Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Secin Guncavdi

Developing Student Interest By Demonstration and Active ParticipationAbstract: It is very well known that developing and maintaining student interestis a challenging task for many engineering classes, especially for mandatoryclasses which are outside the students’ major. In this talk, a four-stage strategywill be presented. These stages include the concept based learning, multimediademonstration, experimental demonstration and active experiment participation.With the help of this planned approach, a better and more interesting atmospherefor learning can be created.Secin Guncavdi, Ph.D.Electrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Wisconsin, Madisonsguncav@engr.wisc.edu

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Charles McIntyre; Hung Nguyen

Senior Design Project Delivery via Student Generated Web Sites - "Lessons Learned" Charles McIntyre and Hung Nguyen North Dakota State UniversityIntroductionIn traditional “project-based” courses (senior level design and capstone courses), the finalproducts are typically paper-based reports and plans (CAD drawings) which include informationrelated to the design and construction aspects of the project. On occasion, the final projects aresubmitted in some form of electronic format (CD, zip, etc.) [2,5]. Currently, many engineering andconstruction firms post project information on company or project specific web sites. In order toprovide students with the “real world” experience

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Robert Edwards

interests of the EET students. This paperprovides a comparison of the old course structure with the new, a description of the steps thatwere taken toward this improvement, an outline of the new labs that have been developed, andfuture plans for continued improvements.II. Course Improvement Objectives:Several objectives were set for the improvement of the course: The course must be relevant to the needs and interests of the EET students. The basic concepts of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics must be presented, but only as required to understand the principles of thermal management. The lectures and labs must relate to each other in order to enhance the learning experience.III. Course History

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Lang Wah Lee; Tamer Ceylan

of rural schools needassistance in the following areas: (1) appropriate education materials to stimulate and challengestudents; (2) strategies to enhance problem-solving ability in students; (3) means to conductinquiry teaching; and (4) ways to foster cooperation between mathematics and scienceeducation. Engineering and education faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville hadconceived an approach and a plan to address the above needs and to foster teachers’professional development. As pointed out in a recent report by the National Commission onMathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century [3], teachers' competence is pivotal forimproving quality of education in U.S. schools. One of the seven recommended strategies fromthat

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

John Mirth

Teamworking 28 (7.4%) 34 (6.7%) 23 (4.7%) 9 (3.7%) 94 5.8 “Soft” Skills Project planning and design 44% 62 (16%) 58 (11%) 30 (6.1%) 19 (7.8%) 169 10 process Societal issues 72 (19%) 26 (5.1%) 30 (6.1%) 34 (14%) 162 10 Ethics, Safety, and 1 (0.3%) 22 (4.3%) 23 (4.7%) 6 (2.5%) 52 3.2 Professional practice

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Anoop K. Dhingra; Al Ghorbanpoor; Joe Rauter

employer helps develop an engineerwith the education and skills to fit the specific needs of the company, and the student receivesvaluable work experience.Each internship involves pairing graduate students with industry for robust, meaningful researchby graduate students under industry and faculty supervision. The research topic is negotiatedbetween industry and the faculty advisor to enhance scientific and technological understandingby producing publishable discoveries as part of the graduate thesis requirements. Every internplacement has a written plan for publishable results.Unlike the traditional model wherein the research is conducted at the university supported bythe industry, the GIP involves student working at the sponsoring company’s

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Christopher R. Carroll

discipline within engineering. The design projects must intriguestudents without becoming chores to complete. They must be fun!As instructor for this class, I am looking forward to incorporating some of my own interests inthe design aspect of the course. Two design problems that I expect to assign are “Produce amodel train track layout given space and resource constraints,” and “Choreograph a square danceroutine given a description of available calls and timing constraints.” Neither of these tasks isobviously Electrical and Computer, Chemical, Industrial, or Mechanical, but both tasks requireengineering skills to complete.Many different “model train layout” projects can be defined. My initial plan is to restrictstudents to just straight track (any

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Dale N. Buechler

their calculus and differential equation/linear algebra classes takenat other institutions. Other students went out of their way to take calculus and differentialequations at another school or technical college to get a better grade only to find later that theywere ill-prepared for their upper-division engineering coursework to follow. One more similartrend observed was the night and day difference in the degree GPAs between those whofinished in less than 5 years and those who finished in 5 years or greater as shown in Table 6.The first plan of action is to share these results with our mathematics department and thedirector of student services for our engineering college. Then they will be shared with ourfaculty and at institutions with similar

