Conference Session

Technology, Communications & Ethics

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

John Wise

Session 2531 Better Understanding through Writing: Investigating Calibrated Peer Review ™ John C. Wise, Seong Kim The Pennsylvania State UniversityAbstractCalibrated Peer Review (CPR) was initially developed by UCLA in the 1990s as a way to usetechnology to increase the opportunities for student writing assignments.1 Writing about aconcept has long been seen as one of the best ways to demonstrate student understanding.Unfortunately, it has always been true that more student writing assignments yields weekendslost in a sea of paper and

Conference Session

Potpurri Design in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Clifton Johnston; Diane Douglas

Session 3425 Writing in the Engineering Design Lab: How Problem Based Learning provides a Context for Student Writing D.M. Douglas, C.R. Johnston, D.J. Caswell, M. Eggermont Faculty of Engineering University of CalgaryAbstractIt is the experience of most writing instructors that when students write (or speak) aboutsubjects that matter to them many writing problems, such as grammar and poororganization, fall away. Since the quality of student writing seems to be dependant on thewriting context, it is worthwhile looking at the situations in which we ask students

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Mya Poe; Dennis Freeman

designed and implemented in acollaboration of technical and writing professionals at MIT, which led to a tight integration of thewriting process with two research projects: an experimental project in a wet lab and a theoreticalstudy using computer simulation. For both projects, students worked in pairs to develop a formalproposal and draft a 10-page scientific paper. After receiving substantial feedback from thetechnical staff, writing staff, and peers, students revised their manuscripts. Comparisons acrossdrafts suggest that peer-review, staff critiques, and the opportunity for revision are all critical tothe educational process. Although written feedback is staff intensive, we have found thatteaching assistants can be taught to provide excellent

Conference Session

Innovations in the ChE Laboratory

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

David Miller; Julia Williams

lives of his students; he also found further supportfor this view in Sageev and Romanowski.1 He began to consult additional sources on thesubject to develop an effective set of strategies to address the problem.Consideration of references on this topic indicated other faculty who were trying toresolve a similar set of root causes.2, 3 The problem lay in finding sources that providedgood models for use in the classroom. Effective models were available from bothLudlow and Newell.4, 5 Both authors, working in the context of chemical engineeringdepartments, addressed student communication problems through the practice of peerreview of student writing. The instructor then set about adapting models for peer review,as well as other writing techniques

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephanie Nelson

organization,completeness, clarity, grammar and punctuation, and understanding of documentationconventions for the disciplines. While assignments as well as findings vary per discipline, thereare enough commonalities in terms of the weaknesses that the findings as well as relatedrecommendations are presented for the all engineering students. Three pedagogical approachescan bring significant improvements to the writing products produced by these students:assigning jointly written reports, providing training on documentation conventions forprofessional reports, and requiring students to draft early and undergo multiple peer reviewsand revisions.Index Terms  Engineering writing, engineering writing pedagogy.IntroductionThe most recent ABET visit to Cal

Conference Session

Student Teams & Active Learning

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Chris Daubert; Steven Peretti; Paula Berardinelli; Deanna Dannels; Chris Anson; Lisa Bullard

Session #3: Interpersonal Aspects of Teaming Module Session #4: Preparing and Delivering Collaborative Presentations The content of these modules can be found at the project web site(http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/project/actionagenda/pages/revisecourse/tws_instructional_materials/jr_lab_instruct_materials.html.) The target learning proficiencies are listed in Table 1.Table 1: Junior-level TWS proficiencies and corresponding skillsProficiency Corresponding skillsCollaborative technical • write collaborativelywriting • function as a peer editorCollaborative technical • convey technical material orally as a team in a way appropriatepresentation

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

James Hanson; Julia Williams

understandabout a concept and how they would approach a problem.Our ultimate goal as instructors is to help students develop the skills necessary to succeed in theirchosen profession. Therefore, the objectives of the Writing-to-Learn assignments forprofessional practice are as follows: 1. During summer internships and after graduation, students annotate calculations. 2. During summer internships and after graduation, students effectively communicate with co-workers and supervisors when discussing ideas or problems.In professional practice, design calculations are reviewed for a variety of reasons including peer-review and litigation. It is unreasonable to believe that a practicing engineer will rememberspecific thoughts about a set of

