A Lack of Depth
Students use textbooks superficially when solving engineering problems.
By Christine S. Lee, Nathan J. McNeill, Elliot P. Douglas, Mirka E. Koro-Ljungberg, and David J. Therriault
Textbooks are often students’ primary learning resource outside of the classroom, used to supplement lecture notes, solve homework problems, and help students study for exams. In these ways, textbooks play a significant role in determining what students learn about engineering and engineering problem solving. Yet despite the prevalence of textbooks in undergraduate engineering courses, we know little about students’ actual engagement with textbooks. Although conventional wisdom suggests that reading a course textbook will lead to better course performance, few previous studies have analyzed how students learn and develop problem-solving skills from their interactions with textbooks.
To address this gap, our phenomenological study examined how students approach and use information in a textbook while solving an engineering problem. To obtain data of students’ problem-solving processes in real time, we used a think-aloud method, in which students were asked to verbalize their thoughts while they solved four materials engineering problems. The think-aloud sessions were video-recorded. Our research team collectively analyzed each think-aloud video to develop individualized follow-up interview questions in order to gain deeper insights into each student’s problem-solving processes. Our study described the essence and major phenomenological structures underlying 10 senior materials engineering students’ experiences of using a textbook during the problem-solving activity.
Our findings revealed that students employed the textbook narrowly when solving problems. Specifically, we identified three major structures common to students’ experiences: (1) the search: finding formulas, engineering material types, and material properties; (2) working backward: using example problems from the text to determine problem-solving steps; and (3) constraint listing: commenting on the static nature of textbooks. The search was characterized by seeking information from the textbook that reduced students’ gaps in knowledge: Students located equations and material properties by turning first to the table of contents, index, or appendixes of the textbook. Working backward was also a common strategy in students’ problem-solving processes. Students moved through each problem in a bottom-up direction, using problem constraints to determine subsequent problem-solving steps. Students relied heavily on textbook example problems, displaying behaviors of novice problem solvers: They slavishly imitated textbook examples. Instead of seeking to understand the underlying concepts, students searched for mathematical formulas that directly matched the current problem based on the presence of common variables. Finally, students listed several constraints related to the static nature of textbooks, suggesting that students in our study were transitioning from using textbooks to using the Internet as their primary reference source.
Our study reveals that engineering students may adopt an unsophisticated and uncritical approach to using their textbooks while solving problems. The ability to think in complex, abstract, and creative ways while solving problems is an important engineering attribute. However, students in our study frequently failed to demonstrate sophisticated problem-solving strategies. Instead, students searched for and relied on analogous example problems in the supplied textbook for structuring their problem-solving approach.
We propose that engineering educators may need to emphasize, and make explicit, the connection among theories, principles, facts, and formulas in textbooks, and the application of that information to engineering practice. Our study suggests that students experience engineering problem solving as a process of looking up equations in a textbook, largely ignoring the conceptual understanding, creativity, and recognition of constraints needed to solve real-world problems. To address this gap, textbook example problems could be purposefully designed to be ill-defined so that the problems introduce ambiguity and open-endedness, representative of the problem-solving contexts students will face in professional practice. Future research is needed to explore how best to help students make more meaningful, critical, and comprehensive use of their textbooks.
Christine S. Lee is a postdoctoral researcher at California State University East Bay; Nathan J. McNeill is an instructor in the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Colorado Mesa University Mechanical Engineering Partnership Program; Elliot P. Douglas is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Florida, where Mirka E. Koro-Ljungberg is a professor in qualitative research methodology and David J. Therriault is an associate professor in educational psychology. This article is excerpted from “Indispensable Resource? A Phenomenological Study of Textbook Use in Engineering Problem Solving” in the April 2013 Journal of Engineering Education. This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant 0909976.
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