Speaker
Description
Mechanics is one of the fundamental pillars of successful engineering studies, because a sound mechanical understanding of the behavior of materials and structures is essential for the constructive and design classes that build on it. Therefore, the teaching of basic mechanics in the first semesters of engineering studies plays a decisive role.
Although engineering and the demands placed on engineers in practice are constantly changing, the content of courses in basic mechanics has often hardly changed in recent decades. The form and delivery of the courses have also remained the same in many cases, even though various technical possibilities for modern and digital teaching exist today. In addition, the content and form of examinations are often regarded as virtually unchangeable. In my experience, however, this “traditional” approach has mainly led to many students not attending lectures in the first place or at least not actively participating.
In order to counteract this and motivate students to participate more actively in courses, there are a variety of methods and tools available, the following of which are highlighted in this work:
Clear definition of learning objectives
Course planning according to constructive alignment
Examples from engineering practice
Online polls and anonymous, digital question option
Video content for preparation
E-quizzes and e-tests
These aspects are presented and evaluated using the example of my Mechanics 1 and 2 lectures for civil engineers. It turned out that, in this case study, the activity of the students could be significantly increased, without this being particularly reflected in the evaluation results. However, a significant amount of time and effort had to be invested to implement the mentioned tools. Further, the reduction of the content to be presented in the lecture seemed to be key for a positive effect to be observed.
