Conference Session

Computer Literacy Among Minority Students

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Roli Varma

should be difficult enough to make students think but notso difficult to take too much of their time. Further, instructions need to increase on debuggingtools and techniques to decrease students’ frustration with code preparation.One major problem for the CS and CE majors is the lengths of time it takes to complete anundergraduate degree. It is expected that the degrees will be earned in 4 years. However, approx.10% of students finish their undergraduate degree in 4 years; 5 is a more realistic timeline. Thisleaves many minority students experiencing a financial aid crisis after 4 years. Advisors couldplay an important role in planning the whole curriculum. Effective counseling and guidance areimportant to all undergraduate students, but

Conference Session

Learning Enhancements for CHE Courses

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Polly Piergiovanni; S. Scott Moor

morecontrol of their learning experience.The use of multi-experiment kits is helpful in presenting a unified and efficient set of activelearning experiences in the classroom. The key example of our work in this area is thedevelopment of flexible kits for process control experiments. These kits can be used in anyclassroom as long as 110 volt power and personal computers are available. They allow students todesign, construct and test both the simple process and their control systems.To take full advantage of these process control kits we are redesigning the time structure androom set up for this course. Setting up a room with work groups instead of rows and planning alonger class period allows both laboratory and classroom experiences to be completed

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Anna Phillips; Paul Palazolo

of Materials 24% of the students expressed a desire to have more design problems included in the class, nostudent expressed a desire to have the design problem eliminated85% of the students expressed a desire to have a closer link between the lab class and the lectureclassFuture PlansWhile the utilization of the swing design is considered as a marginal success at best, the responseof the students in both the lecture and lab class was such that the experiment will be attemptedagain during the Fall 2003 semester. With a longer planning horizon, hopefully the mechanicaldifficulties will no longer be a problem. The lessons learned from the utilization of the reverseengineering will be more fully developed and extended to other design problems

Conference Session

Retention: Keeping the Women Students

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Philip Parker

, they find their jobchallenging and rewarding. One respondent said, “ I love engineering. I get to see what Idesign and know that I am helping a community.” Another replied, “I get to do a lot ofcool stuff, like design test plans for huge engines. My work is constantly changing,keeping things exciting.” A third woman replied that the aspect of her work that sheenjoyed the most was “A sense of accomplishment when the part of the project I directgets done on schedule or when we find clever ways to solve problems. Work is a big partof my happiness and who I am.”We also found that respondents, when asked “What do you enjoy most about your job,”each listed several aspects, often completing lists with three or more items. The responsesare the same as

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Taryn Bayles

Page 8.784.6 “Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ©2003, American Society for Engineering Education”a car are requested. The students are also required to identify their skills in writing, graphics,leadership, teamwork, analysis, drafting, planning and research/library, as well as their strengthsand weaknesses. This information is then used to assign the teams12, which consist of 4-6 teammembers. Teams are balanced using the following criteria: major13, background, academicperformance, gender and ethnicity14, and access to transportation off campus to purchasematerials for the construction of the project. The team application also requires the

Conference Session

ET Design Projects

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

C. Richard Helps

team.Special ChallengesSeveral different advanced challenges have been planned. Collection of objects from thesechallenging locations will earn extra points. Some of the challenges could include retrieving anobject from a platform, climbing stairs to retrieve and object, etc.MultiplierIf this object is dropped into your goal it would act as a multiplier on every object dropped inyour goal thereafter. Example: A “multiply by 2” is dropped into the goal. An object normallyworth 10 points is now worth 20 points when it is dropped into the goal. The multiplier remainsactive from the time it is dropped into the goal until the end of play. Page 8.223.7

Conference Session

Innovations in the CHE Laboratory

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

James Fenton; H. Russell Kunz; Suzanne Fenton

courseconsists of two 4-hour labs per week during which groups of 3 to 4 students perform experimentson five different unit operations throughout the semester (e.g. distillation, heat exchanger, gasabsorption, batch reactor, etc.). Each unit is studied for either one or two weeks, depending onthe complexity and scale of the equipment. Given only general goals for each experiment,students are required to define their own objectives, develop an experimental plan, give a pre-labreport including a discussion of safety considerations, perform the experiments, analyze the dataand prepare group or individual written and/or oral reports. Due to their similar nature and focus(generation of performance/characteristic curves and analysis of efficiency at various

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

James Krogmeier; Mustafa Kamasak; Maribel Figuera; Luis Torres; Jan Allebach; George Chiu; Edward Delp; Charles Bouman; Catherine Rosenberg; Lynne Slivovsky

section that meets weekly for 1hr. and 50 min. with their designated faculty member.The laboratory (Figure 1) is well-equipped with servers, PCs, printers and reference material.There is a conference table for team meetings and workstations for each team. Each student isissued a key to the lab for the semester. The lecture topics are listed in Table 1 and cover a wide Figure 1: Plans of the course laboratory. Page 8.218.3 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

