Conference Session

Advances in Assessment of Communication and Interdisciplinary Competence

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Patricia Carlson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Arlene Ann Russell; Warren N. Waggenspack Jr., Louisiana State University; Chester G. Wilmot, Louisiana State University; Boz Bowles, Louisiana State University; David R. Voltmer, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; W. Todd Monroe, Louisiana State University; Warren R Hull Sr. P.E., Louisiana State University; Dianne Raubenheimer, Meredith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

AC 2012-3917: IMPROVING ENGINEERING EDUCATION WITH EN-HANCED CALIBRATED PEER REVIEW ASSESSMENT OF A COLLAB-ORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECTDr. Patricia Carlson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology Patricia A. Carlson teaches at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. She is the author of over seventy publications and presentation. She has used her experience in educational technology on two large-scale Lilly Endowment grants and on two National Science Foundation-funded research projects. In addition to teaching, she is the Director of the PRISM Project, an outreach program that helps Indiana teachers of middle school science, mathematics, and technology to integrate new information technology applications into their

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part I

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Chad A. B. Wilson, University of Houston

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

WritingThis paper describes how ENGI 2304: Technical Communications for Engineers uses best-selling novels to provide course content and to introduce students to the conventions ofengineering genres by building on their familiarity with humanities readings. Students read thenovels Pompeii by Robert Harris and Prey by Michael Crichton and complete projects based onor inspired by the novels. This paper explains some standard research projects used in technicalwriting classes and outlines several problems with these projects before introducing the conceptof using literature in a technical writing class. While previous studies by Jo Allen and othershave argued against the practice of mixing literature with technical writing, this paper explains anew

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joachim Walther, University of Georgia; Shari E. Miller, University of Georgia ; Nadia N. Kellam, University of Georgia

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

social welfare history, and service-learning. Her research interests are guided by two over- arching themes, social work education and the culture of the profession, and generally fall within three domains: professional socialization, educational innovations, and educational outcomes. Some specific projects in which she’s currently engaged explore questions of professional socialization; professional self-care; critical thinking as a process and outcome; social work’s environmental paradigm; and trans- disciplinary educational approaches. She’s currently collaborating with colleagues from engineering to develop trans-disciplinary approaches to education for reflective practice in a global society, and with colleagues

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part I

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Katherine Hennessey Wikoff, Milwaukee School of Engineering; Michael Hoge Carriere, Milwaukee School of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

ABSTRACTThis paper describes the way innovation and entrepreneurship have been integrated intoan engineering curriculum through a year-long liberal arts seminar. This three-coursesequence has “The City” as its topical focus, and it incorporates principles ofentrepreneurship and innovation through course content specifically centered on theseconcepts through experiential learning in a service project, and through critical thinkingand rhetorical analysis of students’ own research strategies using the Burkean parlormodel of academic and professional conversation.In Fall Quarter, students read texts, view films, and study other cultural products relatedto the concept of “The City.” They examine how depictions of entrepreneurs andindustry illuminate our

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lisa D. McNair, Virginia Tech; Wende Garrison, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

AC 2012-5477: PORTFOLIOS TO PROFESSORIATE: HELPING STUDENTSINTEGRATE PROFESSIONAL IDENTITIES THROUGH EPORTFOLIOSDr. Lisa D. McNair, Virginia Tech Lisa McNair is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where she also serves as Assistant Department Head for Graduate Programs and co-directs the Virginia Tech Engineering Communication Center. Her research includes interdisciplinary collaboration, com- munication studies, identity theory, and reflective practice. Projects supported by the National Science Foundation include: interdisciplinary pedagogy for pervasive computing design; writing across the cur- riculum in statics courses; a a CAREER award to explore the use of e

Conference Session

Advances in Communication Instruction

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Elizabeth A. DeBartolo, Rochester Institute of Technology; Margaret B. Bailey, Rochester Institute of Technology; Risa Robinson, Rochester Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

