This project will develop an understanding of the progression of student learning in materials courses achieved through conceptual change of concept models of materials (CONCOMM). A learning progression of student conceptual knowledge and change for the topics covered across a semester would be developed, and using this progression would foster new strategies for materials teaching and learning strategies, as well as improve the effectiveness of student learning in materials classes. New misconception-compensated instructional materials would be developed to address students' misconception related issues. This approach would be not be limited to materials courses in the materials discipline, but could be used in materials courses for other disciplines as well as new types of nanotechnology courses now being created and taught. The CONCOMM approach will utilize rapid feedback technological tools of Just-in-Time-Teaching and Personal Response Systems to quickly characterize and address misconceptions. It could also be used to study and characterize potential differences of conceptual change for diverse populations which would allow the modification to instructional materials for more effective learning for diverse student populations. A final point is that a general toolkit of misconception-eliciting-methods will be defined which could be used by any engineering discipline to explore students' prior knowledge and misconceptions and then address them to improve teaching effectiveness.
Nanotechnology is one of the leading edge technologies that must be effectively taught to engineering students who will be ready to compete in the global economy. This research will create a framework and instructional materials for the CONCOMM technique which uses rapid accommodation of misconceptions in materials instruction to promote more effective conceptual change, improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning of materials, and build a general model that would have potential for broader application. Effective implementations and assessment and will be developed to measure the effect of the CONCOMM technique on student learning and the instructional materials will be widely disseminated.
