The Effects of Problem Solving Skills Strategy on Automotive Mechatronic Systems for Undergraduate Mechanical Technology Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of problem-solving skills strategy on automotive technology systems for undergraduate mechanical technology students. Thirty-five undergraduate mechanical technology students in 5592103 Machine Design I course offered in semester 1/2013 at the Mechanical Technology Program of Faculty of Industrial Technology (FIT) at Nakhon Si Thammarat Rajabhat University (NSTRU) were chosen to be the participants. Learners’ were simple randomly assigned to experiment group (n = 18) and control group (n = 17). The pre-test and post-test of the theoretical mechatronic brake systems, which was adapted to undergraduate mechanical technology students context was used along multiple with a 40-item multiple choice developed by the researcher. The reliability of the tests was .83. The difficulty levels of the tests were .67. The problem-solving skills strategy short-answer items test of the mechatronic brake systems consisted of 20 items covering four processes: construct problem space; identify fault symptoms; diagnose fault(s); and solutions. Descriptive statistics were used Two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were conducted to investigate. The interpreting significance of the results, the statistically significance was set at .05. On the pre-test, there was no significantly difference between these two groups. On the post-test, there were significant differences between the experimental group scored higher than the control. The finding found that the scores have statistical significantly in each aspect: identify fault symptoms, diagnose fault(s), and solutions have statistical significantly in the experimental group were discussed.