There is broad recognition that meaningful learning requires that students master fundamental concepts. Understanding concepts and the connections among concepts is one of the primary distinctions between experts and novices (Bransford et al., 2000; Chi, 2006;). Conceptual understanding is also a prerequisite for students to transfer what they have learned in the classroom to new settings, something that is arguably among the most significant goals of an engineering education. While there is little disagreement about the importance of conceptual learning, a wealth of evidence drawn from decades of research in the sciences (Lightman et al., 1993; Laws et al., 1999; Chi et al., 2005; Reiner et al., 2008) and a growing literature in engineering (Prince et al., 2010; Prince et al., in review; Krause et al., 2003; Steif et al., 2005; Miller et al., 2006; and Streveler et al., 2008) demonstrates that students generally enter our classrooms with misconceptions and that traditional instruction is often ineffective for promoting sizeable conceptual change. Addressing this problem requires a paradigm shift in teaching methods, from a paradigm of "teaching by telling" to one that more directly engages students at a conceptual level and lets them actively construct new meanings. Research, much of it in the sciences, has successfully demonstrated that a range of student centered instructional techniques can significantly improve students' conceptual learning gains (Hake, 1998; Laws et al., 1999; Reddish et al., 1997; and Mazur, 1997). There is a small but growing body of literature in engineering that supports similar conclusions (Prince et al., 2006, 2009).
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