engineering educators, we seek to promote types of effective and satisfactory teamexperiences that will be required in professional practice. This project expands findings from aprevious case study examining the perceptions of individual team members working withinteams to determine each team’s processes of communication, problem solving, and leadershipstrategies used in Capstone Design projects. Our objectives in this study are to identify andcategorize this perceptual data at both individual and team levels in order to identify anyconsistent factors or characteristics that may contribute to each group member’s perception of ashared experience.Findings from a previous case study involving one team of Capstone Design studentsconsistently indicated
skills were assessed using skill-based coding schemes and a content-basedcoding scheme. A sketching importance lesson was given to students of one capstone designcourse section and results in their sketching of project concepts were analyzed and compare to acontrol group made up of another section. The sketching importance lesson focused on the valueof sketching for design not on how to sketch. A significant finding was that the sketchingimportance lesson changed the type of sketches produced; the number of sketches produced bythe students (a reduction), and increased the number of details within sketches.Key Words: sketching, cognition, engineering education, design documentation1.0 IntroductionA survey of the panorama of mechanical
All the 2 Frequently 3 Occasionally 4 Rarelyfamiliarity with the term “systems engineering.” The students also increased theirperception of how important systems engineering was to companies. With this exposure,students are better suited to go into their Capstone courses as well as entering industry.Any time a team project is used in academia fairness in student grading becomes aquestion. The approach16 used in this class was from both a team-to-team peer review
AC 2009-928: ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND EFFECTIVE TEAMPROBLEM-SOLVING STRATEGIES IN ENGINEERING DESIGN PROJECTS: ACASE STUDYTony Jones, United States ArmyAnna Lambert, University of MemphisDaisie Boettner, United States Military AcademyBrian Novoselich, United States Military AcademyStephanie Ivey, Page 14.936.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 Organizational Leadership and Effective Team Problem Solving Strategies in Engineering Design Projects: A Case StudyAbstractThis project presents a case study examination of the problem solving strategies and discoursepatterns used by members of an Engineering Capstone Design Team. In our study, a
prime example of a modified and extremely successful PL-TL program. MTSUengineering and engineering technology students voluntarily participate in the EVP as anexciting and challenging academic supplement, and some seniors within the program also useelements of the projects for their capstone research course6. This program is currently comprisedof five different student projects: Moonbuggy, Solar Vehicle, SAE Formula One, SAE MiniBaja, and Solar Boat. Instead of the original, established PL-TL model which has beenimplemented to improve classroom progression, the EVP includes real-world simulation andimplements its own unique style which is designed to encourage upper level college students
.8This paper will address the design and outcomes associated with the implementation of theservice-based project in the course. The technological effectiveness will be discussed, as well asthe shortcomings of the implementation process. (Evaluation of the course development andother educational outcomes are discussed in a separate paper.9) Page 14.1362.3Program descriptionEngineering students could take part in various steps in the project-based program, as illustratedin Table 1. The elements of the project were distributed through senior design capstone coursesand the interdisciplinary study abroad course. The study abroad course was taught as a
Management, Professional Practice and Capstone Design. In 2000, at the request of her students, Ms. Philips started the International Senior Design (ISD) taking over 170 students to developing world countries to do their Capstone design projects (http://cee.eng.usf.edu/ICD). Ms. Philips is a lead author of the book Field Guide in Environmental Engineering for Development Workers: Water, Sanitation, Indoor Air, (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Press, 2009).James Mihelcic, University of South Florida Dr. James R. Mihelcic is a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering and a State of Florida 21st Century World Class Scholar at the University of South Florida. In 1997 he founded
positions in industry working for such companies as Battelle's Columbus Laboratories, Rockwell International, and Claspan Corporation. He joined the University of Cincinnati in 1985. Page 14.638.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 Frequency Response of RF Transceiver Filters Using Low-Cost Vector Network AnalyzersAbstractThis paper focuses on the construction and testing of a 7 MHz Radio Frequency (RF) transceiverto provide a "Project Based Learning" RF capstone experience for students in Electrical andComputer Engineering Technology. The Transceiver Project is structured to
