MENU
  • ASEE Logo
  • Give
    Give
    ASEE Donations...
    Classified Volunteer
    Login Join
  • Join Login Volunteer Classified Give
    Give
    ASEE Donations...



About
  • Overview
    • Mission, Vision, Goals
    • Public Policy Statements
    • Constitution
    • Bylaws
    • Organizational Structure
    • Investment Policy
    • Financial Policy
  • Our History
  • Staff Contacts
  • Leadership
    • Board Of Directors
    • Academy Of Fellows
    • Past Board Members
    • Advisory Committees
    • Representatives to External Organizations
    • Executive Director's Message
    • Meeting Minutes
  • Volunteer
  • Careers at ASEE
  • Privacy Statement
I Am A...
  • Member
      Login Required
    • Your Member Page
    • Membership Directory
    • Financials
    • No Login Required
    • Awards
    • Divisions, Fellows, and Campus Reps
    • Sections and Zones
    • Resources
  • Prospective Individual/Organizational Member
    • About ASEE
    • Individual Membership
    • Institutional Membership
    • Major Activities
  • Donor
  • Prospective Partner or Sponsor
  • Advertiser
  • Fellowship Seeker
    • About Fellowships
    • High School
    • Undergraduate
    • Graduate
    • Post-Doctoral
    • Other Programs
Events
  • Conferences and Meetings
    • Annual Conference & Exposition
    • Section & Zone Meetings
  • Council Events
    • Conference for Industry and
      Education Collaboration (CIEC)
    • Engineering Deans Institute (EDI)
    • Research Leadership Institute (RLI)(Formely ERC)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • EDC Public Policy Colloquium (PPC)
  • Featured Events
    • Frontiers in Education
    • NETI
    • CoNECD
    • First Year Engineering Experience
  • Future Conference Dates
Publications
  • News
    • Newsletters
    • eGFI
    • Division Publications
  • Journals and Conference Papers
    • Overview
    • Journal of Engineering Education
    • Advances in Engineering Education
    • Conference Proceedings
    • Section Proceedings
    • Zone Proceedings
    • PEER
    • Plagiarism
  • Monographs and Reports
  • Prism Magazine
  • Data
    • Profiles of E&ET Colleges
    • Case Study Series: Engineering-Enhanced Liberal Education
Impact
  • Public Policy Statements
  • Data Analysis
  • Annual Reports
  • Diversity
Education & Careers
  • Academic Job Opportunities
  • Continuing Education
    • Webinars
    • Courses and Workshops
      • NETI
      • Smart Start
      • Streamlined Course Design
  • Engineering Education Research and Innovation
    • Engineering Education Community Resource
  • PreK-12
    • eGFI Teachers
    • eGFI Students
Calendar
2020 Public Policy Colloquium (PPC)
February 3 - 5, 2020
Washington, DC
See More....
2020 Research Leadership Institute (RLI)
March 8 - 11, 2020
Arlington, VA
See More....
2020 Engineering Deans Institute (EDI)
April 14 - 16, 2020
Las Vegas, NV
See More....
2020 CoNECD
April 19 - 22, 2020
Crystal City, VA
See More....
2020 Annual Conference
June 21 - 24, 2020
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
See More....
Previous Next
  • International Forum
    • Past Forums
  • 2018 Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ETLI Sponsorship Options
  • 2017 Global Colloquium
  • Pre K-12 Workshop
    • Call for Proposals
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Sponsors
    • Program Schedule
    • Past Conferences
  • STEP Grantees Meeting
  • Annual Conference
    • Past Conferences
  • International Forum
    • Past Forums
  • 2018 Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Engineering Technology Leaders Institute (ETLI)
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Program Schedule
    • ETLI Sponsorship Options
  • 2017 Global Colloquium
  • Pre K-12 Workshop
    • Call for Proposals
    • Registration
    • Housing
    • Sponsors
    • Program Schedule
    • Past Conferences
  • STEP Grantees Meeting
  • Annual Conference
    • Past Conferences

2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 42: How is Calculus Applied in Engineering Statics?

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

How is calculus applied in engineering statics?

MOTIVATION

Mathematics courses are a major source of engineering student attrition. Many engineering students drop out before even taking an engineering course. In our previous work examining the mathematical expectations that engineering faculty have of their students, faculty claimed they don’t need most of the calculus that is taught in these high-failure prerequisite mathematics courses. We will investigate to what extent this claim is true.

BACKGROUND

While the mismatch between mathematics content and following engineering coursework is already a concern, it is often studied heuristically by talking to engineering faculty. Few rigorous studies empirically document when students actually need to use calculus knowledge in their coursework.

CONTEXT/Data

This study is a component of a larger effort examining what engineering faculty truly desire out of engineering mathematics education. We mapped how foundational calculus concepts are used to solve assigned problems in topics covered in the widely required Engineering Statics course. We analyzed one full semester of 84 Statics homework problems.

ANALYSIS

To create this mapping, we will use the ‘mathematics-in-use’ technique of Czocher et al. Mathematics-in-use makes an important distinction between “topics” and “concepts” and “skills”. Topics are found in tables of contents, syllabi, or at the top of lecture slides, such as “Derivative rules”. Concepts are lower-level ideas about what an object is, such as “derivatives express a rate of change”. Skills are the sequences of steps used to solve a particular type of problem, such as “how to compute the derivative of a polynomial”. The mathematics-in-use technique involves solving the statics problems in high detail, much more than would be expected from student work or an exam solution. A team of two researchers compared the calculus used in the Statics problems to a list of the skills and concepts in calculus from the mathematics education literature.

DATA

The overlap between engineering statics and calculus is rather weak in the course assignments. Just 7 of 84 problems require calculus knowledge to solve. Many concepts and skills from calculus do not occur at all in statics. Integration in Statics is used more as a pre-defined relationship between variables than as a technique of summing or accumulating, and is mostly avoided through the use of centroids.

Authors
  1. Mr. Brian E. Faulkner University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign [biography]

    Brian Faulkner's interests include teaching of modeling, engineering mathematics, textbook design, and engineering epistemology.

  2. Dr. Geoffrey L. Herman Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9501-2295 University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign [biography]

    Dr. Geoffrey L. Herman is a teaching assistant professor with the Deprartment of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He also has a courtesy appointment as a research assistant professor with the Department of Curriculum & Instruction. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Mavis Future Faculty Fellow and conducted postdoctoral research with Ruth Streveler in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. His research interests include creating systems for sustainable improvement in engineering education, conceptual change and development in engineering students, and change in faculty beliefs about teaching and learning. He serves as the Publications Chair for the ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division.

Download paper (5.52 MB)

Are you a researcher? Would you like to cite this paper? Visit the ASEE document repository at peer.asee.org for more tools and easy citations.

» Download paper

« View session


  • Follow Us
  • twitter
  • facebook
  • youtube
  • instagram
  • linkedin
  • 1818 N Street N.W. Suite 600, Washington DC 20036

  • Telephone: 202.331.3500 | Fax: 202.265.8504

  • © 2018 Copyright: ASEE.org All rights reserved. Privacy Policy.