Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Bill Genereux, Kansas State University, Salina; Elena Mangione-Lora, University of Notre Dame

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

lecture halls are still sending the message, ‘follow along.’ “This new media environment demonstrates to us that the idea of learning as acquiring information is no longer a message we can afford to send to our students, and that we need to start redesigning our learning environments to address, leverage, and harness the new media environment now permeating our classrooms. 4Educators are beginning to understand how media technology is changing the world, but alsohow it is changing the way students learn. Some research suggests that in general, “NetGeneration” students raised on digital technologies have developed some very distinctive stylesof learning that work well in video projects. Two of these are

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Endeavor

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph Herkert, Arizona State University Polytechnic; Jameson Wetmore, Arizona State University; Heather Canary, Arizona State University Polytechnic; Karin Ellison, Arizona State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

graduate students still struggle tofind the most effective models for ensuring that their students internalize professional values andmake them part of their scientific and technical practices4,5,6. This paper will report on the firststage of a three year NSF-funded research project to develop and assess four differentinstructional models that introduce and educate science and engineering graduate students to themicroethical and macroethical issues in their work.Graduate education in science and engineering ethics has typically focused on responsibleconduct in research (RCR) issues and has had a microethical focus (although collectiveresponsibilities are sometimes explored). Topics such as public policy on stem cell research orthe societal

Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Helen Donis-Keller, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

. Therefore, it isimportant that these courses address the educational goals for engineers as effectively andcomprehensively as possible. Page 14.20.2 I propose a unique first year foundation course, designed specifically for engineeringstudents, which facilitates the development of communication skills, individual creativity,critical thinking and writing, and requires that students contextualize their work with respect toprofessionals in the field and the world at large. My course, titled "Seeing and Hearing:Communicating with Photographs, Video and Sound", fulfills a first year foundation requirementin AHS and provides a project-based

Conference Session

Communication and Collaboration

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Julie Sharp, Vanderbilt University; Marilyn Dyrud, Oregon Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

senior project at Oregon Institute of Technology combines communicationand engineering design in a group intensive, team-taught environment. Student teams, however,are not always serendipitous. The most common problem is conflict, usually the result of “socialloafing”: students who either ride the coattails of others or do not perform up to groupexpectations. Unresolved conflict can fester and result in group dysfunctionality. Peer review,as well as judicious faculty oversight, can help alleviate some of the more typical group Page 14.1287.2problems. This portion of the paper explains some common group problems, offers a peerreview instrument and

Conference Session

Communication and Collaboration

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sally Blomstrom, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Hak Tam, University of California, Santa Barbara

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

taught by different instructors using the sametextbook and syllabus. Three of these sections included a service-learning component. This paperexamines whether the course achieves the ABET 3(d) and 3 (g) objectives from the students’perspective. We also look at the similarities and differences between the sections utilizingservice-learning and those that use other pedagogies.Review of Literature This paper grew out of an assessment project focusing on the basic speech course. Toframe the assessment process, two the paradigms of assessment were identified by Ewell [2].While we set to provide information to instructors and administrators for the purpose ofcontinuous improvement, it was possible the results could also be used to address

Conference Session

Writing Is Fundamental

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Beams, University of Texas, Tyler; Luke Niiler, University of Alabama

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

assessment 1; a plan for the incremental implementationof writing skills instruction in Engineering courses 2; an outcomes assessment 3; the use ofwritten workplace materials in Engineering courses 4,5 ; a review of shared assumptions aboutwriting skills among Engineering faculty 6; a multiple-trait scoring guide 7; and the first threeiterations of this longitudinal study 8,9,10. To date, there is no other longitudinal study ofEngineering students’ writing skills on record. Our four years of work therefore begins toaddress this gap in knowledge, and it is hoped that this project will be understood as (a) adescription and analysis of trends observed within a single cohort of subjects; and (b) aninvitation for other researchers to begin contributing

Conference Session

Liberal Education and Leadership

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Val Hawks, Brigham Young University; John Harb, Brigham Young University; Alan Parkinson, Brigham Young University; Spencer Magleby, Brigham Young University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

