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Flipsen, Bas; Persaud, Stefan; van Breemen, Ernest

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With the introduction of the new IDE bachelor in 2021 all courses underwent a revision to promote, amongst other, an autonomous learning attitude. The conventional approach of teaching engineering relied on direct instructions and problem-based learning and proved to be inadequate, as students struggled to apply their engineering knowledge in capstone design projects. Based on our research none of the student’s applied mechanics and materials and only a handful referenced to materials and manufacturing processes in their capstone project. To align with the new approach and to increase the application of engineering in capstone design projects, “productive failure” was introduced as a new didactical approach within our first-year course, Understanding Product Engineering (UPE, IOB1-2). Productive failure flips the traditional learning process and starts with an explorative problem which students cannot solve without the right knowledge. This is followed by an instruction explaining the missing concept. The approach engages students in active problem-solving, with the goal to increase the retention time of the theoretical concepts. We have developed our education around this using our in-house developed framework which includes lectures, workshops, and instruction videos facilitating the seamless integration of this approach into our own courses but also to disseminate it among our academic peers. Based on literature productive failure seems to increase the retention time but is not tested in the context of engineering design. To evaluate the retention time of productive failure and to compare it with the conventional approach of direct instructions, we developed a test to measure students’ retention of the taught knowledge. During the second-year follow-up course of Product Engineering (PE, IOB3-5) we started with an in-class formative entrance-test. An online multiple-choice test was created using questions mirroring those from the first-year final exam. We asked students to do this test with the uttermost care and fill it in seriously without gambling an answer. Students always had the opportunity to tick off the “I don’t know” box without consequences. Of the 282 students performing this test, 16% were repeaters, and 14% were students which transitioned from the previous bachelor program, having never taken the first-year UPE course. This paper will present the outcomes of this test and our findings into the possible retention time of our approach. This study will be repeated annually, serving as longitudinal study of our engineering education to continuously assess and improve our didactical approach.

Keywords:

productive failure, autonomous learning, retention time, engineering design