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

John Spinelli

] 10. Computers and Computing: The contributions of Babbage, Von Neumann and others are considered, as is the effect of computers on modern society. [10, 24, 26] 11. Telecommunications and the Internet: Technological and societal aspects of the “information age” are examined. [6, 24]4. Improving Writing The first two offerings of History of Electrical Engineering provided studentswith extensive feedback about their writing, but improvement in writing, based upongrades, was minimal. Subsequent offerings have made extensive use of peer-review inaddition to instructor feedback, and this appears to have resulted in greater improvementin writing. This experience indicates that an effective way to improve the quality

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Bannerot

expectations for thetechnical communications associated with a multidisciplinary capstone design course in theCullen College of Engineering at the University of Houston have been upgraded through agrowing relationship with the University of Houston Writing Center. Even though the evolutionof this activity is still in progress, the interaction has already resulted in a series of just-in-timeworkshops, opportunities for individual consultations for the students with peer WritingConsultants, the general upgrading of the communication requirements for the course, and thedevelopment of extensive instructions and grading criteria for oral and written assignments. Thisinteraction has already expanded to other courses and other departments in the College

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Fry

Sky" (blue), "Wasabi" (green) and "Chutney" (orange).). The result: your dad's old Schwinn bike on steroids.” 2 [emphasis added]Without realizing it, the author(s) of the above passage make the connection between Rhetoricand successful Product Development. Designers, Engineers, and Marketers are engaged in theact of persuasion. Ultimately, their hard work must persuade a consumer to purchase or use theproduct that they developed. During the process, each partner in the team is trying to persuadehis or her superiors and/or peers that their solution is the correct one.The three overarching components of Rhetoric (Kairos, Audience, and Decorum) clearly apply tothe product development process. In fact restated, the above definition of the

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Lisa McNair; Garlie Forehand; Beverly Sutley-Fish; Michael Laughter; Judith Norback

are covered. First an introduction to the project is given, and second,the highlights of relevant publications are summarized. Third, strategies for teaching workplacecommunication are described and fourth, the goals and orientation of the project are laid out.Fifth, the Communication Lab involved in the curriculum is described. Sixth, the assessmentprocedures are identified, and finally, future work is covered.II. Highlights of Publications Regarding Writing and Presenting in EngineeringThe publication highlights cover three topics. The first focuses on communication skills neededon the engineers’ jobs. The second covers the main tenets of communication instruction,including viewing the workplace as a different “discourse community” from

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Julie Sharp, Vanderbilt University

all engineering majors taken mostly by juniors and seniors. Thepurpose was to establish helpful networking opportunities for students while teaching themreport writing skills. Students surveyed alumni and other professionals about technicalcommunication tasks at work. The following components comprised this project: an alumnusguest speaker, introducing the project; the writing assignment given to the students; studentgroups' planning and gathering information from alumni, the group-written reports, students’post-assessment of the project, and a final alumni-sponsored luncheon meeting with alumni,students, the professor, and administrators. Survey results showed technical communication tobe valuable and somewhat time-intensive in the workplace

Conference Session

Knowing Students: Diversity & Retention

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Zemke; Donald Elger

Session 1430 Growing Undergraduate Student Mentoring Skills Using a Reflective Practice Guided by Peer Feedback Steven C. Zemke, Donald F. Elger University of IdahoAbstractOur university is facing increasing enrollment as well as decreasing funding. Class sizes andfaculty workloads are rising. As a result, the students’ personal connection with the faculty isdecreasing. To cost effectively augment the faculty effort and simultaneously increaseconnection with students we are utilizing undergraduate student mentors. Since excellentmentoring skills

Conference Session

BME Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Semahat Siddika Demir

, Biomedical Engineering,University of Wisconsin at Madison) and her colleagues started for female faculty in engineering[3]. Dr. Chesler’s program was funded by Engineering Information Foundation to develop athree-year workshop series of community-building and peer-mentoring in a small group ofuntenured women faculty. First year their workshop with an Outward Bound adventure in Mainefocused on leadership skills and risk-taking. The second year workshop emphasized writing andcreative-expression skills in Vermont. The workshop attendees were joined by senior speakersand role models, Dr. Ilene Busch-Vishniac (Dean of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University) andDr. Denice Denton (Dean of Engineering, University of Washington), who shared their insightsand

Conference Session

Retention: Keeping the Women Students

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Elizabeth Eschenbach

Session 1392 Go With the Flow - A Student Leadership Opportunity Integrating K-12 Outreach, the Society of Women Engineers, Service Learning and Peer Mentoring Elizabeth Eschenbach, Eileen Cashman Environmental Resources Engineering Humboldt State UniversityAbstractThis paper describes a multi-year project that involved the Humboldt State University StudentSection of the Society of Women Engineers in a Service Learning project that now serves as acontinuous outreach project to young children in the community. The SWE club oversaw

