Paper ID #13847Examining the Influence of an Ill- and Well-defined Problems in a First-YearEngineering Design CourseMs. Jessica E S Swenson, Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach Jessica Swenson is a graduate student at Tufts University. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering with a research focus on engineering education. She received a M.S. from Tufts University in science, technology, engineering and math education and a B.S. from Northwestern University in me- chanical engineering. Her current research involves examining different types of homework problems in mechanical engineering
Vermont under David Warshaw. His research interests in- clude novel assessments of educational efficacy, and the molecular bases of cell movement and muscle contraction.Anna Stevenson Blazier, University of VirginiaAlyssa Becker, University of Virginia Page 26.995.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2015 Integration of academic advising into a first-year engineering design course and its impact on psychological constructsIntroduction and SummaryEngineering educators often look to imbue students with behaviors or traits beyond the retentionand recall of facts, or
, personality, and assessment. He is director of the Individual and Team Performance Lab and the Virtual Team Performance, Innovation, and Collaboration Lab at the University of Calgary, which was built through a $500K Canada Foundation for Innovation Infrastructure Grant. He also holds operating grants of over $300K to conduct leading-edge research on virtual team effectiveness. Over the past 10 years Tom has worked with organizations in numerous industries includ- ing oil and gas, healthcare, technology, and venture capitals. He is currently engaged with the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary to train, develop, and cultivate soft-skill teamwork competencies in order to equip graduates with strong
, whether the first semesterexperiences increased the probability of staying in engineering, and the change in perceivedprobability of graduating with a degree in ECS.These surveys allowed examination of similarities / differences between the LLC and non-LLCstudents at the beginning of the freshman year, and longitudinal change in responses for each ofthese two cohorts from the beginning to the end of the first semester of the freshman year.Exploration of the Longer-Term Impact of the LLCAs this is the fourth year of this residential LLC, a survey was administered to the sophomorethrough senior students who originally enrolled in ECS disciplines in the fall of their freshmanyear. All students in this cohort were asked to complete the survey whether
, first-year engineering instruction, and the pedagogical aspects of writing computer games. John has held a variety of leadership positions, including currently serving as an ABET Commissioner and as Vice President of The Pledge of the Computing Professional; within ASEE, he previously served as Chair of the Computers in Education Division and was one of the principal authors of the Best Paper Rubric used for determining the Best Overall Conference Paper and Best Professional Interest Council (PIC) Papers for the ASEE Annual Conference. He is a past recipient of Best Paper awards from the Computers in Education, First-Year Programs, and Design in Engineering Education Divisions, and has also been recognized for his
26.113.7who are notoriously difficult to recruit, but they would also have the chance to practice andimprove their leadership skills.Facilitators held three meetings just before the start of the program to introduce both thechallenge and the mentorship expectations to each student organization. All mentors were giventhe same information that included the details of the challenge as well as a written mentorshipguide. The mentorship guide provided a breakdown of the engineering design process andoutlined milestones in engineering design process that they should aim for throughout thesemester. The meetings and the written guide also included information on facilitating theirteam’s progress and not just doing the work for their freshmen. The mentors were
change higher education. Its 10threcommendation states: Page 26.907.2 Research universities should foster a community of learners. Large universities must find ways to create a sense of place and to help students develop small communities within the larger whole4. (p.34)The Boyer report served as a call to action for colleges to reform their educational practices andrestructure classrooms to increase active learning among students.Scholarly research in the 1980s and 1990s provided the underpinnings of the learningcommunity concept. Vincent Tinto who studied the causes of attrition in college found thatstudents were more likely
-year project to develop, implement, and studyoutcomes from the curriculum to promote development of inclusive engineering identities. Todevelop our experimental curricula of inclusive engineering practices, we draw on this literaturereview as well as survey data collected from the baseline year of this research project. Thefollowing section reports on baseline findings from students in two first-year engineering coursesthat did not include diversity or identity specific curriculum.Baseline SurveyTo assess the impact of the inclusive engineering identities curriculum, a quasi-experimentalresearch design was adopted. Data collection took place at a large public university with astudent body comprised of 17% underrepresented minorities, 51% women
