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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Hal Nystrom

participated in integrated teams.The ResultsThe students were asked, "If you were designing this class, based on your experience,would you control the teams regarding integration, or let them choose to form as theydesire?" "Control" was given a value of "0" and "choice" was "1". The scores displayedin Table 1 are the mean scores that also reflect the percentage of the students thatrecommended "choice". For example, the score for all students was 0.65, and it meansthat 65% of the students recommended that they be given the choice. These scores areprovided for students grouped based on their characteristics such as location, sex andlevel of satisfaction. The satisfaction grouping is based on the response of anotherquestion in the questionnaire that

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Mohamad Ahmadian

. These may include nationallynormed and standardized objective measures, locally developed objective and essay exams, exitinterviews, oral exams, portfolios, senior projects, capstone courses, student satisfaction surveys,employer questionnaires, and alumni surveys. The assessment of academic achievement involvesmany different units within the university community but must be consistent in purpose anddesign. It reflects the freedom of academic departments to conduct assessment in a manner whichis most appropriate for their specific program. It also reflects a high-degree of interdepartmental Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

James Wood; Elaine L. Craft

rate of 50 percent for all openenrollment, associate degree colleges nationwide. The graduation rate of the first "pilot class"students to have been engaged in the SC ATE engineering technology first-year program is anexciting 50 percent, with additional students expected to graduate within the academic year.When the ATE effort was started, the graduation rate for engineering technology rested at about10 percent.The number of SC ATE faculty (full time and adjunct) continues to grow, with 128 facultymembers involved (as of 9/13/00). Industry interest in and support for the program alsocontinues to broaden, as reflected through the development of the SC ATE Scholars initiative.VI. ConclusionAs the technical/community college population

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

John Brown; Patricia Click

about the source and control of knowledge. Social constructionist views madepopular by philosopher Richard Rorty and anthropologist Clifford Geertz suggest that the waywe think today differs from how we thought in the past. Knowledge is a social construct,directly related to the culture in which it is found. It is the product of the group, rather than anindividual effort (Bruffee 1994). Collaborative learning reflects these new ideas aboutknowledge. Collaborative learning does not assume that the teacher is the sole authority on a Page 6.273.1“Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Karim Nasr; Basem Alzahabi

. IntroductionThe accreditation process of engineering programs has taken a new form, becoming an outcome-based process where individual courses and experiences must contribute to the big picture ofengineering education. This process has caused the majority of engineering programs around thenation to reflect on their educational focus, examine teaching and learning styles, experimentwith new and innovative approaches to assess students’ learning, and above all put in place animprovement process [1]. Revisiting what one teaches in a certain course and addressing whatstudents are really getting out of the course are certainly not easy tasks. This evaluation processbecomes especially difficult when a course is an integral part of a sequence of courses having

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Anna Phillips; Jon Fricker; Paul Palazolo; Norman Dennis

as focused on the primary task of engineeringdesign. To summarize, incoming freshmen work in groups and are assigned a section of a virtuallandscape and this section serves as the working platform for all design elements in the program.For example, as the students learn about surveying or fluid dynamics in their class work, theyapply these concepts directly to projects linked to their section of the virtual landscape. As theknowledge base of the students increase, the design problems evolve to reflect this increasedlearning and the interaction between the needs and requirements of the constituents involved inthe virtual environment. At the same time, students are exposed to interdisciplinary andmultidisciplinary relationships that offer

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Constantin Chassapis; Kishore Pochiraju; Sven Esche

Session 1566 Implementation of Assessment Procedures into the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum Sven Esche, Kishore Pochiraju, Constantin Chassapis Stevens Institute of TechnologyAbstractThe Department of Mechanical Engineering Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) is aiming atdevising a modern engineering program that reflects the recent nationwide trend towardsenhancement of traditional lecture-based courses with a design spine and a laboratory experiencethat propagates through the entire educational program. Another thread to be woven into the

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Martin Trethewey; John Gardner; Thomas Litzinger

better of their two vehicles for it. In the end, driver skill was the determiningfactor in the obstacle course.At mid-semester and the end of the semester, the students were asked to reflect on the majorobjectives of the class and offer their thoughts on how well they were achieved. In the end ofsemester evaluation, the students were asked to reflect on whether the courses objectives hadbeen met and what aspect of the course was most valuable to them. With respect to the objectiveof application of theoretical knowledge from core courses to an engineering system, the studentswere overwhelmingly positive in evaluating the course; 25 of the 26 who responded felt that thisobjective had been met. All of the students who responded to the question on

