Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Douglas F. De Boer

gradingevent.)Also, before the next class Armani will try the new assignment. A diligent Armani will refer tothe textbook and find help as needed and invent ways to check answers. Students like that wouldprobably thrive under any form of instruction. However, maybe Armani will skip the assignedreading in an attempt to save time. Some answers will be correctly found, but many will not. IfArmani does not have enough time or perseverance to finish well, the peer grading rubric willencourage Armani to at least think about and write something down for each problem. Also, Proceedings of the 2010 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conference

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Deborah Nykanen; Rebecca Bates; Marilyn Hart; Mezbahur Rahman

Developing Academic, Professional and Life Skills in Undergraduate Engineers through an Interdisciplinary Peer-Mentoring Support System Deborah Nykanen, Rebecca Bates, Marilyn Hart, Mezbahur Rahman Minnesota State University, Mankato Civil Engineering / Computer Science / Biological Sciences / Mathematics1. IntroductionUndergraduate engineering programs prepare students for a career in engineering by buildingknowledge of fundamental engineering concepts and developing skills in engineering design.Due to limitations on program credits, broadening the student’s education beyond the requiredengineering coursework is typically limited to mandatory humanity and social science electives.Developing

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

William R. Peterson; Guanghsu Chang

– The First ExperimentAs previously reported (Peterson, 2001) in the winter semester of 2000 I was assigned to teach agraduate seminar in engineering management for the first time. The course was an elective intwo overlapping master’s programs – one in industrial engineering and one in engineeringmanagement. The course was offered off-campus over a 12-week period. Each class was a threehour and twenty minute block that was to start at 6:00 PM. The catalog’s course description(Western Michigan University, 2000) of the course was as follows: “ISE 622 Industrial Supervision Seminar (3-0) 3 hrs An analysis of the writings, literature, and philosophy concerning line supervision and employee direction in manufacturing industries

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Byron Garry

Proceedings of the 2010 ASEE North Midwest Sectional Conferenceassessment including student surveys during and at the end of the course, self-reflection entriesin journals, self-reflection papers, alumni surveys, notebooks, log books, student written user’smanuals, exit surveys, and assessments by a consortium of faculty.Gloria Rogers, ABET's Managing Director of Professional Services, writes extensively on thetopic of assessment. In an article entitled “When is Enough Enough?”8, she says that datacollection activities must be examined in light of good program assessment practice, efficiency,and reasonableness. She says several questions need to be asked, such as, “Is there a clear visionof why specific data are being collected?” She answers

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Rebecca Bates; Andrew Petersen

beneficialbecause students can shore up weaknesses in their understanding brought to light by theindividual exam. However, not too much time should be allowed, since more misconceptions inunderstanding will be uncovered by the group exam than by the individual exam, and it isimportant to provide fast feedback.Before the exam, students must prepare sufficiently to be ready to actively engage during theexam. Without adequate preparation, students may find it too easy to passively rely on the groupconsciousness and may not be capable of identifying gaps in their own knowledge during thediscussion. To encourage individual accountability and active discussion during the exam, thestudents must follow two rules. 1. Each student must write some of the answers

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Joseph Dobmeier; Joseph Gehrke; Matthew Simones; Patrick Tebbe

been multi-disciplinary with Physics and Mechanical Engineering faculty and students. Undergraduate andgraduate level students have also worked together. It was quickly found that scheduling issuesfor the repeated on-site visits would make it difficult for faculty to personally oversee allactivities. Therefore, a process of peer mentoring was relied on with more experienced studentsleading the development of new students on the project. As students rotated off the project (dueto graduation or other responsibilities) efforts were made to ensure that new students were fullytrained by the time they would need to take over tasks.III. PROJECT TASK BREAKDOWNThe first task performed for this project was a literature review. Students extensively

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Waddah Akili

difficult to come to grip with all the cited definitions, meanings, and interpretations of theterm “active learning”, since different contributors in the field have interpreted some termsdifferently. However, by gleaming at the literature, it is possible to arrive at general consensus ofwhat appears to be widely accepted definitions, and shed light on how common terms are used.Active learning is generally defined as any instructional method that engages students in thelearning process. It is widely accepted that active learning requires students to take part in “pre-planned” learning-related activities, believed to spark and stimulate their learning, while in theclassroom(Bloom 1956; Randolph 2000) .These activities would include: reading, writing

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Waddah Akili

, individuals seek outcomes that are beneficial to them and to all other group members(Smith et al 1981; Johnson et al 1991). Cooperative learning researchers and practitioners haveshown that positive peer relations are essential to success in college. The positive interpersonalrelationships promoted through cooperative learning are regarded as crucial to today’s learningcommunities. They reduce uncertainties and increase the quality of social adjustment andintegration into college life. Isolation and alienation, on the other hand, often lead to failure. Twomajor reasons for dropping out of college are: failure to establish a social network of classmatesand failure to become academically involved in classes (Mckeachie et al 1986; Tinto 1994).The

Collection

2010 North Midwest Section

Authors

Beckry Abdel-Magid

course, wherestudents follow prescribed procedure to run the equipment, test specimens, obtain results,analyze data and write a report in which they discuss and interpret the data and drawconclusions. However the first element of “designing an experiment” is rather difficult toaddress in an undergraduate course. The difficulty is due to many reasons including lack of timeto cover essential laboratory tests in the curriculum, lack of preparation of undergraduatestudents to design and perform their own experimental work, and the extra training needed tooperate expensive equipment.Some educators argue that it is better to have students run fewer but more open-endedexperiments than many well-prescribed and guided experiments [1]. This paper