perform a reality check on the software results. In most cases, the systems that engi-neers deal with have become complex and involve phenomena from multiple disciplinary do-mains. For example, digital logic, electric-circuit behavior, and heat transfer all play a role in de-signing computer chips. Does our engineering curriculum prepare our graduates to deal withsuch complexity?The authors suggest that the current approach to the engineering curriculum is out of step withthe current practice of engineering. A modification to the early engineering science courses, andpossibly the first-year science and mathematics courses, would serve to change the students’ ap-proach toward problem solving and better prepare them to apply what they learn to
by (1) integrating new student orientation with math assessment and learning, (2) linking STEM faculty educational training with STEM freshman learning communities and with orientation, and (3) integrating and expanding, based on research best practices, existing programs such as learning communities, undergraduate research, and faculty development. The program targets all first year students for success and is expected to have a significant impact on at-risk students. Students at-risk for not earning or completing a STEM degree include those who are underprepared in math, those with financial need, Hispanic students, women, and students with low self-efficacy.”The grant was motivated by significant
Migration in Engineering Programs." Journal of Engineering Education, 2008: 259-278.11. Evensky, Jerry, Wayne Grove, Yue Hu, and Timothy Wasserman. "Closing the Loop: Enhancing Collegiate Performance by Empowering Self-Assessment." American Economic Association Annual Conference. 2008. 647. Page 26.92.1012. ASEE. Going the Distance: Best Practices and Strategies for Retaining Engineering, Engineering Technology and Computing Students. American Society for Engineering Education, 2012.13. Cabrera, Nolan L.,l Danielle D. Miner, and Jeffrey F. Milem. “Can a Summer Bridge Program Impact First- Year Persistence and Performance
form of summer bridge programming available for engineering students,indicating that many institutions recognize the importance of summer bridge programs in theeffort to increase retention. The development of the University of Portland’s summer bridge wasinfluenced by the best practices that have arisen out of other institutions’ summer bridgeprograms. Two programs that were particularly important in the designing of the summerprogram were Oregon State University’s LSAMP Summer Scholar Program9 and University ofSouthern California’s Discover Engineering course14. Page 26.300.4OSU’s program is a 3-week program for underrepresented STEM students
programs,primarily designed for liberal arts majors, [2] few institutions have implemented a common readfor engineering students. Common reading programs provide a valuable mechanism to set thestage early for educational goals that will be developed later in the engineering curriculum.University of Virginia-School of Engineering and Applied Science (UVa-SEAS) and theUniversity of Michigan, College of Engineering offer successful engineering common readingprograms, with 80% and 97% participation among first year students respectively. During thelast twenty years, UVa-SEAS has developed best practices for designing and implementingcommon reading programs specifically for engineering students. Michigan Engineering outlinesa recently developed program
in Engineering Education (FREE, formerly RIFE, group), whose diverse projects and group members are described at feministengineering.org. She received a CAREER award in 2010 and a PECASE award in 2012 for her project researching the stories of undergraduate engineering women and men of color and white women. She received ASEE-ERM’s best paper award for her CAREER research, and the Denice Denton Emerging Leader award from the Anita Borg Institute, both in 2013. She helped found, fund, and grow the PEER Collaborative, a peer mentoring group of early career and re- cently tenured faculty and research staff primarily evaluated based on their engineering education research productivity. She can be contacted by email at
is part of the development team for Clarkson’s First Year Engineering/Interdisciplinary course described in this paper. Her current research interests include the implementation and evaluation of evidence-based effective learning practices in STEM education, environmental education, and energy education.Dr. John C. Moosbrugger, Clarkson University John C. Moosbrugger, PhD, is a Professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering and Associate Dean for Academic Programs for the Wallace H. Coulter School of Engineering at Clarkson University.Prof. Peter R Turner, Clarkson University Currently Dean of Arts & Sciences having previously served as Chair of Mathematics and Computer Science, and before that on the
