Conference Session

Integrating Art, Humanities, and Engineering

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Adeel Khalid, Southern Polytechnic State University (ENG); Craig A Chin, Southern Polytechnic State University; Mir M. Atiqullah, Southern Polytechnic State University; John F. Sweigart P.E., Southern Polytechnic State University; Beth Stutzmann, Southern Polytechnic State University; Wei Zhou

Tagged Divisions

Multidisciplinary Engineering

; emphasis on social relevance, service learning, volunteerleadership, and collaboration. These skills can be taught without significant investment.Introduction and emphasis on more soft skills in engineering classes can help students develop Page 23.256.3these skills.In the engineering senior design courses for example, ethics and law (patent and trademark) canbe incorporated in the teachings. These could be in the form of assigned reading, case studies,videos, external lecturers, and webinars from professional organizations like ASME, IEEE, andAIAA. Moreover writing should also be much emphasized, assigned and graded. Further oraland technical

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Learning, Evaluation, and Assessment

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Narayanan M. Komerath, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Multidisciplinary Engineering

controversial and encounters stiff opposition. • Learners’ efforts vindicate our effortsThe massive effort to reform undergraduate engineering education over the past 20 years hasgenerally emphasized breadth and soft skills, inevitably at the expense of quality and depth oflearning in core subjects. One easy metric is that while the number of credit hours needed forgraduation has gone down, typically by about 8%, a number of “softer” subjects has beenintroduced, at the expense of hours devoted to core depth. Thus the core courses have beencompressed heavily, while no compression effort is evident in the “soft” courses. Thiscompression certainly came at least in part from removing items that took too long to teach orlearn. A detailed presentation of

Conference Session

Capstone Projects, Design Projects, and Teamwork

Collection

2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Michael W. Prairie, Norwich University; Gregory Wight P.E., Norwich University; Peter Kjeer, Harvard University

Tagged Divisions

Multidisciplinary Engineering

, he said “are you kidding?” and then explained how he doubtedhe could get better hands-on engineering learning than what he was already getting. Assessmentfor the next implementation of this project will be more formalized, and formative assessmentthrough a reflection assignment will likely be the instrument used. This appears to be anappropriate instrument for assessing the professional or “soft” skills within the small sample size(N ~ 80) that spans the three disciplines at Norwich University. Questions will be formulated toevoke responses regarding the communication process between teams, the allocation of (or“negotiation” for) requirements between the subsystems, and the role of individual contributionsto the larger project.Another