difficult, I began a seminar program in which teams of people from partner schools (parents,teachers, etc.) learn from me and from guest lecturers how to fundraise and write proposals tofund playgrounds. These efforts have enabled three schools to complete their playgrounds. Myultimate goal is to upgrade all the public school playgrounds in my community.Truly addressing a community issue requires planning, assessment, evaluation, and action;reflecting on this process has enabled me to be a better citizen to my community and a betterinstructor for my students.ReferencesBoyer, E. (1990, re-released 1997). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of theprofessoriate. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.Boyer, E. (1996). The
overview of the project and its plan of work is discussed elsewhere12.360-Degree Data CollectionThe data on this project was collected using a 360-degree or multi-rater type of collectionmethod. The 360-degree method is commonly used in performance evaluations, providingfeedback to an individual from multiple perspectives13. This method provides data for thisproject from many different perspectives forming a reliable and valid picture of faculty membercharacteristics and their work environment perceptions. Perspectives include that of self,colleagues, students, experts in education innovation (such as the director of a center for teachingand learning), and the reality (from administrators and published documents) and perceptions(from individuals
collect baseline data duringthe first year. They focused on evaluation planning efforts during the first year of the grant;findings from a survey and interviews administered to college faculty and administrators; andinstitutional data related to the goals of the Program. During years two and three, a follow-upsurvey was administered to all college faculty (see Table 1 for completion rates), in addition tofaculty interviews (see Table 2 for completion rates) and collection of institutional data(faculty gender composition by rank, promotion, attrition, time in rank, grant applications andawards, publications, leadership positions, recruitment, awards and worklife policies overtime) related to the goals of the program. Note that project personnel
students’ subsequent questions garnered no response from theCounty. This caused frustration to the students, who had to scramble to come up with other waysto define design specifications and gather needed information. Although this resulted in spurringeven more learning in the students, the situation points out the importance of making sure allsocial actors are on board during a co-managed community-based educational project. Otherfindings included the importance of a required, pre-arranged site visit to the ecological resource,since the students did not have the motivation or time to plan such a trip themselves, even as theyrecognized the importance of such a visit.The HMC E138 student team worked with the Conservancy and the County to
Paper ID #7821A Conceptual Framework for Technology-Enhanced Problem-Based Learn-ing in Construction Engineering and Management EducationDr. Namhun Lee, East Carolina University Namhun Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Construction Management at East Carolina University, where he has been teaching Construction Modeling and Information Technology, Construc- tion Planning and Scheduling, Construction Estimating, Equipment Management, and Advanced Cost Estimating and Cost Analysis. Dr. Lee’s main research areas include: 1) Information Visualization and Decision Support Systems, 2) Building Information Modeling
to gather initial data to provide a baseline of comparison with studentsat the beginning of the semester in addition to the current end-of-semester survey. This will giveus the ability to gauge how the course has shaped student perceptions and confidence levels moreaccurately. We also intend to implement a peer evaluation process to reinforce groupparticipation and open communication, and are going to move up some of the deadlines for theearly phases of the group projects, as well as adding a day early in the semester for the groups toform and begin planning for their projects.The course program outlined in this paper takes an engineering student through a variety ofdifferent exercises and projects to inform, encourage, and involve the
the course. For example, any course learning outcome achieving anaverage rating score below 3.5 will raise a concern and require an action plan for improvement.Figure 7 displays a comparison between the student survey and instructor assessment. 6 Student 5 Instructor 4 3 2 1 0 O1 O2 O3 O4 O5 O6 O7 O8 O9 O10 O11 O12 Page 23.12.13 Figure 7. Comparisons
depicted on Figure 1 suggest a possible relationshipbetween students’ exposure to computing courses and positive student perceptions aboutcomputing utility, their ability to currently use computing, and plans to use computing in future Page 23.888.8professional and academic work.Table 4. Pre- and Post-survey scores of students perceived ability to use computation, perceivedutility in their studies and future careers, and intentions of future use of computation grouped bynumber of disciplinary courses students completed. Pretest Scores Posttest Scores
industrial and student side.However, now that the course itself it better established, more instructor time should beavailable to coordinate such activities. A related stretch goal is to have the problemsthemselves proposed by local industry. This has not been attempted in part due to thelimited ‘laboratory’ available for the class, but will hopefully be an option for futureofferings as plans for addition of a kitchenette to one of the classrooms are underway. Page 23.929.9Bibliography 8 1. Armstrong RC, Brennecke J, Butts S et al. How is the Discipline of
