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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Dilpreet S. Bajwa; Sreekala G. Bajwa

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0058 Industry and Students Perception of Capstone ProjectsDilpreet S Bajwa, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Sreekala G Bajwa, Agriculturaland Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND.Email – dilpreet.bajwa@ndsu.edu , sreekala.bajwa@ndsu.eduAbstractCapstone projects are designed to help students learn technical, communication and interpersonalskills that will ultimately provide them with a broad knowledge base required at the start of theirprofessional careers. Engineering capstone experience prepares students to work in a productivemanner in teams. It is expected that the students will learn problems solving

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Annamalai Pandian

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0002Transforming senior students to Competent Engineers through Project Based Learning Dr. Annamalai Pandian Assistant Professor University of Wisconsin-Stout Menomonie, WI 54751 USAAbstractThis paper focus on transforming the senior level engineering students to competentmanufacturing engineers thru project based learning. The final project work for themanufacturing system design and simulation (MFGE-440) course is geared toward challengingthe students to develop a detailed

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Steven Buchhop; Tate Carlson; Evan Edwards; Prakash Ranganathan; Reza Fazel-Rezai

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0014 Household Energy Aware Real-Time System (HEARTS): A Capstone Project Design Steven Buchhop, Tate Carlson, Evan Edwards, Prakash Ranganathan, and Reza Fazel-Rezai University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202 prakash.ranganathan@engr.und.eduAbstract— This paper discusses a design framework and student experiences of a capstone project carried by students at theDepartment of Electrical Engineering, University of North Dakota (UND). The goal of this capstone project was to provide a“Smart Home” that

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Xiang-Fa Wu

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0010 Implementation of hands-on nanofabrication projects into undergraduate mechanical engineering design courses Xiang-Fa Wu Department of Mechanical Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58108 Phone: 701-231-8836; Fax: 701-231-8913; E-mail: xiangfa.wu@ndsu.eduAbstract Substantial progress has been made in nanotechnology in the last two decades, which hasnoticeably shaped today’s engineering activities and people’s life and will significantly influencethe entire society in the near future. Today’s undergraduate engineering education needs torepresent such a

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Scott G. Gabert; Jeff C. Kaiser; Derek J. Snyder; Prakash Ranganathan; Reza Fazel-Rezai

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0015 Data Acquisition and Control of Microgrid Using ZigBee – A senior design project Scott G. Gabert, Jeff C. Kaiser, Derek J. Snyder, Prakash Ranganathan and Reza Fazel-RezaiAbstract—This paper describes a novel switching mechanism to acquire data and control a microgrid.The grid operates in two distinct modes; Islanding and grid-connected modes. In islanding mode, thecircuit should be able to isolate sections of the grid when the electrical grid experiences failure. In grid-connected mode, the microgrid has to supply and maintain the power balance to critical loads. Solarpanels act as one of the Distributed energy resource (DER

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Adam Kramschuster; Gregory Slupe

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0056 A Collaborative, Cross-Disciplinary Project between Engineering Courses and Programs Centered on Design for Manufacturability Adam Kramschuster and Gregory Slupe kramschustera@uwstout.edu; slupeg@uwstout.edu Department of Engineering and Technology, University of Wisconsin-Stout 807 3rd Street East, Menomonie, WI 54751, USAAbstractThis manuscript describes a collaborative, cross-disciplinary effort between the B.S. inManufacturing Engineering program and the B.S. in Plastics Engineering program at theUniversity of Wisconsin-Stout. In one course, plastics

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Sousada Chidthachack; Mark A. Schulte; Forster D. Ntow; Jia-Ling Lin; Tamara J. Moore

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0021 Engineering Students Learn ABET Professional Skills: A Comparative Study of Project-Based-Learning (PBL) versus Traditional StudentsSousada Chidthachack, Marc A. Schulte, Forster D. Ntow, Jia-Ling Lin, and Tamara J. Moore 1 STEM Education Center, University of Minnesota Twin Cities 1School of Engineering Education, Purdue Universitychid0008@umn.edu, schu2891@umn.edu, ntowx001@umn.edu, jllin@umn.edu, and tamara@purdue.eduAbstract This paper presents preliminary findings of a study that investigated the learning experiencesof students who enrolled in two

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Francis Peloubet; Eakalak Khan; G. Padmanabhan

our graduating seniors outside of their normal comfort zone in a structuredand supportive class environment. The course has steadily evolved to keep pace with the ever-changing science and technology and the evolving expectations of the profession and the societywe serve. In this model, carefully chosen real world projects are assigned. Faculty and guestspeakers make presentations on engineering design process; engineering project management;leadership in an engineering environment; relationship of engineering projects, business, andpublic policy; global perspective in engineering; and professional career and licensure. Studentswork together in teams while a select number of faculties act as technical consultants. Otherfaculty members act as

