USING CASE-BASED REASONING INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGY TO TEACH MATHEMATICAL MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF MECHANICAL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Many industrial technology education reform movements call for developing students to engage multidisciplinary studies through the complex problems that emerge for advances and changes in engineering theory and technology applications. The purposes of this research were to design of the case-based reasoning instructional strategy framework as part of the study along with the approach and to examine the effect of achieved using case-based reasoning instructional strategy to develop students for undertaking their own design projects. A one-group pre-test and post-test quasi-experimental design was employed in this study. All 31 a third-year in 5503901 Industrial Technology Research course of undergraduate mechanical technology students, Faculty of Industrial Technology at Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University in semester 2/2013 were invited to participate in the present study. The procedures provided to the students as the course goals of Problem Solving in Mathematical Modeling and Analysis of Rotational Mechanical Systems: A case study of Mechanical Transmission System for Industry was conducted to test students’ learning outcome. Data were analyzed by the descriptive statistics including mean, standard deviation and 95% confidential interval were used to estimate the students’ learning outcomes to learning by CBRIS at pre-test scores. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) with post-hoc multiple-comparison (Bonferroni) was used to identify significant factors affecting students’ learning outcomes to learning by CBRIS at post-test scores. The results showed that for an analytical reasoning approach to learning, the post-test mean score was noticeably higher than that at the pre-test. No significant difference was observed between the pre-test and post-test mean scores for a previous experience approach. The research finding fostered certain aspects of problem solving in mathematical modeling and analysis. The study also some suggestions of use instructional strategy, that support students’ thinking and reasoning.