) promoting student enthusiasm, and 3) providingexposure to real-world engineering. The remainder of this paper discusses theseprinciples and provides examples of how they have been implemented into the hydraulicstructure design course.Lab and lecture integrationIt is apparent that the learning environment within the engineering classroom is enhancedand engineering concepts (the big picture) are more adequately retained when in-classlectures are coupled with related hands-on experience, such as laboratory exercises.When the topics and assignments of the lectures and laboratories are integrated, thelearning in the lab reinforces the principles taught in the classroom and vise versa. Aneffective inductive/deductive learning environment is
involved in using continually-evolving system-level design tools and theefforts made to reduce their learning times.IntroductionABET 2000 requires providing students with a significant hands-on design experience.Graduating electrical engineering students should have the ability to develop system-leveldesigns for a variety of applications, implement these designs in functional hardware, and test thehardware in real-life operating conditions. To achieve such professional competence, studentsshould be required to participate in a sequence of hardware design experiments and projects.These laboratory exercises aim at: a) sharpening students’ abilities to design complex digitalcircuits and systems, and to interface these designs to peripheral devices, b
experiments. The students have indicated that they would like to see more use ofcomputer data acquisition systems and the availability of computers in the laboratories so theycan perform on-site data analysis and calibration. Currently there is only one mobile dataacquisition system that is rarely used in some of the laboratory courses. To address this concern,the engineering faculty at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne have integratedcomputer data acquisition in some of the existing and new experiments.One of the new “high tech” laboratory experimental apparatus that was designed, developed, andconstructed is a bench-top air conditioning processes demonstrating unit. This experimentalapparatus is currently being used to demonstrate to
technology education which helps to impart the hands-on aspect of thesubject area. To achieve this objective of providing practical knowledge skills, precisioninstrumentation with controlled environment is needed which may not be easily available inuniversity laboratories.This paper describes an innovative approach of team-teaching this new course in metrology. Aworking relationship has been established with a local A2LA-certified (American Associationfor Laboratory Accreditation) calibration laboratory where students get to learn the practicalaspects of precision measurements. The paper describes the course structure and gives somesample theory and experiments that students learn. The paper also discusses the lessons learnedfrom the students
; Simulation in the ClassroomAbstractProcess control is a difficult subject for students to grasp. Student difficulties includeunderstanding how to apply what they are seeing in the classroom, how to connect it to othermaterial they have learned, how to design a control system and how to understand the unsteadystate nature of control problems. It can also be a difficult subject for faculty to teach particularlyfor them to include both analysis and synthesis, both transfer functions and equipment.Often separate laboratory sessions and simulation assignments are used to help studentsunderstand the application of what they are doing and to gain an appreciation for non-steadystate operation. However these effective approaches do have limitations. The
called a lecture-and-labenvironment. This environment traditionally uses lectures on subject matter and is supplementedby laboratory experience. If the laboratory experiments are not generating the expected results,very often the whole experiment needs to be repeated. The unexpected results could be due tofaulty components, incorrect design specifications, or improper connections. Nonetheless,implementing a circuit in the lab with undesired output might be time consuming. However,having an electronics simulator will enable the students as well as the instructor to analyze theperformance of a circuit prior to implementing the actual hardware components.This paper investigates design, simulation and implementation of a decade counter using
AC 2007-2288: EXPOSING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO THE ROLE OFENGINEERING AND ADVANCED MATERIALS IN DEVELOPINGALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCESGukan Rajaram, North Carolina A&T State University Gukan Rajaram is a Post-doctoral research scientist in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina A&T State University. His research is in the area of electrode and electrolyte synthesis and characterization for solid oxide fuel cells. He also teaches senior level mechanical engineering laboratory and actively involved in K-12 outreach activities.Devdas Pai, North Carolina A&T State University Devdas M. Pai is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering
