Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephan A. Durham; W. Micah Hale; Seamus Freyne

Teaching Aids and Laboratory Experiments to Enhance Materials Learning Stephan A. Durham1, W. Micah Hale2, Seamus Freyne3 1 University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center / 2University of Arkansas / 3Manhattan CollegeAbstractMost civil engineering programs across the country require one course in materials and materialstesting. Many times these courses are structured to provide students the basic understanding ofthe production, properties, and behavior of common structural materials. Emphasis is oftenplaced on concrete, steel, and wood. This paper presents teaching aids and laboratoryexperiments that can be used

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ramesh V. Narang

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

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Wei Zhang

the learning outcome ofthe introductory computer architecture course.References[1] David A. Patterson, John L. Hennessy. Computer organization and design, thehardware/software interface. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2005.[2] Homepage of SPIM simulator. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~larus/spim.html[3] Sally L. Wood, Chris Dick. Concepts of parallelism in an introductory computerarchitecture course with FPGA laboratories. In Proc. of the ASEE/IEEE Frontiers inEducation Conference, 2004.Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 10[4] N. Calazans, F. G. Moraes and C. Marcon. Teaching computer

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2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Behnam Bahr; Kurt Soschinske; George Gray

2007Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education” 2maintain educational relevancy, such experiments and equipment must be reviewed and updatedon a continuing basis. In the ME design laboratory, design and analysis software must befrequently updated to maintain relevancy for teaching engineering analysis skills. Computersmust be updated every several years to keep up with more memory and computationally-intensive design and analysis software tools. For engineering technology students, thecurriculum must include acquisition and maintenance of state-of-the-art manufacturing systemssuch as inspection and computer

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Stephan A. Durham; W. Micah Hale; Seamus Freyne

resource allows instructors todistribute course information, lecture notes, handouts, papers, and laboratory data to students.Group pages are created to allow laboratory groups to communicate and transfer data to oneanother. The first author currently teaches a junior level civil engineering materials course at theUniversity of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. This course has been taught withand without Blackboard™ assistance. The course CE 3141, Materials Testing Lab, is taughtmore effectively as a result of distributing course materials and data online. Laboratory groupsprocess data and develop laboratory reports without meeting through online groupcommunication and file download capabilities. This mode of delivering materials to

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Kamesh Namuduri

are either currently offering or planning to offer Associate (2-year)degrees in the Information Assurance (IA) discipline in the near future. The mission of this consortium is“to promote security awareness within the region through collaboration with local communities,community colleges, private industry, and law enforcement agencies and to pursue education, training,and research activities in information assurance and security disciplines". The partnerships range fromsharing IA teaching materials and laboratory resources, to forming state-wide working groups andorganizing state-wide education and training workshops. This paper provides the details of the activitiesbeing pursued by Wichita State University to bring cybersecurity awareness in

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Leroy R. Cox; Katie Grantham Lough

on the mathematicalProceedings of the 2007 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education 4substance of laboratory reports, without giving valuable feedback as to the writing style of thework.6Educational Activities to Improve Undergraduate Engineers’ Writing SkillsIf the charge of engineering educators is to produce tomorrow’s population of engineers who arefully competent in an ever-changing workplace, then means must be sought to help our studentsin this critical area. It is not simply enough to assign a writing assignment (or collection ofassignments) to teach students good writing skills. The majority of

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Walter O. Craig

advisory board can serve as a powerful tool to help the school or department in theaccreditation process. The board can also serve as a fund raising mechanism by having itsindustrial partner give grants for scholarships for incoming freshman, or monies to help purchaseequipment and supplies to maintain a laboratory of the department. The industry advisory boardmembers can also serve as mentors on an industry sponsored project. Another important purposeis to advise the department in the area of curriculum development. Industry participation incurriculum development will ensure that ET students are taking the necessary classes to givethem the industry skills to compete globally with other engineering technology graduates.The Industry advisory board

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Kimberly H. Henthorn

participation, and feedback to theinstructor and students. In 2006, the 3-hour lab block associated with the course was reorganizedinto 3 1-hour problem solving sessions. This modification greatly increased students’ retentionand understanding of the material by efficiently utilizing class time, which resulted in anoticeable improvement in overall course grades.CollaborationOne of the most important and hardest skills to teach students is collaboration. Many youngerstudents in engineering were at or near the top of their high school and freshman college classesand have learned that they work most effectively by themselves. However, the problem-basedcourses they encounter in engineering are very different and many students who do not learn towork

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ramazan Asmatulu; Mehmet B. Yildirim; Waseem Khan; Adebayo Adeniji; Humphrey Wamocha

nano-sized fibers thatconsist of higher physical properties (e.g., surface area, porosity and flexibility). In a typicalelectrospinning process, a jet is ejected from a charged polymer solution when the appliedelectric field strength overcomes the surface tension of the solution. The ejected jet then travelsrapidly to the collector target located at some distance from the charged polymer solution underthe influence of the electric field and becomes a solid polymer filament as the jet dries. Thiscommunication presents the fabrication and characterizations of nanofibers and devices forundergraduate and graduate students to enhance their hands-on laboratory experiences.KeyWords: Nanotechnology, fabrication and characterization of nanofibers

