Effectiveness of Engineering Drills Using a Computer to Problem Individualization and the Comparison of Answers

Abstract

Five identical drill problems in engineering designed to subjectively involve the students were distributed. The values for the answers to the final question varied depending upon each student's individual seat number. A program using a hand-held computer was developed for checking the answers each of the 14 times during the year these types of problems were distributed. By using the computer, rather than doing the by hand, on the average, the teacher needed to spend only about 60% as much time checking the results of the final problems, meaning that he or she had much more time available for checking equations and explanations. Also, by using the computer, the teacher was able to use time-serial information to quantitatively grasp the status of the learning process. Thanks to this, it became easier to provide the students with suitable feedback regarding their progress. Also, the results of two questionnaires given during the course showed that the students' impressions of this system were favorable, with the results of the second questionnaire being somewhat higher. In summary, this system proved the effectiveness of the engineering drills given to the students.