-3 Similarly, RIT students working as lab instructors on-campus or participating inteaching activities off-campus report that they viewed teaching experience as a valuable part oftheir college careers.4 However, in order to teach, we must first prepare our students tocommunicate their ideas clearly.Within the mechanical engineering curriculum at RIT there has been past work done tostrengthen the communication abilities of engineering students. Namely, a team-basedpresentation project has evolved within an advanced thermodynamics course as a way tointroduce upper-level engineering students to an engineering outreach opportunity while alsostrengthening communication skills and deepening engineering knowledge.5-6 Formativeassessment results

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Justin L Hess, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Jessica Erin Sprowl; Rui Pan, Purdue University, West Lafayette; Melissa Dyehouse, Purdue University; Carrie A. Wachter Morris, Purdue University; Johannes Strobel, Purdue University, West Lafayette

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

. Page 25.520.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012 Empathy and Caring as Conceptualized Inside and Outside of Engineering: Extensive Literature Review and Faculty Focus Group AnalysesAbstractThe purpose of this study was to investigate how faculty both inside and outside of engineeringconceptualize empathy and care and how they perceive empathy, care, and engineering to be (ornot to be) interrelated. The project employed a comprehensive comparative literature reviewalongside a thematical analysis of focus group interviews, the interviews being conducted withfaculty inside and outside of engineering. The primary research objectives include (1) definingempathy

Conference Session

STS Perspectives on Engineering Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Harold R. Underwood, Messiah College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

AC 2012-3711: TEACHING NON-MAJOR STUDENTS ELECTRICAL SCI-ENCE AND TECHNOLOGYDr. Harold R. Underwood, Messiah College Harold Underwood received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at UIUC in 1989 and has been a faculty member of the Engineering Department at Messiah College since 1992. Besides teaching circuit analysis and electromagnetics, he supervises the Communications Group of the Messiah College Collaboratory, including a project involving flight tracking and messaging for small planes in remote locations, and an assistive communication technology involving wireless enabled remote co-presence for cognitively and behaviorally challenged individuals. He has been teaching Exploring Electrical Technology as a

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sarah E. Zappe, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Melissa Marshall, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Enrique D. Gomez, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Esther Gomez, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Angela D. Lueking, Pennsylvania State University, University Park

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

, happiness andsafety. The students were mentored by a faculty member whose background is inCommunication. The quality of student presentations was high, utilizing the assertion-evidencemethod of slide design.Data was collected to determine whether the following project objectives were met: 1) Studentsin the First Year Seminars will have a greater understanding of the possible careers inengineering as well as the engineering majors; and 2) Students will be more likely to defineengineering in terms associated with health, happiness, and safety. The data showed that thestudents had a very positive reaction to the Engineering Ambassador visits, although a largersample size would be necessary to more clearly understand the impact.Introduction and

Conference Session

Linking Engineering and Liberal Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert O. Grondin, Arizona State University, Polytechnic

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

background established, let’s quickly outline how engineering might be described interms of Kagan’s nine dimensions. We have already dealt with the first dimension, that ofprimary interest.The second dimension has to do with sources of evidence. Here we realize that engineers oftenperform projects that run for months or years, and that different questions are asked at differentstages of a project. Generally, the first step of a project requires engineers to understand theintentions of the humans who will be affected by the project. Evidence of the sort normallysought by social scientists and humanists plays important roles in this early stage. The evidencehere may be heavily contextualized as well. Then, as engineers move into the middle phases

Conference Session

Advances in Communication Instruction

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Keri Lynn Wolfe, Pennsylvania State University; Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University, University Park; Joanna K. Garner, Old Dominion University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

. For all eight slides presenting the complex concept of how magneticresonance imaging works, the visual evidence had the same design as in the assertion-evidenceslides. While the size of that evidence was typically smaller, the auditorium in which theexperiment occurred had a relatively larger projected image than exists in most rooms. If thevisual evidence of the topic-subtopic slides significantly affected the results, then the design ofvisual evidence appears to play a larger role in the comprehension of complex concepts thanpreviously assumed.Introduction In engineering conferences, meetings, and classrooms, presentation slides are oftenused to communicate key concepts and factual details. A recent sampling of several thousandslides

