Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2009

Publication Title

Journal of Engineering Education

Abstract

Interviews were conducted with students from a sophomore-level mechanics of materials class, a sophomore/junior-level structures class, a senior-level steel design class and a graduate-level advanced steel design class to investigate students’ conceptual understanding of bending and normal stress. The graduate students generally demonstrated higher computational skill and confidence but they were not significantly different from the sophomores in terms of conceptual understanding. Interestingly, the seniors showed markedly lower confidence in their ability to solve the problems posed in the interviews. Common difficulties include a conceptual definition of stress and reasoning involving the normal stresses developed under bending.

Keywords

civil engineering, conceptual understanding, qualitative research methods

Volume

98

Issue

2

First Page

111

Last Page

129

Rights

Given permission by the ©American Society for Engineering Education

Comments

Originally published in the ASEE Journal of Engineering Education, 98(2):111-129.

https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/jee

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