Acquisition of manufacturing content knowledge and practical skills by focus groups discussions

Manufacturing content knowledge is an important part for Mechanical Engineering Students. In Taiwan, two path for high school students to learn mechanical engineering content, general high school or technique high school. For technique high school students, they would learn basic mechanical engineering content through practical course and lecture in-class. Generally, the connection between practical course and in-class course are weak. Students hardly learn to connect the manufacturing content with practical course. Therefore, students need more effective method to connect the content. Focus group discussions is one of effective method to connect learning activities with content knowledge. It based on participates' observation and reflection ability. In this study, we proposed to use focus group discussions as a framework for practical courses in high school. Students who learning manufacturing content knowledge, metal welding by practical course. Based on the background and motivation, we investigated two research questions as follows: (1) Does student learning with focus group discussions to acquire manufacturing content knowledge better than without FGD?; (2) What is the difference between student learning with and without focus group discussions to acquire manufacturing content knowledge? According to the result, we found that learn manufacturing content knowledge with FGD in a practical course can improving student learning performance. It can provide a reference for teachers who teach the practical courses. For future work, we would deeply find the correction between different backgrounds of the student, like learning style, course interesting.