Student accuracy in reading logarithmic plots: The problem and how to fix it

Through extensive student testing and interviews, we found that the majority of university sophomore, junior, and senior engineering students in a standard introductory materials science engineering course have a variety of difficulties reading correct values from simple logarithmic graphs. For example, students often unknowingly interpreted the log scale as linear and were confused about the order of magnitude of a value in the negative exponent region. To address these issues, we used the results of our findings to develop and implement a set of online “essential skills” tasks to help students achieve a core level of mastery and fluency in reading log plots, a basic and critical skill for engineers. The online tasks were administered as for-credit homework assigned several times throughout the semester, and students spent 10-20 minutes on each assignment. Results of post-tests indicate that with this minimal practice, students were able to dramatically improve their accuracy in reading log plots compared to a control group with no log plot practice. Furthermore, testing one month after training demonstrated that student continued to retain the learned skill. Future development will focus on making these essentials skills task broadly available online and further improving effectiveness and usability.