Improving the Physics Learning Outcomes of Engineering Students Through Just in Time Teaching (JiTT)

Abstract

In this work, we estimate the impact over five semesters of a methodology based on Just in Time Teaching in Physics for Engineering laboratory courses. The research question explored here is as follows: what is the impact of Just in Time Teaching (JiTT) implementation on student academic achievements as measured by the grades obtained by engineering students in physics laboratories? We examined the research question by statistical analysis of the grades obtained by students before and after the implementation of the JiTT strategy. The statistical analysis showed an increase in the percentage of students with grades over 4.0/5.0 upon the implementation of this strategy. A significant difference between the grades obtained before and after implementation in the Physics I and Physics II laboratories was confirmed by ANOVA (p < 0.005); in contrast, in Physics III laboratories, we observed similar grades before and after the implementation. We conclude that the implementation of JiTT improves the grade distribution over higher values, suggesting that students have better learning outcomes; more efforts are needed in Physics III laboratories to achieve a similar (or greater) increase in grades than in Physics I and II.