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Andy S. Peng; Robert Nelson; Cheng Liu; Ahmet Turkmen; Wei Shi; Jia-Ling Lin

applying a hybrid instructional model to a newlydeveloped computer engineering course at UW–Stout, which includes the delivery of onlinelectures through streaming videos combined with bi-weekly in-class lectures as well as hands-onlaboratory exercises related to the course material. The design of this curriculum follows aframework that was developed to fulfill the course requirements. In addition to traditional classsettings, the course also implements a team project which has several reporting components tomonitor students’ learning progress. Multiple in-class surveys were conducted throughout thesemester to obtain course feedback from the students. The instructor also constantly solicitedand collected student comments about the course during the

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Jerry Gao; Lianbo Zhu

adjunct instructors from the construction industry. They usually are current construction engineers or managers who have many years of construction experience and are rich of professional skills. Then these instructors teamed up with full-time faculty to co-teach courses. This approach combines the high quality of engineering theory with valuable professional skills to provide students with an excellent learning opportunity. • Professional development in the industry – faculty members were encouraged to obtain summer internships in the local construction firms to develop professional skills such as surveying, project control, field management, etc.The implementation of these approaches makes sure that

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Cory J. Prust; Stephen M. Williams

the then Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) in themid-1980’s. At that time, ABET began to specify a “culminating design experience” for allaccredited engineering curricula.For many schools, the shift of accreditation criteria to assessment and evaluation processes hasimpacted senior design courses. Student outcomes are often assessed in the senior designcourse(s). Integration of student outcome assessment in design course(s) has met with varyingdegrees of success.Senior design has presented an opportunity to increase interaction with external constituents thathave an interest in projects and in hiring graduates. While these interactions often strengthenoverall student experience, in some cases they present unanticipated

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Charles McIntyre

responsibilities that are required for atypical construction project, i.e., construction documents and codes, material estimating, projectscheduling, procurement and delivery, actual construction, inspections, change orders, projectdelivery, demolition, and a final project report. The “revised” course was delivered during the2012 Fall Semester to sixty-five (65) students. Student feedback was extremely positive.IntroductionCurrent research within the engineering disciplines indicates that a first-year (freshman) hands-on course that emphasizes real-world design experiences can increase recruiting and retentionrates and provide the groundwork for future academic “learning” in subsequent coursework.3,8,14Within the engineering disciplines, there exists a

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Nischal Adhikari; Sima Noghanian

with environmental features and make their way to receiver. Interactionincludes: • Reflection off the ground • Reflection off the surface of a building face • Diffraction off of an edge of a building • Transmission through a wallThe software uses advanced high-frequency electromagnetic methods to provide accurate resultsover a frequency range from approximately 50 MHz to 40 GHz. In this paper, we have presentedthe ray tracing software with a unique approach to attract the student by giving a wholesome ideaof designing and running a project in WI. Wireless Ray Tracing Education Land (WRTEL)8,Urbana™ 3-D Wireless Toolkit9,10, SE-RAY-EM11,12 are a few examples of many ray-tracingsimulation software which has different features and

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Bakr M. Aly Ahmed; Mike Christenson; David A. Crutchfield

. As justification for theproposal, the executive summary states:“This project will benefit all NDSU students by improving their access to a specificcategory of technology which is presently grossly underrepresented at the University:technology for measuring, displaying, and predicting the energy efficiency of buildings.... students in NDSU’s professional design and engineering programs will benefit fromaccess to technology which improves their ability to design, construct, and manageenergy-efficient buildings.”The team’s proposal was partially approved in Spring 2011. Among the approved portions of theproposal were several tools and technologies related to the investigation and diagnosticevaluation of environmental conditions. The approval

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Cristinel Ababei; Anca M. Miron

% − ofwomen in electrical and computer engineering fields. Its goal is to address this gender gapproblem by exposing women to electrical engineering at an earlier age, thereby fosteringexcitement about pursuing careers in electrical engineering and higher confidence in theirmath, science, and problem-solving skills. Designed for the duration of one week, the campactivities include hands-on microcontroller based projects using Arduino boards, classdiscussions, meetings with female professors and students, and tours of local high-techcompanies. Utilizing entry and exit questionaires, we found that 50% of the participantsfelt empowered and declared that they wanted to become electrical engineers. We alsodiscuss several suggestions for improving future

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Nannan He; Gale Allen; Cameron Johnson

of automation components including programmable logic controllers (PLC’s),actuators and robots, sensors, motors, drivers, and operator control displays. Students design,simulate, build, test and document automation systems for capstone projects to demonstrate theirunderstanding of the subjects. The initial version of the courses and lab was described in a paperin late fall 2006 1.Since then, several different types of laboratory equipment have been added the course syllabusand material has been continuously improved. Active learning and hands-on learning are thebasis for instruction in the courses. Several short projects have been added to the course. Teamsof two-to-three students develop and complete capstone projects. More details about