Conference Session

Linking Engineering and Liberal Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Gayle E. Ermer, Calvin College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

have to be addressed in the context of engineering design in orderto produce products and infrastructure that are safe and effective. This paper will explore variousaspects of complexity in technology, particularly in engineering design and analysis, and suggestsome ways that engineering education may need to be adjusted to address these needs, with aspecial focus on the complexities addressed by the interdisciplinary field of complexity theory.Complexity in TechnologyFor some, it may be intuitively obvious that technology is increasing in complexity, based on theincreasing scale and scope of our technological projects. However, our perception of the extentto which this is occurring is likely influenced by our own interpretation of the term

Conference Session

Advances in Communication Instruction

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Holly M Matusovich, Virginia Tech; Marie C. Paretti, Virginia Tech; Andrea M. Motto, Virginia Tech ; Kelly J. Cross, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

foundations of education and a Graduate Research Assistant in engineering education.Ms. Kelly J. Cross, Virginia Tech Kelly Cross earned her bachelor’s of science in chemical engineering from the Purdue University in 2007. She earned her master’s of science in materials science and engineering from the University of Cincinnati under the direction of Dale W. Schaefer, Ph.D. Cross is currently in the second year of the engineering education Ph.D. program at Virginia Tech and currently involved with multiple educational research projects with faculty at Virginia Tech. Page 25.1394.1 c

Conference Session

Innovations in Promoting Technological Literacy II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Zbigniew J. Pasek, University of Windsor

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

contributions to society shown or hinted?The process of film content analysis is usually based on the intersection of two analyticalapproaches: the content analysis and the discourse analysis. The traditional content analysismethodologies, which is a study of recorded human communications, have been in use inhumanities and social sciences for over three decades23 and are well developed and documented.Their use, however, in this project has to be adjusted to take into account the visual nature of theresearched materials. Recent advances in visual communication analysis24 offer some guidanceon how these approaches can be used in analysis of a dynamic medium, such as film.While the traditional content analysis provides a summarizing, quantitative

Conference Session

Accreditation and Outcomes-based Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Amy E. Slaton, Drexel University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

prescriptive texts, may Page 25.1348.7encourage consensus, but partly by so doing that emphasis deflects students from interrogatingdifference or fairness. For example, some educators equate "functioning on multidisciplinaryteams" with working well with business and management representatives, hardly a recipe fordiverse political or social outlooks in an engineering project.2 Nor is "sending kids to the Web,"as one educator suggested as a partial fulfillment of outcome J ("a knowledge of contemporaryissues") likely to introduce a critical sensibility into the engineering classroom. 12Also worrying are increasingly frequent invocations of "global

Conference Session

Accreditation and Outcomes-based Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sandra A. Yost, University of Detroit Mercy; Laurie A. Britt-Smith, University of Detroit Mercy

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

other external accreditation bodies are often more mature than those inprograms that are not separately accredited, so a model of collaboration across disciplines hasbeen adopted as a way forward in developing assessment expertise among colleagues who deliverthe liberal education component of the undergraduate engineering curricula.The goals of this project were (a) to assess the existing capacity for core curriculum assessment,and (b) to design and implement an intervention aimed at increasing this capacity in academicdepartments not previously required by external bodies to engage in outcomes-based assessment.This remarkable effort is a largely faculty-driven process which enjoys the enthusiastic support ofuniversity administration. It also

Conference Session

Advances in Communication Instruction

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Beth Bateman Newborg, University of Pittsburgh; Teresa L. Larkin, American University; Dan Budny, University of Pittsburgh

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

knowledge and developing skills most familiarto students entering unfamiliar disciplinary territory, students are likely to feelencouraged, rather than inhibited, and engaged, rather than lost, confused, or intimidated.Faculty, as well, benefit from the significant possibilities for enhanced insight andcommunication that can result when we listen to and try “talking in” one another’sdisciplinary languages.We approach this paper’s title, “Can We Talk,” quite literally, asking about the ways inwhich “we”—science/engineering faculty and faculty in the liberal arts/composition –can maximize our ability to meaningfully communicate across disciplines to createcourses, curricula, projects, and assignments that best serve our students and thatfacilitate