Conference Session

Physics in the K-16 Classroom

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Sallie Townsend; Natalie Segal

v2 0 a2 –9.00 ft/s2 ∆x = v0t t2At this point the question is "Now what do I do?" We must establish a plan of action. Theproblem asks for the reaction time. Consequently, we must find ∆xR since tR = ∆xR/v1 and there isno occurrence of reaction time other than in the left-hand table. This tells us to find ∆x2 in theright-hand table since the two displacements add to 200 feet. We don't care about t2. The finaltable pair with formulas entered to remind us what we are doing is Reacting Braking ∆xR = 200 − ∆ x2 (second) ∆ x2 ← (first

Conference Session

Learning and Teaching Issues

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Matthew Parsek; Chris Riesbeck; Gulnur Birol; Ann McKenna

the problem solving process. Theyprovided support in helping students to generate ideas, correct for misunderstandings, monitorprogress, and keep to a work plan. Page 8.348.6 Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering EducationTable 2 summarizes the aspects of the course we implemented to align with the HPL framework.Each of these aspects was new to the course and represent the activities developed as a result ofour cross-disciplinary collaboration. HPL Guideline Course activity

Conference Session

Recruitment and Retention

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Herrick; J. Michael Jacob; Jeffrey Richardson

, American Society for Engineering Education”The change from the traditional curriculum of (DC Circuits, AC Circuits, Electronics I orElectronic Devices, Electronics II or Electronic Circuits) to an integrated spiral analog curriculumbegan in the fall of 1995. It was then phased in, as those students moved through their plan ofstudy. This transition is shown by the vertical dotted line. It is suggested the reason thedepartment retention appears to exceed the university retention that semester is that studentstransferring into ECET that semester were required to begin with the very first course. So theywere counted as retained by the department, but were counted by the university as retainedelsewhere. In both previous and subsequent semesters, most

Conference Session

Statistics in the CHE Curriculum

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Valerie Young

and asked to evaluate it. Does thisproduct meet specifications? Is this device useful for measuring SO2? How do the in-house labresults for water phosphate concentration compare to those of an independent lab? Propose anexperimental plan for determining the density of a liquid to a specified level of uncertainty. Thequestions are broad enough that more than one statistical technique could be acceptably appliedand complex enough that more than one technique or more than one step is probably required.Solutions with differing degrees of thoroughness are quite likely. The solution format is always“a memo to your boss”. Mechanical performance of a calculation will not lead to a passinggrade on these problems. The students practice selecting

Conference Session

Web Education: Delivery and Evaluation

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Kevin Lansey; Jeff Goldberg

the block saying "what am I supposed to do for this class?" were also common. Most ofthese problems have been solved by extensive communication processes between the TAs andthe students. Emails to students every few days, announcements to the class before the semesterstarts, an emailed syllabus and navigation write-up before the first day of classes, and direct linksto the class site from the University catalog are necessary to ensure that students have theinformation needed to be successful in the class. We schedule each block 2 months before thestart of the semester and this includes the modules to be offered, the homework due date, and thefinal exam date. Advanced planning helps our faculty and our students.During the first course

Conference Session

Improving Teaching and Learning

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Deepti Suri

are being asked to the class as part of the feedback process.Like all assessment processes, this process has several disadvantages too. To name a few:• There is usually a high turnaround time. From the time the initial set of questions is mailed to the QM to the time the compiled results are received; it can be a week or even more depending on the schedule and commitment of the QM. In a term of 10 weeks, this can be a significant amount.• It requires some planning and time commitment on part of the instructor and the QM.• There are no special rewards for the QM for their effort and commitment. This might be a roadblock for students who might be interested but are swamped with other commitments.• The quality of the recommendations is

Conference Session

Global Engineering in an Interconnected World

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Dyani Saxby; Saeed Foroudastan

amounts of hazardous materials. 10 The number of deaths as a result of shippinghazardous materials on highways and interstates is unacceptable.“Trains are ten times less likely than trucks to have accidents involving hazardous materials.” 11Nevertheless, The Associate of American Railroad’s Hazardous Materials Emergency ResponseTraining Center has provided training to deal with hazardous materials emergencies to over10,000 emergency responders including firefighters, public safety agencies, chemical shippers,trucking companies, and of course railroads. The AAR works in collaboration with theTransportation Community Awareness and Emergency Response Program to assist communitiesin developing emergency response plans nation wide. 12 CSXT, a leader

