Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Daniel N. Pope

generally take ownership oftheir projects, they learn material specific to their projects and beyond that taught in class, and he c mm nica e ha ma e ial hei cla ma e . Since each den jec i diffe en ,there is usually an increa ed demand n he in c ime. Thi a e e en he c eof the CFD course, the problems designed by the students, the models they employed, thechallenges faced by the instructor, and the lessons learned.IntroductionThe evolution of modern computers and simulation tools has had a profound effect on theengineering profession. Engineering problems that were once addressed by governmentresearchers or industry research and design teams using custom computer codes can now beroutinely solved

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Katherine Acton

Learning S r c ral Anal i in A B ilding ha Teache Katherine Acton University of Minnesota DuluthAbstractThe Swenson Civil Engineering Building, opened in 2010, was constructed with the goalof providing a space in which, and from which, Civil Engineering students can learn.Multiple exposed structural systems allow students the opportunity to visualize the wayin which the building is designed to carry load. The building is LEED certified. A largehigh-bay lab is open to view, so that class work and research is visible to students as theypass through the halls of the building.The high bay lab features two 15-ton gantry cranes. The gantry cranes have beenanalyzed in the

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

R. Nelson; J. Bumblis; C. Liu; A. Turkmen; N. Zhou; D. Olson; R. Rothaupt

areas can be verycostly.Although launching such a program involves a great number of challenges, there are also great rewards.To be able to offer students the opportunity to attend a local / regional university and receive training ina specialized field such as computer engineering is very rewarding. To see the excitement of studentslaunching a new professional organization or to see the first co-op students thrilled over the thingsthey are learning and seeing such experiences are priceless.SummaryEstablishing a new engineering program is an extensive and expensive undertaking. In this paper anexample of such an undertaking is presented by providing a thorough description of steps taken torequest, prepare and launch a new Computer Engineering

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

M. S. Stachowicz; L. B. Kofoed

Problem Based Learning Principles for projects with “soft” evaluation. 1 M. S. Stachowicz, 2L. B. Kofoed Laboratory for Intelligent Systems, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, USA, The Warsaw School of Computer Science, Warsaw, Poland mstachow@d.umn.edu1 Department of Architecture, Design & Media Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark, lk@create.aau.dk2IntroductionInspired by a design workshop course offered at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department(ECE) at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) [1] we could see

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Seraphin C. Abou

promises a fundamental reconceptualizationof the environmental health and safety training based on the development of quantitative andpredictive models to describe crucial processes. To achieve this change in safety culture, learningcommunities (International Curriculum on Nanotechnology) are being formed at the interface ofbiology systems, engineering and computer science. Through this new teaching/learningcommunities, research and education can be integrated across disciplines and the challengesassociated with multidisciplinary team-based science and engineering can be addressed. Theresults show a general positive relationship between the use the learning technology and studentengagement and learning outcomes.Keywords: Engineering education

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Alon McCormick

the curriculum, perhaps encountering d ff c e a c ea e eac ab e e Finish Junior year with full Numerical Methods principles course Difficulties with tools now mastered not a difficulty any more Intermediate concepts now addressed well and uniformly. Vistas now opened to students interested in advanced numerical methods through computational research and grad course. Advantages: Students now become motivated before the Numerical Methods course to learn about numerical methods; they have a chance to see the dangers/limits of using Matlab routines simply as an appliance. For selected students, good

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Marian S. Stachowicz

Fuzzy Versus Conventional Control Marian S. Stachowicz, Laboratory for Intelligent Systems, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, USA, The Warsaw School of Computer Science, Warsaw, Poland mstachow@d.umn.eduAbstractThis article presents notes from the interdisciplinary course ECE 5831 Fuzzy Sets Theory and ItsApplications and an introduction part to ECE 4951 Design Workshop dedicated to IntelligentControl, both taught at the ECE Department, University of Minnesota Duluth. What are theadvantages and disadvantages of fuzzy control as compared to conventional

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Lisa Anneberg; Jiao luo; Suyun Luo

Student Attitudes on a Collaborative Undergraduate Engineering Program between the USA and China Lisa Anneberg1, Jiao Luo 2and Suyun Luo3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Lawrence Technological University, 1 Department of Automotive Engineering, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, 2-3AbstractToday, the globalization of higher education is an important major development of higher education.Shanghai University of Engineering Science [SUES] and Lawrence Technological University [LTU, ofSouthfield, MI] have had a multifaceted academic collaboration since 2003. Fifteen Americanengineering faculty and 1200 Chinese engineering undergraduate students have participated in theevolving

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Mike Rowe

object-oriented paradigm similar to popular programming languages likeJava, C++, C# and other currently popular languages. If a student is interested in continuingtheir education in software engineering or computer science, having this object-orientedknowledge and experience is a definite plus. Unlike typical object-oriented programminglanguages students do not need to learn a programming language vocabulary and grammar.Often with as little as five minutes into a getting started tutorial, students are productive andoff on their o n. Although the don t need to learn the vocabulary, the language is similarenough to a real programming language that the kind of get use to it. One of the currentenhancements to Alice is to make the language even more

