US EPA

7148317 

Journal Article 

AC 2012-4073: BUILDING A COMPREHENSIVE SOLUTION TO OBTAIN AND SUSTAIN STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES FOR A COLLABORATED LAB 

Zeng, FF; , 

2012 

AMER SOC ENGINEERING EDUCATION 

WASHINGTON 

WOS:000380250105029 

Today's higher education teaches students that to know their subject matter and pass their exams are no longer enough. Students must obtain and sustain their knowledge for future practical problem solving from course work and lab exercise. To obtain knowledge is not easy task. Furthermore, to sustain knowledge from college study is an even more difficult, but critical and urgent task in the Chinese Information Technology Bachelor's program. This research tries to address this urgent need and discover a new way to ensure students to be able to obtain and sustain their learning outcomes from their course work through lab activity enhancement.Today's college students come to their colleges with different motivations, goals, plans, attitudes, and expectations. College study requires them to complete all their assignments to reach all the goals with no requirement compromised. As a part of college study courses with computer lab assignments usually provide instructors with a unique opportunity to motivate students to work hard to achieve their goals and to sustain their knowledge as well as to measure student learning outcomes on this matter. Research finds it is still difficult to predict or measure how much students are able to sustain their learning outcomes before their graduations. This research aims to first ensure that all student lab activities and exercises are designed to not only for them obtain crucial knowledge and pass their course studies but to sustain their knowledge for a long term through newly designed lab activities. While student collaborations continue to stay in the center of their lab activities, additional new core of self-directed teaching and learning will engage students even deeply in their lab activity design in order to increase their interests and exposures to independently develop their knowledge in critical thinking and problem solving. Newly designed measurement and assessment for student learning outcomes is another nature product from this research.This research recognizes importance and potential out of dramatically improving assessment on outcomes of lab activities as a part of coursework. As a part of an experiment it also selects methods and strategies from successful experience in American higher education and brings it into lab activity design by letting assessment goals lead the way of lab design. It engages both instructors and students in standard setting and determines when to vary targets or incorporate student work samples in standards. It is important to indicate that the standard setting is an ongoing process. 

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