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Migri Prucz

. It is obvious that multiple criteria are, usually, considered simultaneously in theprocess of selecting a particular profession or undergraduate education program, eventhough they are not all equally important, and not all can be quantified in the same way.The conventional approach to formalizing the simultaneous consideration of multipledecision criteria is to assign a relative "weighting factor" to each of them, so that thesefactors add all up to 1 (or 100) for the complete set of criteria [4, 5]. While theseweighting factors reflect the perceived importance of every criterion, relatively to eachother, they reflect merely the perspective of the "conventional wisdom", which may, ormay not, agree with the particular interests, constraints

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Alan Sahakian

, optical components, including lasers and photodetectors, aredescribed. Basic optical properties are introduced, including Snell’s law, total internal reflection,attenuation and diffraction. Aside from the CD player, fiber optics and free-space opticalcommunication are used as examples. The capacity of CD players, and some of the newerstandards such as CD-RW and DVD are described. Page 6.658.2 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering EducationThe ninth week introduces electronic devices and their

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Bina Ramamurthy; Pratibha Gopalam; Alexander N. Cartwright

accustomed. JavaApplets can be used as supplementary instructional material in traditional lecture style courses toallow instructors to present educational material in a more visually appealing manner. In thisway, Java Applets allow for the incorporation of teaching styles not normally practiced.Relationship between Learning Styles and Java AppletsIn the language of Felder, the traditional lecture style of teaching (abstract/ verbal/ deductive/sequential) incidentally addresses only the intuitive/deductive/reflective/sequential learningstyles [Table 1]. Invariably, lecture style teaching is a mismatch with students that have otherlearning styles. To increase the impact of teaching on students, lecture style teaching should becoupled with active

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Val Girolamo; Seung Kim

, testingand characterization, production and process control, parts and mold design, assembly andfinishing, process automation and simulation, prototyping, and quality control.Since the versatility of materials with respect to shaping allows such a wide range of science andtechniques to be employed. This results in complex problems for technologists, particularlyconcerning plastics processing interactions. The complex problems reflect a unique field on anew relationship of the structure-property-process in plastics. In this context, the new experienceof technology must be accumulated for students to adopt a “practice-in-theory” in materialsengineering courses in engineering technology programs.“Mechanical Engineering Technology Laboratory II” is a

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Larry Richards

are designed with awareness of thevariety and range of individual differences between students. The labs are not gearedtoward the top of the class, nor the bottom. They cannot be too easy, or too complex. Weknow that most of our students have a moderate level of computer sophistication.Individual help is available for those who fall behind or do not understand the material.We have worked for years to get the level and timing of the lessons right; most studentscan complete most lessons with very little help. But each year we discover new problems:some due to the changing software, others due to the students. The lessons must beregularly updated to reflect software revisions and changed to incorporate new contentand exercises.The labs embody

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Barbara L. Christe

particular area) to create focused content Selection of tools for assessment and inter-student communicationInvestigate the nature of student learning as it develops in an on-line class. Participants mustsynthesize information the instructor provides and ask questions about it. This is called inquiry-based learning. The role of instructor is also changed. Distance educators are facilitators. It isimportant to elicit conclusions from the students as they view the course content. Carefully craftassignments to reflect this process. Do not require a simple rote repetition of facts.Prepare tutorials for students who need extra material. These basic materials are often alreadyavailable on the web. Links to explanatory sites will provide additional

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Elliot Douglas, University of Florida

them to the need for that information. It should be noted that these problems werefirst implemented in the fall of 2000, and are not reflected in the assessment results given below.Interpersonal RapportThe three elements above all fall within the intellectual excitement dimension of Lowman’s twodimensional model of effective teaching.11 It is appropriate that the focus of the T4E model beon this dimension, since Lowman found that intellectual excitement is slightly more importantthan interpersonal rapport for effective teaching. However, interpersonal rapport with studentscan not be ignored, as it is necessary to achieve the highest levels of teaching skill. There areseveral techniques that can be used to promote interpersonal rapport. The

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Wen-Whai Li; Charles Turner; Alfredo Martinez