Construction of a Solar Powered Outdoor Digital Display as a Capstone Design Project,” Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, 2004. 2. Haman, A., Ross, R., Schumack, M., et. al., “A Student-Centered Solar Photovoltaic Installation Project,” Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, 2007. 3. Meah, K., Fletcher, S., Ula, S., and Barrett, S., “Integrating Wind and Solar Electric Energy into Power System Teaching,” Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition, 2007. 4. Al Kalaani, Y., “A Solar System Project to Promote Renewable Energy Education
totheir future employment. Students benefit from the knowledge and experience of practicingengineers. Combining classroom instruction with a capstone design project reinforces keyprinciples and gives students a practical application for their knowledge. This paper reports howelectrical facilities of a university and personnel responsible for its design and maintenancebecame key partners in energy management and renewable power projects for a capstone seniordesign course. This paper documents grid operations, power plant efficiency, and energy costcontrol projects, focusing on a substation design for integrating a wind turbine into theuniversity’s grid. The project includes topics in power systems analysis using practical designmethods. Effective
sources and sinks for projects at the institution. These include thecapstone design courses that are an integral part of each departmental curriculum, the seniorproject and thesis requirements for students, and the individual interests and efforts of bothstudents and faculty. In the current nascent stage of the PBLI there are a range of activitiesacross the spectrum of departments. Unit requirements for the capstone design experience rangefrom 4 to 9 quarter units, senior projects are occasionally integrated with capstone design, butmany are stand-alone classes or individual study experiences. Single student experiences are thenorm, with a few departments offering “interdisciplinary” experiences. Projects range frominstructor selected activities
varied user community, which demonstrates the role and value of communicationand supporting tools, such as discussion forums, version control, and task or defect trackingsystems. Third, students may already be familiar with FOSS as users.Faculty can help students by using a five step “USABL” model in which students use FOSSprojects, study the project as a worked example, add minor enhancements, build largercomponents, and finally leverage FOSS for other purposes. This paper describes experiencesusing FOSS and this approach across a computer science (CS) curriculum and particularly in asophomore-level SE course and in capstone software projects. First, it briefly reviews SE courseand project design, and FOSS. Second, it describes the five step
University. His interest include image and video processing, communication systems, digital signal processing, and cryptographic theory and applications.Min-Sung Koh, Eastern Washington University Page 14.67.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 A Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Project Implementing a Robotic Arm for the Artificial Insemination of Endangered Amphibian SpeciesAbstractThis paper presents a pilot undergraduate project started in fall 2007 and completed in spring2008 at Eastern Washington University. The goal of the project was to expose
, and C. D. Sorensen, “A Review of Literature on Teaching DesignThrough Project-oriented Capstone Courses,” Journal of Engineering Education, pp. 17-28, 1997.[2] D. L. Evans, B. W. McNeil, and G. C. Berkeley, “Design in Engineering Education: Past Views of FutureDirection,” Engineering Education, vol. 80, pp. 517-522, 1990. Page 14.337.10 9[3] K. Smith, S. Sheppard, D. Johnson, and R. Johnson, “Pedagogies of Engagement: Classroom-Based Practices,”Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 94, No. 1, 2005, pp. 87-102.[4] P. H. King
be sent out to be fabricated. However, typical turn-around times do not allow the graduating class to have a chance to test and verify theirdesign, and get the satisfaction and the real world experience of testing. By using MOSISfabricated designs of previous generations, this missing link was completed.1. Introduction and BackgroundThe paper describes how MOSIS fabricated CMOS Operational Amplifiers are used as a realworld design experience in a senior level Analog Integrated Circuit Course in ElectricalEngineering at the University of Southern Maine.Design is an ABET requirement that every engineering student should experience beforegraduation. Although this experience can be left to the capstone project most engineeringprograms require