Conference Session

Assessment & Quality Assuranc in Engr Ed

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Roger Reynolds; Macy Reynolds

support the claim are listed in this section. Studentnames, email subject line, greeting and closing were omitted to both save time and allow foranonymity; however, grammar and spelling errors were left in the samples to demonstrate acontinuing need for writing practice.1. The instructor is alerted that several students did not grasp a concept from the previouslesson. Knowing the problems the students had before the next class helped the instructor plan areview or example as part of the next lesson. At other times, sending a group email with more Page 8.1035.2information on the issue helped all the students find success with homework that might

Conference Session

Teaching Strategies in BME

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Russ Poldrack; Richard Hoge; Randy Gollub; Mark Vangel; Ian Lai; Douglas Greve; Julie Greenberg

to support biomedical education on topics related to BIRN’s researchefforts, an ideal place for dissemination of this module.We plan to use this module in conjunction with an fMRI statistics workshop that will be offeredduring the summer of 2003 at the MGH/MIT/HMS Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging.This two-week long workshop will meet for two-hour sessions three times per week. Participantswill attend a series of lectures as well as lab sessions that utilize this module. We will collectspecific feedback on various aspects of the simulation and tutorial from the participants. Thisinput will inform future revisions of the module.V. SummaryThis paper describes an instructional module on the topic of fMRI data analysis. The goal is

Conference Session

Mathematics in the Transition

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Claudia Morrell; Taryn Bayles; Anne Spence

courses. Most recently she developed, coordinated and taught a summer workshop,“Introduction to Engineering for High School Teachers and Counselors.”CLAUDIA MORRELL, Director of Planning and Grants for the Center for Women and Information Technology atUMBC, joined the University in August of 2001. In both this and her previous position at CCBC, she becamefamiliar with and has worked to address the issues related to the lack of participation of girls and women in STEMprograms. Her skills as a collaborator have been instrumental in building bridges between the two institutions. Page 8.774.11 “Proceedings of the 2003 American Society

Conference Session

Promoting ET Through K-12 Projects

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas Juliano; Ronald Rockland; George Gonzalez; Joel Bloom

, Dillon,”New Jersey: Strength in Numbers”, Site Selection, vol43, Feb/March 1998, p.117-1232. Farmer, Edgar I., Honeycutt, F. Diane, “Community College Administrators and Faculty Opinions of Tech Prep”, Community College Journal of Research and Practice, v 23, no. 8, December 1999, p. 717-253. Pucel, David J., Sundre, Sandra K., “Tech prep articulation: is it working?”, vol. 37, no. 1, Fall 1999, p 26-374. Scambilis, Nicholas A., “Developing an Environmental Engineering Technology Program”, St. Louis, MO, 2000 ASEE Annual Conference, June 2000.5. Jacobs, Jim, “Tech Prep: The Middle Plan”, Techniques, v75, no. 4, April 2000, p. 526. Kate, Nancy T., “Job Training that Works”, American Demographics, v16, July 1994, p. 477. http

Conference Session

Assessment in EM Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Tricia Varvel; Stephanie Adams

preference). The third preference dimension, thinking vs. feeling, indicatesthe way people make their decisions. People with a thinking type preference tend to make theirdecisions based on logic, facts and fairness, while feeling types tend to focus on the effect thattheir decisions will have on the people involved. The last preference dimension addresses theway that people prefer to organize their world. People who have a judging preference areorganized, punctual, and like to plan ahead, while people with a perceiving preference areusually spontaneous, adaptable, and open to new ideas9. The most important concept of this type of information is that there is no right or wrongpreference. According to the theory, all eight preference poles

Conference Session

Global Issues in Engineering Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Robinson; Fred Denny

were discussed insome detail.Video tapes obtained from the Wisconsin Lobbying Association were used to introduce thesubject of lobbying and how lobbyists function. The students were asked to locate a web sitelisting all Louisiana lobbyists and another web site showing funds provided for lobbying at thenational level. The instructor explained how trade associations apply the “four C’s” in retaininglobbyist services and managing issues: o Identifying Critical Issues o Building Consensus o Developing Communications Plans o Coordinating with Allied Groups and Supporters Page 8.1130.7Some class time was spent in

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

John Bell; Scott Fogler

compatibility in our experience, and in general the strong interest andsupport that VRML enjoyed for a few years has died down. The automatic VRML generatorstend to produce overly complex wasteful code, which may be less of an issue as computers havegotten faster, but which is still very difficult to maintain manually. Although we have notabandoned this platform, there are no current development activities or plans for it either.Always Store Chemicals Properly ( WorldToolKit and Half-Life )This safety rule states that all chemicals should be stored in proper locations when not in use.There are special storage locations for flammable and radioactive materials; acids and basesshould not be stored together, and of course, chemicals should not be left