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Audrey LaVallie; Eakalak Khan; G. Padmanabhan

ASEE-NMWSC2013-0004 Impact of a Research Experience Program on North Dakota Tribal College STEM Student Retention Audrey LaVallie1, Eakalak Khan2, and G. Padmanabhan2 1 Faculty, Turtle Mountain Community College, Belcourt, North Dakota (e-mail: alavallie@tm.edu) 2 Professor of Civil Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, North Dakota (e-mails: Eakalak.khan@ndsu.edu and g.padmanabhan@ndsu.edu respectively)Abstract Recent educational research shows that students who engage in research projects aremore likely to

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

J. E. Johnson; L. Stradins; S Springer; R. Asthana

theestate of Fulton and Edna Holtby. The goal was to promote professional activities of students,faculty, and staff in areas of research, scholarship, course development and professionaldevelopment by providing funds for stipend, travel, buyout for release time and purchase ofequipment, services and supplies. These funds were to be used to offer undergraduate andgraduate students opportunity to explore special topics outside of their formal coursework thatinspired their creativity and imagination through additional research and exploration and earncollege credit for their work. As structured coursework rarely offers extended, stress-freeenvironment conducive to learning and exploration, ideas were developed for student projects toprovide laboratory

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Nannan He; Han-Way Huang

face great challenges in gettingstudents to be capable of conducting efficient software development. In the last decade, model-based design (MBD) is an emerging development methodology for modern software. Itsefficiency has been demonstrated in large scale software engineering projects. This paperpresents our experience of integrating modern MBD concepts and tools into a ProgrammingTools (PT) course. First, the basic components in the MBD process are exposed to students,especially its two unique components - automated code generation and model-based verificationand validation (V&V). Second, three modeling languages: Matlab/Simulink, LabVIEW andSCADE are exposed to students. They all have been widely applied in embedded control

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Achintya N. Bezbaruah

Coordinator (IC) and his/her responsibilities includecoordination with CCs, preparation of information documents, and disseminationof information via multimedia. The CCs start working with their contacts in theirhome country immediately, and send out detailed information (in PowerPointslides) on the program to their contacts. The information on the program includeprogram objectives, expectations, deadlines, basic steps on how to do research,report writing and research presentation tips, and example projects (Figures 1-3).Once contacts (potential mentors for the research group) is established, individualteleconferences (via telephone or Skype or Google Hangout) are organized. TheCC, IC and/or PD discuss with each mentor how to form a project group and

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Naima Kaabouch; Deborah L. Worley; Jeremiah Neubert; Mohammad Khavanin

students early and very often, which increasesinstructor workload and effort [15, 16]. Other institutions augmented their freshman classes withhands-on activities [17-20].This paper describes a method that can be used to increase student retention, motivation, andeventual success in engineering. In our project, an NSF-funded initiative (Project DUE-0942270)at the University of North Dakota, we combined the use of engineering modules in calculusclasses and a peer mentoring program to address some of the common barriers to retention andsuccess. This paper describes only the peer mentoring program and the results of its assessment.Peer mentoring is defined as “a helping relationship in which two individuals of similar ageand/or experience come

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Bob Fourney; Jason Sternhagen; George Hamer; Cory Mettler

326the electrical engineering program, motivate the students by giving future lab exercises a senseof purpose, more closely tie the various EE undergraduate classes to each other, and more closelytie the senior design experience to the rest of the undergraduate curriculum. This course has nowbeen offered twice, in the spring of 2012 and 2013.The third stage of the FOCUSED concept includes modifying a minimum of one lab orsignificant assignment in at least one of the required courses each semester of the sophomoreand junior years. The selected assignment will be modified so as to provide a direct tie-in to anongoing senior design project. The students who were exposed to these senior design projects asfreshmen will be aware of the relevance of

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Thomas Shepard; Michaela Andrews; Cole Harris

lecture and a 100 minute lab that meet each week during a 14 week semester.The curriculum is heavily geared towards project-based and hands-on learning with a goal ofexposing students to many facets of engineering.There are many works out there which show that students, and specifically first-year engineeringstudents, learn by doing and retention can be improved by incorporating hands-on projects andexercises1-4. However, one challenge that can limit the effectiveness of these projects is the factthat many students are not confident with tools. In a curriculum requiring much building ofprojects this is a problem; students may be able to envision great products only to beoverwhelmed when attempting to fabricate. Knowledge of tool use can lead to