configuring system and displaying data.Mechanical Engineering Laboratory This laboratory course is a requirement of ourmechanical engineering juniors and has an annualenrollment of ~40 students. Wireless sensors are beingutilized to study the deformation of beams and their modesof vibration. To illustrate the use, Fig. 5 shows an Vertical beamsexperiment in which the response of a small structure to Excitation motorvibration is being analyzed. A small electric motor with aneccentric drive induces vibration into the structure. The Strain gageflexible vertical beams will exhibit different modes ofvibration depending on the motors
knowledge, the ability towork in teams is one of the most important attributes engineering graduates can possess.Course HistoryIn the semesters leading up to Fall 2005, the UMR Material and Energy Balances course wastaught twice per year, with the majority of students enrolling in the fall. The spring semester wastypically much smaller, with repeat and transfer students comprising most of the enrollment.The course was structured with two standard 50-minute lecture periods and one three-hourlaboratory period per week. The laboratory period was reserved for students to work onhomework, learn computer programming skills, and complete additional practice problems.Personal Response DevicesBeginning in Fall 2005, personal response devices (“clickers
placefully qualified engineering, math and science faculty, technical and computer laboratories,established linkages with industry — as well as data gleaned from previous feasibility studies onengineering at CCSU. All of this was the result of a well developed strategic plan andconsequent strategic management. At the moment of expanding its academic offer to includeengineering, the school had four engineering technology majors, three technology majors, andalso programs in technology education and applied sciences.As always is the case with new academic disciplines, implementation of the new mechanicalengineering program was a tremendous challenge, both in terms of logistics and resources, butforemost in regard to curriculum and program mission.Along
experimental characterization of multiphase flow phenomena. Page 12.895.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Innovative Fluid Mechanics Experiments for Modern Mechanical Engineering ProgramAbstract One of the primary objectives of the Petroleum Institute (PI) is to prepare futuremechanical engineers to assume successful career paths in the Oil and Gas industry.With this in mind, a state of the art core measurement laboratory represents an importantfacility for teaching use within a Mechanical Engineering Program. Such a facility hasbeen developed at the PI, and is utilized at undergraduate level
, web-based format to regional community collegesand 3+2 partner institutions (i.e., 4-year universities without engineering programs).The first course in our freshmen engineering series is a hands-on laboratory/lecture course thatstudents in all engineering majors take. The course is designed to let students experience what itis that engineers do in each of the majors offered. PowerPoint lectures, based on the on-campuslectures were modified to add recordings of the spoken lectures and animated sample problemsto lead the students through problems that ordinarily would be written on the board in the lecturehall. All lectures and assignments were posted on Blackboard. The greatest challenge inconverting this course into a successful distance
principles which form the basis of the author’s methods for effective teaching arediscussed. Additional topics covered in this paper include using lecture time effectively,conducting a laboratory course, administering assignments and exams, and grading consistentlyand fairly. The effective use of helpers such as homework graders and laboratory teachingassistants is discussed. The author also addresses the use of technology for teaching, specificallywarning about becoming overly reliant on such technology.IntroductionIn today’s university environment, much is expected from professors regarding the education ofstudents. One primary duty and responsibility of the university professor is to teach effectively.Specifically, the engineering professor is to
visiting an aerosol research laboratoryon campus, a roof-top meteorological and air sampling station, and outdoor atmosphericobservations including heterogeneous nucleation (mixing clouds) from a local power station.These trips allowed students to see the equipment used in collecting data and performingatmospheric experiments in a laboratory setting and to gain a better appreciation for how theyfunction and the limits of what they can do.The final major class activity was a field trip to the Marian Koshland Science Museum of theNational Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. This museum is dedicated to only twoexhibits, one of which has been climate change. Students took an independent audio tour of thismuseum and had the opportunity to work with
AC 2007-2053: AN INTEGRATED UNDERGRADUATE DYNAMIC SYSTEMSTEACHING METHODOLOGY UTILIZING ANALYTICAL ANDEXPERIMENTAL APPROACHESPeter Avitabile, University of Massachusetts-Lowell Peter Avitabile is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Director of the Modal Analysis and Controls Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is a Registered Professional Engineer with a BS, MS and Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering and a member of ASEE, ASME, IES and SEM. Page 12.222.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 AN INTEGRATED UNDERGRADUATE
