A Multisensory Approach to Improving Student Efficacy in an Introductory Steel Design Course

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Research on multisensory approaches to teaching demonstrate such methods have proven useful with students who lack well-developed visualization skills.1, 2, 3 To improve the ability of students to visualize important lesson concepts in a 1st year steel design course, the author augmented the concept mapping structure used in the daily lesson plans to present material visually and aurally in the classroom with full-scale, 3D steel models of figures from the course textbook. Integration of these models into the lesson structure are shown to have had a positive impact on students’ ability to visualize loads, load paths and failure limit states and thus conduct effective analysis and design. Class averages on graded problems involving lesson concepts related to the full-scale steel models are compared to averages from prior semesters to assess impact on student ability. Responses from course surveys are used to compare subjective parameters related to both ability and motivation.

Author(s):

Keith Landry    
College of Engineering & IT
Georgia Southern University
United States