Conference Session

The Fundamentals of Fun

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Brewer Stouffer; Jeffrey Russell

(1998) recommends a series of activities to incite creativity when faced with anengineering problem: • Immerse yourself in a domain or problem; • Be prolific—generate lots of ideas; • Use tools for representations and thoughts (e.g., brainstorming, notebooks, and sketches); • Play with ideas; • Avoid premature closure; • Don’t be afraid to be different; • Be open and receptive to new ideas; • Do it—practice your craft; • Maintain a product orientation; • Relax—indulge your diversions; • Reflect—review what you have done; • Have fun!This list can be viewed as steps in an on-going process, as individual milestones in creativedevelopment, or as inspiration for a professor or

Conference Session

Retention: Keeping the Women Students

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Monica Gaughan; Donna Llewellyn; Marion Usselman

professionals—white men, minority men,white women, and minority women—and to design educational requirements that accommodatethese different strategies or educational pathways. Our NSF-funded Alternate Pathways toSuccess in Information Technology (APSIT∗) program is seeking to explore the nature of the ITand engineering educational and career pathways used by successful female and minorityGeorgia Tech alumni. In particular, the specific goals of this project are: • To define alternate indices of IT and engineering success that reflect a broader interpretation of societal value than indicated by yearly income and job prestige. • To determine the nature of successful IT and engineering educational and career pathways used by women and other

Conference Session

Innovative & Computer-Assisted Lab Study

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Hur Koser; Dennis Freeman; Alexander Aranyosi; Aleem Siddiqui

reflect fluidvelocity. Faster velocities can be measured by strobing the LED light source; using one pin ofthe computer’s parallel port to gate a transistor driving the LED works well for this purpose. Theresulting double-image of the beads can be used to estimate fluid velocity. Alternately, smallermarkers such as water-soluble, fluorescent semiconductor quantum dots[3,4] can be perfused.Because of the small size (<15 nm) of these nanocrystals, Brownian motion keeps them insuspension. Rough estimates of fluid velocity can also be determined from changes in height ofthe input reservoir, or velocity can be controlled using syringe pumps.A straightforward application of this lab is to ask students to measure brightness gradients andfluid

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Daryl Caswell; Clifton Johnston

1793Bibliography 1. Harris, James G., “Journal of Engineering Education Round Table: Reflections on the Grinter Report”, Journal of Engineering Education, Jan. 1994, pp. 69-94 2. Rittel, H.W.J., “Impressions of Architecture 130: Notes and Observations of Prof. Horst W.J. Rittel’s Classic Design Methods Course at Berkeley as taught circa-1969- 1971” Design Methods, Theories, Research, Education and Practice, 1996 Vol 29 no. 1 to vol. 32 no. 4 3. Fauvel, R., Winkelman, P., “Organization of Technological Information for the Novice Mechanical Designer”, International Workshop on Pedagogics in Design Education, International Society for Design Science of Engineering Design, Pilzen, Czech Republic, November, 1998. 4

Conference Session

K-12 Outreach Initiatives

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Fisher; Jed Lyons

itemswere smaller than the differences seen for the initial survey. The variability associated with theresponses to the items was smaller for Cohort 2 on items 2 through 7 as compared to Cohort 1.The difference in variability is an indication Cohort 2 responses were more consistent as a group.The differences in means and variability might be a reflection of the differences between the twocohorts in past teaching experience. However one cannot rule out the possibility of effects dueto one cohort being in elementary school classrooms and the other in middle schools. Page 9.511.5 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education

Conference Session

Topics in Mechanical ET

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Vincent C. Prantil; Thomas J. Labus; William Howard

and plot the deflected shape.Figure 10 shows the displaced shape of a bar pinned on both ends. Students computed thebuckling loads for fixed ends (simulating the grips of the test machine) and compared it to theload recorded during the buckling test. The comparison of test results to hand calculations forthese tests is interesting in that results for tests withpinned ends agreed very well with calculations (usuallyless than 5% error), while the test results for fixed-endtests were not as good (typically up to 20% error).Students learned that the idealized fixed boundarycondition may not accurately reflect the actualgeometry. A loose fit between the rod and the adapterallowed some rotation of the rod end, while theassumption in the calculated

Conference Session

Scholarship in Engineering Technology

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Abi Aghayere

strategies at their institutionsin order to provide the necessary support mechanism for ET faculty scholarship and thusmotivate their faculty to become engaged in scholarship. As much as possible, ET scholarshipshould be student-centered, involve students, and enhance student learning and classroominstruction. As ET faculty begin to reflect on their teaching, consulting and other activities on acontinuous basis, and writing or presenting on their findings to a broader audience, and receivingfeedback, classroom instruction will be enhanced; however, for this to happen and for thescholarship culture to become ingrained in ET, adequate support and enablers for facultyscholarship and an adequate reward system are needed; such support could be in the