features to promoteactive learning, including (1) hands-on activities and demonstrations, (2) the integrated use ofwireless laptops through an in-house developed web-based learning tool to promotemetacognition and assessment of student learning, and (3) a capstone ethics project wherestudents complete a risk assessment of the impact of nanotechnology on society. Additionally,this course will focus on synthesizing fundamental concepts in science and engineering towardsapplications in nanotechnology. The other new sophomore course, Material and Energy Balancesin Nanotechnology (ChE 214), is a ChE specific laboratory-based course, emphasizing how thefundamental skills students have just learned couple to nanotechnology. For ChE students, theapproach
Write a report outlining a design strategy and assessing its strengths, weaknesses, and feasibility o Write a report describing functional/technical specifications of the proposed design strategy • Write an end-of-project report presenting the final design, strategy, technical description, and performance assessmentThese outcomes were then used as a template to guide development of the course.In order to achieve both the education and design goals of this course, class periods are Page 12.409.4organized to be approximately half lecture and half laboratory. Lectures and labs are held in thesame
AC 2007-598: PROJECT GUISE: CURRICULAR INTRODUCTION ANDRESOURCES FOR TEACHING INSTRUMENTATIONDavid Beams, University of Texas-Tyler Page 12.1201.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Project GUISE: Curricular Introduction and Resources for Teaching InstrumentationAbstractProject GUISE (General-purpose, Universal Instrumentation System for Education) is acomputer-based laboratory instrument combining LabVIEW virtual-instrumentationsoftware and custom external hardware developed with support of the National ScienceFoundation under grant DUE 9952292. Descriptions of its development have beenpreviously published. However, an opportunity to
AC 2007-1240: REAL-TIME ACCESS TO EXPERIMENTAL DATA USINGTABLET PC’SGregory Mason, Seattle University Dr. Mason received a BSME from Gonzaga University, an MS in Computer Integrated Manufacturing from Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Washington-Seattle. He developed a robotics laboratory for the Department of Defense in Keyport, WA and was involved in numerous automation projects, including a robotic container welding system and a robotic torpedo fueling system. While at the University of Washington Dr. Mason did post-doctoral research for NASA, designing a multirate flutter suppression system for a commercial jet. His current
AC 2007-1864: ENTANGLED PHOTON EXPERIMENTS FOR ENGINEERINGTECHNOLOGYScott Shepard, University of Central Florida Dr. Shepard received a Ph.D. from MIT and worked at Bell Labs for six years. He has been teaching in Engineering Technology for five years and is currently at the University of Central Florida. His research interests include: innovative laboratory components for undergraduates; telecommunications; sensors; and solar energy. Page 12.678.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Entangled Photon Experiments for Engineering TechnologyAbstractThe fact that a Quantum Computer
power systems. He is a senior member of IEEE and ISA. Page 12.339.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 CAN-Based Fieldbus ExperimentsAbstractThis paper presents Controller Area Network (CAN) based hardware experiments, andintegration of these experiments in instrumentation and control systems courses laboratories atthe Bowling Green State University (BGSU). A general purpose PIC microcontroller basedCANstart module is first introduced. This board provides communication features for simpledigital inputs such as switches and digital outputs such as LED’s. It also has analog inputs andrelay outputs
50-minute lecture periods CEE 3500 Fluid Mechanics Junior Fall 3 cr. 3 50-minute lecture periods CEE 3902 Civil Engineering Materials Junior Fall 2 cr. 1 50-minute lect. & 1 2-hr lab CEE 3911 Fluid Mechanics Laboratory Junior Spring 1 cr. 1 3-hr lab Proceedings of the 2007 Middle Atlantic Section Fall Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 2The current sequence begins in the spring semester of the freshman year and extends to the spring of thejunior year. Villanova has a common
processes, electro-deposition, chemical mechanical planarization, I-line and deep UV wafer steppers, Perkin ElmerMEBES III electron beam mask writer, and device design, modeling and test laboratories. Theprogram remains the only ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology)accredited Bachelor of Science program granting a degree in Microelectronic Engineering. Theprogram, which includes 5 quarters of required co-op, currently has over 130 undergraduatestudents. The Co-op is a program commences after the second year, and students alternateschool with paid employment in the semiconductor industry. The laboratories at RIT include thelargest university clean room for IC fabrication and are partially supported by our industrialaffiliates