Foundation have recognized the need to incorporatesustainable/green principles into engineering education curriculum. 8,9,10 These papers andarticles all reflect the need to integrate sustainability concepts across the engineeringcurriculum.II. GenesisIn 1997, Virginia Tech (VT) and UTEP joined forces to submit a proposal to ENRON, alarge energy corporation, for the development of a student and faculty exchange that wouldinitiate a greening program in the Colleges of Engineering and Science at UTEP. UTEPwould build on Virginia Tech’s existing green program and Virginia Tech students and Page 6.359.2faculty would have an experience at a culturally

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Karen Davis

, ethics, social impact, andeconomics are addressed by the project, as well as a self-evaluation. In the self-evaluation,students reflect on how their mandatory co-op experience, as well as their course work, haveprepared them to undertake the project. Project implementation and oral status reports take placein the Winter quarter. In the Spring term, testing, refinement, writing final evaluations, andpresentation at a senior forum are done.The important curriculum innovation is that the students usually do not write more than a page ortwo for any weekly assignment, yet when assembled the individual assignments form a complete Page 6.451.1

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Sridhar Condoor; Richard Weber

Session 3261 Inquiry-Based Student Learning Sridhar S. Condoor, Richard G. Weber Saint Louis University/ Fairfield UniversityAbstractIn the traditional engineering curriculum, students are presented with and tested on factualknowledge. Very little emphasis is placed on their thought process, which is more important as itcan lead to inventions and innovations. This attitude is reflected in the commo n answer “I don’tknow” from the students who do not spend any effort or time to think. The engineering programsat St. Louis and Fairfield Universities have the common

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Katherine Carels; James Howard; Charles Bersbach; Debra Larson

like a4” manager whenworking with people in paradoxical cross-functional teams requires a seemingly innate ability tocreate instinctive strategies and to make spontaneous decisions. This“tacit knowledge5” cannot be mastered solely through the textbook or lecture. A combination oftheory and structured practice followed by guided reflection is needed to develop the practicalcompetencies required of a professional skilled in the management of multi-disciplinary projectteams.This paper describes a graduate-level engineering management course that incorporates anintensive practicum designed to build these competencies at the tacit level. In particular, wefocus our discussion on the use of a sociolinguistic technique called TeamTalk6, which provided

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Geoff Swan; S P Maj; D Veal

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering EducationOther students asked why we used the terminating resistors? They were encouraged to getanswers by adding or removing such effects from the equipment use and to note the results.They disconnected the resistors and observing the effects of the refected signals. This led onto a discussion of the method of finding where a break has occurring in a cable by noting thetraversal time of the signal to the break and its reflection back to the signal source. Why dowe use twisted pair wiring? Again lengths of the twisted pair cabling was untwisted and thedistorting effects on the

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Sang Ha Lee; Betsy Palmer; Rose M. Marra; John Wise; Thomas Litzinger

students wererandomly selected during their first year and invited to participate in three hour-long interviewsessions. During the interview, each student reflected on his or her view of knowledge,education, and learning. The interviews were transcribed and sent to a rater experienced inassigning positions relative to the Perry Scheme based on student responses to these types ofquestions. While it was hoped that students would progress from simple dualistic views(position 1 / 2) through complex dualism (position 3) and relativism (4 / 5) to commitment inrelativism (position 6+), most students in this sample did not make it beyond position four. Thispaper will review the findings with an eye towards curricular activities that may or may

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ilya Grinberg

area in the table.4. As usual, make conclusions.Every exam includes one more question about the technical article in the most recentprofessional publications. The answer is expected in the form a memorandum to their supervisor.Students should be current in their specialty from the beginning of their careers, right here, at theCollege. Development of their communications skills is also a target.At the beginning of the semester students are assigned a library research project. They canchoose topics freely as long as they are related to electrical engineering/electrical engineeringtechnology field. The structure of the project should reflect the following: 1. Why did I choose this topic 2. What did I know before I started my research 3

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Rosalyn Berne

"revolutionize agriculture to increasecrop yields while reducing use of pesticides; to create tens of thousands of novel speciesof bacteria, plants, viruses, and animals; to replace reproduction, or supplement it, withcloning; to create cures for many diseases, increasing our life span and our quality of life;and much more." Joy explains, "We know with certainty that these profound changes inthe biological sciences are imminent, and will challenge all of our notions of what life is."Notions about the meaning of our human and earthly lives, and how we want to livetogether, are at the core of ethical reflection.4. Reaching through the MatrixTo bring into the engineering classroom the moral questions of these developing newtechnologies requires moving