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

William E. Howard; Joseph C. Musto; William C. Farrow

installed in onelaboratory. We plan to make greateruse of this tool in the coming year,with the software available over theMSOE network. SolidWorksexperience is not a necessaryprerequisite for use of the motionanalysis if the component part filesare provided to the students. Thestudents can be taught how toassemble the parts and prescribe Figure 11 COSMOS/Motion Modelmotion in a one-hour session. of Cylinder MechanismConclusionsAs CAD and dynamic analysis software has become more powerful, more affordable, andeasier to use, its potential for use in dynamics and mechanism and machine design courses hasrisen. Well-planned usage of these tools can be an effective supplement to the

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Kris G. Mattila; Dennis Johnson

rehabilitation were to identify unhealthy areas,develop rehabilitation work plans, implement a series of educational programs for MCCCparticipants, and manage the project work The MCCC was responsibility to provide anadequate workforce to the project. In addition to funding the project the MDNR through theFisheries Division provided technical data about the watershed. The general public providedadditional input and support. The organization of the project is shown in Figure 1. The projectwas begun in the summer of 1999 and continued through the summer of 2000, at which time theproject was extended for two additional years. Without this partnership the project would nothave been implemented because of lack of funding and staff

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ester B. Johnson

fit intoany of these categories.Many students that graduate from MPS go to college and are successful. They receivescholarships within the community and from foundations. They have good GPA’s andhave high rankings from high school and many of their parents support their endeavor incollege and pay their tuition. But those students generally do not attend UWM. Thereare also those students that work and receive financial support from within thecommunity, family members and financial aid, but the majority of them do not attendUWM.The mission of the Office of Diversity in the College of Engineering and Applied Science(CEAS) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is encompassing and addresses manyconcerns. A strategic plan has been developed that

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Deepti Suri; Eric Durant

extendedmarket and technology research phase, many aspects of the design have already been drafted bythe time the SE students begin working with the BE students. Although not ideal, the timing ofthe collaboration is the best feasible option. The second year BE students are not far enoughalong in their research to provide the needed input on requirements and constraints. In fact, thetiming is appropriate for documenting requirements that are unambiguous and measurable, sincethe BE students have developed the appropriate domain knowledge by the third year.This collaboration was planned before the quarter began by the two faculty teaching therequirements course (the authors) and the faculty member advising the third year BE students.The BE faculty member

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Michael P. Hennessey

solving the entire MineMadness problem was too difficult in the time allocated so the design problem was simplified to focus exclusively on “getting-over-the-wall,” i.e. the 4 x 4 or 4 x 8’s and no longer was stability, steering and mine management functionality required. Thatsaid, design teams were advised to plan for the addition of eventual steering and mine management modules to be incorporated(in a stable sense) into their machines. Detailed design and manufacturing ensued with students heavily utilizing the CADsystem (SolidWorks [6-9,10]), machine shop, and machine component suppliers (note: no “parts kit” was provided). The lattercomment is important since most students were totally unfamiliar with where to find and purchase real

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

James W. Boggs; R. Chris Williams; Kris G. Mattila; Todd Scholz

Michigan Department of Transportation Adopt-a-Highway program by going out twice a year and maintaining the roadway on a section of M-26in Michigan's western Upper Peninsula. Another way in which the program has partnered has been by performing project work inthe area of civil engineering design and planning for the local community. One recent exampleis the work done by students that looked at redesigning a section of a local road in order todevelop a bypass for the section of highway that passes through Michigan Tech’s campus andthe local community. The student's work on this project met with the approval of the AdvisoryBoard members who regularly do this type of work.Primary Education The Pavement Enterprise has partnered with the

Collection

2004 ASEE North Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Chris Papadopoulos; Adeeb Rahman; Josh Bostwick

designprojects, will also help students to cultivate their critical thinking abilities.In the end, merely presenting the fundamentals of mechanics, even if done correctly, will beuseless. It will do little good, for example, to follow even our own suggestions, such ascompleting free body diagrams or sketching coordinates with single-headed arrows, if notaccompanied by a deeper commitment to and insight into student learning. Our real point is notsimply to call for correcting details, but rather, to engender within mechanics pedagogy the well-conceived and planned articulation of the concepts that underpin these details. Without aserious attempt at this, we will be left with our current situation, so keenly described byHestenes, et. al