How to Improve a Textbook with Engineering Technology Students

Abstract

Strength of Materials is the hardest course in the first two years of the Mechanical, Civil, and Architectural Engineering Technology programs at Indiana University – Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW); consequently it has the highest drop and fail rate (between 18% and 30% per semester). A previous ASEE paper described the process for creating a new textbook designed to help students learn better and pass the course in larger numbers. The textbook is free, available online as a 2 MB pdf file. This paper focuses on continuous improvement of the textbook. While commercially-produced textbooks are updated once every four to ten years, the new textbook is updated every semester based on student feedback. In the first semester of the new textbook's use, feedback was optional and worth extra credit points. Unfortunately, only the most desperate students participated, and the quality of the responses was inadequate. Subsequently, feedback was incorporated into the homework assignments as a course requirement, with better than 90% participation. Feedback must be both specific and actionable: “this chapter is confusing” does not meet these criteria, whereas “I don't understand how to solve the moment in Example 6, page 45” meets both criteria. A student may not know what to change, but can easily identify the confusing parts of a text. This paper presents an analysis of the quality and quantity of feedback responses, with examples of positive effects on the textbook over the past three semesters. Although the topic of the book is Strength of Materials, this paper discusses techniques that can be applied to a variety of undergraduate engineering textbook topics. Introduction I spent a sabbatical semester writing a Strength of Materials textbook tailored to the needs of Architectural, Civil, and Mechanical Engineering Technology students at IPFW. The writing process is described in a previous paper,1 along with the reasons for writing the book: to make the text more understandable and less wordy, to reduce textbook costs, to use standard Greek symbols for shear and normal stress, to create new homework problems every semester (to reduce copying), to introduce algebraic homework problems, and ultimately, to reduce the failure rate. Since the textbook is electronic, I was able to use color extensively, because color is free on a laptop, pad device, or cellphone. The textbook is available to the students as a 2 MB pdf file, free on the university's website.2 The great benefit to an electronic book is frequency of revision. Commercially-produced textbooks tend to be updated once every 4 to 10 years, so if there is an error or a confusing passage, 8 to 20 semesters of students are educated with the flawed book before corrections are introduced. It is hard to imagine any other manufactured product with known flaws remaining on the market for so long without some change in design, processing, or materials. This new textbook has become a good example to students of Continuous Improvement in action. The textbook topics are organized as follows: Preface Introduction to the book Editors List of all students who have edited previous editions of the textbook Terminology List of symbols and their meaning, along with typical units; Greek alphabet Definitions Terms with their symbols and definitions Chapter