. Currently PaperBotsprovides lesson plans and the associated templates allowing for teachers to print them up and thestudents to make items like cams and articulated joints from paper. These initial lessons provideactivities about design and mechanisms with no more cost than that of some cardstock and brassfasteners for the cam activity and similarly for the others16.Those existing lessons only require already available classroom materials but are limited inscope. The PaperBots robotics kit is specifically designed for use with classroom materials toaugment those activities with inexpensive electronics and a microcontroller to allow for studentconstruction of robots. The combination of these inexpensive materials, mechanical components,and
former case, the student willlikely solve the related quiz quickly, while in the latter case, the student may struggle on the Page 23.974.10quiz. That is the motivation behind our Solution Pace feature which compares the student’s workpace on the quiz to that on the homework.Including features that characterize the correctness of the work, especially Quiz Score, canimprove the predictive power of the models. However, our goal is to predict performancewithout requiring manual grading. We plan to explore methods for automatically evaluatingsome aspects of correctness. For example, it would be possible to perform character recognitionon final
than the T-cohort.Because the students responded favorably to the revised method in their written comments, andbecause student performance was found to be statistically equivalent to that for the traditionalmethod, the first author plans to continue the use of the revised method but will makeadjustments in the course materials intended to improve their effectiveness. These adjustmentswill include the omission of more material from the notes to further encourage studentengagement during class. The idea, in this regard, is to find the right balance between what isprovided directly and what should be added as it is discussed.References1. Hibbeler, R. C., Engineering Mechanics: Statics, 12th Edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey
planning on further investigating this in future course offerings andassociated surveys. 2. InterviewsIn the fall 2011 offering, six graduate students participated in individual interviews, and fiveundergraduate students participated in one focus group. In addition, three faculty members whoadvised groups participated in individual interviews. In the spring 2012 semester, four graduatementors participated in individual interviews, and four undergraduate students participated in onefocus group. Interviews lasted between 20 and 30 minutes, and were audio recorded andtranscribed. The interview data analysis process began with a preliminary exploratory analysis,as described by Creswell6, to get a general sense of the data. Next, codes, or “labels”7
andshow their project to them, we don’t give grades for these activities; therefore somestudents do not actually take these earnestly. We plan to design a more rigorousmechanism in the near future to encourage students having more interactions with end-users. At the end of the semester, each student design project is demonstrated in public,and is evaluated based on the following three categories: creativities, difficult levels, andcompleteness. Evaluations are done by classmates, observers and instructors. Theobservers may involve university staff members, end-users, and industrialrepresentatives. Results of the evaluations will be used for two distinguished purposes: 1.Assign a grade for the project, and 2. Rank the projects for Capstone
typical formal education, involving the presentation of material in a logically orderedprogression. Sequential learners follow linear reasoning processes when solving problems.However, the remote lab allows both sequential and global students to learn thanks to theactivities the instructor is able to perform in the classroom.Research has shown that learning styles affect learner performance at university7. Therecommendation is that lecturers should be aware of the potential problems and needs of studentswith different learning styles, and plan accordingly the learning opportunities they provide 8.Teaching transient state by using a remote lab experiment simultaneously provides with theopportunity to enhance the learning process by giving students
the University of Georgia. Her professional career has been dedicated to non-profit organizations in the form of events planning, development, grant writing, and coordinating educational activities for K-12 students. Page 23.1083.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2013 STEM Applications: Integrating Informal Learning with the Formal Learning EnvironmentAbstractMany times only a select group of students are able to participate in after school activities due tovarious reasons. Because only a few students are able to participate from a given class
structured computer use. It is ultimately expected that our findingscan be used as empirical evidence to encourage instructors to incorporate structured computer-use into their pedagogical practice.5.1 LimitationsThere is a need to quantify the amount of error when using active window as a proxy forattention. During observations, students were often observed listening and looking at theinstructor or projected slide (i.e., “checking in”), but continued to have their browser open as thetop-most, active window. Our observation protocol allows for a comparison between observedattention and active window and we plan to use that data to calculate error rate. Based on theobservations in this study, we anticipate that error rate will be less than 10