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Ahmet Turkmen; Jon Breen

the overall system is shown in Figure 1. The audio/musical signal isprocessed on the fly. An electrical guitar is plugged into the sound card of the computer. Proceedings of the 2011 North Midwest Section ConferenceSampling rate can be selected by the user between 4 KHz and 96 KHz. A certain number (N) ofsignal samples are kept in the buffer, which keeps only the most recent N samples. This numberis selected by the user between 64 and 8192. The user can obtain magnitude plots of the DFT andthe FFT of the signals on the display with the software. The sampling rate and number ofsamples determine resolution and maximum frequency of the transform.Figure -1. Block diagram of the system.The Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT

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2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

William R. Peterson; Guanghsu Chang

both the graduate andundergraduate levels. The authors also present the results of teaching the course usingspreadsheets exclusively.Background:As suggested earlier, the use of spreadsheets for engineering economic type calculations is thenorm in the workplace1. Even in 1980 practitioners were writing simple programs in Basic andother programing languages to calculate internal rates of return (IRR). In one instance which oneof us was involved with, the calculations were done on a single board computer (an AIM 65). Inthis instance once the program had been written and saved, all that was required was the an inputof he ann al ca h flo a ocia ed i h a projec and hen a imple do loop a incremen eduntil the net present worth was zero (assuming that

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Enemuoh Emmanuel Ugo; Samuel Kwofie

Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana. Itexposed students to global concepts of sustainability with emphasis on alternative materials andmanufacturing methods in Ghana. Learning was reinforced by visits to local manufacturingfacilities, art centers, museums, and historical villages. Also, students were engaged in culturalactivities including: learning Akan language, dancing, keyboarding, textile dying, and basketeeringas part of their study abroad experience in Ghana. During the program, students were givenprojects to analyze, evaluate, and make recommendations on how to improve on the sustainabilityaspects of a product. The major sustainability measures considered are embodied energy andcarbon dioxide (CO2) footprints and the projects

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Genevieve Gagnon Ph.D.

chalk to computers, e-Blackboards, You-tube18, smart phones and iPads.Students now start to learn in kindergarten with Smart boards in their classrooms, nochalk, no dry marker, just electronics. They have access to Blackboard online inelementary school where they can view information from teachers and their grades oncomputers. For a school to stay competitive, it must get on board with all this newtechnology to be relevant and keep the interest of the audience, our students coming fromthis high technology upbringing. They expect to be entertained and have access to allinteractive tools that we can provide to them for learning. This research will try to showthat there are many different tools to make your classroom a class of the future and

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Debao Zhou

ed a Zeig e Nich PID i g e h d ge he be t ballbalancing results. This is a wonderful example to apply class learned technology to solveengineering problems. Figure 3, Ball balancing project. Figure 4, Light tracking for charging cell phone.Another group of students used the direct control method to realize the tracking of sun light suchthat a cellular phone can be charged through a solar panel. The system is shown in Figure 4. Astepper motor was controlled by a microcontroller. PID controller is used in the microcontroller.The controller data are downloaded to the microcontroller from a personal computer after thetuning on computer. The feedback is from a light sensor which is just beneath the solar penal asshown

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

D. A. Rogers; B. D. Braaten

microwave measurement equipment to assess the performance of these products. Ingeneral, they will be comfortable using the computer facilities and measurement equipmentavailable in our laboratories. Much of the learning will be done through interaction with theircolleagues in class and in the labs. The course should help to build a cooperative climate amonggraduate students and their research faculty mentors, further stimulating interest in research.This should lead to the development of lifelong friendships. Finally, we hope that many courseprojects will grow into theses and research publications. Proceedings of the 2011 North Midwest Section ConferenceAcknowledgementThis is to acknowledge our debt to Dr. Robert M. Nelson

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Nathan Johnson

planning and communicating to students through compiling assessmentresults.Curriculum SettingSeveral required lab courses, taught at the 3xxx level, could have been suitable for assessingexperimental design in the UMD Civil Engineering Curriculum. However, finding anappropriate laboratory exercise for design assessment was difficult since most experimentalmethods in Infrastructure Materials and Soil Mechanics follow well-specified standard methods.Exercises in Transportation Engineering involve complex computer programs are difficult todesign without in-depth knowledge of the software. In contrast, most lab exercises in Hydraulicsand Hydrology involve collecting and analyzing data from field or laboratory settings thatillustrate the theories

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Carl Sandness; Tom Jamar; Roy Smith; j. Moe Benda

2007.This facility resides in the old study hall on the second floor of Hibbing High School and houses30 Dell Precision 390 workstations, a central server, printers and full network access. Withsupport from the HHS Administration and Building and Grounds, this facility has been central tocourse content delivery. Recent additions through the Applied Learning Institute and CarlPerkins funding including upgraded memory for the computers and a new Dimension seriesprototyper for generating plastic 3D models from student CAD creations.Second (9th 14th): An annual engineering mentoring session is held in November at BARREngineering in Hibbing. Local mining and engineering firms call for volunteer engineers tomeet with students over hors d oeuvres to

