Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Aaron S. Bradshaw; Gary N. McCloskey; Franklin Miguel

Development of a Civil Engineering Design Course Based On Reflective Action Aaron S. Bradshaw, Merrimack College Gary N. McCloskey, O.S.A. Merrimack College Franklin Miguel, Merrimack CollegeAbstractAdded to solid technical skills, there are a number of “soft” skills that a civil engineer must possess to besuccessful in practice. A concept for a course is proposed where students can develop technical and non-technical practice skills using the learning approach of reflective action which was first introduced byDonald Schon in the 1980’s. Reflective action is demonstrated through a design problem involving

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

their work.In response to student end of course feedback, the capstone project options increasedfrom two to three. The competition still existed and students continued to mention in theircomments that they would prefer that projects were unique to each group.During the EOCR at the conclusion of the Spring 2000 semester, a recommendation wasmade to change the courses name from “Planning and Design of Construction Projects”to “Civil Engineering Design”. The new course name more accurately reflected theevolving nature of the projects chosen which spanned an increasingly diverse set of sub-fields within civil engineering. Based on student feedback and instructor observation,more guest speakers and more field trips were added to the course.As CED

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Christopher W. Swan; Julia Carroll

occurredvia self-reflective evaluations. For example: 1. an initial survey asked students to reflect upon the relative importance of all the skills involved in an engineering career 2. the DiSC and Myers-Briggs assessment methodologies were used so students could assess their own leadership traits or skills as well as those exhibited by others; 3. questionnaires were routinely used during team projects, both having individuals assess intra-team efforts as well as students evaluate the performance of other team’s oral presentations An example of the assessment of individual team members’ performance during the termproject is presented below. Final Term Project

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Bahram Nassersharif

problem. That is, learning must have a purpose beyond, "It is assigned". 2. Support the learner in developing ownership for the overall problem or task. 3. Design an authentic task. 4. Design the task and the learning environment to reflect the complexity of the environment they should be able to function in at the end of learning. 5. Give the learner ownership of the process used to develop a solution. 6. Design the learning environment to support and challenge the learner's thinking. 7. Encourage testing ideas against alternative views and alternative contexts. 8. Provide opportunity for and support reflection on both the content learned and the learning process.The implementation of our discovery-based

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

David A. Gray

context of control charts provides significant feedback that allows primary employees to evaluate their own process, and 3) The only way to improve the output of a process is to change it, ergo, “If you do not like your grade, change your process.” These three ideas paint a realistic picture of the college enterprise, and provide the students with context that allows them to evaluate their own progress and to make decisions directed toward improvement.Messiah College’s engineering department has long had concern for successful transition of first yearstudents into the academic rigors of our engineering program. Reflecting this concern, we

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Elif Kongar; Tarek Sobh

goals are achieved attheir corresponding aspiration levels. This also implies that embedding Eq. 15 into the model is notrequired since the results would remain unchanged.5. Conclusions and Future ResearchThe proposed paper attempts to find “best” solutions to factors that would ensure sustainability of theSchool of Engineering at the University Bridgeport. In this regard, a Preemptive Goal Programmingmodel is applied to the first five goals of the School. Even though it is mathematically cumbersome toformularize the relationships between the goals and model variables given that the model reflects reality,it provides interesting results depicting the effects of various goals on the remaining system variables andgoals. Hence, the model can also

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Bassem Alhalabi; M. K. Hamza; Ali Abu-El Humos

facilitated in learning the material 70 Performing the experiment via on CL has facilitated in learning the material 80The equity between remote labs and software simulation reflects the fact that remote labs need moreenhancements in terms of the hardware and software used to develop the remote labs environment shouldthe remote labs be able to relinquish software simulation and be at the same time a substitute for realphysical labs. Segment 4- Questions Set 4 Result (%) The experiments procedures and purpose was clearly understood using RL. 75 The experiments procedures and purpose was clearly understood using SS. 67.5 The

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Hudson V. Jackson; Evelyn A. Ellis

demonstrated by students’ performance on standardizedachievement tests poses a special challenge due to the rigid instructional schedules that are often used intoday’s classrooms. Career imprinting will require teachers to have more latitude in their dailyinstructional schedules so that they can guiltlessly deviate from “test-prep or time on task driven” agendasto “capitalizing on teachable moments” and “student interest-driven” agendas which will afford learnersthe opportunity to reflect on what they are learning. This will not only make it possible for them to puttheir newly acquired knowledge into the context of what they already know but will also motivate them to 7think outside of the

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Elif Kongar; Paul Kontogiorgis; Nancy L. Russo; Tarek Sobh

other invited speakers at society-sponsored events reflect the diverse membership of thesociety5.Industry also has a responsibility to accelerate readiness of the female workforce, which will helpalleviate skills availability issues, and bridge the communication gap between IT functional jobs andbusiness leaders’ vision with academic institutions.Honorary societies, funding agencies - including federal agencies and foundations, along with thecongress, should take the necessary steps to encourage adequate enforcement of female workforcedevelopment.Women are well positioned to make major advances in interdisciplinary research. They like to integrateacross various academic fields and use multi-pronged, multi-disciplinary approaches. They work well

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Saikat Ray

. ConclusionComputer based testing enables an instructor of a course for M.S. students in a teaching oriented school tocondition them to the habit of regular studying without increasing the grading load. The author has usedthem in class successfully with increased student attendance and attention. There are issues with computeraccess, some time is lost if the class has to go to a computer lab for the test, possible web outages duringthe test, etc. However, the benefits of CBT significantly outstrip its disadvantages in creating bettermotivated students at the M.S. level.DisclaimerThis article reflects author’s personal scholarly view on the subject and is written based on his personalexperiences at different schools and anecdotes gathered from various sources

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Richard B. Mindek

section 4.0 of this paper, and then summarize their results in a brieftechnical memo. It should be noted here that only one of the seven graduate students in the course hadany previous experience using PLCs, and none had any experience using the RSLogix software.Although not conclusive, the results of the project were very encouraging. The students were able toexplore some of the capabilities of PLCs, within the design limitations of the platform, and required verylittle external input. On the project itself, students’ scores averaged 86%, indicating they generallyunderstood the basic operation of the PLC as they completed the project. And feedback on the projectwas also very good from the students, as reflected in their end of semester