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Gretchen A. Mosher

intothree broad areas: learning barriers, social challenges, and faculty/instructor issues1, 4.Ashraf4 suggests that TBL in the classroom does not always appropriately simulate the situationin the workplace and the result is that less motivated students may receive better grades andproductive students receive lower grades, relative to the level of effort expended. He summarizeslearning concerns such as lower quality work and stifled individuality as a result of groupprojects in the classroom. Ashraf4 also questions whether group projects result in studentslearning new skills, given that students often “divide and conquer” components of projects,working on the section of the project that they know best. Finally, Ashraf4 suggests that theefficiency

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Naima Kaabouch; Deborah L. Worley; Jeremiah Neubert; Mohammad Khavanin

factors include quantitative skills, students’study habits, commitment to the program, involvement in extracurricular activity, andconnections to peers. In addition, math/calculus has been cited by students who switch awayfrom engineering as the most influential factor in their decisions. This paper describes anapproach to improve engineering student persistence when learning calculus without having tomake any changes in the current calculus curriculum. This approach is one the methods used inan NSF-funded initiative (Project DUE-0942270) at the University of North Dakota. The projectcombines several techniques, including the integration of stand-alone engineering modules to besolved by students outside class time and the use of engineering

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Nannan He

scheduling with little emphasis on the design V&V. In order to equipstudents with the advanced knowledge of developing reliable embedded systems, this course isenhanced from two aspects. First, an on-going research project results on model-based testingand formal methods are incorporated into this course. Model-based testing is an importantfeature of Model-based Design (MBD) methodology, which can be used to check whether thedesign model satisfies the functional or nonfunctional requirements like timing. An automatedformal method Model Checking, which is one of the most commonly used formal verificationtechniques, is exposed to students. It has been applied to deriving test cases from real-timedesign models. Second, students are introduced

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Han-Way Huang; Nannan He

projects. Second, we need to find an easy-to-use and affordable IDE software forstudents to develop and debug their program. Third, we need to find an appropriate textbook orprepare lecture notes. This paper presents our experience of teaching the ARM Cortex-M4microcontroller in our second microprocessor course of our computer engineering program.A brief history of ARMIn 1983, the British company Acorn saw the need to move beyond 8-bit CPU architecture and aproject to invent a new CPU instruction set was started. In April 1985, the first 32-bit ARMprocessor implemented in the 3 ǂm process came to life. It was a 32-bit RISC machine builtwith only 25,000 transistors. This processor was used as the processor of the Acorn’s multimediaPC. A later

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Achintya N. Bezbaruah; Rajani G. Pillai; Hannah Hood; Holly Erickson; Eric Dobervich; Jane Laux; Jamie Varholdt; Adam Gehlhar; Michelle Weber; Harjyoti Kalita; Talal Almeelbi; Mary Pate; Michael Quamme; Mohammad Enayet Hossain; Seydou Cisse; Amanda Grosz; Navaratnam Leelaruban

, and fabrics. Itis projected that nanotechnology market will grow by 19% during 2013 to 2017[1] from its present market value of US$1.6 trillion [2]. There will a demand fornanotechnology workforce and the demand is projected to sustain over the years.Nanotechnology markets are growing in electronics, energy, healthcare, and 418construction [1]. It is felt that there is a need to introduce nanotechnology to thefuture generation of scientists and engineers while they are still in their middleschools.Project DescriptionSeven teaching modules involving various aspects of nanotechnology weredeveloped and introduced to the seventh grade students at West Fargo STEMCenter Middle School in West Fargo, ND. Pre

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2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Han-Way Huang; Nannan He

, Altera, and Lattice Semiconductor. Tochoose among Microblaze, Nios II, and Mico32, we considered the following factors: Development software support Availability of tutorials and books for the development software Availability of affordable demo boards for lab projects Availability of lab projectsAfter comparing these factors, we chose Altera’s Nios II soft core processor for our course.Nios II is a soft-core processor targeted for Altera’s FPGA devices. As opposed to a fixedprefabricated processor, a soft-core processor is described in HDL codes and then mapped ontoFPGA’s generic logic blocks (logic element (LE) in Altera’s term). A soft-core processor can beconfigured and tuned by adding or removing features on a

Collection

2013 North Midwest Section Meeting

Authors

Christopher R. Carroll

convenient Arduino family of microcomputers. TheArduino microcomputers are easily incorporated into student senior projects, and are easilyprogrammed in high-level languages such as C or Pascal. The AVR family includes a widevariety of processor capabilities, from simple components housed in 8-pin packages to powerfuldevices in 40-pin packages or larger. Because students have used Arduino microcomputers sooften, there was considerable interest and pressure to update the microcontroller course,switching to an AVR processor to provide students with background knowledge for their projectdevelopment.Fortunately, a new development board for AVR processors is available, the EasyAVR version 7from MikroElektronika (Figure 2). The EasyAVR board features the