Conference Session

Design for Community

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Hanna Lee; Sven Bilen; Robert Pangborn

team is an E-Team, which is sponsored by the NCIIA. E-teams work on later-stage development of an idea and a plan for its commercialization. They mayinclude engineering students as well as students from business and other majors, and each teammust have a faculty advisor. E-Teams may form as part of a course or on the independentinitiative of students, faculty, or other representatives of member institutions.17Volunteers Student design projects generally contain a large cast of volunteers, which are perhapsbest harnessed via active involvement by the faculty advisor(s) or industry/government mentors.This group includes students who work on a project without receiving academic credit or

Conference Session

Web Systems and Web Services

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Marcus Huggans; Steve Watkins; Halvard E. Nystrom

learning for students with differing or opposing learning styles. In addition, theseasynchronous learning modules can provide a rich learning environment when developedwith due deliberation and planning. The purpose of this study was to test whether learning environments designed to favorspecific learning styles enhance learning for students with those learning styles, andwhether it impacts their satisfaction with the experience.2 Tutorial resource modules weredeveloped and tested in a graduate/senior-level elective engineering electrical engineeringcourse. Versions of the modules were designed for sequential and global learners.Sequential users prefer to process information linearly, and global users prefer to obtaininformation holistically or

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanics Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

R.W. Carpick; K.W. Lux; Buck Johnson; Wendy Crone

component to thecourse. The laboratory activities are self-contained modules which build upon each otherculminating in the production of a microfluidic device for the filtration of nanoparticles by theconclusion of the course. The individual modules are designed to coincide with the subjectmatter under discussion in the course such as surface characterization, synthesis techniques, andsoft MEMS. These modules utilize web-based lab procedures which were developed through theUW MRSEC and have been incorporated into the web-based lab manual which was developedconcomitantly with this course.On “Micro” vs. “Nano”When planning the course, the relative emphasis to place on micro- vs. nano-scale concepts wascarefully considered. While a course devoted

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanics Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Scott Wirgau; Abhinav Gupta; Vernon Matzen

to the girder of the shear buildinggiving it an initial excitation. The control of these actuators could be implemented in LabVIEW,as was the control for the shake table. Another future consideration is the use of the web camera. Currently the camera beingused has relatively low frames per second with basic usage limited to showing the lab setup andverifying whether or not the table is moving. Purchase of a faster, higher quality camera thatwill be able to show the video of the experiment more fluently is planned. Furthermore, with ahigher quality camera combined with proper software, it will be possible to grab a selectednumber of frames per second matching or closely matching the frequency of various structuralmodes. This would

Conference Session

Engineering Education Research

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Alexander Quinn; Amy Pritchett; George Nickles

extentmeasurements confirm each other.These efforts to develop systems models of engineering education and to apply them to designand evaluation are on- going. One potential use of this method is in supporting rigorous coursedesign and planning evaluation. When a new course is designed, it can be conceptually designedby creating the abstraction hierarchy model of the course. This would support instructors inexplicitly choosing the elements at each level of abstraction, including the level of Cognitive andEducational Functions which is usually implicit, that support the objectives for the course. Also,instructors can identify all the elements of a course that support a particular course objective,allowing them to determine how well they have met each

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Greg Luttrell

topics beyond the normal scope of the course;§ Required the students to participate in a class activity while not physically in-class;§ Challenged students to a high degree of thought (content and format) to receive high marks; and§ Allowed assessment of student thoughts and writing without using in-class time.The instructor must plan for, be, and remain committed to the discussion process throughout thesemester.§ Discussion topics must be integrated with the overall course objectives and augment in-class activities, student learning.§ To maintain student interest in the discussions through the semester, there is a need to continue to focus the discussion topics in the class activities through formal (tests, quizzes, questions) and

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Victor Giurgiutiu; Brian Mouzon

two or more of the following disciplines is required:electro-mechanical devices (preferably piezoelectric), opto-mechanics, precision componentsand mechanisms; must have demonstrated capabilities in the use of computer-aided engineeringsystems.” A deluge of computers, sensors, microcontrollers, actuators has permeated the veryfabric of present-day society. Microcontroller-based devices and appliances are to be found in allthe crevices of our everyday life. Even the auto industry, a traditional mechanical engineeringfiefdom, is putting tens of microcontrollers in a modern automobile, and plans to increase this Page 8.586.1Proceedings of

Conference Session

Value Added Collection Management

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Karen Grigg

facultymembers who invent to consult with patent librarians for assistance and training.The opportunity to teach patent and trademark searching skills is enhanced in anenvironment where instruction is delivered systematically. Nerz and Weiner (2001) discussa curriculum-integrated approach to library instruction where librarians work with facultyat the curriculum level to identify strategic points at each grade level where libraryinstruction can be embedded into courses to build information literacy competencies.They state that, “in order to be relevant, library instruction must be planned strategicallyacross the curriculum and implemented in a way that allows the student to grasp thecomplexities of the information universe. There needs to be