Conference Session

STS Perspectives on Engineering Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Wesley Marshall P.E., University of Colorado, Denver; Michael Tang, University of Colorado, Denver; Stephan A. Durham, University of Colorado, Denver

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

approved as interdisciplinary general studies course options that satisfy university corecurriculum requirements in the areas of: gender and multi-culture diversity (ENGR 3400); andinternational perspectives in an increasing global environment (ENGR 3600). Since becoming a part of the University-wide core curriculum, the two courses haveattracted considerable attention across majors and academic colleges. Students typically takethese courses to satisfy their general education requirements, and the courses are offered everyfall and spring semester in two formats: in the regular classroom as a blended course or strictlyonline during the summer months. Table 1 is a projection of next year’s enrollments based onaverage enrollment from the last

Conference Session

Innovations in Promoting Technological Literacy II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

J. Douglass Klein, Union College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

tools that dwarf human abilities. Page 25.476.3 Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors on a standard chip will double everytwo years, has held since 1970. It is, of course, a law in neither the political nor the scientificsense, but rather is a pattern of technological evolution, spurred by human ingenuity andcompetitive spirit. The human genome project, predicted to take 15 years to complete in 1990,was finished in only ten and the life-cycle of technology products gets shorter and shorter.McKibben talks about our moment in technological history as being at the “knee of the curve” ofexponential growth in technological

Conference Session

Innovations in Promoting Technological Literacy II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William R. Loendorf, Eastern Washington University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

. Initiallythe teaching methods included lectures, discussions, videos, exams, and written projects(Loendorf6, 2004). Over time the teaching methods have been expanded to include recreatedartifacts (Loendorf & Geyer9, 2008), demonstrations (Loendorf & Geyer10, 2009), othercollections of technologies (Loendorf & Geyer11, 2010), and innovative visual content(Loendorf8, 2011).An additional teaching method was incorporated right from the very beginnings of the course butwas so tightly integrated into the course that it was almost overlooked. That method wasstorytelling. Stories with a historical perspective as well as personal experiences abouttechnology are intertwined throughout the entire course. These stories, in many ways, help thestudent

Conference Session

Accreditation and Outcomes-based Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna M. Riley, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

lend support toneoliberal trends in academia.It may be premature to begin a conversation about alternatives before the critiques of OBE inengineering education have been fully articulated. Tentatively, then, I will point to somestrategies that may address the concerns I have raised here about OBE and EC 2000.We have learned from critical pedagogy that our apparatuses of university administration andaccreditation will reproduce structures of power that we ultimately seek to dismantle, resist, orchange. We cannot retain the same decision-making structures – neither in our universities nor inour accreditation system, and expect to see different results. Thus, a project as simple aschanging ABET outcomes - for example to include diversity as a new

Conference Session

Advances in Assessment of Communication and Interdisciplinary Competence

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Carolyn Kusbit Dunn, East Carolina University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

proposal and technical report. The technical report includes a component of each of theprevious assignments – graphics, a definition and a description are all required – and so studentscan learn how these individual pieces of technical writing can function together to form adifferent whole. In the 13th week of class, the content focuses on oral presentations, and studentspresent a five minute oral report on the topic of their technical report. The final week of class isspent reviewing material for the final project, which is a portfolio of the student‘s correctedwork. Throughout the semester, students receive their assignment back with fairly extensivefeedback from the instructor. For the final project, students have to make corrections to

Conference Session

STS Perspectives on Engineering Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Atsushi Akera, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Disadvantages  Research contracts render  Inappropriate theses if not properly opportunities to render valuable supervised public service, particularly in  Certain types of sponsored research problems of national defense may be more suitable for industrial  Contracts for basic research are organizations with which the desirable as means of building up educational institution should not [the] research atmosphere of the compete institute  Steer project in direction of funding  Research contracts… make it agency interest

