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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Thomas J. Impelluso

Load Theory (CLT) provides guidelines to present information in a mannerthat encourages learning and optimizes intellectual performance [1]. As an example, considerthe obstacles in learning new material in a non-native language. Clearly, there is an overload:learners must master the new material and the language itself. Interestingly, this is resonant withthe challenge of learning to program a computer (learners must master operating systems and thesyntax) for students not in the computer science major. CLT can mitigate challenges in suchcases when learning loads are high. CLT was used to re-design a computer programming classfor mechanical engineers at San Diego State University. According to CLT, information can only be stored in long

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Raman Menon Unnikrishnan; Ricardo V. Lopez

humans and computers and a component that encouragesthe application of computer science skills to community issues. They recommend that theprogram should also address the self confidence issues of students.Current Situation The overall fall 2006 ECS FTF class had a 1-year retention rate of 49% whereas overallfall 2007 ECS FTF class had a 1-year retention rate of 53% showing a slight improvement. Theoverall fall 2006 ECS cohort had a 2-year retention rate of only 31%. These are appallingstatistics. Proceedings of the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Pacific Southwest Regional Conference 23Description of

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Amelito G. Enriquez

perception of the effects of this classroomenvironment on their learning experience. These results indicate that the interactive classroomenvironment developed using wireless Tablet PCs has the potential to be a more effectiveteaching pedagogy in problem-solving intensive courses compared to traditional instructor-centered teaching environments.1. IntroductionStudies have long shown that the traditional instructor-centered lecture format is an ineffectivelearning environment, and that active participation, as well as interactive and collaborativeteaching and learning methods, are more effective in various areas of science and engineeringeducation including Chemistry1, Physics2, Engineering3, and Computer Science4. Various usesof technology have been

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Paul Blowers

meaningful learning for a four week long segment of the course on cardiovascular,respiratory, and renal systems. Concept mapping exercises and scores contributed to six percentof the students' final grades. During the four weeks, students participated in a 50 minute longintroductory workshop on concept maps on other topics. Students were then given a case studywhere they worked in a team for 1 week to make a concept map detailing the interrelationshipsbetween different concepts and the case study. The 1 week time period included a 2 hourworkshop where students discussed their work with the faculty members. Two faculty members Proceedings of the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Pacific Southwest Regional Conference

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Gemunu Happawana; Amaranath Premasiri; Arye Rosen

backscatteredlight are very important in a detection system.2. Theory of reflectance optical detection systemThe physical requirement necessary for an optical system in order to detect multiple numbers ofchromopores is to have light sources of specific wavelength with different absoptivity pattern.The light attenuation between the source and the detector can be written as follows: ⎛I ⎞ − log10 ⎜ out ⎟ = ODλ ⎜I ⎟ (1) ⎝ in ⎠where I in is the incident light, I out is the detected light, and ODλ is the optical density forwavelength λ . Optical density is a function of absorption ( Aλ ) and scattering ( S λ

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Kurt Colvin

redevelopment effortwas made possible by the support of the Cal Poly CTL.Backward DesignVery few of us, as engineering educators, have had a formal course in pedagogy. Therefore, inaddition to the challenging task of developing new and improving existing courses, we also haveto battle with our lack of formal training in the area of course design. However, there is a richfield of instructional design literature from which we can draw.Backward course design is one method that can guide instructors as they struggle with designingtheir own courses or even an individual lecture (McTighe & Wiggins, 2005). The steps inbackward course design include: (1) identify the desired results, (2) determine the acceptableevidence, and (3) plan learning experiences

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Estelle M. Eke

prerequisite for courses such as controls, mechatronics, modeling of dynamic systems, vibrations, and capstone design. Course Structure Beginning in fall 2000 the 16-week semester course was restructured such that 8 weeks are devoted to the theory of numerical analysis and problem solving in the MATLAB environment. The numerical techniques covered in this course spanned topics encountered in a typical numerical methods textbook(1-3). The topics covered are: introduction to linear algebra, the solution of systems of linear equations, curve-fitting, interpolation, and the solution of ordinary differential equations. In the next 2 weeks a brief introduction to controls and/or vibrations is given. The accompanying laboratory exercises involve

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Reza Raeisi; Deepak Anand

hardware for remote data acquisition to monitor and collect temperature andreport back wirelessly to be further processed by the embedded microcontroller. One RFmodems is used to communicate with the rest of the RF modems and receives the temperaturefrom the remote locations. Project is implemented by using the HCS12 Dragon 12 plusDevelopment Board as embedded microcontroller and “Code Warrior”, an IntegratedDevelopment Environment (IDE) for embedded applications. The software is written in ‘C’programming language using the Code Warrior IDE. The Code Warrior IDE has been developedby Freescale Semiconductor Company[1].IntroductionIndustrial wireless modem accepts serial data (typically using RS-232, RS-422, or RS-485standards) and transmits it