Systems, Fall 20065 Dym, op. cit., p. 1116 The percentage of the semester grade that is allocated for this project has changed in the six years the course has been offered. When the course was an elective course (2002-2004) there was an additional Project #4 that was an individual project usually tied to the capstone project that students took at the same time as this course.7 Artobolevsky, Ivan I., Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design, Vol. II, Lever Mechanisms, Part 1, trans. Nicholas Weinstein (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1976)8 ME 481 Syllabus, Fall 20079 Toogood, Roger, Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 Mechanica Tutorial (Structure/Thermal), (SDC Publications, 2006
AC 2009-1847: PASSAT: A CUBESAT STUDENT DESIGN PROJECT FOR ACTIVECONTROL-SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND VERIFICATIONDaniel Rooney, Saint Louis UniversityMathew Roseman, Saint Louis UniversityCharles Shotridge, Saint Louis UniversityJeffrey Aschenbrenner, Saint Louis UniversitySanjay Jayaram, Saint Louis University Page 14.944.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 PASSat: ACTIVE CONTROL SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT AND VERIFICATIONAbstract: The CubeSat program at Saint Louis University’s Parks College is a highlyeducational and valuable program for engineering students. Students gain a largespectrum of knowledge; both theory and real world based
AC 2009-2482: A BRINE-SHRIMP ECOSYSTEM DESIGN PROJECT FOR 5TH-AND 6TH-GRADE STUDENTSPaul Schreuders, Utah State UniversityAmanda Feldt, Utah State UniversityHeather Wampler, Utah State UniversitySara Driggs, Utah State University Page 14.5.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 A brine shrimp ecosystem design project for 5th and 6th grade studentsAbstractAs engineering strives to increase its student numbers, more and more programs in biologicalengineering and other areas are developing outreach efforts for K-12 students. An importantcomponent of this type of outreach is the creation of grade appropriate design
quarter.4. Conclusions and Future WorkStudents learn, verify, and reinforce lecture concepts by performing power converterexperiments in the laboratory sessions. In our approach we adopted the principles of theproblem-learning methodology. With this approach, students can develop confidence andthe abilities needed in project design, as well as in their senior capstone design courses.The design experience develops the students’ lifelong learning skills, self-evaluations,self-discovery, and peer instruction in the design’s creation, critique, and justification.Students learn to understand the manufacturer data sheets, application notes, andtechnical manuals. The experience, which would be difficult to complete individually,gives the students a
AC 2009-424: PREPARING BETTER ENGINEERS: COMPULSORYUNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECTS THAT BENEFIT UNIVERSITIESAND THE PROFESSIONAisling O'Sullivan, University of Canterbury Dr Aisling O'Sullivan has been teaching and researching in the discipline of Ecological Engineering as a senior lecturer (US associate professor) at the University of Canterbury since 2004. Prior to that, she was a visiting Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Oklahoma and a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the National University of Ireland in Dublin. Along with Dr Thomas Cochrane, she has led curricular developments, including undergraduate research projects, for the Natural Resources Engineering Programme. Aisling
you think such activities will play in your professional engineering life?In addition to developing historical perspective, the project presents students with an op-portunity to practice their written and oral communication skills. The peer assessment isparticularly important, because it provides the students with feedback on how to improvetheir writing and also identifies strengths they already possess. Significantly, it is hopedthat assessing others’ writing forces the students to contemplate the attributes of excellentwriting and leads to improvements in their own writing.Assessment of the Project EffectivenessIn order to assess the impact of the project, graduating students in the capstone designcourse were surveyed and asked to name
):“design-oriented project-organized education which deals with the practical problems ofconstructing and designing on the basis of a synthesis of knowledge from many disciplines and istherefore having students learn to know how.”14 Smith et al. suggest that PCL is a “pedagogy ofengagement,” a practice that deepens student learning through “student-faculty contact,cooperation among students, and active learning.”15 Page 14.840.3Sheppard et al. advocate team-based PCL as a way to improve students’ competencies inteamwork and communication strategies. They also found that capstone design courses (a type ofPCL) promote student excitement, build “skills
BaylorUniversity addresses this gap in part by seeking project sponsors for the on-campusoffering of Technology Entrepreneurship capstone course whose ventures are in fact“born global.” Examples include two assessments completed in Spring 2008 for ExousiaCorporation from Houston with partnerships and operations in several China cities, andone performed in Fall 2007 for a US owned company located in Suzhou, China. But theexperience of performing a project with Chinese teammates while living in China for sixweeks as a participant in the i5 Program is, of course, a much more immersive andimpacting experience in global technology entrepreneurship.The final presentations being delivered to a team of executives from the sponsoringcompany composed of not only