) Managing conflict and conflict resolution Understanding and use of power, authority and influences Managing and measuring performance Communication and interpersonal skills Project managementGlobal (Holistic) Understanding: Effective leadership occurs within the context of global,meaning general or comprehensive, systems. This has always been true, but the nature of themodern society adds emphasis to this dimension of leadership. The complexity of modern,worldwide systems is reflected in the changing ethnic composition of organizations, the potentialof political change to quickly alter environments and situations, and the extent to whichinternational issues, including trade, business, and employment, affect local

Conference Session

Tree-huggers, Diggers, and Queers--Oh my!

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dean Nieusma, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

have provided entire engineeringcourses oriented toward sustainability. 14Even more ambitious efforts exist to introduce sustainability content across engineering curriculain a variety of ways. One initiative entails infiltrating sustainability content into a variety ofexisting courses in an undergraduate civil engineering program to ensure that coverage of suchcontent was not subject to variations in specific instructor interests. 15 Another initiative entailsdevelopment of a graduate civil engineering/green construction program that combinescoursework, directed research projects, and international exchanges in a format similar to design-based, service-learning experiences. 16 Educators developing new curricula sometimes rely onABET

Conference Session

Liberal Education and Leadership

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Julia Williams, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Richard House, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Anneliese Watt, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Professional Communication course at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where she has taught since 1999. Previous research has included the Professional Engineering Genres Project, and her focuses include engineering communication and rhetorical analysis. She is currently serving as Program Co-Chair for the IEEE Professional Communication Society Conference (IPCC 2009). Page 14.340.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2009 Communication Pedagogy in the Engineering Classroom: A Report on Faculty Practices and PerceptionsAbstractThe purpose of this project was to analyze

Conference Session

Writing Is Fundamental

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Murali Krishnamurthi, Northern Illinois University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

AC 2009-2425: SCAFFOLDING TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING ENGINEERINGSTUDENTS' WRITING SKILLSMurali Krishnamurthi, Northern Illinois University Murali Krishnamurthi is Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Director of Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at Northern Illinois University. He received his Ph.D in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University. His teaching and research interests include project management, information systems, system simulation, optimizaton, expert systems, and engineering education. Page 14.1042.1© American Society for Engineering

Conference Session

Writing Is Fundamental

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Beth Richards, University of Hartford; Mohammad Saleh Keshawarz; Hisham Alnajjar, Computer and Electrical

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

2006, the University of Hartford College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture, inWest Hartford, Connecticut began a partnership with the Faculty of Engineering at theUniversity of Herat, in Herat City, Afghanistan. The goals of the project are to use a combinationof curriculum revision and development, faculty development, distance learning andcollaborative projects, and local/internal partnerships to establish the Herat University Faculty ofEngineering at the preeminent Engineering program for Western Afghanistan.Once a part of Kabul University, the Faculty of Engineering became a permanent part of HeratUniversity in 2004. After functioning in Kabul for approximately 20 years, the Engineeringprogram was closed following the Soviet

Conference Session

Engineering Ethics: An Interdisciplinary Endeavor

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Brocato, Mississippi State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

documentation per team (see Figure 2 below for an example). We then use a document camera to show each team’s documentation on the screen; teams explain and justify their choices, and the class critiques both their choices and their writing. 4. The instructor marks each team’s documentation to provide guidance and to capture what was said verbally during class. Since our in-class projects typically count as daily/participation grades, and since such projects are executed quickly and with little preparation time, we do not grade these documents as strictly as we do larger, out-of- class assignments. The point of in-class work like this should be the process of analyzing ethics and communication.Plan of

