Fluids friday! A method for improving student attentiveness and learning in the classroom

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

This project introduces a pedagogical technique designed to help improve student attentiveness and energy in a lecture class. This idea was motivated by early morning classes in which students are tired and have difficulty paying attention and remaining focused. This work offers a relatively simple but effective approach which takes only about 5 minutes of class time once per week. The basic idea is to start off the class period with interesting a fun material that is somewhat related to the course material. This helps to capture students' attention, wakes them up a bit, and gets their interest and energy flowing early in the period. Following this activity, the remaining class period can be treated as normal, but can "ride the wave" of student interest. Results from an anonymous student survey indicate that on average students strongly agree that they enjoy this activity and have more energy afterwards, and agree that it is beneficial to their overall learning in the course. Anonymous student comments from the survey as well as the student evaluations for the course also support the effectiveness of this concept.

Original languageEnglish (US)
StatePublished - Jun 26 2016
Event123rd ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition - New Orleans, United States
Duration: Jun 26 2016Jun 29 2016

Other

Other123rd ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew Orleans
Period6/26/166/29/16

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Engineering

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