Conference Session

Innovations in Promoting Technological Literacy II

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Vazgen Shekoyan, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Todd Holden, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Raul Armendariz Ph.D., Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Helio Takai, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Sunil Dehipawala, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Dimitrios S. Kokkinos Ph.D., Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Regina Sullivan, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; George Tremberger Jr, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Paul J. Marchese, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; David H. Lieberman, Queensborough Community College, CUNY; Tak Cheung, Queensborough Community College, CUNY

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society, Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

. Lieberman, Queensborough Community College, CUNYProf. Tak Cheung, Queensborough Community College, CUNY Tak Cheung, Ph.D., professor of physics, teaches in CUNY Queensborough Community College. He also conducts research and mentors student research projects. Page 25.1267.2 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2012Technological literacy in required science courses for non-STEM students in acommunity college with extension to junior high school environmentAbstractTechnological literacy is an important outcome for a non-STEM student taking a requiredscience course to function effectively in our

Conference Session

Creative and Cross-disciplinary Methods Part I

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jean Hertzberg, University of Colorado, Boulder; Bailey Renee Leppek, University of Colorado, Boulder; Kara E. Gray, University of Colorado, Boulder

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

photography students, plus students from art history, film, and journalism. In contrast tomany other art/science courses, the artists do not contribute only art to their joint projects, nor do the engineerscontribute only technical assistance. Instead, the engineers are expected to be artists, with aesthetic control overtheir work, while both the art students and the engineers are expected to preserve the scientific utility of theirimages of fluid flow by providing accurate documentation of the flow and imaging process. There are severalother unusual aspects of this course. All assignments are open-ended: students are not given explicitrequirements or instructions to use specific flows or visualization techniques. Instead they are provided with

Conference Session

Linking Engineering and Liberal Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

J. Ledlie Klosky, U.S. Military Academy; Scott M. Katalenich, U.S. Military Academy; Steven D. Hart, U.S. Military Academy

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

. Conversely, engineers acting alone are equally unlikely to makewell-informed decisions about system-level concerns like climate change. Sadly, engineers inthe past have too often made decisions that were good for the project or purpose within theirpurview only to find that the solution had broader societal harms that far outweighed the projectgains. It will take an intellectually diverse team to meet the Triple Bottom Line of EconomicProsperity, Health Environment and Social Equity (Regional Plan Association 2008).GEN ED 231: INFRASTRUCTURE APPRECIATIONUnfortunately, the truth is that very few universities offer, much less require, even a singlegeneral education course covering the composition and function of infrastructure; call itInfrastructure

Conference Session

Accreditation and Outcomes-based Education

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jens Kabo, Chalmers University of Technology; Xiaofeng Tang, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Dean Nieusma, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; John Currie, University of Sydney; Hu Wenlong, Beihang University; Caroline Baillie, University of Western Australia

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

meaningful integration of social-analyticcapabilities of engineering education.Finally, we noticed variations across the countries in their presentation of social-analyticcapabilities as constraints, awareness, responsibility and cultivation in engineering education.We suggest that these variations reflect the dominant common sense within the engineering(profession) in each particular national context. Although a similar engineering common senseexists in all the four countries, each presents a particular articulation and respective emphasis atthe national level, which deserves consideration in any contextualized application of the findingspresented here.As our research team moves forward on this project, we anticipate looking more closely at

Conference Session

Advances in Assessment of Communication and Interdisciplinary Competence

Collection

2012 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tristan T. Utschig, Georgia Institute of Technology; Judith Shaul Norback, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jeffrey S. Bryan, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education/Engineering & Society

Jeffrey S. Bryan is currently in his first year of Georgia Tech’s M.S. program in digital media. He attended Southern Utah University as an undergraduate, and majored in English education. He worked for several years as a trainer for AT&T, teaching adult learners, and as an Editor for an opinion research company. He currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant in Georgia Tech’s Center for the Enhancement of Teach- ing and Learning (CETL), where he assists with assessment and data analysis for ongoing CETL projects. His master’s thesis involves an investigation of choice and transgression in video game storytelling