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

David Lanning

: a) Calculation of the force in a structural member of a simple two or three member truss. b) Calculation of the shear force at an arbitrary location in a beam. c) Calculation of the second moment of area with respect to the centroid. Proceedings of the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Pacific Southwest Regional Conference 216 d) Understanding the concepts of static determinacy and static indeterminacy. e) Prediction of the shape of a bending moment diagram for a given shear force diagram.An example question is shown in Figure 1. The follow-on question asks the student to calculatethe second area

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Jesa H. Kreiner; Peter W. Othmer; Timothy W. Lancey

229Balance Response Platform for Stability Assessment for KinesiologyRehabilitation Device after Knee SurgeryLift for Placing and Extracting of a Handicapped Person to the PoolRobotic Painting DeviceConversion of an Internal Combustion Automobile into an Electric VehicleHovercraft Vehicle DesignPlatform for Mounting Inspection CamerasThermal Management UnitSolar Hot Dog CookerAutomatic Shish Kebab MachineRickshaw DesignSterling EngineMovable Mirror Focusing Solar CollectorReferences 1. Kreiner, Jesa, “A Contemporary Method of Teaching Machine Design Courses”. Event # 1824, 86th Annual Conference of the ASEE, University of British Columbia, ASEE Journal October 1978, Vol. 69. 2. Kreiner, Jesa and S. Krishnamurthy, “ Relevance of

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Kate Disney; John Krupczak

. The lab projects either require students to takeapart a device and analyze the functional parts (mechanical dissection) or build from scratch anew device (i.e. “make-and-take” projects).Core Technology is defined as technology that is familiar to students as users. Core Technologyis also technology that appears repeatedly in many engineered systems. Examples of CoreTechnologies are 1) a speaker, 2) a radio, 3) the LED, 4) the transistor, 4) the lever, 5) theinternal combustion engine, 6) a DC motor, etc. These technologies are so familiar in everydaysystems that students have a starting point from which to build their knowledge.All people can and should understand the workings of common core technologies and have abasic understanding of the

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Hassan Badkoobehi

. This is a problem that the new generation will have to learn to understand and dealwith.Index Terms—sustainability, renewable energy, waste minimization, and green building. I. INTRODUCTIONThe duty of an engineer first and foremost is always the health and safety of the public. SpecificallyCanon 1 which states “Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welfare of the public andshall strive to comply with the principles of sustainable development in the performance of their pro-fessional duties.” In general design standards have been written and constructed to help engineers up-hold this standard of protection of the public either by negligence or unethical conduct. However theduty of the

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Vasco D. Polyzoev; Eniko T. Enikov

carbon rod. The other end of the rod is attached to an extension of the shaft of a low-friction potentiometer. The potentiometer is fixed on a plastic stand at the proper height, so thatthe pendulum can swing freely. A 2” propeller U-80 is attached to the motor shaft to produce athrust force in order to control the angular displacement of the pendulum from the verticalposition (fig. 1). A custom designed circuit board produces the controlled voltage supply for themotor via Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) with a resolution of 0.05V, and reads out the voltageon the potentiometer, which is proportional to the angular position of the pendulum. Thesefunctions are implemented using a Microchip PIC16F690 microcontroller, mounted on a ZIFsocket for

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Pradip Peter Dey; Thomas M. Gatton; Mohammad N. Amin; Mudasser F. Wyne; Gordon W. Romney; Alireza Farahani; Arun Datta; Hassan Badkoobehi; Ralph Belcher; Ogun Tigli; Albert P. Cruz

197 Agile Problem Driven Teaching in Engineering, Science and Technology Pradip Peter Dey1, Thomas M. Gatton1, Mohammad N. Amin1, Mudasser F. Wyne1, Gordon W. Romney1, Alireza Farahani1, Arun Datta2, Hassan Badkoobehi1, Ralph Belcher1, Ogun Tigli1 and Albert P. Cruz1 1 National University, 3678 Aero Court, San Diego, CA 92123, U.S.A. 2 National University Community Research Institute, 11255 North Torrey Pines, La Jolla, CA 92037ABSTRACT:In problem driven teaching, all major teaching activities are driven by a problem or a set ofproblems. Some

