Work in progress — The iCollaborate MSE project

The overall objectives of the research work in the iCollaborate MSE (Materials Science and Engineering) project are to measure if improvements in student learning outcomes, student engagement, and successful course completion are possible if the structure in basic materials engineering courses is transformed from primarily deductive practice to an Information Communication Technology (ICT) enabled inductive teaching and learning environment. The specific innovations that are proposed in the project are the development of MSE education applications for the iPod Touch, which facilitate and support collaborative learning opportunities, by targeting specific student learning objectives that are known to be challenging for many students in basic MSE courses. We are studying whether the combination of specific learning objective targets, completed in collaborative groups, and supported by conceptually contained data, visuals, audio, and information from the iPod Touch, will lead to specific improvements in learning outcomes for students. The purpose of this work-in-progress paper is to describe the initial suite of iPod applications that have been created, the challenges faced in the development of them, and the observable differences in collaborative experiences of the students with and without the devices. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, CCLI, grant, # 0941012.