Conference Session

Learning & Teaching Issues

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Vikas Jain; Durward Sobek

respectively for the satisfaction and thequality models. From the learning results, it was observed that the network architectures had a Page 9.1256.9good “memory” and the trained matrices of weights and bias reflected the hidden functionalrelationship well. Thus the models can serve as a reasonable surrogate to reality. Finally, Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Educationbecause the testing and validation errors (MSE) were small and the R-Sq values low, the modelsdeveloped can be considered reliable for the

Conference Session

Curricular Change Issues

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Nigel Middleton; Barbara Olds; Heidi Loshbaugh; Ruth Streveler

an evaluation, a participant in a 2000 workshop reflected, “time wellspent; I believe all instructors would benefit by learning more about WAC and how theycan help students become better writers.”physics i and iiThe Physics courses, unlike the Writing Program, already existed in the CSM curriculum,and were required of each CSM student. As a general requirement, the existing course,largely lecture or other passive forms of content delivery was plagued with lowevaluations, student dissatisfaction, and high rates of failing grades. This course needed amakeover, and the Faculty Mini-Grant program helped to provide the means. As Dr.Thomas Furtak, the principal developer of the Physics I course describes it, “we hadarrived at a point where I

Conference Session

Trends in ME Education Poster Session

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

John Hochstein

encounter with the BSC are revealing and similar to theinstructors’ perceptions of the experience. The design teams did not integrate the BSC into theirday-to-day operations to the extent that had been hoped. It was viewed more as an “add-on”, asanother “thing to do”, than it was as a system that could improve team effectiveness. Theinstructors believe this is due to a lack of regular insistence, on their part, for project progressreports reflecting the BSC objectives and initiatives. Both the students and instructors fell intoold habits and relied almost exclusively on milestone charts and task planning sheets to trackproject progress.The instructors view some of the student assessments with skepticism: “I just filled it in withthings that I knew

Conference Session

Student Teams & Active Learning

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Bannerot

ability towork effectively on a team.The results from the four classes consistently indicate higher SAT Verbal scores andlower SAT Analytical scores for the “good” team players compared to the “poor” teamplayers. These results are suspect, however, since the SAT scores are probably the leastreliable of the input variables. Also, this result may simply be a reflection of the fact that Page 9.302.10a large fraction of the “poor” team players (40%) were Asians, who usually do well inmathematics but tend to have (English) language difficulties. Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference &Exposition

Conference Session

Engineering Education Research

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Alisha Waller

is carried out, align with a conceptual framework, reflect careful and thorough reasoning,and disclose results to encourage debate in the scientific community” (p. 6). Applying these ideasto education research is perhaps a bit more fuzzy and unclear than applying them to disciplinaryresearch in STEM fields. In order to make these applications more clear, let’s discuss some ofthe similarities and differences between engineering disciplinary research and STEM educationresearch.Engineering Research and STEM Education Research “Education is multilayered, constantly shifting, and occurs within an interaction among institutions (e.g., schools and universities), communities, and families. It is highly value laden and involves a

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Sven Nielsen

considerable extent according to human resource, expenses and economic re- sults,• they are guided to a result of essential extent and importance – in the light of relations to a number of people who will be affected, and to the result’s functionality (lifetime) and economic influence.,The above characteristics naturally involve special attention to reflection and awareness ofthe potential possibilities and resources in connection with human, social and technical di-mensions in a necessary interplay between innovations, development, decision and executingprocesses.The risk of a close co-operation between university and enterprises is that the studies and stu-dent groups can seem like free consultative partners and with short term solutions only

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

David Brigham; Angran Xiao; Kenneth Bryden

to support the students’ interaction andexploration. A human factor experiment was conducted accounting for the different educationalbackgrounds and learning styles of the students in order to achieve the highest learning effectiveness.We suggest that students without a background in CDF prefer using streamlines to vector field todisplay vector data such as flow speed. For scalar data such as product concentration, students preferusing isosurfaces to contour surfaces.There are some concerns to be addressed in the future work:♣ The engineering models are an essential part for the virtual reality model to reflect the actual fermentation process, as well as the plant process. It is necessary to work closely with the industry to ensure that

Conference Session

Student Teams & Active Learning

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Jeannie Brown Leonard; Janet Schmidt; Linda Schmidt; Paige Smith

groups in engineering, students who left engineering for other majors, aswell as engineers in the workforce. As stated by a senior student, “this kind of course[is] tryingto get you to see all aspects…from concept to design to implementation and manufacturing…Ithink a grade in this course, to me, is more reflective of how you are as an engineer than a lot ofthe other courses that you take.” Comprehensive project based courses are more predictive of Page 9.85.10who will be a successful practicing engineer than courses on theory. The learning potential of “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference

Conference Session

Mobile Robotics in Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Steve Richards; Daniel Pack; David Ahlgren; Igor Verner

possess. Hence, the project selectionshould be determined based-on well-established criteria that reflect the senior design projectobjectives of a particular institution. A variety of robotics projects give faculty members theflexibilities desired to meet the objectives of an individual program.Administrative Issues: We now briefly discuss the administrative portion of senior designprojects. We present the method developed at USAFA in this section and share the lessonslearned in the Discussion section. At USAFA, the senior design course for the electricalengineering and the computer engineering students is a one-year, two-semester long, course. Westart the first semester with lessons to teach students hardware skills necessary to implement

Conference Session

Collaborative & New Efforts in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

JoAnn Lighty; Holly Moore; David Richardson; Nick Safai

institution of highereducation in Utah. (See Table 1) The data in Table 1 reflect credit bearingclasses. Table 1 STUDENTBODY PROFILE (Based on Fall Semester 2002 for SLCC* and Fall 2003 for UofU) Salt Lake Community University of College Utah Student Headcount 23,154 28,437 Male/Female 52/48% 55/45% Utah Residents 94% 90.4% Undergraduate/Graduate N/A 78.8/21.1% Percentage of White students

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Computer Engineering Technology

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Ming-Sung Koh; Mick Brzoska; William Loendorf

will be able to independently solve complex realworld problems in Software Engineering Technology as demonstrated in their senior projects.Conclusions, Reflections and the FutureThe SET Program at Eastern Washington University has been implemented and is now up andrunning. Information gathered through surveys and site visits was utilized to create an innovativeand state of the art SET Program. By using an experience-based service learning model, workingclosely with industry and the community, and applying a new recruitment and retention modelfor underrepresented students the program is poised for success. Page 9.692.13 Proceedings of the

Conference Session

Life Sciences and ChE

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Alfred Carlson

covering the same volume of material. Instead of “covering” severalgrowth models for cells, the cluster approach allows the students to explore only one or “Proceeding of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright @ 2004, American Society for Engineering Education”two. Design tends to become focused on scheduling and sequencing issues, nottheoretical considerations of the design process or use of design software. Overallstudents learn to find “a” way and not to hear about “all the ways” of accomplishingsomething. I am convinced that the students’ comments that there was “not enoughlecture” reflected the lack of what I call the “feeling of efficiency” in learning that

Conference Session

Design Experiences in Energy Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Sara Ross; Patrick Giordano; James Blanck; Dona Johnson; Peter Jansson

payback of 3.2 years. Whenconverting the incandescent lights to fluorescent T8’s, there would be an annual savings of$1,519 with an investment cost of $170 and a payback of only 0.1 years. The T8 fluorescentbulbs are the newest generation of lighting. Previously the most efficient method of lighting wasthe T12. The declaration of T8 and T12 reflects the overall size of the fluorescent tube. The T12is a larger physical tube compared to the T8 tube; this decrease in size contributes to the overallenergy efficiency of the lighting. The proposed lighting changes are cost effective, fairly simpleto implement and provide a considerably short-term payback. In reviewing the water usage of theTeam House, it was discovered that the current water consuming

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Graduate Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Sig Lillevik

they can also be worth nothing. When youadd in bonuses, the total compensation in industry contains several factors and this is not byaccident. The theory is that when times are good your compensation increases and when timesare bad it decreases. This way, a company does not have to lay off employees in bad times andrehire-retrain them when times rebound. Academic salaries are on the other side and often table-or formula-driven. Some department heads adjust salary increases to reflect merit but many justuse a percentage based on their new budget.Your performance metric in industry is focused on results (technologies transitioned, productsshipped, etc.) and measures what you accomplished and how you contributed to the company’smission. At the

Conference Session

IS and IT Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas Cullinane; Baris Yanmaz; Ronald Perry

and WRA categories. Variables fromthe former categories might be influenced by the educational process and the individual, whilethose from the latter categories strongly reflect work experience. This suggests that there may becomparatively little that the education process can do to influence migration to IT as opposed toexperience in the industry -- more on this in Section 5. Since gender was not selected as a predictor variable but there is strong feeling that itshould matter, the sample was split by gender and SPSS was offered the same sets of "final" pre-dictor variables to produce a "male" and a "female" equation for each outcome measure. The re-sulting equations are shown in Table 4. The R2 values are generally in excess of 0.90