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Vince Bertsch; John Krupczak; Kate Disney; Elsa Garmire; Tim Simpson

final dimension –the ‘critical thinking and decision-making’ dimension – has to do with the person’s approach totechnological issues” [3]. This dimension enables individuals to ask informed questions aboutrisks and benefits when introduced to a new technology, and to participate in discussions anddebates about the potential uses of that technology. Four content areas were also defined. Theseare: (1) technology and society, (2) design, (3) products and systems, and (4) characteristics,concepts, and connections. In addition, an assessment matrix was created that combined the fourcontent areas (the rows of the matrix) with the three cognitive dimensions (the columns of thematrix), and it is this matrix that lead to the development of the proposed

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Lizabeth Schlemer; Jose Macedo

, and undergraduate technology studentsare put on teams together in laboratory courses. Although only in the beginning stages of thiscurricular change, these researchers feel it will be an effective method to simulate the workingenvironment for the future graduates. Adams, Zhang and Burbank[1] placed undergraduates andgraduate students together on teams with the explicit goal of preparing undergrads for graduatestudy and research. They observed both increasing graduate enrollment and higher quality ofgraduate students after implementation of these teams. The School of Electrical and InformationEngineering at the University of South Australia experimented with grouping seniors with highschool students on a design project8. The projects were

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Teresa M. Ogletree; Brian P. Self; James Widmann

Activities, were first developed in the mid 1970s to serveas a tool for understanding the problem solving thought processes of children studyingmathematics [2]. Rather than pushing students toward a particular solution, MEAs focus on thedevelopment of an adaptive problem solving strategy or model that can be repeatedly used. Theoriginators of MEAs propose six primary principles to develop new problems [1]. 1) The Model-Construction Principle requires that the students come up with a procedure for explaining a “mathematically significant” situation. 2) The Reality Principle puts the problem in context and offers a client who needs a realistic engineering solution to a problem. 3) The Self-Assessment Principle enables students to

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Lora Goodwin; Brian P. Self; James Widmann

will becorrelated to scores on a midterm test and a final exam to see if there is a correlation betweenstudent conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge.Background: Procedural Knowledge versus Conceptual KnowledgeProcedural knowledge typically classifies knowledge of processes, algorithms or specific stepsinvolved in completing a problem or task. This type of knowledge plays a very important role incompleting tasks which require hands-on experience, or in solving problems which may ariseoften or need to be completed quickly without time for thought or analysis [1]. Proceduralknowledge, however, has limitations and does not necessarily correspond to a strong conceptualunderstanding of the concepts at hand. It is typically applicable to one

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Frederick Harris; Gordon Lee; Stuart H. Rubin; T. C. Ting; Billy Gaston; Gongzhu Hu

represents a summary of the discussions ofresearchers from industry, government and academia who were assembled to address how thisevolution of computing can impact education in the next revolution. 1. Introduction The concept of computing has been continuously evolving. In the early 1980s, it was themarriage of computing and communication technologies that created the era of internet-basedinformation resources that continues to affect and penetrate into our daily activities throughinformation accessing. Currently, this polygamy of computing, communication, storage, sensoryand displaying technologies impacts almost all social, cultural, and economical development aswell as our daily life. That is, the impact of computing places a multitude

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Lawrence Fong; Brian P. Self

at the catapult during the launch.Every MEA should include a ''self-assessment'' aspect. This allows students to check their workand see if their engineering analysis was correct. Currently, the students can check their analysisby seeing if their calculated launch distance corresponded with the actual distance on launch day.However, this self-assessment will be expanded by the instrumentation of strain gages and anaccelerometer - allowing for the verification of predicted results with experimental data.   Figure 1. Catapult used in Dynamics courses. Proceedings of the 2009 American Society for Engineering Education Pacific

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Geon S. Seo; Eniko T. Enikov

information—in order to create useful toolsand technologies. Consequently, engineering education has the objective of not only presenting thescientific principles, i.e., engineering science, but also of teaching students how to apply these toreal problems. It is not surprising, therefore, that hands-on laboratories have been an integral part ofthe engineering curriculum since its inception [1]. Their importance has been recognized by theAccreditation Board of Engineering Education (ABET) and its predecessors by creation of criteriarequiring adequate laboratory practice for students [2-6]. Unfortunately, during the last severaldecades, engineering laboratories have become highly complex and expensive, with multiplesimulation tools and computer

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Debra Larson

“apply knowledge” in four technical areas appropriate to civil engineering.ASCE adopted the subcommittee’s revised BOK1 as the standing BOK1, and it is this versionthat is used in this paper. The revised BOK1 outcomes for the bachelor’s stage of thefulfillment pathway, along with the corresponding level of achievement at graduation and thecorresponding ABET Criterion 3 outcome, are provided in Table 1.Table 1. ASCE’s BOK1 OutcomesBOK1 Outcomes at the Baccalaureate Achieve. ABET Level Criteria

