Browsing by Author "Case, Jennifer"

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    Communicating your findings in engineering education: the value of making your theoretical perspective explicit
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff; Case, Jennifer
    The authors observe that many research papers in engineering education do not explicitly state the theoretical perspective underpinning their work. In this article they argue for the value of theory in assisting researchers in communicating their research findings. Three theoretical perspectives that can be used to support one's research are described, namely; positivism, constructivism and critical inquiry, and in each case examples of research questions that best match the particular framework are given. Researchers are advised to be aware of the limitations of each perspective and to use the one that best assists them in understanding and solving the problems they wish to address.
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    Grappling with methodologies in educational research: science and engineering educators finding their way
    (Nova Science Publishers, 2009) Jawitz, Jeff; Case, Jennifer; Marshall, Delia; Kgeti Setati; Renuka Vithal; Cliff Malcolm; Rubby Dhunpath
    Science and Engineering faculties at South African tertiary institutions have seen dramatic changes since the 1980’s due to a changing student body as a result of equity and redress measures. There has also been an increasing interest in educational research that might help improve student learning. Some of these researchers are disciplinary experts taking an interest in teaching and learning, while others have moved from undergraduate scientific work to postgraduate educational qualifications. Many of these researchers have no foundations in social science research. As a result much of the research produced by this group tends to unproblematically apply the ‘scientific method’ to problems in the social sciences. As authors of this chapter, we fit the above description, and describe our journeys in developing more appropriate and critical ways of conducting research in these complex and changing higher education contexts. Our initial research efforts were conducted in largely positivist frames. While there were many opportunities to develop (and publish) within this framework, we became increasingly aware that this framework offered superficial understandings of the student experience and failed to engage with broader societal issues. Interpretivist and critical perspectives appeared to offer more productive frames within which to work, yet we struggled to make sense of and gain access to these discourses. In this chapter we analyse and describe the experiences gained from two different research projects we have pursued during the 1990’s. The first theme concerns issues around gender and engineering education, and began with a narrow focus on why women choose to study engineering and shifted to grappling more critically with notions of gender and race. The second theme concerns students’ experiences of learning, initially exploring the approaches to learning framework and in later work responding more critically to the dominant theories in this area. Some of the questions which we address include: What are the methodological challenges involved in shifting to a more interpretive and critical paradigm? Is critical theory a useful framework for researching tertiary science and engineering education?
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    Investigating the effectiveness of animations in exploring learning a case study in a Chemical Engineering course
    (2012) Ma, Karen; Case, Jennifer; Smith, Leonard
    Using technology in the classroom environment has become increasingly popular among educators. One way of employing technology is using instructional animations to teach concepts, favoured owing to their ability to depict changes in object over time. Animations are commonly believed to increase motivation and foster learning, but there is little empirical evidence for this belief. Some researchers have found that animations can be effective; others, however, show that animations have the same effect as a combination of static pictures and text. Some have even showed that animations could actually have negative effects on student learning. A lecturer at the University of Cape Town had planned to use animations in his third year undergraduate Chemical Engineering Course in Reactor Design. This became the context for the present study which investigated the effectiveness of these animations for promoting conceptual understanding as well as exploring students' perspective on learning from animations as well as students' enjoyment level. A quasi-experimental case study was conducted over four topics in Reactor Design and one topic was repeated. Each investigation was on one topic, and in each investigation, the Reactor Design class was split so that the student either attended a traditional lecture or an animation lecture. The two groups of students were used to compare the impact of animations on student learning.