courses are taught by individuals with extensive academic knowledge butrather limited industrial experience. They are theoretical experts but often lack the practicalexposure that is also required to be a successful practicing engineer. Even the assignments,laboratory experiments, and projects reflect this academic slant to their engineering education.Traditionally this is how engineering classes are taught focusing on theoretical solutions tohypothetical problems. The real world engineering perspective is classically absent or minimal atbest from the coursework and curriculum. However, the importance of this real worldengineering experience cannot be overlooked.Two seasoned engineering professors in the Engineering & Design (E&D
. We make the followingobservations from Fig. 1: • Organization was noticeably improved; this could probably be attributed to the fact that all assignments in this sample were laboratory reports were apparently created using standardized guides or templates. • Neither author noted much change in the quality of the content of laboratory reports. This is somewhat surprising, given the expectation that students at this level would be adapting to the idiom of their professional communities of discourse. A possible explanation is that wide discrepancies in participants’ writing samples were noted, and this range of responses was reflected in the overall rating. • Evaluations of mechanics showed problems
traditional teaching laboratory courses with design, build,and test (DBT) activities. In particular, the following principles and methods are adapted: ahands-on experience integrated to abstract concepts discussed in lectures, a clear linkage toindustrial applications, and Design Build and Test (DBT) projects. Specifically, two DBT coursemodules are developed: the heat exchanger and scaled building air-conditioning system. Theproject attempts to improve the relevance of the stand-alone ME lab course to the lecture coursesthrough the execution of DBT activities. This adaptation enhances students’ learning of thermalscience subjects by providing students an enhanced, open-ended design problem experience inthe mid-stage of the curriculum rather than
CurriculumAbstractThe Aerospace Engineering Department at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, is inthe later phase of a dynamic experiment to revitalize its “hands on” approach toundergraduate engineering education and bring it better in line with evolving accreditationstandards. Part of this plan is to introduce commercially available aircraft manufacturing andfabrication “kits” into its laboratory curriculum. This has been largely accomplished, and thechallenges of the initial phases of this task were presented in a previous publication. Thispaper presents how the lessons learned and resulting innovative learning experiences arebeing integrated throughout the aerospace curriculum with a critical eye towards meetingaccreditation standards. These
interests are laboratory/project-driven learning and integration of research into undergraduate education. Dr. Yao is a member of the American Society of Engineering Education.Loren Limberis, East Carolina University Loren Limberis is an Assistant Professor of Engineering at East Carolina University. Prior to joining ECU, he was a faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The College of New Jersey. He received both his BS degree in Electrical Engineering and PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Utah. His research interests include the study of motor protein motility mechanisms and the incorporation of motor proteins and their associated tracks into bio
methods for improving or supplementing the teaching of heat transferincluding the use of spreadsheets to solve two-dimensional heat transfer problems7, the use of atransport approach in teaching turbulent thermal convection8, the use of computers to evaluateview factors in thermal radiation9, implementation of a computational method for teaching freeconvection10, and the use of an integrated experimental/analytical/numerical approach that bringsthe excitement of discovery to the classroom11. Supplemental heat transfer experiments for usein the laboratory or classroom have also been presented, including rather novel experiments suchas the drying of a towel12 and the cooking of French fry-shaped potatoes13. Suggestions for theintegration of heat
AC 2007-519: SITE ANALYSIS AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATIONAdrian Miron, University of Cincinnati Dr. Adrian Miron received his B.S. and M.S. in Applied Physics from University of Bucharest and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from University of Cincinnati (UC). He is a research professor within the Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering Department at UC, where he has developed and taught graduate core courses and has conducted research on various nuclear and radiological engineering topics. Previously, Dr. Miron worked at Argonne National Laboratory in the Diagnostic and Control Group within the Nuclear Engineering Division, and collaborated closely with the RESRAD team within