Conference Session

Accreditation and Related Issues in ECE

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Hue Van Tran; Steven Reyer; James Friauf; Owe Petersen; Katherine Wikoff

Humanities.Instructors provide evaluation and feedback on writing in all of these writing-intensive courses.In EN-131 Composition, instructor feedback is supplemented (and amplified) by evaluation andfeedback provided by other students through peer critiques generated in small-group writingworkshops. EN-131 students are then required to implement that feedback through revision ofmultiple drafts. During the peer-review process, students also engage in self-assessment andreflection on their own writing, albeit somewhat obliquely. Critiquing other students’ workhelps to develop the editing skills and awareness of quality standards necessary for students toevaluate their own work, and the multiple-draft writing process encourages continual self-reflection and

Conference Session

Entrepreneurism in BME

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

David Smith; John Troy; Penny Hirsch

nature of this session varied. One year itinvolved a debate; another year the instructor analyzed the conventions of some of the articlesassigned for the writing project. In 2003, students were also encouraged to take drafts of theirsecond papers to the university’s peer tutoring center for additional review. Page 9.1206.6Step 4: Grading the final paper. Instructor grading is the most time-consuming and important Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004 American Society for Engineering Educationactivity, especially on the first paper

Conference Session

Graduate Student Experiences

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Angela Linse; Tammy VanDeGrift; Jessica Yellin; Jennifer Turns

ofconsulting experience in industry, which made her unique among the participants in the pilotoffering of the program.ProcessMarcy had not experienced writing a teaching statement before participating in the ETPP. She Page 9.1006.11often questioned the utility of activities provided on the topic sheets, but usually completed theweekly writing tasks. Marcy also felt she had little teaching experience when she started the Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Educationprogram, and through talking with her peers

Conference Session

Innovations in the ChE Laboratory

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Ron Artigue; Mark Anklam; David Miller; Dan Coronell; Atanas Serbezov; Sharon Sauer; Alfred Carlson

written comments provided by the reviewers, so they can receive credit for their work.Understanding how to improve your report 6) Meet with your instructor to discuss your graded report and ways to improve the technical presentation and writing style. 7) It may be necessary to rewrite your reports and/or collect additional data to support your conclusions.their peer reviews, they revise their reports prior to submitting them to the faculty. The studentsare thus able to learn from the mistakes of others (by completing a peer review) and from theirown mistakes (by having their own work reviewed by a peer). This is an important skill that isseldom emphasized in the typical curriculum.The peer review process is first introduced to

Conference Session

Technology, Communications & Ethics

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Christopher Long

system of distributed cognition.Small groups provide an optimal environment for peers, near peer mentors, and communicationsfaculty to interact through various modes of communicating. Speaking, writing, drawing,gesture, computer programs, etc. mediate individuals’ construction of knowledge. At the sametime, these media represent knowledge externally for others, who can both provide feedback anduse it in their own knowledge constructions. The process of constructing knowledge is enhancedby expert guidance and feedback as the learners work on increasingly challenging aspects of theresearch projects they are involved in with their research advisors. What learners can do initiallywith guidance from a more knowledgeable member of the discipline they

Conference Session

Teamwork and Assessment

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Heather Sheardown; Donald Woods

Chemical Engineering Division: Assessment of Teams, 3513 paper 832 An Approach to developing Student=s skill in Self Assessment Donald R. Woods and Heather D. Sheardown Department of Chemical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton ON L8S 4L7Abstract: Self and peer assessment can be vital parts to any team assessment. Theassessment can be of the overall team or of the performance of team members.Assessment is a judgment as to the degree to which a goal has been achieved. Instudent self assessment, the judgment is made by the student. In this paper the fiveprinciples of assessment are summarized. Assessment is about performance notworth; is based on evidence not intuition

Conference Session

Recruiting/Retention Lower Division

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Chih-Ping Yeh

, who are excellent writers, are selected by faculty to help other students by reviewing their written work. These peer tutors receive specialized training by the Learning Assistance Center. There are currently over 26 Writing Fellows on campus. Writing Fellows are also available on-line. • Provide Students with Support and Assistance to Secure Financial Aid: Schoolcraft College received an endowment for scholarships to support academically and economically disadvantaged students from the Thompson-McCully Foundation. WSU also has Presidential Scholarships and Tech Scholars will be encouraged to apply. Often students would not visit with financial aid advisors, particularly, if they had failed to file the federal

