Conference Session

Computational Tools and Simulation III

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lok PASUPULETI, Northern Illinois University; Omar Ghrayeb, Northern Illinois University; Hubert Ley, Argonne National Laboratory; Clifford Mirman, Northern Illinois University; Young Park, Argonne National Laboratory

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

AC 2009-1241: DISASTER PLANNING FOR A LARGE METROPOLITAN CITYUSING TRANSIMS SOFTWARELok PASUPULETI, Northern Illinois UniversityOmar Ghrayeb, Northern Illinois UniversityClifford Mirman, Northern Illinois UniversityHubert Ley, Argonne National LaboratoryYoung Park, Argonne National Laboratory Page 14.494.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009Disaster Planning for a Large Metropolitan City Using TRANSIMS SoftwareAbstractOver the past decade the United States has endured many disasters, both man made and due tothe forces of nature. In each case, leadership in the public and private sectors learn that moreneeds to be done to ensure continuity of life and economy

Conference Session

Software and Hardware for Educators III

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark Bannatyne, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis; Dan Baldwin, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis; Kevin Marshall, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

AC 2009-1083: A MODEL FOR THE PLANNING, MARKETING, ANDIMPLEMENTATION OF A DEPARTMENTAL LAPTOP INITIATIVEMark Bannatyne, Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis Dr. Bannatyne is a Professor of Computer Graphics Technology at the Purdue School of Engineering at IUPUI, and acting Department head for the Department of Design and Communication Technology. Dr. Bannatyne is a graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology where he studied Machine Tool Technology, Utah State University (BSc., 1988, MSc. 1992), and Purdue University (Ph.D., 1994). Dr. Bannatyne is an active member of AVA, ITEA, ASEE, Phi Kappa Phi, and Epsilon Pi Tau where he is a member of The Board of Editors

Conference Session

Software and Hardware for Educators III

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Silas Bernardoni, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Mauricio Rodríguez Alcalá, Skidmore College; Maria Rodriguez Alcala, Paraguay Educa

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

country-wide XO deployment in Paraguay and thesmall, experimental deployment in Wisconsin with the required technical support. The jointproject strives to utilize the skills and resources found on university campuses in the US tobenefit disadvantaged students both within the US and abroad, while providing qualityeducational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate learning and research. The researchconducted to-date that seeks to estimate the Total Cost of Ownership in computer deploymentsconsiders but does not include the voluntary contributions made by students. This paper strivesto exhibit and examine the value of student contributions from the academic perspective. Furtherresearch is planned to formally evaluate the value of the student

Conference Session

Robots in Education

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ryan Meuth, Missouri University of Science and Technology; Paul Robinette, Missouri University of Science and Technology; Donald Wunsch, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

competition requires the team to design and build a medium-sized robot to autonomously traverse an outdoor obstacle course. Obstacles normally consist of colored barrels, construction netting, white lines and trees. The team uses stereovision cameras as the primary obstacle detection sensor. The team is currently exploring several algorithms for path planning. Paul recently become a member of the UMR Applied Computational Intelligence Lab. He recently spent the summer developing adaptive user-interfaces as part of a research partnership with Boeing.Donald Wunsch, Missouri University of Science and Technology Donald C. Wunsch II (S’87–M’92–SM’94–F’05) received the B.S. degree

Conference Session

Computational Tools and Simulation I

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dianne Raubenheimer, North Carolina State University; Jeff Joines, North Carolina State University; Amy Craig, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

problem solving task was used in all the classes described in this paper. The goal forthe next round is to create another problem solving task to implement in similar classes at ouruniversity in the fall and spring of 2009, as an attempt to replicate the results using a differentproblem context. Another plan is to implement the original task at other universities that havethe same engineering disciplines to see if the new course is making an impact on the student’sproblem solving ability. The team is currently in conversation with a few peer institutions. Thegoal will be conducting a comparable study at other locations and assisting them in developing asimilar course