active member of Northeastern’s Gateway Team, a select group of teaching faculty expressly devoted to the first-year Engineering Program at NU. She also serves as a Technical Faculty Advisor for Senior Capstone Design and graduate-level Challenge Projects in Northeastern’s Gordon Engineering Leadership Program. Dr. Jaeger has been the recipient of numerous awards in engineering education for both teaching and mentoring and has been involved in several engineering educational research initiatives through ASEE and beyond.Dr. Richard Whalen, Northeastern University Dr. Richard Whalen is a Teaching Professor at Northeastern University in Boston, MA and a core member of the Engineering Gateway Team. The focus of this team
given to the studentsis considered when utilizing team-based activities in the classroom. It is important for the projectassigned to be complex enough to require the work of the entire team and challenge the studentsthat are involved.3 Time limits, and deadlines that encourage the assignment to be completedthrough collaboration, are essential when designing a team project. If one student can accomplishthe task on their own, then there is no need for the team to work together.Several researchers have written about the use of assigned roles for student teams. For example,Schaffer and Lei explored the advantage of requiring students in a senior-level course to assignand define roles on teams and found that students who were required to take on and
with new students who might have other interests as they visit campus andspeak to the current group of students. Other research could focus on instructor activities to raisethe overall course objectives evaluations and to determine the best techniques as well as the mosteffective means to introduce the five focus areas to the students. Furthermore, retention shouldbe monitored to determine if the course has any positive or negative effects on studentperceptions.References[1] Davis, Barbara G., Tools for Teaching, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco, CA, 1993.[2] Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F., (1991) Applying the Seven Principle for Good Practice inUndergraduate Education, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.[3] Brown, B.L., “New learning
Paper ID #12601Implementation and Effects of a Bridge Program to Increase Student Learn-ing and Retention in Engineering ProgramsDr. Tony Vercellino P.E., Youngstown State University Dr. Vercellino attended Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and received a B.S. in Civil Engineer- ing. While working on his B.S., he worked as an operator for an industrial wastewater plant over the course of 4 years. After graduating, he worked 2.5 years as a consulting engineer designing municipal water distribution and wastewater collection/treatment systems. Tony attended graduate school at Texas Tech University, receiving both a M.S
student centeredenvironment.The objective of this project was to introduce a new module on electronics to students enrolled ina first year engineering program. The module was incorporated in an engineering problemsolving course and was designed to include reading material, practice problems, hands-onactivities, and a project. This paper describes the content of the module, how the module wasimplemented, and its impact in students’ perception of engineering.Methodology:Sample Size: 42 students enrolled in an engineering problem solving course participated in thisstudy. All students were enrolled in a first year engineering program at a land-grant institution inthe mid-Atlantic region; none of the students have been accepted in a major
assessment. He is director of the Individual and Team Performance Lab and the Virtual Team Performance, Innovation, and Collaboration Lab at the University of Calgary, which was built through a $500K Canada Foundation for Innovation Infrastructure Grant. He also holds operating grants of over $300K to conduct leading-edge research on virtual team effectiveness. Over the past 10 years Tom has worked with organizations in numerous industries includ- ing oil and gas, healthcare, technology, and venture capitals. He is currently engaged with the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary to train, develop, and cultivate soft-skill teamwork competencies in order to equip graduates with strong interpersonal and
of precedent materials, and experienced instructional designers’ beliefs about design character. These studies have highlighted the importance of cross-disciplinary skills and student engagement in large-scale, real-world projects. Dr. Exter currently leads an effort to evaluate a new multidisciplinary degree program which provides both liberal arts and technical content through competency-based experiential learning.Iryna Ashby, Purdue University Iryna Ashby is a Ph.D student in the Learning Design and Technology Program at Purdue University with the research interests focused on program evaluation. She is also part of the program evaluation team for the Purdue Polytechnic Institute – a new initiate at Purdue
having obtained her PhD in 2007 from the University of Illinois at Chicago under the supervision of Dr. Thomas L. Theis. She has developed a research program in sustainable engineering of bioproducts. Her research ranges from design of systems based on industrial ecology and byproduct synergies, life cycle and sustainability assessments of biopolymers and biofuels, and design and analy- sis of sustainable solutions for healthcare. Since 2007, she has lead seven federal research projects and collaborated on many more, totaling over $7M in research, with over $12M in collaborative research. At ASU, Dr. Landis continues to grow her research activities and collaborations to include multidisciplinary approaches to
