The Impact of Strength-Based Projects on the Engagment of Students in the Mechanics of Materials Course

The Mechanics of Materials course has been offered in flipped modality over the past 8 years at the University of Connecticut.This course is an entry-level course required for several engineering majors such as Civil, Mechanical, Biomedical, Materials Science, and Manufacturing Engineering.The goals of this flipped course are to improve student learning in large enrollment classes and promote inclusive teaching by providing online content to all the students.In this design, the lectures are delivered using pre-recorded videos.The in-person class time is used to present a brief recitation of the lecture material, discuss challenging concepts, and solve problems, individually or in groups.A recent study evaluated the impact of using real-life examples by asking students to share images of engineering concepts.It found that while this activity benefits the learning of students, only a small group of students was motivated to actively participate.It was hypothesized that the single-domain approach relying on photography skills and interests of students is a limiting factor in broadening the participation of students.In the academic year of 2020-2021, a series of optional small strength-based projects (SBP) were added to the course to further improve student engagement and participation.Students were able to contribute to the course based on their personal interests and expertise.Students were prompted to identify one or more areas of interests such as photography, drawing, filming, sports, programming, computer gaming, comedy, woodwork, cooking, planting, poetry, reading, and puzzles.After students identified their area of interest, the instructor assigned individual, or group projects aligned with the student interests and course content.More than 25% of students participated in this activity compared to 5% in the previous single-mode approach.The participants created unique projects that are being used as learning materials in the course.This paper discusses the observations from this pilot implementation, the impact of strength-based projects on students' engagement, and the improvement in the students' learning experience.A retrospective survey was used to collect student feedback on whether this activity reinforced their sense of inclusion and improved their skills related to the implementation of their knowledge in real-life problems.Modifications have been made on the structure of strength-based projects in the academic year of 2021-2022 to enhance students' experience and improve the quality of the projects.The changes and expected outcomes will be discussed in this paper. Response to Reviewers:Reviewer 1: Since the math is limited at this stage in their career as engineering students, does this make the