on the final exam. The primary limitation to success ofthe inverted course model was inconsistent buy-in from the students to watch the videos beforeclass. About 40-60% of the class watched the appropriate online lecture prior to the relevantclass time, but by the midterm exam about 90% of the students had viewed the majority of theonline lectures. Student performance was better with the inverted classroom on two of fourrelated homework assignments. The average student performance on the midterm exam wassimilar, although the “bottom” of the curve was improved during the inverted class (increasedfrom ~44-53% traditional to 68% inverted). Improvements in student learning were primarilyevident on the more difficult quantitative concepts. Plans
not seek to provide a thorough survey oranalysis on curriculum shaping, but such can be found in other relevant work.2,6,7,8 The work hereby presented specifically addresses the instruction of a single, non-elective,junior-level undergraduate introductory course to Mechatronics in the Mechanical Engineeringprogram at Western New England University (WNE). WNE does not currently have aMechatronics program for undergraduates (there are plans to start one in the near future), but itdoes offer a master’s-level concentration. That said, the course addressed in this paper is not apre-requisite for this concentration. Prior to this course, the students have had standard freshman- and sophomore-level coursesin the ME curriculum such as Statics
College (BSCC), a state-supported community collegein Alabama. The Coach is developing a series of web-based writing instruction modules andwill help students learn to write for audiences of engineers through sequences of writingsamples, prompts, and heuristics. By emphasizing writing as a design process, The Coach isintended to provide engineering faculty with a valuable resource for developing students’rhetorical skills. The Coach’s development is founded upon the understanding engineeringcurricula are the most-appropriate venue for building stronger engineering writing skills.Technical issues prevented the planned launch of The Coach in 2011, but roll-out took placeon all three campuses in fall, 2012. This paper describes in detail the state
students even preferred a hybrid Page 23.1176.2course over the old traditional classroom 4. Our quasi-study supports this.The description of the traditional classroom for this department is a twice-a-week classconsisting of 75 minutes of f2f per class period. The instructor conducts the class in a traditionalmanner with transparency projectors or perhaps with the help of technology such as acomputer/projector and PowerPoint slides combination. Homework and tests are typically givenand received through paper handouts and take ups. Our plans were to migrate toward a hybridlearning environment, also called blended learning and the terms can be
of mutuality. A discussionof the results disaggregated by institution is presented to evaluate if a trend emerges whencompared with their persistence information.The two research questions posed can be integrated in a single inquiry goal as follow: Is itpossible to assess the relationship of social integration and persistence by estimating indexes likemutuality, using only academic records?The justification for such area of inquiry is that schools normally keep complete academicrecords. Thus, if such information can be used for evaluating an important aspect of academicdevelopment, like student’s integration, it may allow an interesting use of those hard-builtdatasets, for institutional strategic analysis, and for policy making and planning
Page 23.1212.2development, design is the activity most associated with the engineering profession1. This isespecially true for mechanical engineering. In mechanical engineering, as with otherengineering disciplines, design is defined as the process by which a product, process or bothare developed in order to satisfy a specific need2-4. While technical knowledge andcompetency is necessary for success, it is not sufficient as engineering designers often needto possess numerous other skills such as creativity, problem solving, visualization,communication, team-work and planning skills in order to obtain successful engineeringsolutions2,5-7. Many educators and practitioners acknowledge that while one only becomes anexpert engineering designer
and end users—indicate they are using a wireless mesh protocol for at least some of their wireless field devices,and 20% are only using wireless mesh systems. Over half of the WSN adopters are using energyharvesting for at least a few wireless sensor nodes, and 9% use energy harvesting to power themajority of their wireless field devices.Compared with ON World’s previous survey in 2010, data reliability has dropped to only abouttwo-thirds as much of a concern compared with the previous 2010 survey. Costs, battery life, andstandards confusion are ranked slightly higher as inhibitors in our current survey compared withthe previous survey6. Seventy percent of end users indicate they are planning WSN or additionalapplications.Looking forward
. Adesso CyberPad Digital Notebook: http://www.adesso.com/en/home/tablets.html32. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development, Evaluation ofEvidence-Based Practices in Online Learning; A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies.Washington, D.C., 2010. Page 23.1259.1333. Echo 360 Survey "The Student View of Blended Learning, " www.echo360.com34. Assessing Consumer Preferences for Continuing, Professional, and Online Higher Education. Eduventures,2011.
