Assessing conceptual understanding of material science among non-physics majors

This study intends to develop a learning module for Materials Science (Scimatp) and assess the students conceptual understanding in Materials Science within a term of implementation of the learning module. An intact class (n=40) of freshmen students from De La Salle University Manila enrolled in Scimatp were the subject of the study. To assess the conceptual understanding of the student, a comparison between their pretest scores and post test scores were analyzed. Furthermore, the responses to different activities in the module were listed and summarized. Results revealed that the correlation between the pre test and post test is 0.380. This implies that when the pretest is high, the post test is also and vice versa. The result of the paired sampled test that was administered to the respondents gave a t-test value that is -11.768 which means it is significant. The difference between the pre test and post test score of the 40 respondents is significant. The negative sign indicates that the post test scores are higher that the pre test score. This implies that the learning module implemented on the class of the respondents gave a positive result in terms of their conceptual learning. Moreover, the learning module as well as the implementation of the learning module was evaluated before, during and after the implementation of the study by both experts and respondents and evaluation shows a very positive view on the developed module. It was apparent that after instruction, the conceptual understanding of the respondents improved. The inspiration of the created learning module is the UbD framework which proved as an effective technique that may be used in implementation classroom discussions and could hold could hold promise as effective pedagogy for concept change. Furthermore, based from the result of the activities and student response, the students concepts of materials science was better showcased in the presentation of their performance task which is an application of the different materials properties to different invention concepts