Conference Session

Biological & Agricultural Division Technical Session 1

Collection

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ann D. Christy, Ohio State University

Tagged Divisions

Biological & Agricultural

communicate effectively; (h) the broad educationnecessary to understand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic,environmental, and societal context; (i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability toengage in life-long learning; and (j) a knowledge of contemporary issues. Often thesenontechnical skills do not receive as much emphasis in undergraduate engineeringeducation and instead must be learned on the job, learning "soft skills the hard way" 2.Opportunities do exist in current engineering curricula to better integrate the developmentof these nontechnical skills into students' experience. These include team projects incapstone design and freshman design courses, engineering study abroad courses, servicelearning projects in both

Conference Session

Biological & Agricultural Division Technical Session

Collection

2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jorge Rodriguez P.E., Western Michigan University; Alamgir A. Choudhury, Western Michigan University

Tagged Divisions

Biological & Agricultural

is acomponent where soft skills were developed12. The project was an open-ended problem whereteam members had to think about safety and functionality, and at the same time team membersdeveloped and applied skills on teamwork, project planning, economics, and communication7.The key difference was the domain where the students had to develop their project, the projectwas not a typical application of what they have learned in their coursework, but at the same timethis project presented the opportunity to illustrate a common situation that students will be facedonce they apply (and get) a technical job. It brings to light one of the message that are usuallyoffered in design courses where open-ended and different application domains are

Conference Session

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Education Technical Session

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Abby M Kelly, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; David Jones, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Roger Michael Hoy, University of Nebraska; Evan Curtis, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Angela Kaye Pannier, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Richard R. Stowell P.E., University of Nebraska, Lincoln

Tagged Divisions

Biological & Agricultural

, businessand soft skills, and teamwork, specifically with diverse and interdisciplinary groups2. Anemphasis on these skills as well as a more rapid method of developing them is needed within thesenior capstone design sequence.Like other universities, we have found that our traditional approach to the teaching of capstonedesign is not addressing all of the challenges discussed above. As a means to begin to addressthese issues, our department implemented a two-week rapid design challenge (RDC), similar tothe challenge developed by Bucknell University1. The RDC was adapted to better suit our needsand initially implemented in the spring of 2010. The challenge has been conducted four timesand critically evaluated after each semester. Here, we present our