Review by: Reichert, Raimond (2004-07-26)

The goal of the research detailed in this paper was to isolate the factors that made instruction in designing for stamping most effective, using both software tutorials and traditional classroom instruction. The authors conducted several experiments to this end. For the first, they developed a software tutorial to introduce students to designing for stamping. The first part of this tutorial is an introduction which uses video and animations to illustrate the relationship between the shape of a part and the ease or difficulty of constructing the tooling required to produce the part. The second part is a workshop module in which students can design and build parts themselves and obtain design evaluations of the tooling required. 22 students were taught design for stamping using only the software tutorial, 17 students were taught in a lecture-only format. The overall results showed that the tutorial group outperformed the lecture group almost by a one standard derivation, a finding which replicates what other studies on the effectiveness on software tutorials have found.

However, the authors also noted that most students failed to understand the process of stamping, that is, that a part must be given its external shape before any bending can occur. They had difficulty in visualizing the entire process. To determine what would be the most effective way to teach the stamping process, the authors set up an experiment using five different approaches to teaching the subject: (a) Software Tutorial Only Group which had access only to the software; (b) Video Lecture Group A which had only access to a videotaped presentation; (c) Video Lecture Group B which had access to the videotaped presentation plus a textbook; (d) Traditional Lecture Group, a live lecture with questions permitted and graded homework; (e) Software Tutorial plus Homework Group which used the software and with graded homework.

The most striking result was that students of group (d), exposed to a traditional lecture with questions and graded homework, performed on average one standard derivation better then students of group (a), (b), (c), and they performed as well as students of group (e). The authors argue that this experiment, taken with the results from the experiment described above, shows that students profit by a considerable amount from directed and individual feedback. Indeed, the feedback seems more important than the method of instruction (lecture vs. software tutorial) itself.

Though these results can not be easily generalized, they illustrate that arguments and claims about the effectiveness of certain methods of instruction should be made very carefully indeed. More research of this type is needed to substantiate other hypotheses on the relative improvements through certain methods of instruction.