Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 2: Activities with Impact! Special Session

Collection

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lessa Grunenfelder, University of Southern California

Tagged Divisions

Materials Division (MATS)

sufficientcontent knowledge to perform an experiment. In many courses, therefore, the start of labs isdelayed to the second week of the term or later. If utilized, the first lab session is often dedicatedto a review of safety rules and/or a lecture presentation on lab expectations which may includedetails of report writing and formatting. These activities do not engage students or excite themabout the course. Here, an introductory activity is described for a mechanical behavior ofmaterials laboratory course that requires minimal instructor preparation and no student priorknowledge. The activity is a collaborative analysis of a scientific paper that challenges studentsto think about report formatting and data presentation while getting to know their peers

Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 6

Collection

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Anurag Srivastava, Texas A&M University; Sayyad Basim Qamar, Texas A&M University; Saira Anwar, Texas A&M University; Bilal Mansoor, Texas A&M University

Tagged Divisions

Materials Division (MATS)

regarding thereport's formatting and the minimum word count expected from the report, which is 2000words. Students were asked to submit a technical exhibit document consisting of all the tablesand figures that will be included in the report. Along with the templates, a guidance documentwas also provided to the students so they would have an idea about the required informationin each section of the report. For the ceramics labs, the students were required to submit anabstract.Feedback on all submitted documents was provided through a peer review process in whichstudents were randomly assigned memos, exhibits, and reports of the other teams in thecourse for their review and feedback on the Canvas about the writing aspects. Rubrics wereprovided to all

Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 5

Collection

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Timothy Chambers, University of Michigan; Katie Snyder, University of Michigan

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Materials Division (MATS)

” and communicate that forward to their peers. Our tentative plan is to ask next year’s(now this year’s) students to test and comment on the revised versions and iterate further.Grant writing The third deliverable was again collaboratively written on teams; this time, the task wasto draft a grant proposal to a fictional government agency offering funds for projects usingmagnets in novel ways. In this case, we provided a lecture content and recommendations aheadof the project to familiarize students with typical features of grant proposals, with particularemphasis on establishing the need, using key evidence from their lab work to support theirproposal, and building a cohesive credible argument for their proposed idea across all sections

Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 4

Collection

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Rajan Kumar, Northwestern University

Tagged Divisions

Materials Division (MATS)

their Prelab responses and workedcollaboratively through additional case studies and example problems related to the topicsintroduced. In Week 7, students gave short presentations (5 min) to their peers to practicecommunicating important gaps in scientific and engineering knowledge and receive feedback.Table 2 shows the list of discussion topics and associated RDC learning outcomes. Principles ofbackwards course design were used to map the RDC learning outcomes to discussion topics andPrelabs [12]. Table 2: MatSci 160 discussion topics and associated RDC learning outcomes Expected RDC Week Discussion Topics

Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 5

Collection

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mackinley Love MSc, University of Calgary

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Materials Division (MATS)

targetperformances of understanding, and how well they lend themselves to evaluating individualstudent performances” [1, p. 356]. It is known that aspects of student identity have significanteffects on academic performance [11], but their absence from constructive alignment means thateducators have not been provided guidance on how to implement constructive alignment in away that equitably benefits all students and ensures inclusion of a diverse range of studentbackgrounds.Biggs [1] mentioned that teaching and learning activities do not need to be the sole domain oftraditional instructor-led lectures; peer groups and independent learning are also viable avenuesof activities in a constructively aligned course. However, both forms of learning carry their

Conference Session

Materials Division (MATS) Technical Session 5

Collection

2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Angela R Bielefeldt, University of Colorado Boulder

Tagged Topics

Diversity

Tagged Divisions

Materials Division (MATS)

options for making the same product. As shown in Table 4,about half of the students chose to work alone and half in groups. This was true for both the firstand second project. In 2024 working in a group was widely preferred and in 2022 working alonewas widely preferred. Most students stayed with the same modality of working alone or with thesame peers on both the first and second project, and only a few groups split up after the firstproject (1 or 2 per term) and few new ones formed. Groups of 2 or 3 students were mostcommon, and 4 was very rare.Table 4. Number of students each semester who chose to work alone or in a group Year Project 1 Project 2 N work alone N work