were some similarities across all sites. Only 10 percent or less of the students at any sitereported that school was “Hard” or “Very hard” and almost all at each site planned on some formof post-secondary education. STEM subjects were listed among the subjects liked most at all thesites and math and English Language Arts among the subjects liked least, and over 80 percent ofthe participants at all the sites agreed or strongly agreed that they liked science. Most of theparticipants at all the sites reported that they had studied forces and motion, but only a few atthree of the four sites reported that they had studied buoyancy.But there were also additional differences that make comparisons of the two environmentsproblematic. The first was the
their design analysis. The students who had a wind energy projectsintended to use INLWind Energy program but due to the location of their feasibility study theycould not obtain wind data in the format required by this program, and so they had to developtheir own analysis programs. The author is planning to continue making the use of these softwaretools in the aforementioned course with some improvements. Valuable lessons were learnedfrom this trial as to what kind of difficulties the students have encountered and what kind ofadjustments need to be made in order to make the use of these software tools both enjoyable andbeneficial to the education and training of the students.References1. Sözen, M., “From a Traditional Combustion Course to an
take less time than an actual real time lecture would without anyloss of information conveyed and with the potential of greater student learning by maintainingthe student’s attention on the subject.Second, it forces the instructor making the video to plan the lecture from the perspective of notonly including all the necessary technical material, but also for keeping the student’s attention onthe subject matter longer, enhancing the student’s enthusiasm on the subject being studied, etc.using new tools that are not always available in a classroom environment. Because the video isnot a real time recording, the instructor can modify and improve it as many times as desired untilall the points have been made with sufficient clarity, the concepts
three energy software products (MEDEE-S/ENV, EFOM/ENV and DBA-VOID) which are in use in 26 Asian and 7 European countries by both governmental and non-governmental organizations. Acharya has a M.Eng. in Com- puter Technology and a D.Eng. in Computer Science and Information Management with a concentration in knowledge discovery, both from the Asian Institute of Technology in Thailand. His teaching involve- ment and research interest are in the areas of Software Engineering and Development (Verification & Validation) and Enterprise Resource Planning. He also has interest in Learning Objectives based Educa- tion Material Design and Development. Acharya is a co-author of ”Discrete Mathematics Applications for
department at Lamar University. Since joining Lamar in 1998, he has taught over 12 different courses including management, quality and economics. His research interests include six sigma, facility layout and risk management. Dr. Underdown is the academic advisor of the Industrial Technology academic program at Lamar. He has been a member of the Institute of Industrial Engineers since 1996. Dr. Underdown consults small businesses in the areas of strategic planning, process improvement, and lean manufacturing.Dr. Qin Qian, Lamar University Qin Qian EDUCATION Ph.D. Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Feb., 2008 Dissertation: Solute exchange with sub-aqueous sediments: hydrodynamic interactions with