Conference Session

Computer Education Innovations

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Claudia E. Vergara, Michigan State University; Mark Urban-Lurain, Michigan State University; Cindee Dresen, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce; Tammy Coxen, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce; Taryn MacFarlane, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce; Kysha Frazier, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce; Daina Briedis, Michigan State University; Neeraj Buch, Michigan State University; Louise Paquette, Lansing Community College; Jon Sticklen, Michigan State University; Jeannine LaPrad, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce; Thomas Wolff, Michigan State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

Instructional Technology Research & Development in the Division of Science and Mathematics Education at Michigan State University. Dr. Urban-Lurain's research interests are in theories of cognition, their impact on instructional design and applying these to the use of instructional technology. He is also interested in the role of technology in educational improvement and reform.Cindee Dresen, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce Cindee Dresen is CSW’s Director of Operations. Ms. Dresen is responsible for staffing management, work design and delivery, product and service continuous improvement, organizational learning, knowledge and information management, technology planning, and infrastructure

Conference Session

Embedded Computing

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Holden, California Maritime Academy

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

senior design projects of the class of 2009 and 2010 havedesigned and are planning designs of systems that use microcontrollers to accomplish electronictasks.HardwareAs a starting point, an inexpensive microcontroller system was developed with the followingspecifications: • Cost less than $75 per lab station, and less than $25 per student unit. • Be used to teach programming in a traditional programming class • Be used for laboratories in an electronic circuits course • Be used as a measurement device (DAQ) with Labview as well as a stand alone data logger in a measurement systems course. • Be the cornerstone of mechatronics laboratory robotics work.The microcontroller system used is based on the Atmel AVR 8-bit line1

Conference Session

Software and Hardware for Educators II

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph Tront, Virginia Tech; Kimberly Filer, Virginia Tech; Glenda Scales, Virginia Tech; Jane Prey, Microsoft Research

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

indicated that there had been no publishedcase studies or industry accepted guidelines describing network configurations that caneffectively connect 300 users inside of a single high density space. While frequency managementof adjacent wireless access points has been studied in the research literature, there was still agood amount of work to be done to apply the theory to our complex situation. Economic Page 14.695.7considerations were also one of the driving factors in determining how the network would beupgraded to handle the necessary bandwidth.Over the course of a year, upgrade plans were made and implemented. While most commercialaccess points

Conference Session

Robots in Education

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Ahlgren, Trinity College; Igor Verner, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

Trinity College Fire-Fighting Home Robot Contest(http://www.trincoll.edu/events/robot/) and in the AUVSI Intelligent Ground VehicleCompetition (http://igvc.org). The pilot study focused on mastery projects includingdevelopment of workshops aimed at instructing peers in the mastery project subject areas. Asecondary goal was to consider the RST as a learning environment using, as a basis, socialcriteria presented by Bandura6.In the fall, a pre-semester survey asked students to reflect on their backgrounds, interests, andconfidence levels in robotics and to state their plans for future studies and careers (Appendix I).The survey aimed to direct students to develop skills and self-beliefs that they would need torealize their plans. The survey also

Conference Session

Software and Hardware for Educators I

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Rosario Gil, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Elio Sancristobal, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Sergio Martin, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Antonio Colmenar, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Gabriel Diaz, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Martin Llamas, Universidad de Vigo; Edmundo Tovar, Polytechnic University, Montegancedo; Alfonso Duran, Carlos III University of Madrid; juan peire, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Manuel Castro, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

wishing to study in this new education plan. This mobility ofpeople might foster the economy and create jobs.This new model is voluntary and while it was initially accepted by the countries present inBologna, there have been countries that have signed up later and others who for country-specificreasons have been rejected. Page 14.1040.2Of course the adoption of this new model implies a number of negative aspects, thus eachprospective adopting country must weight the relative costs and benefits to reach a decision.The clear disadvantages common to most countries are: ̇ Economics implications of the change of the educational system of each

