Abstract:

At German universities, around 40 % of students still drop out of their studies in classical engineering subjects. The three most frequent crucial reasons are "performance problems" (38 %), "wish for more professional and practical relevance" (18 %) and "lack of study motivation" (17 %). Due to the fact that the teacher has an influence on these three main causes, an intervention was carried out in the course "Industrial Control Systems and Real-Time Systems" at Leibniz University of Hannover with the aim to reduce influencing factors on study dropout, according to the research method "action research". The interventions have been planned, carried out, evaluated, reflected and optimised by the exercise instructor.

The course is attended by about 40 Bachelor's and 90 Master's students from the fields of electrical engineering, computer science and mechatronics. It consists of a lecture, in which the content is explained theoretically by the responsible lecturer, as well as an exercise, in which the instructor deepens the lecture content by solving tasks in the plenum and answering students' questions.

The starting situation of an exercise during the intervention is a practice-oriented problem task, which is solved collaboratively by the students according to action orientation. The problem tasks refer to a problem product from the future professional field, which is used to control the developed problem solution.

During the first three phases, the students "inform" themselves about the problem and the basic content, "plan" possible solution options and "decide" between them. While the first three phases take place self-directed at home, the students "realise" and "control" the problem solution collaboratively in the lecture hall (flipped classroom). In the last phase, the students "reflect" on the learning process. Due to the large cohort, only some of the students' exemplary solutions can be checked on the problem product located in the lecture hall. Therefore, the problem product is part of a remote lab, which thus allows individual control from home.

In order to measure the factors influencing study dropout, a questionnaire was used not only at the beginning of the lecture period regarding the experiences in former studies, but also at the end of the lecture period regarding the described course. Furthermore, the exam results as well as memory protocols of the instructor were taken into account. The measurements were carried out in a control group and in the experimental groups during the two following years.

The results show that the "amount of work" and the "pressure to perform" in both experimental groups as well as the "compensation of missing previous knowledge" in the first experimental group and the "interest in the content" in the second experimental group have significantly worsened compared to the control group. The "interest in subject-related jobs" has significantly improved in both experimental groups and the "occupational and practical relevance" has significantly improved in the last experimental group compared to the control group. The exam results showed that students in both experimental groups performed significantly better than the control group in comparable subtasks.

Keywords:

Learner-centered activating teaching, activating large cohorts, problem-based learning, flipped classroom, remote lab, study dropout.