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jeffrey Nadel; Dan Walsh

research for industry and provide real-lifeprojects for students in the form of thesis and graduation exit required senior projects. Thus, theimplications of the ATL are a win-win environment for all involved. The Advanced TechnologyLaboratories (ATL) provides a crucible where students can undertake defining educationalcapstone experiences that fully reflect new ABET criteria and the new millennium. This paperdescribes the computing resources and systems that have been put in place to support this goal.The ATL is a place where government, industry and academia have come together, whereeducation and research have come together, where computing and engineering have come togetherto create a knowledge-age, and where students grow into enabled

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Raymond Thompson

each plan would need to meet the SOT model guidelines. The eight itemsrequired in each assessment plan were:1. A brief, one or two-page description of the department and its programs.2. The Departmental Mission Statement3. Learning outcomes for the degree and program option offered by that department. The learning outcomes should reflect the learning outcomes stated by the University and the School of Technology.4. The current curricula and plans of study for degrees and programs offered by the individual department.5. Documentation of the methods and techniques used to assess degree learning outcomes. These summary documents should indicate the methods, direct or indirect, used in assessment and how the result of

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Ted Aanstoos; Steven Nichols

job. In this research project, students are asked to analyze their own four-yearcurriculum, determine the preferred set of assets at the entry level to the job they plan to seekupon graduation, and plan the supplemental education (through seminars, short courses,certificate courses, etc) required to bridge the gap. The remaining sections of this paperdescribe this assignment and its results in more detail.Team-Proposed Research Project. In some semesters, Teams were told to select their ownresearch topic using whatever criteria they wished, as long as the topic reflected a significantportion of the topics, goals, and objectives of the course. In these assignments the key elementsof the project were to lay out the Background, identify the

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Anna Phillips; Paul Palazolo; Scott Yost

second phase involved reviewing some of the more recent curricular modifications inengineering education, and in general, research data supported that idea that successfulmodifications include a variety of approaches designed to work together and reflect theindividual learning styles of the students. Randolph’s4 recent review of Kolb’s5 and Bloom’s6work regarding individual learning styles suggests that engineering educators should designcurricular methodologies that are more student-centered and less teacher-centered. At the sametime, Randolph4 proposes that writing can be used as a powerful tool for learning byincorporating more psychologically active writing activities to promote transfer from contentknowledge to application of content

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Joseph Walsh; David Kelso; John Troy; Barbara Shwom; Penny Hirsch

communicators5.A new paradigm: the integrated approach used in one freshman courseIn the 1990s, a new and more promising approach to engineering communicationpedagogy—one of genuine collaboration--has been emerging. In this paradigm, engineering andcommunication experts work together to develop a curriculum that blends engineering andcommunication instruction and leverages the synergies between the two fields to help studentslearn more about each than if they studied each separately. The emergence of collaborativeprograms reflects a number of changes in academia over the last decade: an increased emphasison creative problem-solving in engineering; conceptual advances in other fields about howpeople learn; and institutional advances, such as greater

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas Stanford; Michael Aherne; Duane D. Dunlap; Mel Mendelson; Donald Keating

engineering innovation. Graduate education must be responsive to this change and mustbuild a new type model of in-service graduate professional education which reflects thesubstantial changes and characteristics of the engineering innovation process itself, and thestages of lifelong growth, professional dimensions, and leadership responsibilities associatedwith the modern practice of creative engineering in a knowledge-based, innovation-driveneconomy. Whereas traditional research-based graduate engineering education and teaching haveresulted during the last three decades as a byproduct of the linear research-driven model ofinnovation, a new model of graduate professional education has been developed which focuseson lifelong professional education for

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2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Shirley Fleischmann

yourclassroom on the first day and ask when they will be able to begin the project. Imaginehaving to hold students back a little so that they can fully appreciate the lessons of todayin preparation for the tomorrow they are eager to reach. An impossible dream? Not atall! The understanding and development of the “design based” approach described in thispaper came as a result of my search for an approach that would more clearly meet theneeds of my students and that would also better reflect current engineering practice. Inretrospect this approach also fits the requirements of ABET 2000 remarkably well.The formal approach described in this paper was developed after a very successfulexperience with a project titled The Wooden Shoe Regatta – a design, build