Work in Progress: Using Conceptual Questions to Assess Class Pre-Work and Enhance Student Engagement in Electromagnetics Learning Studio Modules

This work in progress focuses on the junior year of the Electrical Engineering program, and in particular on one of the two-course sequences constituting the EE core competencies in signals/systems, electronics, and electromagnetics. These three course sequences are also in the focus of an effort charged by the National Science Foundation whose overall goal is to revolutionize engineering education. A team of educators has broken each of the courses into a set of five learning studio modules (LSMs). After LSMs 1-2, 3-4, and 5, respectively, in each of the core competency areas, a knowledge integration (KI) module is conducted to illustrate how LSM concepts from signals/systems, electronics, and electromagnetics can be applied together to solve real-world engineering problems. This paper presents and discusses innovations in teaching and learning electromagnetics LSMs aimed at increasing the student engagement especially related to class pre-work. Namely, with the new LSM/KI pedagogical structure and substantial portions of class time being devoted to KI sessions, it has become evident that the students must engage very intensely in the assigned pre-work that, in turn, must be carefully thought out and guided, and, most importantly, meaningfully assessed. To this end, one of the faculty team members has developed a unique and extremely comprehensive collection of Conceptual Questions in electromagnetics, to help students comprehend anchoring concepts in this core competency. These are multiple-choice questions that focus on the core concepts of the material, requiring conceptual reasoning and understanding rather than calculations. Conceptual Questions of this scope and intent are completely new in the electromagnetics area, and in practically all ECE areas. Furthermore, this is one of the most complete and ambitious attempts to use them in science and engineering education overall. In preparation for each class, students must complete assigned pre-work that includes required reading and a timed, online quiz where they answer a series of carefully designed and chosen Conceptual Questions pertaining to topics in the pre-assigned reading within the current LSM. These brief, interactive formative assessments are both evaluating and enhancing students’ understanding of the core concepts of the reading material. Such gained understanding enables students to actively engage in the subsequent LSM class taught in a flipped (inverted) classroom fashion primarily using realistic examples and problems that strongly reinforce theoretical concepts and facilitate active and problem-based learning including interactive discussion. In addition, each class starts with the discussion of the Conceptual Questions from the pre-work assessment (the online assessment system gives the students feedback on the correctness of their answer instead of giving them the correct answer). The students and the instructor discuss why some (incorrect) answers appeared attractive and seemed right, and ultimately what is (or should be) the reasoning behind the choosing of the one correct answer. To further solidify understanding of the core concepts, similar Conceptual Questions are then given as part of the post-work homework assignment, along with computational problems based on these concepts. The assessment of this new approach is carried out using the Electromagnetics Concept Inventory (EMCI) and other techniques.