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

James Allert

ABET accreditation reporting in theDepartment of Computer Science at UMD. It requires a minimal amount of up-front data entry(course assessment rubric performance results as shown in Figure 1) and no further data entry. Itrequires no Excel skills or coding. Once the data is in, reports such as those shown in Figures 2-6are generated automatically at the touch of a button. In our department we have adopted 12program student-learning outcomes and a total of 31 various performance criteria. In the mostrecent ABET report prepared by our department almost 300 direct measures of studentperformance were provided by faculty for inclusion in the accreditation analysis. Compilingdetailed reports of how well the computer science program achieved each

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Richard A. Davis

. Although we warn the students that they will need these tools in courses later in theprogram, some students are in the habit of compartmentalizing their learning. Once they arefinished with the computational methods course, they do not automatically make the connectionof applying the recipe later in the program. However, when we provide them with a copy of theExcel worksheet and macros from the wood density exercises, they are able to quickly relearnand apply these skills.In one particularly complicated lab analysis, students use the macro to estimate the uncertainty inthe calculation of chemical equilibrium constants. Experimental measurements of volume andmass to calculate reagent concentration and extent of reaction are fed into a worksheet set

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Mitchell Cornelius; Bidhan Roy; Osama Jadaan

a a a , the project with the highest valuation. 2. The internal rate of return (IRR) analysis: The internal rate of return is the interest rate at which the cash flow of the project breaks even, ie., the interest rate at which valuation is zero. If we are dealing with a single project, we execute the project if the IRR exceeds the a a .E , .A a , a a a , IRR (a a IRR a rate). 3. Benefit-Cost analysis: If we know the dollar value of the benefits associated with a project, we compute the ratio, benefit/cost (or the difference, benefit-cost

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Byron Garry

Examples of Rubrics Used to Assess ABET Student Outcomes in a Capstone Course Byron Garry South Dakota State UniversityIntroductionIn our Electronics Engineering Technology (EET) program, we are continually re-evaluating thestudent outcomes and how they are measured by the assessment process. We have defined, withthe approval of alumni and our industrial advisory board, sixteen Student Outcomes labeled (a) -(p). These begin with the ABET Criterion 3 Student Outcomes (a) - (k)1 , and then add theProgram Criteria for Electrical/Electronics Engineering Technology, and some universityrequired student learning outcomes, which are labeled

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Lisa Watrous; Mari Buche; Susan Bagley; Jason Keith

andPerforming Arts, Business, and Cognitive and Learning Sciences. Responses are provided onlyfor applicants who indicated both gender and type of position (SFHI or replacement hire) forwhich the application was made. As shown in Table 1, the information from over 1,400applicant survey responses was evaluated. It is important to note that the data for the 2008-09academic year represents the full complement of SFHI applicants but only three of thereplacement searches (from two academic units) due to being administered relatively late in theyear. As the department replacement hire data contains far fewer responses, detailedcomparisons between the SFHI and replacement hire responses were not conducted for this firstyear. Some of the questions for the 2009

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Waddah Akili

overlooked; Sharing known skills- Students who possess certain knowledge or skills (computer skills, laboratory skills, data analysis and reduction skills, writing skills, presentation skills, etc.) should be willing to pass it on, and/or share it with their group members; Collaborative skills- Groups cannot function effectively if members do not have (be willing to learn) or use some needed social skills. Such as: leadership, decision-making, trust building, and conflict management; Monitoring progress- Groups need to discuss amongst themselves whether they are achieving their set goals; they need also to prioritize the scheduled activities, introduce changes when needed, solicit advice

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Christa James-Byrnes; Mark Holdhusen

watch all ofthe videos.Conclusion and Next StepsA team of engineering faculty and instructors met to analyze an existing EngineeringFundamentals course developed, and delivered the course in an online environment. A list oflearning outcomes and topics were developed and the delivery of each topic was chosen toachieve the desired learning outcomes given the constraints and possibilities of the onlineenvironment. The course was broken into 15 units, each unit was composed of 3 lessonscorresponding to the three major categories of the course (computers/applications; engineeringprinciples; team/project design). Most topics were delivered using online text and/or videoscreated by the team of faculty and the instructional designer. In addition to the

Collection

2011 North Midwest Section

Authors

Ryan G. Rosandich

or most con enient route through a degree program rather than pursuing their passion for mechanical engineering. Leaving too much choice up to the student is dangerous. Well- designed, coherent tracks seem to be a better option than just a large basket of elective courses. 4. More practical content Providing practical hands-on experiences, active discovery-based learning, and realistic problem-solving and design experiences are admirable goals, but very resource intensive. Such activities require small class sizes and increased numbers and skills in the faculty. They also require a great deal of space and equipment to be realistic. Many BSME Proceedings of the 2011