PERC-a collaboration between engineering and arts and science faculty to help insure better student preparation

In an attempt to enhance preparation of engineering students, the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences at Mississippi State University have been working together to try to enhance the effectiveness of pre-engineering courses. As part of this effort, the physics department has started supplementing regular physics for engineering courses with Web-based content. The goal is to develop tools and content that will help infuse proven effective teaching practices in the teaching of these courses. The aim is to have Web tools that affect both the in-class activities as well as the outside of class activities. Currently, some of the tools used allow for just-in-time teaching inquiry based learning through online tutorials. To accomplish this goal a set of dedicated tools and tutorials (PERC) was developed and placed on a dedicated Web server. Effort was made to ensure that the tools were easy to use by both students and faculty, and that they do not require an extra time investment from the faculty. Pre and post standard tests were administered and used to help evaluate the effect of PERC. We describe PERC, from both student and faculty viewpoints. We demonstrate an example tutorial and show the faculty-authoring interface. We address faculty and student use. We discuss collaboration issues both within the department and outside the department. We finally report the evaluation activities and their results