Conference Session

Communication and Collaboration

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael Alley, Pennsylvania State University; Are Magnus Bruaset, Simula Research Laboratory; Melissa Marshall, Pennsylvania State University; Marianne M. Sundet, Simula Research Laboratory; Sarah Zappe, Pennsylvania State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

seemed to be areasonable amount of time to request graduate students to leave their research projects,travel to a location in the country, and focus on these communication skills. Becausewriting critique sessions require significantly more time (both the time to read themanuscripts and the time to discuss the manuscripts), we decided to provide feedback onthe writing in a different manner from what Simula had done in 2008. Once we established the scope of the workshop, we needed to secure funds. Themain portion of the funding was needed to provide a conference site with lodging andfood for the participants. While we decided to require the graduate students to providetheir own transportation to the conference site, the lodging and food

Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christy Moore, University of Texas, Austin; D'Arcy Randall, University of Texas, Austin; Hillary Hart, University of Texas, Austin

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

AC 2009-1879: THE BIG PICTURE: USING THE UNFORESEEN TO TEACHCRITICAL THINKINGChristy Moore, University of Texas, Austin CHRISTY MOORE is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin where she teaches engineering communication courses and a signature course on “Society, Technology, and the Environment.” Her pedagological and research interests include service-learning projects, engineering ethics and professional responsibility, research ethics, and strategies for advancing students' analytical and rhetorical skills. She is co-PI on an NSF project, The Foundations of Research Ethics for Engineers (FREE) and collaborated on the

Conference Session

Tree-huggers, Diggers, and Queers--Oh my!

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

George Catalano, State University of New York, Binghamton; Caroline Baillie, Queens University, Kingston

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

local officials,university officials, family and friends all in attendance along with local and nationalpress. David thoroughly enjoyed the festivities and was immensely pleased by his device.At that time, the project seemed an incredibly successful effort for everyone. Subsequentto the celebration, David continued his work for a while as an attendant at the theater butsoon things began to change. He became much more withdrawn than he had ever beenand soon quit his job. The seeming depression became worse and worse notwithstandingthe heroic efforts of his social worker. David now is completely withdrawn and in factinstitutionalized.An objective judging of this case would clearly point to the fact that notwithstanding allthe noblest of

Conference Session

Critical Thinking and Creative Arts

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Beth Todd, University of Alabama; Garry Warren, University of Alabama; Susan Burkett, University of Alabama; David Cordes, University of Alabama; Marcus Brown, University of Alabama

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

-module score of 3.7 to apost module score of 4.3 on a 5-point Likert scale. Another approach has been to combine studyof contemporary issues and ethics through case studies.14,15 Authors discussed the challenges ofteaching a truly contemporary ethical case study, where new information became available everyday. Needy introduces students to the impact of contemporary issues on project management byincluding articles from the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and the local paper as discussiontopics in her engineering management course.16ImplementationPrior to starting the actual meetings each semester, it is necessary to identify a time and locationfor the meetings and to publicize these events. Setting the time for the meeting is

Conference Session

Liberal Education and Leadership

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

James Hanson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Julia Williams, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Gathering Storm (Committee onProspering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2007) and Educating The Engineer of2020 (National Academy of Engineering, 2005), publications that pointed us toward revising ourinstitutional outcomes. In a project taken on by our institute-wide committee responsible formaintaining our student learning outcomes process—the Commission on the Assessment ofStudent Outcomes (CASO)—we determined that adding a leadership outcome to our set ofinstitutional outcomes would be a significant revision.The decision to add leadership to the list was reinforced by the development of Rose-Hulman Page 14.458.2president’s

Conference Session

Tree-huggers, Diggers, and Queers--Oh my!

Collection

2009 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Erin Cech, University of California, San Diego; Tom Waidzunas, University of California, San Diego

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

Page 14.1384.2definitions of LGBT categories and issues facing LGBT persons in engineering workplaces, and 1makes recommendations for creating LGBT-friendly workplace cultures.3, 4 Nevertheless, thistopic has yet to be systematically examined in either professional engineering settings orengineering education. We break new ground with a study of LGB students enrolled in a majorUS engineering college we call “Gold University.”This project draws on intensive interviews and focus group meetings with seventeen engineeringstudents from a variety of engineering sub-disciplines and educational levels. Our researchquestions investigate (1) the climate