Conference Session

Assessment and Evaluation in Design

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Regina Hannemann, University of Kentucky

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

paperintends to show a set of report outlines along with evaluation tools and rubrics used in a one-semester senior design capstone course.The author of this paper has taught the senior design capstone course in Electrical and ComputerEngineering at the University of Kentucky for several years. During this time a set of reportingoutlines for the students were developed. The course is offered as a one-semester class and thestudents need to write a proposal, a midterm executive summary, and a final report. For all ofthese reports the students are given an outline to follow. The students also need to hand inself/peer evaluations three times per semester. These self/peer evaluations have been adaptedfrom different self/peer evaluations found on the

Conference Session

Communication in Design

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kristen Eichhorn, SUNY Oswego; Cara Thompson, SUNY Oswego; David Vampola, SUNY Oswego; Fritz Messere, SUNY Oswego; Rachid Manseur, SUNY-Oswego

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

limit on the numberof courses or degree credit hours. Consequently, teaching communication skills must be infusedin required courses adding to the general education portion of the curriculum and withoutreplacing cognate or core engineering material. The challenge is to provide a solid and modernengineering education where students will naturally and ubiquitously acquire efficient andmodern communication skills.This presentation discusses some of the research results of this project including the developmentof a modern technical writing course, the integration of communication skills into engineeringmaterials, and multidisciplinary methods that combine students enrolled in the Arts, Media, andCommunication Studies with engineering

Conference Session

Assessment and Evaluation in Design

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mark Steiner, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Junichi Kanai, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Richard Alben, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Lester Gerhardt, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Cheng Hsu, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

withpeer evaluations, each student was also asked to write a reflective memo. Both the reflectivememo and peer evaluation questions were designed to force the student to think critically abouttheir team experience. The words used for the assignment are shown in figure 3 below.For this assignment you should reflect upon your participation on the project and comment onyour key strengths and how it has contributed to the overall effort. You should also describepossible weaknesses and opportunities for improvement, the major challenges and issues faced,and what you have learned from the experience. Comment on what might have been donedifferently to make your learning experience more productive.In addition, you should prepare a peer evaluation for

Conference Session

DEED Potpourri

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Farrokh Attarzadeh, University of Houston; Enrique Barbieri, University of Houston; Miguel Ramos, University of Houston

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

toprovide training and real world, small-scale project experience through the completion ofa full-project lifecycle from conceptualization to prototype. Brief discussion of thoseprojects that resulted in provisional patents, refereed journal publications, and conferencepresentations will be given. Some of the features of the course, such as University andindustry guest speaker series and final project evaluation by the department’s IndustrialAdvisory Board, leading professionals, faculty, technical staff and peers will beexamined. The paper concludes by outlining a set of short term and long term goals forthe future direction of the course.IntroductionEngineering and engineering technology disciplines consider senior project courses animportant and

Conference Session

Capstone Design Pedagogy I

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Andrew Trivett, University of Prince Edward Island

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

as a bulk raw material and our structure of courses as the manufacturingprocess neglects the reality of their peer-to-peer learning, and their various interconnectedcommunities as having a role in their eventual graduation as junior engineers.figure 1: The linear system model of engineering education. The student is likened to a materialflow through a process leading to the desired "engineer" graduate.The model of an education based on this approach is represented in Figure 1. The student, aftercompleting high school, enters the University system and follows through taking discrete coursesas represented by the blocks. Each block follows the preceding one in a succession until thecomplete diagram is filled. We, the faculty determine what

Conference Session

Communication in Design

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Cherian Mathews, University of the Pacific

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

demonstrations), and by peerevaluation (students assess contributions of all their team members at the end of each project).Both the instructor evaluation and peer evaluations showed that students gained teamwork skills.One group reported having problems with a team member; comments from the peer evaluationshowed that despite some difficulties with team dynamics, students feel that they gained valuableexperience in dealing with a difficult team member.The structure of the course (which is broken down into 3 projects) also helps with thedevelopment of teamwork and leadership skills. With a 3 person team, each team member getsto serve as a group leader for a project, since leadership roles are rotated from one project to thenext. Team dynamics solidify as

Conference Session

Early Engineering Design Experiences

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kala Meah, York College of Pennsylvania; Timothy Garrison, York College of Pennsylvania; James Kearns, York College of Pennsylvania; Gregory Link, York College of Pennsylvania; Laura Garrison, York College of Pennsylvania; Wayne Blanding, York College of Pennsylvania; Emine Celik, York College of Pennsylvania; Jennifer Dawson, York College of Pennsylvania; Stephen Kuchnicki, York College of Pennsylvania; Barry McFarland, York College of Pennsylvania

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

; ≠ familiarize the students with basics of engineering design; ≠ promote interaction with engineering faculty and staff; ≠ develop technical writing and communication skills.2. Course OrganizationThe course is scheduled as a 6 hour laboratory, meeting three times per week for two hours persession, with four faculty instructing. As the course supports a large number of students (96students at most in the current organization), and large class sizes would limit student-facultyinteraction, the students are distributed into six approximately equal smaller groupings. On anygiven day of the week, these six groups are distributed among three classrooms and activities,each of which has a different emphasis: ‘learn’, ‘plan’, and ‘do’. The two groups in

Conference Session

Capstone Design Projects

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jennifer Dawson, York College of Pennsylvania; Stephen Kuchnicki, York College of Pennsylvania

