AC 2009-922: INTERNATIONAL CAPSTONE DESIGN PROJECTS:EVALUATING STUDENT LEARNING AND MOTIVATION ASSOCIATED WITHINTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN PROJECTSJohn Layer, University of Evansville John K. Layer, Ph.D., P.E is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Evansville, Evansville, Indiana.Chris Gwaltney, University of Evansville Chris Gwaltney, P.E. is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Evansville, Evansville, Indiana. Page 14.785.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 International Capstone Design Projects: Evaluating Student
multiple approaches to deal with theuncertainty and we would like to investigate how engineering students respond to theuncertainty.We used a framework of mathematical thinking to examine how engineering students deal withuncertainty in design. Currently, in many engineering curricula, the first three years consist ofmathematics and science courses. In the fourth year, a capstone design project is added toprovide a chance for students to deal with complex real-world problems. Determining howstudents use mathematical thinking in this capstone design project will potentially informengineering educators on integrating engineering science and practical design tasks.Theoretical frameworkIn order to investigate how engineering students learn and use
Systems, Fall 20065 Dym, op. cit., p. 1116 The percentage of the semester grade that is allocated for this project has changed in the six years the course has been offered. When the course was an elective course (2002-2004) there was an additional Project #4 that was an individual project usually tied to the capstone project that students took at the same time as this course.7 Artobolevsky, Ivan I., Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design, Vol. II, Lever Mechanisms, Part 1, trans. Nicholas Weinstein (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1976)8 ME 481 Syllabus, Fall 20079 Toogood, Roger, Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 Mechanica Tutorial (Structure/Thermal), (SDC Publications, 2006
):“design-oriented project-organized education which deals with the practical problems ofconstructing and designing on the basis of a synthesis of knowledge from many disciplines and istherefore having students learn to know how.”14 Smith et al. suggest that PCL is a “pedagogy ofengagement,” a practice that deepens student learning through “student-faculty contact,cooperation among students, and active learning.”15 Page 14.840.3Sheppard et al. advocate team-based PCL as a way to improve students’ competencies inteamwork and communication strategies. They also found that capstone design courses (a type ofPCL) promote student excitement, build “skills
teams was not a waste.Seniors, however, agreed more strongly with the statements “I have a realistic understandingof the daily responsibilities,” “I feel well prepared for my future career,” and “I have a closeworking relationship with faculty.” These responses may have been due to the student’sinvolvement in capstone design projects, which typically provide the student greaterinteraction with individual faculty and more control of their project. Page 14.1055.17Figure 9. Effect of student status on their responses to the 2008 survey.As with the faculty, female students responded more positively (at the 5% level) to service-related work than male
the same project.At Harvey Mudd College, Clinic is the culminating design course, where students apply thedesign skills and engineering knowledge learned to a client sponsored real world problem. Thedesign course sequence at HMC include a first-year experience (E4), where students first learnabout the design process; an engineering tools course (E80), where students learn and gainhands-on experience with simple machine tool applications; and the Clinic. HMC students arerequired to have at least one semester of Clinic during their junior year. For seniors, Clinic is ayear-long project and is considered their capstone project. Clinic teams are comprised of mainlyseniors with a junior rotating between semesters, a company liaison, and a faculty
, such as the electrical engineering capstone course where all students participatein a service-learning assistive technology project. They have also integrated service-learning into engineering science courses with project work that varies in size and scopeas a function of the curricular constraints for the respective courses. This approach, at acollege level engages community partners with the support structure at the college leveland reduces the overhead that many faculty encounter starting their own projects.The SLICE project objectives are stated as: ≠ Integrate service-learning into the engineering curriculum at UML so that everystudent is exposed to service-learning in every semester of their experience in everydepartment at UML
for teaching these skills now engages the engineeringfaculty in a collaborative environment with resources drawn from within the College ofEngineering.We have used a variety of approaches to assess the success of our initiative, including studentevaluations, faculty survey, and an external advisory council. Our initial observations, drawnover a three-year period in Senior Capstone Courses, are that students’ understanding of thetechnical content has increased in the communication-intensive courses. It seems that students’efforts to communicate technical aspects of their designs, have required better understanding ofthese aspects, especially when the students are challenged during their oral presentations.Feedback from design review panels and
types of methods, and different methods are needed to understand the complexitiesof the research environment. The qualitative data, acquired from students’ weekly journalentries, provided data to further enhance an existing National Engineering Students’ LearningOutcomes Survey (NESLOS), developed by the lead author and utilized in prior efforts 12, 13. Thestrength of the mixed-methods approach used herein is that such qualitative and quantitativetools can be used across project-based learning experiences (undergraduate research, industryinternships, capstone design, service learning, etc.), across engineering disciplines andengineering programs. Key findings are likely to be transferable across other engineering REUprograms as well as other
U of M. She is a member of the Association for Institutional Research, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and the American College Personnel Association.Donald Carpenter, Lawrence Technological University Dr. Donald D. Carpenter is Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Lawrence Technological University (LTU). In this role, he is an instructor for several engineering courses (from freshman to senior level) that involve ethics instruction. Dr. Carpenter is also Director of Assessment for LTU and recently served as Founding Director for LTU’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Dr. Carpenter has conducted funded pedagogical research and development projects, has published
individually, and may be done in a labperiod, over the course of several weeks, or be structured as a capstone experience.Instructors usually observe the results of students’ work and evaluate projects based onthe specifications provided at the beginning of the assignment. As important as it is forstudents to meet the stated criteria, it is difficult to evaluate students’ critical thinkingwhen only seeing the end result of the process. Critical thinking is a reflective process; toassess it, we must “get inside the student’s head”. Students must self report what theirthought processes were and that must be done in the narrative form - either orally or inwriting. For convenience and assessment documentation purposes, having students writea reflective
at Purdue University.Leah Jamieson, Purdue University Dean Leah Jamieson is the John A. Edwardson Dean of Engineering/Ransburg Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Jamieson earned a BS degree from MIT and MA, MSE and PhD degrees from Princeton. She is co-founder and past director of Purdue's Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program. Dr. Jamieson is the 2007 President and CEO of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering and she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Her research interests ;include engineering education,computer engineering and signal processing
processes of the project. She has been faculty in science and mathematics education quantitative and qualitative research design courses at the doctoral level. She has been involved in the development of innovative mathematics curricular activities and formative assessment in mathematics problem solving. Page 14.347.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 Comparison of Student Perceptions of Virtual and Physical LaboratoriesKey words: metacognition, experimental design, virtual laboratoryAbstractThis paper presents an analysis of student survey responses after completion of three differentlaboratories, two
-organizer of Virginia Tech’s Research in Engineering Studies (RES) group.Miguel Hurtado, Purdue University Miguel Hurtado is Ph.D. Candidate in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He holds a B.S. in EE from Universidad de las Américas, Puebla, M.S. in Signal-Image Processing from ENST - Télécom Paris, M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics and M.S. in Management, both from MIT. His research is focused on statistical methods for sensor fusion in automotive applications (Fisherian and Bayesian approaches), project management, and lean enterprise. He is also interested in engineering education perspectives in social and global context