Conference Session

Signal Processing Education

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Thad Welch, Boise State University; Cameron Wright, University of Wyoming; Michael Morrow, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

reasons.While a number of other excellent example systems exist, the popular press regularly points outin such articles as “Clues for the Clueless” by Daniel McGinn and Temma Ehrenfeld that mostAmerican adults do not understand the foundational concept of compound interest.2 McGinn andEhrenfeld go on to state that “. . . research shows that people who can answer questions like these(calculating compound interest) do better at planning for retirement, saving and managing theirdebts.”So, given the need for more understanding of basic financial concepts, this important, yet verysimple DSP system can be made to be much more motivational if we allow α to be greater thanone. This seeming contradiction to the stability requirements associated with the poles

Conference Session

Computational Tools and Simulation I

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sam Shearman, National Instruments

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

input signal frequency past the Nyquistrate. Watching the frequency-domain plot, they will see the input signal peak cross the Nyquistrate and continue to increase as an alias peak breaks off and starts to decrease. At the same time,the time domain plot will show the input signal, the alias and the location of the signal samples.Plotting the three signals together emphasizes how an alias can be thought of as an alternativeinterpretation of the signal samples.Digital numeric controls could have been chosen as alternatives to knobs for the input signalfrequency and sampling rate parameters. Such controls allow users to set specific values throughkeyboard entry. This type of action can be useful if the exercise that you plan for yourdemonstration

Conference Session

Embedded Computing

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Yoon Kim, Virginia State University; Shahzad Akbar, Virginia State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

. Page 14.417.11Figure 11: Spectrums of accelerometer response placed at R3 without compromise. Page 14.417.12 470Hz 630Hz 720Hz 390Hz 630Hz 690Hz Freq Freq Freq Diff 2 Diff 3 Diff 1Figure 12: Comparison of safe and damaged bridge spectra Page 14.417.13Future WorkThe bridge monitoring system is a convergence design that provides a better design solution toexisting monitoring systems. The design plan implements vibration analysis

Conference Session

Computer Education Innovations

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Charles Lesko, East Carolina University; John Pickard, East Carolina University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

-dimensional virtual world created by its participants (commonlyreferred to as residents) and since it’s unveiling in 2003, scores of educators from over 130colleges and universities have begun to evaluate SL as an educational platform. 1The growth of SL in the education arena has been wide-spread and global. However, beforeacademia can evaluate this relatively new environment, virtual spaces need to be planned,designed and developed that allow for academic discussion and identification of newpedagogical uses for this communication media. As with any new delivery mechanism eachmust undergo a process of building, evaluation, and assessment with virtual environments beingno exception.Although the value of SL as an academic tool is still in its early

Conference Session

Software and Hardware for Educators I

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Miguel Latorre, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Manuel Blazquez, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Elio Sancristobal, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Sergio Martin, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Francisco Garcia-Sevilla, Castilla-La Mancha University; Catalina Martinez-Mediano, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Gabriel Diaz, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia; Manuel Castro, Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

resources reveals the need fornew tools which can treat metadata not only as static data but as information in constantevolution, thus supporting the effective development of educational resources. Secure andcomfortable authentication systems (SSO), trust facilities or how to connect on line communitiesare issues we are going to take into account in future developments.AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to acknowledge the Spanish Science and Innovation Ministry and theSpanish National Plan I+D+I 2004-2007 the support in the project TSI2005-08225-C07-03"MOSAIC Learning: Mobile and electronic learning, of open code, based on standards, secure,contextual, personalized and collaborative" and to the CYTED-508AC0341 “SOLITE-SOFTWARE LIBRE EN

Conference Session

Embedded Computing

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christopher Korpela, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; Robert McTasney, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

their own projects in the workspace. In this setup, theshared memory resource is SRAM and only CPU1 is connected to the non-memory peripherals.When the projects are built and compiled, the Nios IDE is then used to run the debugging sessionto experiment with the processors.9 Running the session shows that the processors are indeedworking as planned and the mutex is ensuring that only one of the processors is able to access thememory at a single time. The source code allows the processor to output a message when thatprocessor has control of the mutex and is able to update its count. In Figure 3, it can be seen inthe Nios IDE that the mutex was indeed stopping the other processors from being able to write tomemory according to the code. This