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

,modifications made to the course, an overview of the Assessment Evaluation Forms, andproposed actions for course improvement. This method has proven to be effective in helpingfaculty members reflect on teaching methods and develop strategies for course improvement.An example of an Assessment Evaluation Form is shown in Figure 1. It has several sections,starting with the instructor’s evaluation of the level of difficulty of the assignment (easy,moderate, or difficult). Next, the instructor writes a description of how they expected students toperform on the task. Observational notes are then written which evaluate student performanceon the task, including quantifying the number of students exceeding (E), meeting (M), or below(B) expectations. An overall

Conference Session

Teams and Teamwork in Design

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

R. Keith Stanfill, University of Florida; Arif Mohsin, University of Florida; Oscar Crisalle, University of Florida; Suleyman Tufekci, University of Florida; Carl Crane, University of Florida

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

these incentivesmay be enticing, it is apparent that most coaches truly enjoy working with the student teams andcontributing to the development of these emerging young engineers. The management style ofthe coaches ranges from hands-off, to equal-among-peers, to autocratic.Each year brings new projects, new students, and many new challenges (logistical, managerial,technical, and financial) for the coaches to deal with. Further, coaches for student teams inmultidisciplinary capstone design courses frequently lack teaching paradigms that can be calledupon to serve as a guide when making pedagogical and team-management decisions. In otherwords, few faculty experienced multidisciplinary capstone courses in their own education andsimply do not have

Conference Session

Teams and Teamwork in Design

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Wael Mokhtar, Grand Valley State University

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

year and they have the chance to choose between them. By the end of the junioryear teams, are selected and faculty advisors start working with the students. By the end of thefirst semester of the senior year each team is required to write a project proposal that includes theproject feasibility, its implementation plan, and the scope of the work to be accomplished. Theproposal is reviewed by Project Review Board (PRB) who are a group of faculty including thefaculty advisor and each team is required to give a presentation. If the project is approved byPRB, the team starts the building and testing during the second semester. A second round ofreview by PRB is done during the mid-semester to evaluate the progress of the project. In thismodel, the

Conference Session

Design Projects across the Curriculum

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tom Thomas, University of South Alabama; Michael Doran, University of South Alabama; James Sakalaukus, University of South Alabama

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

meetcertain criteria. To do so, there is a formal assessment procedure. ≠ All senior projects in the College of Engineering are presented in a public forum during the Spring semester of each year. ≠ The students prepare and present the results of their projects. ≠ The audience consists of students (peers), faculty, members of the College and Departmental industrial advisory boards, and any other interested parties. ≠ After the formal presentation and question and answer period, the attendees are requested to complete an assessment form for each project. The form includes questions on content, visual aids, the presenter’s delivery, the presentation mechanism, responses to

Conference Session

Early Engineering Design Experiences

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Aezeden Mohamed, University of Manitoba; Myron (Ron) Britton, University of Manitoba

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

). Page 15.1292.6Power is supplied by a 6V battery to power the controller and their logic Ics. An active sensor will be ~ 6V(including logic “1”) and an inactive sensor will be ~0V (indicating “0”). The controller circuit is constructedon a breadboard and connected to the elevator using a ribbon cable with a specified writing pin configuration. Figure 4 Design of a model elevator controller project (a) paper design (not to scale) (b) actual designEgg Mover ProjectThe requirement of this project to design build, and demonstrate a device that will pick up, move and place araw grade “A” large egg. To start the test, the egg is placed on a spot 2.4 m from a 2 x 6 (38mm x 140mm)that is on edge. The engineering object is to pick up the egg, move it

Conference Session

Early Engineering Design Experiences

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Prins, James Madison University; Eric Pappas, James Madison University

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

, develop, and use cognitive tools in authentic domain activity” (p.39);that is, using tools increases cognitive activity and ability. Salomon writes of his disagreementwith Brown (above), and argues that the interaction between a human being and an intelligenttool (computer) results in a favorable “cognitive residue” (p.5) that does not result from theinteraction between a tool user and a non-intelligent tool (“situated”).7 The “cognitive residue”that results in these situations is that the use of intelligent tools may result in thinking skills beingtransferred to other dissimilar, or at least similar, situations (but the author notes that too littleresearch has been done in this area).Vygotsky’s notion that understanding is social in origin,8

Conference Session

Early Engineering Design Experiences

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Douglas Oppliger, Michigan Technological University; Jean Kampe, Michigan Technological University

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

to real-world expertise and mentoring from professionals in academia andindustry. HSE teams write business plans, solve real-world problems, perform testing andanalyses, build prototypes, manufacture parts, operate within budgets, and manage their projects.Each spring, HSE teams showcase their work alongside college students at the University’sUndergraduate Expo. At the conclusion of their HSE experiences, it is expected that the studentswill demonstrate proficiency in applied workforce skills, they will be more disposed to enterSTEM careers, and they will be prepared to undertake the training and education needed to enterthose careers.HSE is modeled after Michigan Technological University’s highly successful and nationallyacclaimed

Conference Session

Capstone Design Pedagogy I

Collection

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Alan Cheville, Oklahoma State University

Tagged Divisions

Design in Engineering Education

results. Competitions should be "against nature" rather than against peers. Finally,for middle school students beginning design projects with a clearly outlined prototype design Page 15.371.3rather than with a "blank slate" improves engagement. Similar considerations are brieflydiscussed in project selection in a college freshman design course8.For capstone design courses (typically taken by college students in their senior year) a number ofpapers have mentioned aspects of successful design projects as part of a summary of theeffectiveness of capstone courses. The factors reported as leading to a successful project include"being viewed as