Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Tammy Yut-Ling Chan; Gustavo Borel Menezes

improve their work throughout thequarter.Key features of the courses included: 1) Dedicated class time was dedicated for students andinstructors to work together; 2) Teamwork enabled students, under time pressure, to analyzeengineering problems, formulate solutions, program, write, and prepare presentations; 3)Engineering problems were solved with widely-available software; and 4) Teams competed toproduce the best course manual for next year’s course.Preliminary results from surveys showed that students felt more confident and knowledgeablewhen presenting technical information, writing their reports, and using computer tools in theirsubsequent courses. They also used these skills later in their senior design projects. Compared totheir peers who

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Kurt McMullin; Thalia Anagnos; Jan Hustler; Nancy Thomas

informal interactions allowed the IHE participants to discuss educational issues face-to-face, mentor individual educators, and observe successful pedagogical models.  One IHE faculty member worked one-on-one with several teachers in drafting funding proposals to collect resources for the K-8 classroom. Teachers had limited prior experience on writing successful funding proposals and working with the engineering faculty members they were given support to define need and craft a successful proposal for sponsoring agencies.  Engineering faculty partners were also involved with the overall project management, the evaluation of assessed data, the presentation of findings at various conferences, and the

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Antonella Sciortino; Lisa Star; Tesfai Goitom

engineering programs should provide student with "the broad education necessary tounderstand the impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, andsocietal context".While it is beneficial to expose students to engineering as soon as they enter the program, manyfreshman students often do not possess the necessary background to perform research on theirown and to fully analyze the technical aspects of engineering projects. Faculty support isindispensable to guarantee a successful outcome, but peer mentoring could also be an effectivestrategy to engage students. Peer mentoring programs that employ junior or senior undergraduatestudents as mentors for freshman/sophomore students, either in freshman courses or in extra-curricular

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Kiran George

fields. Similarly, the out migration fromthe College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) at California State University,Fullerton (CSUF) has been profound. In 2010 with funding availed from the NSF, ECS at CSUFestablished the ECS Academic Catalyst for Excellence (ACE) Scholarship Program designed toreverse its historical legacy of high student attrition. This program awards scholarships to ECSstudents over the 5-year period of the project and leverages a well-established network of ECSand University student services to support cohorts of ACE scholars (recipients of the ACEscholarship) majoring in ECS majors. The ECS ACE scholarship program provides tuitionscholarships and a myriad of support services ranging from peer mentoring to

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Alex Dekhtyar; Anya L. Goodman; Aldrin Montana

acquiring the technical knowledge and skills taught in the courses (learning objectives 1-4 for CSC 448 and 1-3 for BIO 441). 2. Are life sciences students acquiring computational skills? The key computational skill presented in BIO 441 was the ability to convert a biological problem into a set of software requirements (learning objective 4 for BIO 441). 3. Are students learning to work effectively with their peers within and outside of their discipline? In particular, is there evidence that cross-disciplinary collaboration within the in-concert teaching framework is beneficial for the students? (learning objective 5 for both courses). 4. How did students perceive in-concert

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Tina Smilkstein

Increasing Lab Participation and Content Retention Through Supportive Laboratory Preparatory Assignments Tina Smilkstein, California State University at San Luis Obispo I. AbstractA study is done on an electrical engineering circuit lab course to assess the effect onparticipation, retention of course content and student satisfaction when prelab assignments wereexpanded to include a write up of the experiment background and goals. Reading that wascreated specifically for each lab covered background for the lab that the students should bebringing with them from previous courses but did not tell them how to do the lab. They wereasked to summarize the

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Jim Helbling; Angela Beck

structural response predictions through the manufacture and test of a test articlerepresentative of the component. A design-build-fly option is also available for some teams whochoose to further evaluate their designs through flight test. There are numerous objectives and atight schedule, and all teams must document their work, both in writing and in a series of formalpresentations.In order to better prepare these engineering students for their professional lives, the facultyteaching Aircraft Detail Design have incorporated social responsibility and professional ethicsinto the course content. The course content will be described, and then the iterative method usedfor teaching this content will be explained.A primary example of this type of ethical

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Raman Unnikrishnan; Victor H. Delgado; Hye Sun Moon; Edward Sullivan

surprisingly several remedies also. ECS first-yearretention has improved between 15 and 20% during the past five years. The approaches, analysesand results of the CSUF experience are expected to be useful to all, particularly for institutionswith large populations of first-time college goers or underrepresented minorities.1. BackgroundHigh-Impact Practices are defined as purposeful and effective educational practices whichdeepen student engagement and learning leading to college student success. 39 Through years ofanalyzing student gains Kuh found that students who participate in high-impact educationalpractices have higher student engagement gains than their peers. He recommends that students Proceedings of the 2013 American Society for

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Binod Tiwari

school student joined as a part of their co-curricularinternship opportunities. The group found that the shredded rubber tires can be shredded into thedesired size to enhance the load carrying capacity of weak soils. The study resulted into 7presentations and a peer reviewed publication. Shown in Figure 3 are the photographs of rubbertire mixed soil and increase in density of soil after mixing shredded tire, 10% by weight. TheCSUF seniors are graduating this year and pursuing graduate study whereas the CSUF graduatestudent is pursuing PhD at a renowned US university. The community college student isapplying to transfer into a civil engineering program, whereas the high school student gotadmission into an engineering program at the university of

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Jeffrey Georgette; Brian Self; James Widmann; Kathryn Bohn; Eric Wang

    351Figure 1. Active-engagement vs. traditional instruction for improving students’ conceptualunderstanding of basic physics concepts (taken from Laws et al.,1).Although the exact definition of inquiry-based instruction varies somewhat between differentinvestigators, we will use the defining features offered by Laws et al.1 and highlighted by Princeand Vigeant5.Table 1: Elements of Inquiry-Based Activity Modules (a) Use peer instruction and collaborative work (b) Use activity-based guided-inquiry curricular materials (c) Use a learning cycle beginning with predictions (d) Emphasize conceptual understanding (e) Let the physical world be the authority (f) Evaluate student

Collection

2013 Pacific Southwest Section Meeting

Authors

Thomas M. Korman; Hal A. Johnston; Lloyd Crask

price bids while commercial bids are lump sum.Phase 1 - Project Planning and DesignStudents begin the simulation in Phase 1 by being presented with a list of potential projects toreview. Considering market conditions, student teams proceed by selecting a project to plan andthen designing a project control system for the project. This is accomplished by selectingmethods for each project activity and balancing the schedule and cost considerations. In Phase 1,students compete against their peers as well as the simulation’s virtual companies for award ofthe project. Award of projects is based on the team’s accuracy and proximity to the simulation’sinternal estimate. Teams that are not initially awarded a project for their efforts must continuewith