submersible pump. The design was a collaborative workof all the engineering programs at the University and enjoyed the participation of severalengineering students, including capstone design projects. The model design is shown in Fig.6. Page 14.217.7 Fig. 6 Model Solar/Wind Powered Water Pumping System on the campus of UDC, entirelydesigned and mounted by UDC students. The center picture depicts an 800 Gal water tank with, inside, a submersible 900W water pump.III. MOU with a local GO and Renewable Energy Power System Design andImplementation.Inspired by the lessons learned from the fact finding mission to Ethiopia and the
AC 2009-1195: THE INTEGRATION OF COGNITIVE INSTRUCTIONS ANDPROBLEM/PROJECT-BASED LEARNING INTO THE CIVIL ENGINEERINGCURRICULUM TO CULTIVATE CREATIVITY AND SELF-DIRECTEDLEARNING SKILLSWei Zheng, Jackson State University Dr. Wei Zheng is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at Jackson State University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Civil Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001 and has over10-year industrial experience. Since becoming a faculty member at JSU in 2005, he has made continuous efforts to integrate emerging technologies and cognitive skill development into civil engineering curriculum. He currently is the Principle Investigator for Nanotechnology Undergraduate
calculation or series of calculations, plotting experimental data and finding line ofbest fit, or modeling). Of the cases where students did not show evidence for a design decision,we noted the lack of evidence.The reports analyzed in this study come from three different courses. The first of which is asenior capstone design course in Biomedical Engineering (BME). Students in this course areevaluated on initial and midterm presentations and reports on progress in addition to the finalreport and presentation. The final report must showcase a single product concept and include asummary of the market, technical feasibility, and analysis of the challenges to development,manufacture, and delivery of product. Projects in this course ranged from the
course to generate sufficient intellectual excitementto overcome senioritis and be the bridge between baccalaureate education and the ‘real world’.In the authors’ opinion the capstone course is not the culmination of the undergraduateexperience; it is the first pre-licensure experience. Through this process the authors hope that thestudents will reach the sublime state of Civil Engineering Enlightenment-- that ‘Ah-hah’ momentwhen an individual stops thinking and acting like a student and starts thinking and acting like apracticing engineer.Background The ‘perfect capstone project’ is the Holy Grail for many engineering programs.Educators continually seek it and seldom find it, but, when we do, it provides a phenomenalexperience for both
AC 2009-2416: INTRODUCING A TWO-SEMESTER RESEARCH COURSE INTHE FRESHMAN YEARWael Mokhtar, Grand Valley State University Assistant Professor, School of Engineering Page 14.798.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 Introducing a Two-Semester Research Course in the Freshman YearAbstractEngineering schools have been using capstone projects to introduce the students to ‘real world’applications and break the barrier between theory and practice. It is usually in the form of a two-semester course where the students use the first semester to develop the soft skills needed for theproject in terms of project management and
AC 2009-1176: A PORTABLE WORKCELL DESIGN FOR THE ROBOTICSINDUSTRYTaskin Padir, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Dr. Taskin Padir is a visiting assistant professor in the robotics engineering program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Prior to WPI, he was an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Lake Superior State University where he taught undergraduate courses in robotics, machine vision and systems integration, circuit analysis, electronics, and introduction to engineering and advised capstone design projects within the robotics and automation option. He received his PhD and M.S. degrees from Purdue University, both in electrical engineering. He received his
recently beenopened to students that have yet to declare their major. One intent of the original program was toenhance the students’ learning and problem solving experience in a real world environment andperhaps give them a start on their capstone project. The summer internship program allows themto conduct research and solve engineering problems with scientists and engineers in some of thenation’s finest facilities. The Academic Individual Advanced Development (AIAD) program ispurely voluntary, but nearly all of the civil and mechanical engineering majors forfeit some oftheir free time to participate in the program every summer. These internships are usually fourweeks in duration due to other institutional requirements that can only be