Conference Session

Electrical & Computer Engineering Poster Session

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Mohammad Alam

Education9. Concluding remarksIn the above, we have attempted to show how a modern electrical and computer engineeringdegree program must reflect, in a balanced fashion, the wishes and aspirations of its majorconstituencies. In order to achieve this, there must be well-defined goals and carefully specifiedoutcomes showing that those goals have been achieved. Part and parcel of this is an effective setof assessment tools, the results of which must be carefully analyzed to ensure effective remedyof weaknesses. Finally, at all times, all engineering programs, large and small, must try toinculcate, by whatever means, a personal interest in the welfare of the individual student.AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank faculty members of the

Conference Session

Unique Courses & Services for Freshmen

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Catherine Blat

SI. It is interesting to note that the demographicsof the students who attend SI are reflective of the demographics of general population of thecollege. Page 9.897.8 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2004, American Society for Engineering Education Figure 4: SI* vs. Non-SI Gender 100% 90% 80% 70%% of Students 60

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Courses and Issues

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Jean-Pierre Delplanque; Marcelo Simoes; Joan Gosink; Catherine Skokan

reflects its usage by many disciplines (civil,electrical, environmental, mechanical, petroleum, and metallurgical engineering students).The new combined course would reduce credits hours for all these disciplines, whileproviding opportunities for students to enroll in specialized discipline-specific courses. Forexample, electrical engineering students could omit further applications courses related tofluids entirely. The fundamentals course should provide them with essential knowledge forthe Fundamental of Engineering (FE) exam. Civil and environmental engineering studentsmay elect to take the applications course in open channel flow and ground-water flow, whilemechanical engineering students might elect to take applications courses in computation

Conference Session

CE Body of Knowledge

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Stuart Walesh

shown by the dot pattern, to and beyond Level 3 (ability) via post-licensure experience and/or education. 7. The dot pattern also indicates that additional outcomes (beyond 15) are probable after fulfilling the pre-licensure BOK.AttitudesAs stated earlier, the BOK is defined as “the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to becomea licensed professional engineer.” Knowledge, skills and attitudes are the essential componentsof the what dimension of the BOK. Individual experiences and review of studies8,10 prompted theBOK Committee to include attitudes in the BOK.By attitudes, the Committee means ways in which one thinks and feels in response to a fact orsituation. Attitudes reflect an individual’s values. A person’s

Conference Session

Potpurri Design in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Zsuzsanna Szabo; Darrell Sabers; Reid Bailey

clarified to indicate that it refers to modeling of a design before building it (as opposed to “testing” a built final design). 2. Because the rubric did not fit all student responses well, it needed to be updated to better reflect a measure of a student’s design knowledge. For instance, initially students received 2 points for indicating that more documentation was needed for the pretest. After scoring the pilot tests, the points were split such that indicating that documentation is needed throughout the design process receives 2 points whereas merely indicating that the time spent in documentation needs to be lengthened (a less specific answer) only receives 1 point. This bottom-up adjustment was needed

Conference Session

Technological Literacy II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Kurt DeGoede

them) physics concepts to situations notexplicitly covered in class or in the text. This was reflected as well in student comments whenasked about what aspects of the course they would like to see changed. Many commented thatthe exams were too difficult and indeed many did struggle on the exams. Many exam problemswere at the application level. Despite these struggles and the fact that no students receivedhigher than an A- in the course and the average grade was a B-, overall the students gave very Page 9.1145.14 Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition

Conference Session

Instructional Technology

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen Marionneaux; Michael Edmondson; Matthew McDaniel; Jay Daly; Eugene Ressler; Stephen Ressler

, and the iterative nature of the design experience are all reflected in these survey responses. • The students’ misconceptions suggest areas for future improvement of the software.The survey completed by the four teachers was intended primarily to provide general feedbackabout the conduct of the contest. We did, however, ask about three specific issues:What did your students learn from using the WPBD software? The teachers’ responsesgenerally paralleled those of their students, except that the teachers added three new (and equallyvaluable) learning outcomes: • Students learned the importance of teamwork. • Students gained confidence in their ability as self-directed learners. • Students gained comfort with the use of

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Rufus L. Carter; Amy G. Yuhasz; Misty Loughry; Matthew Ohland

critical to effective team functioning.35,36Management researchers who specialize in human resources have studied a personality traitcalled conscientiousness to predict employee performance. Conscientiousness reflects a tendencyto be careful, dependable, responsible and achievement-oriented. Conscientiousness does notsuffer from the race-based differences that plague other selection tools that are frequently used topredict performance. Conscientiousness has a small amount of predictive value for taskperformance and training proficiency.37,38 Conscientiousness is more strongly associated withcontextual performance,39 which is also called organizational citizenship behavior.40,41