Conference Session

Electrical & Computer Engineering Poster Session

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Arthur Brodersen; Cordelia Brown

multiple sections offered inthis course. This learning model is being applied to half of the sections. Students register forone of the offered “Introduction to Digital Logic” sections. Students have no knowledge thatthere are different modalities of instruction. This method assures a nearly random assignment tosections. The remaining sections will receive the traditional approach to instruction. Thesections using the learning model receive instruction through a combination of lecturing, activelearning exercises, collaborative learning exercises, and peer instruction exercises. In thesesections, students are engaged in challenge projects and presentations. Instructors and teachingassistants are provided with special training workshops on techniques

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Information Technology

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

C. Richard Helps; Michael Bailey

that all toooften we not only do not count the cost, we are not even aware of it. In this particular instancethe costs, and risks, are significant.The primary change is that production and distribution costs have decreased radically and so themotivation for, and enforcement of peer review of freely available materials has diminished,therefore the reliability and validity of the information obtained by a simple search engine is nowsuspect. Anyone can write a technical article and post it onto the Internet quite easily. Efficientsearch engines, such as Google, and active self-promotion can ensure that the article will befound by potential users. The only form of “peer-review” left is how high on the list the searchengine puts a particular item

Conference Session

Projects,Teams & Cooperative Learning

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Gregory Mason

teamwork and technical writing in engineering practice. They are also asked whether they enjoy working in a team. Evaluation Method: Survey results are tallied and summarized.Team Peer Evaluation Description: Team peer evaluation forms are modified versions of similar forms presented at the BESTEAMS workshop at the ASEE Annual Conference 20015. Each team member is asked to rate themselves and the other team members in various categories relating to the member’s performance in the team. The BESTEAMS surveys were modified by adding the following questions: “Does the team member contribute to

Conference Session

International Engineering Education I

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Dyani Saxby; Saeed Foroudastan

enough challenges forcollege students, international students face several additional pressures. These includeadjusting to an entirely new culture and surroundings, as well as building relationshipswith their new peers 1. Page 9.796.1 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering EducationAdditional pressures are placed on those international students who do not speak Englishas their native language. This is one of the major obstacles facing international students.Language barriers can exacerbate struggles with class work

Conference Session

Scholarship in Engineering Technology

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Abi Aghayere

faculty workload model.The current paper focuses on strategies that will encourage, facilitate, and provide support for thegrowth of scholarship in ET. Some of the “ways and means” for increasing scholarlyproductivity that are currently being implemented in the College of Applied Science andTechnology (CAST) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) are discussed. These include:developing a college scholarship website, developing a scholarship mentoring program,developing web-based venues of dissemination and peer review, developing grant proposal andscholarly writing workshops, and identification and cultivation of support resources forscholarship. The early results and experiences from implementing some of these strategies at RITare discussed

Conference Session

Capstone Design II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Karen Davis

weeks. The techniques described here could be adapted in a straightforwardmanner to a semester system by splitting the winter term assignments. The class meetsonce a week for 2 hours, and assignments are due on non-class days to increaseturnaround time on grading and returning them. The fall term is devoted to the formationof teams and the writing of a complete design report via weekly incremental writingassignments. Peer-assessed design reviews, project implementation and current eventsassignments take place in the winter quarter, and the writing assignments for projectdocumentation are due every other week. In the spring term, testing, refinement, writingfinal self-assessments, and a peer-assessed presentation and demonstration are done.An

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Stani Vlasseva; Valentin Razmov

, American Society for Engineering EducationHere we report on our experiences with a third approach that combines the benefits of bothworlds while suffering from the drawbacks of neither. The idea is to use several sources offeedback – the student herself, other (peer) students, external domain experts, and projectartifacts – to augment feedback coming from instructors. The benefit of doing this is that itreduces the time demands on instructors while providing students with additional feedback, ofteneven more trustworthy, to help them learn.We have implemented this idea in two courses so far, both in software engineering, taught tojunior undergraduate students at the University of Washington in 2002 and 2003, respectively.One contribution of this

Conference Session

Service Learning in Engineering

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

John Chandler; dean fontenot

engineering curriculum andprofessionalism. Service learning is easily implemented in engineering communicationscourses because the nature of the courses lend themselves to written and oralpresentations to a professional audience, and, in the case of service learning, acommunity audience. In the IE Communications for Engineers course, students developprofessional written and oral communication skills by writing technical documents,giving oral presentations on those documents, and writing and delivering professionalemails. However, the team projects for the course are geared toward teaching studentsabout civic responsibility by having them design, develop, and deliver exercises geared topublic schools that demonstrate and teach elements of engineering