Grasple is widely used for math, but what about engineering?

Project introduction and background information

The importance of practicing in education is widely recognised, and particularly in technical courses (e.g., mathematics, physics and engineering). Inspired by his personal experience as Fluid Mechanics teacher in Civil Engineering at the University of Twente (see below), the author desired to create an interactive practice tool for students. UT's Teaching & Learning Fellowship (theme 'digitalisation', 2022-2024) offered him the opportunity to explore, test and study this in an evidence-based way. 

Grasple, an online platform that enables teachers in Higher Education to find and create and share openly licensed exercises, was selected for this pilot. It was chosen because of its built-in symbolic algebra system and conditional logic features. Furthermore, pragmatically speaking, UT is already a client for its math education. However, until now, Grasple has been exclusively applied to mathematics and statistics. Importantly, the author has no commercial interests in Grasple (neither before, during nor after the project).

Fluid Mechanics 1 is a 2 EC Bachelor course, taught in the first year of UT's BSc program Civil Engineering and in the premaster for the MSc progam Civil Engineering & Management. The course consists of four lectures, three tutorials, and is assessed with a written exam. Students generally perceive it as a difficult course and acknowledge the importance of practice.

Objective and expected outcomes

The goal of this study was to explore how an interactive online practice tool can assist in engineering education. Importantly, the tool was never meant to replace other activities, such as tutorials. The following steps were taken:

• Literature review
• Teaching Fluid Mechanics 1 in 2022/23 (without interactive online practice tool)
• Interviewing fellow Fluid Mechanics teachers at UT
• Choosing and exploring the platform to be used for the new tool (i.e., Grasple; see above)
• Conducting panel meeting with students
• Developing new tool (see figure below for an example)
• Teaching Fluid Mechanics 1 in 2023/24 (including new tool)
• Evaluating using panel session and online questionnaire.

Based on the literature, the interviews and panel meetings, various constraints emerged in this process. The tool should (i) resemble the offline self-study setting as closely as possible, (ii) stimulate 'good behaviour', (iii) allow for multiple solution paths, and (iv) overall focus on systematic problem-solving skills. 

Results and learnings

Overall, the pilot study has demonstrated feasibility of using Grasple for formative assessment in Engineering courses. More specifically:

• Students are generally satisfied: they actively use it as a self-study tool, mostly in preparation for the exam. Furthermore, students claim that it has helped them sharpening their problem-solving skills. Finally, they emphasize it should supplement the existing education, i.e. not replace tutorials.
• Designing and implementing the exercises in Grasple proves rather time-consuming for the teacher. There seems to be no 'light' version in which one can explore this lightly. As a consequence, to justify the time investment, courses should not change over the years.  
• Some technical adjustments are needed to improve the tool; see recommendations below.
• It is important to realize how exercises in engineering courses typically differ from those in mathematics courses; see figure below.

Recommendations

• Apart from expanding and optimizing the existing database with Fluid Mechanics exercises, it is recommended to seek experience also in other engineering courses.
• A major technical improvement would be to implement a dedicated physics-answer mode in Grasple, capable of assessing three elements at once: (i) a numerical value, (ii) the associated physical units, (iii) the number of significant digits. Since these elements are so closely connected and crucial in engineering exercises, treating them together is not only convenient, but also desired from the perspective of stimulating 'good behaviour' (see objective above).
• Furthermore, to enhance user-friendliness, it is recommended to create the possibility of shortcut keys in the Grasple's equation editor. This request actually emphasizes the difference in formulations for math (small number of simple symbols) and engineering (large number of more complicated symbols with subscripts).
• When continuing using the tool in engineering eduction, keep an eye on (desired and undesired) side effects. For example, regarding the student's academic development, it may seem more desired to offer such tools at the beginning of BSc programs rather than at the end of MSc programs.

Practical outcomes

Inspired by the findings in this pilot study, Grasple is currently (early 2025) considering implementation of the technical recommendations above.