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2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Shannon G. Davis; Carol S. Gattis; Edgar C. Clausen

a partnership to assist the Northwest Arkansas EducationRenewal Zone (NWA-ERZ) in engaging students in hands-on, standards-based science activitiesthat help to form the base for the engineering discipline. This University of Arkansas SciencePartnership Program is a three-year Summer Institute program funded by the ArkansasDepartment of Higher Education which focuses on the professional growth of 6th, 7th and 8thgrade science teachers from 23 schools in the NWA-ERZ. The Program teams teachers withengineering faculty to improve teaching skills and to increase the teachers’ use, understandingand application of selected laboratory exercises. It includes classroom/laboratory instruction,follow-up activities at the schools, and evaluation, both

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

W. Roy Penney; Rachel M. Lee; Meagan E. Magie; Edgar C. Clausen

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

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Waleed K. Al-Assadi; Mandar V. Joshi; Sagar R. Gosavi; Daryl Beetner

Incorporating Altera FPGA Demo boards in Computer Engineering Labs Waleed K. Al-Assadi, Mandar V. Joshi, Sagar R. Gosavi, and Daryl Beetner Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Missouri-Rolla Rolla, MO 65401 {waleed, mvjvx8, srggz3, daryl} @ umr.edu Abstract Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are widely used as teaching tools in universitycomputer engineering laboratories. Numerous computationally intensive applications such as IPcores, ASICs and microcontrollers are prototyped on FPGAs to reduce the number of cycles andthe time to market. This paper

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2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

R.L.A. Jordan

engineering and technology has been developed over the years through “stand and deliver” methods to meet the objectives above. Overhead projectors, written and copied material, chalkboards and whiteboards for sketches and equations, hand written assignments and tests, and physical laboratory experiments, etc. are all easy to use to accomplish the objectives for educating the engineer or technician. With online training, however, different methods must be used to accomplish the educational objectives; some of which have not even been imagined. In this paper, online instruction for technology and engineering courses will be examined. In particular, the experiences of teaching a first synchronous distance education course will be

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Yahong Rosa Zheng; Sarat K. Chitneni; Daryl G. Beetner

more attractive to implementing DSP component for CmpEcurriculum than digital signal processors traditionally used for the EE curriculum. Besides, theincreasingly important role played by FPGA in the DSP market also gives strong justification tothe adoption of FPGA for our DSP laboratories.This paper presents our new development on DSP laboratory materials for CmpE curriculumusing Altera’s DE2 FPGA kits. Many universities have developed DSP labs based on moresophisticated FPGAs such as Xilinx Vertex 4 and Altera’s Stratix II. However, low-end FPGAsuch as the Cyclone II on Altera’s DE2 board have mainly been used as simple input/output (I/O)and micro-controller. Teaching materials are found only for digital logic and computerarchitecture

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2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Larry A. Glasgow

Teaching (2006).8. Ford, L. P. “Water Day: An Experiential Lecture for Fluid Mechanics,” Chemical Engineering Education,37:170 (2003).9. NSF Report 95-65. “Restructuring Engineering Education: A Focus on Change.” Carolyn Meyers, Chair (1995).10. Mississippi Department of Education website, Tech Prep, “Contextual Teaching” (2006).11. Feisel, L. D. and A. J. Rosa. “The Role of the Laboratory in Undergraduate Engineering Education,” Journalof Engineering Education, 94:121 (2005).12. Weith, J. D. “Sparking Creativity,” Chemical Engineering Progress, 101:49 (2005). Proceedings of the 2007 Midwest Section Conference of the American Society for Engineering Education

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Ana Goulart; Charles Watkins; Robert Hegedus

network architectures and protocolsthat have not been used together very often. New and usually expensive equipment may not beavailable in our laboratories to test these new technologies. Thus, we are taking advantage of ourcommunication networks modeling and simulation course to teach new technologies andprotocols and test their integration.As an example of this approach, this paper presents a course project that our junior studentsperformed. The goal of this project was to evaluate voice over IP (VoIP) over 802.11 wirelesslocal area network (WLANs). As discussed in [1], “both IP voice and 802.11 WLANs are newtechnologies, and so the base of practical experience in merging the two is small.” Voice over IPapplications are real-time applications

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Johannes Strobel

Compound Problem Solving: Workplace Lessons for Engineering Education Johannes Strobel Engineering Education Purdue University, IN AbstractFor practitioners and researchers who incorporate real-world problems into their teaching, it isessential to understand real-world problem solving and the nature of problems for better designof the instruction. Several models exist that address the categorization of problems. DavidJonassen’s design theory of problem solving describes eleven different problem-types mappedon a four-dimensional scale. Real world

Collection

2007 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

William A. Kline; Thomas Mason

Institute campus.The building was formerly a commercial office building and is divided into approximately 15flexible/modular work rooms with one or multiple teams assigned to the work rooms. Eachroom includes defined team areas, modular furniture with a workspace for each student, aprinter, a small meeting area with conference table, and usually space for the project manager.Dedicated laboratories have been setup for an electronics shop, machine shop, wet lab, and rapidprototyping equipment. Each student is assigned a desktop computer with necessary software tosupport their work. Work spaces are ‘open’ which facilitates communication among the team.Co-locating the project manager with the student team facilitates both formal and