Index: Educational/Pedagogic Research

• My publication list (with copies of selected papers).
• Using robots to teach non-engineers about science and technology
• Teaching Introductory Digital Logic
• Active Learning
• Teaching and Education Hints from EESP
• The impact of flexible deadlines and optional re-submission of homework and lab reports on student learning

Immediately Implementable Teaching and Educational Hints from the Enineering Education Scholars Program:

• EESP - Engineering Education Scholars Program

  The NSF and the University of Wisconsin - Madison sponsored a week-long program for doctoral students one year (either way) from their Ph. D. degree completion date. It is actually part of a larger NSF initiative to improve the quality of teaching in higher education in America. More info can be found at the EESP web site. http://www.engr.wisc.edu/services/elc/eesp/.

• ASEE Paper

  This workshop covered many techniques and ideas for implementing interesting and useful pedagogic tools, such as active learning, problem-based learning, teaching and learning styles, and group work. Several of the participants, and one of the organizers, banded together to write about some of the experience that we have had with implementation of some of these ideas. This project is not ``research'' as such, but more of a compendum of case studies. It will be presented at the next national meeting of the ASEE - American Society for Engineering Education. You can get a preprint from the link below:

  ``Change Agents: Immediately Implementable Teaching and Educational Hints from the Engineering Education Scholars Program,'' (200K), by J. Reeves, S. Courter, K. Nickels, D. Noyce, A Pearce, L. Schaefer, R. Wickramasinghe, and R. Lyle, To appear in Proc. 1999 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, New Engineering Educators Division.

The impact of flexible deadlines and optional re-submission of homework and lab reports on student learning

Several of the members of this department have grading policies in place to avoid the case where students see coursework as something they have to do only to get grades. Dr. Doderer assigns red and blue plusses and minuses to homework that are not reflected in the course grade. Dr. Uddin allows resubmission of homework for partial additional credit. Dr. Giolma has students re-work exams as homework, so they have time without pressure to work on them.

As part of getting oriented in my new position as an Assistant Professor in the department, I have studied these policies, and wondered what I should be doing in my courses.

This project studies the effect of several grading policies on learning: flexible deadlines allowing several homework and/or laboratory assignments to be submitted late, and re-submission of graded homework assignments for partial credit. Dr. Uddin and I have adopted identical policies, and are querying our students to gather information on these policies.