions (depicted in figure 5):

The degree of didactical interactivity andThe degree of personalization

The degree of didactical interactivity describes the type of questions/problems that a student has to answer/ solve. E.g. tasks with high didactical interactivity are e.g. remote or virtual experiments and other tasks with interactivecontent objects (ICOs).

Tasks with low didactical interactivity can only identify declarative knowledge (i.e., guess the result of an applied

method, answers required to “what”). Explaining and applying a method step by step, i.e., generating answersrequired to “why and how”, needs a high didactical interactivity. Such questions are implemented in learning management systems as “free text”, which means that finally a teacher will assess the text, not the system. To test procedural knowledge, until now mostly oral examinations or project work are used by teachers or tutors. In that way also a personalization is given per se.

Figure 5: Classification of e-assessment systems

To reach assessment 3.0-functionality we have added a higher degree of personalization then it was possible with assessment 2.0 systems. Therefor the askMe! system uses an adaptation engine adapting the questions to the individual learning situation of a student by variation of the following aspects:

Question sequenceQuestion selectionFeedback selectionQuestion presentationFeedback presentationQuestion difficulty

Based on a domain model of a teaching subject a user model is build up during the problem solving process. It represents the degree of factual and procedural knowledge of a user compared to the required knowledge fixed in form of a semantic net in the domain model. Figure 6visualizes this aspect.

Figure 6: User Modeling

Level of KnowledgeType of Knowledge

Domain Model

Student sKnowledge

ApplicationProcedural Knowledge

0.810.40

AnalysisFactual KnowledgeComprehensio

nConceptual Knowledge

0.55

Synt hesisProceduralKnowledge

0.92

`s

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A brief overview of the architecture of the askMe!system gives figure 7.

The student can access the adaptation-engine to get the next test adapted to his / her actual learning situation. It is also possible to get information about the actual user status by accessing the user modeling component. This component provides the student an overview of strengths and weaknesses concerning the actual the learning process.

Four modeling components of the askMe! system provide information for the adaptation process:

The adaptation modeling componentThe user modeling componentThe domain modeling component andThe question modeling component.

The adaptation modeling component compares the actual knowledge of the student, provided by the user modeling component, with the domain model and decides, which next question fits best to enforce the student to make progress in learning.

The user modeling component collects data during the session about for instance the duration between the presenting and answering to a question, the kind of the question, preferred media types and so on. That way a

stepwise adaptation to the users preferred types of question is possible.

The domain modeling component contains in form of a concept map the topics of a teaching subject and their factual and procedural relations. It provides a front end to the teacher for managing the domain model in the Web Ontology Language (OWL).

The question modeling component constitutes a data model to represent tests, questions, responses, etc. Itenables editing questions, describing and initializing ICOsand processes students’ responses resulting from interacting with them. For more detail see [9].

IV. EVALUATION RESULTS

The course, were the system was applied for the first time, is called digitals systems design and is provided for bachelor students in the fourth semester. The number of registered students for this course is about 80. The objectives of the course are getting acquainted with basic knowledge in the field of computer engineering, the design of digital systems and the understanding of computer internal information processing, computer architectures and organizations. Generally, the course consists of a lecture given by one of the authors and an accompanying seminar. While during the lecture primarily theoretical basics are taught, the seminars focus on exercising the application of the theoretical foundations.

Figure 7: Architecture of the askMe! system

<<component>>User Modeling

Domain Model

Test Performances,Adaptation Decisions

General SettingsGeneral Settings

<<use>>Take Adaptive

Tests

StudentAdaptive

Tests

<<component>>Domain Modeling

<<component>>Question Modeling

<<component>>Settings

<<component>>Adaptation Modeling

<<component>>Adaptation Engine

Domain Model

QuestionsUser Model

<<use>>Show Statistics

User Profile

Question Details

Author<<use>>

Manage Questions

<<use>>Manage Users

Domain Model

<<use>>Manage Domains

Administrator

<<use>>Adjust Settings

<<use>>Manage Adaptive

Tests

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The askMe! system was made available for 31 students preparing for their final exams (formative self-assessment). In order to find out whether the system supports students’ learning, only these certain students were informed about and had access to the askMe! system. The random formation of the groups is ensured by relying on the existing seminar groups. The exam results are compared with the results of a comparison group, which did not use the system and with the long term results of the last 4 years.

The students had four weeks to work with the system to prepare for the oral examination that took place in September 2013. The askMe!-tests created for the students specifically address the topics identified as difficult for the students in the past. In particular, the ability of the askMe!system in providing interactive questions (through the integration of ICOs) allows students to apply their learned knowledge especially in procedural knowledge areas.

Figures 8 and 9 show the results. While the average grade during the last years was around 2.5, the 22 students having used the askMe! system get average grades with 1.8. In average around 15% fail the first exam, in the group that used the askMe! system it was only 5%.

Figure 8: Average grades with and without using the askMe! system

Figure 9: Failure rate with and without using the askMe! system

V. CONCLUSION

With the results of the methods, shown in this paper, we are sure, that we can improve the study conditions for engineering students. Without additional personnel support such tasks are impossible. The BASIC engineering school thus is an experiment that shows what it costs to improve engineering education. It is funded for a period of five years.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank Felix Dürrwald for and Nedal Jawdat al-Aqraa for implementing the e-learning material in the askMe! system.

REFERENCES

[1] www.tu-ilmenau.de/keld, 5.6.2013[2] www.fem.tu-ilmenau.de, 5.6.2013[3] www.bildungsportal-thueringen.de, 5.6.2013[4] H.-D. Wuttke, S. Fincke and K. Henke, “Sharing e-Learning

Resources – Contributions to an Infrastructure in Thuringia”,International Conference on Interactive Computer-Aided Blended Learning. ICBL. Antigua, Guatemala, 2011, pp.70-75.

[5] www.tu-ilmenau.de/basic, 5.6.2013[6] www.edu-sharing.net, 5.6.2013[7] K. Henke, K. Debes, H.-D. Wuttke and A. Katzmann, “Mobile

Assessment Tool”, International Conference on Interactive Computer-Aided Blended Learning. ICBL., Florianapolis, Brazil, 2013, in press.

[8] C. Saul and H.-D. Wuttke, “Assessment 3.0 meets Engineering Sciences”, 16th International Conference on Interactive Collaborative Learning ICL, Kazan, Russia, 2013, in press.

[9] C. Saul and H.-D. Wuttke, “E-Assessment meets Personalization”, Proceedings of the IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON 2013) Berlin, pp. 200–206.

AUTHORS

H.-D. Wuttke is with the Technische Universitaet Ilmenau, Fakultaet Informatik und Automatisierung, Max-Planck-Ring 5, 98693 Ilmenau (Dieter.Wuttke@tu-ilmenau.de).

S. Fincke is with the Technische Universitaet Ilmenau,Zentralinstitut für Bildung, Max-Planck-Ring 5, 98693 Ilmenau (Sabine.Fincke@tu-ilmenau.de).

K. Henke is with the Technische Universitaet Ilmenau, Fakultaet Informatik und Automatisierung, Max-Planck-Ring 5, 98693 Ilmenau (Karsten.Henke@tu-ilmenau.de).

This work was supported in part by the federal ministry for education and research of Germany.

Without With

Without With

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