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Kyle A. Watson; Ashland O. Brown

engineering areas, including mechanics of materials, vibrations, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, and machine design and analysis. The current paper focuses in more detail on the heat transfer component of this project. The educational goals of the heat transfer tutorials include the following: 1) to develop thermal FE tutorials that are easily accessible and require minimal instructor effort in order to integrate them into a required mechanical engineering undergraduate heat transfer course, 2) to provide undergraduate engineering students with a basic understanding of FE theory as applied to thermal analyses, 3) to provide undergraduate engineering students with an ability to apply commercial FE

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Said Shakerin

demonstrations; these range from simple to complex,inexpensive and homemade devices to elaborate, expensive and commercially availableunits. Children’s toys and the so called “executive toys” or novelties have also beenemployed as demonstration tools7-10. Properly selected toys offer at least threeadvantages: (1) they are relatively inexpensive and readily available for immediate use;(2) there is a good chance that students are familiar with them from their ownexperiences; and (3) they exhibit a wide variety of scientific concepts. In addition to theirutility for classroom demonstrations, toys can be used for other educational purposessuch as informal science education and inspiring ideas for student projects.The literature on toys in education is

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Gordana Jovanovic Dolecek; Fred Harris

332 Understanding Histograms, Probability and Probability Density Using MATLAB Gordana Jovanovic Dolecek 1, 2 and fred harris2 1 Department of Electronics Institute INAOE, Puebla, Mexico E-mail: gordana@inaoep.mx 2 Department of Electrical Engineering, SDSU San Diego,USA E-mail: fred.harris@sdsu.eduAbstract This paper presents an attractive way to introduce the fundamental terms used to describe arandom variable using a

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Ranjan K. Sen; Pradip Peter Dey

 that a second level programming course should be based on such an approach. Such a course will be useful for students as well as professional programmers who need this new  skill  in  the  light  of  more  and  more  multi‐core,  many‐core  and  cluster  based  commodity  multi‐computing. 1. Problem statement Parallel  programming  has  traditionally  been  a  highly  specialized  area  of  programming.  Interestingly  a very  limited  aspect  of  parallel  processing  is  often  known  to  traditional  sequential  programmer.  This  is multi‐threading  and  is  used  to  improve  response  time  by  off  loading  slow  computations  such  as input/outputs  to  a  thread  different  from  the  main  thread.  However,  in  parallel  programming

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Gordana Jovanovic Dolecek; Fred Harris

370 MATLAB-Based Demo Program for Discrete-Time Convolution Gordana Jovanovic Dolecek 1,2and fred harris2 1 Department of Electronics Institute INAOE, Puebla, Mexico E-mail: gordana@inaoep.mx 2 Department of Electrical Engineering, SDSU San Diego,USA E-mail: fred.harris@sdsu.edu1. Introduction Though the field of engineering has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, the teachingengineering has changed relatively little1. Many of the

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Eniko T. Enikov; Malcolm T. Gibson

380 Expanding Engineering Education through Undergraduate Research Experience in Micro-Robotic Drug Delivery Eniko T. Enikov 1 , Malcolm T. Gibson 2 Advanced Micro and Nano Systems Laboratory, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, The University of Arizona. 1 Principal Investigator, 2 Undergraduate StudentAbstract This paper examines the use of MEMS research in bio-medical micro-robotic drugdelivery as an education vehicle for expanding the effectiveness of undergraduate engineeringeducation in order to meet advancing challenges of the future

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2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

DingXin Cheng; Joel Arthur; Albert M. Johnson

currently available in civil engineering can cover all the aspects of it. At thebeginning of the project, two different approaches were compared: 1. developing only one new class to include all aspects of waste tire applications 2. add teaching modules to different levels and related civil engineering classesThe second method was chosen because it is more flexible and can reach more students. It alsogives students more opportunity to be exposed to waste tire educational materials.Therefore, it was proposed to develop waste tire application teaching modules for a variety ofcivil engineering courses from freshman level to senior level. Each module contained one ormore lectures. Figure 1 illustrates the courses that training modules were developed

Collection

2009 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Stephen Beck; Joshua Brent; Thomas Brown; Agostino Cala; Eniko T. Enikov; Richard Lucio

395 Engineering 101: Peer Teaching with LEGO NXT Robotics Stephen Beck1, Joshua Brent1, Thomas Brown1, Agostino Cala1, Eniko T. Enikov2, Richard Lucio III1 1 Undergraduate Student Mentors; 2Faculty advisor Advanced Micro and Nano Systems Laboratory, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, The University of ArizonaAbstractThe vast amount of knowledge and the multitude of disciplines encompassed by engineering canoften be intimidating and difficult, creating an educational barrier for beginning students. Thegoal of an