Instructional module in Fourier spectral analysis, based on principles of "how people learn"

Journal of Engineering Education, Apr 2003 by Greenberg, Julie E, Smith, Natalie T, Newman, John H

2) End-of-term survey: On an anonymous end-of-term survey given in 2001, students used a five-point Likert scale to rate the usefulness of many aspects of the course. A rating of five corresponded to extremely useful, while a rating of one was labeled complete waste of staff effort. Three items on the survey directly addressed some novel components of the module: the interactive demonstration of spectral analysis; the tutorial questions, including hints and answers; and the tutorial resources, that is, text summaries, tables, and figures. Other items on the survey asked about the frequency with which students returned to use these materials later in the term.

Eighteen of the nineteen students responding to the survey rated all three of those components either four or five, indicating that they had found them useful. The one remaining student gave all three components a rating of two; that same student commented on the survey, "Go over stuff more in class then go and do tutorial." Comments by the other students included the following: "make more online tutorials"; "way cool" referring to the interactive demonstration; and "*6," an attempt to give the interactive demonstration a rating of 6 on the 5 point scale. On another portion of the survey, 72% of students indicated that they returned, with varying frequency, to use the interactive demonstration and tutorial later in the term. One student wrote "In preparation for the quiz it was very helpful."

3) Lab Report Comments: As part of each lab report, students are asked to respond to the question "What did you like/dislike the most about this lab exercise?" The spring term 2000 responses to this question had not been retained. Instead, the spring term 2001 responses were compared between Lab 1 (the ECG lab which included portions of the spectral analysis module) and Lab 2 (a speech-coding lab which did not use the HPL framework, a Web-based tutorial, or the interactive demonstration).

In responding to this question on Lab 1, the majority of students commented on issues that are not directly relevant to the spectral analysis module. (This is because the question addresses the lab exercise, not the module; while the two intersect, neither encompasses the other.) Three students did specifically mention the tutorial, with one student commenting positively and two students giving mixed feedback, describing the tutorial as useful and interesting, but also tedious and disruptive to the flow of the lab exercise.

A fourth student wrote what could be considered a ringing endorsement of the HPL framework, though it should be noted that students were not given any information or instruction concerning the principles of HPL, the Legacy cycle, or the rationales behind the various pedagogical approaches used in class:

"Ireally liked the way this laboratory was organized. Designing a ventricular arrhythmia detector was not very hard after having solved the previous exercises that guided us through this task, which would have been otherwise hard to accomplish."