Conference Session

Software and Hardware for Educators II

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Eric Wiebe, North Carolina State University; Chia-Lin Ho, North Carolina State University; Lisa Bullard, North Carolina State University; Dianne Raubenheimer, North Carolina State University; Jeff Joines, North Carolina State University; Carolyn Miller, North Carolina State University; George Rouskas, North Carolina State University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

capabilities vital forengineering professionals. In the next phase a refined set of computational themes wassent back out to the industry panel for ranking. Results from the industry panel and thecurrent Delphi process will be presented. Implications of the results for a computationalthinking thread in the engineering curriculum will be discussed as well as plans for futureproject activities.IntroductionRapidly developing computational technologies are radically reshaping the nature of theworkplace 1. Jobs that consist primarily of routine engineering and computationalactivities are quickly moving oversees to cheaper labor markets or being completelyautomated. This and other immense changes in global political and economic dynamicsmeans the 21st

Conference Session

Robots in Education

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kenneth Fernandez, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; Richard Fischer, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center; Paul Drews, Missouri University of Science and Technology; Amir Mobasher, Alabama A&M University; Maegan Grady, Saint Mary's College, University of Notre Dame; Robert Rucker, Vanderbilt University; Jessica Tham, Louisiana Tech University; Thomas Bierbower, Randolph High School

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

larger robotic system, the iRobot/John DeereR-Gator capable of carrying large instrument payloads and robotic arms. During the 10 weektenure of the team the students developed computer graphics-based simulations of a lunar surfaceoperational scenario in which satellite imagery is used to identify the location of a target ofinterest. Small scout robots are deployed to examine the target and a larger vehicle equippedwith proximity sensors is used to retrieve the target. The simulations represent actual hardwaredemonstrations that have been performed or are planned for implementation in the near future.Their project required the students developed graphic models of all vehicles and to developed thecontrol algorithms needed to execute the robotic

Conference Session

Programming for Engineering Students II

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John K. Estell, Ohio Northern University

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

Page 14.358.8Requesting Information through Facebook GroupsTo determine the effectiveness of using Facebook Groups for requesting information from ourgraduates, two exercises were conducted in the fall of 2008. One of the questions that is oftenasked by prospective students or their parents is with regard to what sort of job one can get witha degree in a particular field. To assist in answering this question, the first exercise involvedrequesting members of our Alumni Facebook Group to mail in one of their business cards. Thegroup members were all sent a message that first stated the often-asked question, then requestedthat they contribute to a planned display of business cards that would creatively serve as a visualaid for addressing this

Conference Session

Robots in Education

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alexander Mentis, United States Military Academy; Charles Reynolds, United States Military Academy; Donald Abbott-McCune, United States Military Academy; Benjamin Ring, United States Military Academy

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

the GNAT GPL 2008 distribution. Page 14.309.43.2 AbstractionOur package provides public Ada functions for most of the Create Open Interface opcodes, andwe have plans to implement more functionality in future versions. Each function accepts a set ofparameters sufficient to generate the data bytes required by its opcode and returns a pointer to adynamically-sized array of bytes containing the opcode and data bytes. This pointer can then besent as a parameter to the Xmit procedure, provided in the linked child package, which streamsthe bits to the Create in a manner compatible with the target operating system.By the point in the course that our

Conference Session

Embedded Computing

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steven Barrett, University of Wyoming; Jeffrey Anderson, University of Wyoming; Jerry Hamann, University of Wyoming; Robert Kubichek, University of Wyoming; Suresh Muknahallipatna, University of Wyoming; John Pierre, University of Wyoming; David Whitman, University of Wyoming; Cameron Wright, University of Wyoming

Tagged Divisions

Computers in Education

. Page 14.528.15 Figure 3. Drop tube instrument to measure the gravitational constant [reprinted from 11].F. Coursework Development by Student EngineersEngineering departments are often faced with the need to update laboratory exercises andequipment without adequate funds to do so. This is especially prevalent in an EmbeddedSystems based curriculum where processor technology and programming tools are rapidlychanging. We have made a conscious effort to base new course developments on emergingtechnology and plan for a 5-6 year classroom lifetime [Adapted from 16].Another challenge faced by departments is satisfying Accreditation Board for Engineering andTechnology (ABET) Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) criteria for a major