. Her interests are in quantitative and qualitative research and data analysis.Jacquelyn F. Sullivan Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder Jacquelyn Sullivan is founding co-director of the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program and the General Engineering Plus degree program at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. She has been intimately involved in the retention-promoting First Year Engineering Projects course since its inception, and has recently become a driver for spatial visualization skill building through the course. She is currently launching CU Teach Engineering, a unique initiative to produce secondary science or math teachers through a new design-based
project-based curriculum to more fully Page 26.751.3engage first-year students.Project Descriptions The projects in spring 2013 were selected by the engineering Graduate Teaching Assistants(GTAs), who work within the first-year program. Each GTA represents one of the engineeringdisciplines within the Watson School: Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, Systems Science andIndustrial, and Biomedical engineering departments. Each GTA submitted three ideas andpresented them to the Engineering Design Division faculty, who made the final decisions. Theengineering faculty then wrote a brief summary of each project for the students. Each GTAserves as an
: first-year seminars and experiences,7-12 writing intensive courses,13collaborative assignments and projects,14, 15 undergraduate research,16, 17 diversity/globallearning,18, 19 and learning communities.20-22 In additions to these practices, some authors havereported other interventions designed to improve retention, including peer and facultymentoring,23, 24 bridge or college preparatory programs,24-26 and mandatory math tutoring.27In this study we explore the effectiveness of a variation of a learning community – namely aliving-learning community (LLC) of first-year engineering students that was started at ouruniversity in the fall of 2013 and is now in its second year. Loosely defined, an LLC is a groupof students who live together in a dorm
Education Department, Purdue University Syafiah Johari is currently a senior in Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University. She did research under supervision of Dr. Monica Cox (Associate Professor) and Nikitha Sambamurthy (Graduate Stu- dent) in Engineering Education Department for the 11-week Summer Undergraduate Research Fellow- ship (SURF) program in summer 2014. Her research interests include heat and mass transfer, energy and environment. She was the recipient of Mechanical Engineering Scholarship Award of Purdue University in 2013 in recognition of her outstanding achievement in academic and co-curricular activities and Best Engineering Design Award for the excellent class design project in spring 2013
) and later at different stages (post andmid-first-year) in the first-year program. Specifically, the goal of this research was to determineif the student scores could elucidate deficiencies in their math skills, and whether or not it mightbe feasible to use these results to develop interventions to deal with these deficiencies and/orguide instructors in best teaching practices.The overall pre-university math assessment averages indicate that the students are not ready forfirst-year engineering, since the averages for both groups are only 50%. The data also shows thatthese scores are not consistent with students’ overall high school averages of 80%. This studysuggests that high school averages and first-year GPA have a weak correlation with the
understanding and a disposition that a student builds across thecurriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences tosynthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond thecampus”10, 11. The Integrative Knowledge Portfolio Survey was designed “in order to create apedagogy and technology to help students know and articulate what they have learned”9, 11especially valuing how they learn and implementing this in their career choices11. Pizzolato’sSAS is the first tool of its kind to assess self-authorship quantitatively. The capacity to assessself-authorship quantitatively can help institutions create and implement new practices by havinga tool that could be used for assessment. Prior to
studentsare asked to rate their confidence to perform the following tasks by selecting a number between 0and 100, conduct engineering design, identify a design need, research a design need, developdesign solutions, select the best possible design, construct a prototype, evaluate and test a design,communicate a design, redesign, work as part of a team, most students selected the same score foreach task (they clicked down the line for each grid question). This is possibly due to the fact thatall survey questions were presented on one page via google forms and the survey was given tostudents at the beginning of labs each time using about 10 minutes. Students might have beenoverwhelmed by the amount of questions included and thus did not carefully