Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

R. Radharamanan; Ha Van Vo

shownduring the presentation. Figure 9. Kool-Aid process flow diagram5. ConclusionsThe biomedical, mechanical, and industrial engineering curriculum at MUSE providessignificant learning opportunities to the students. Theory on design, 3D modeling and simulation,manufacturing, automation, and robotics span the curriculum. Hands-on experience in design andmanufacturing laboratories, and open-ended design projects from freshman through senior yearsreinforce the theory. Lastly, Students participate in real world experience through industry co-op, summer internship, and participation in professional society activities. Typical examples oflaboratory work (CAD, CAD/CAM, and robotics modules) developed, presented and discussedin

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2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Arthur Heinricher; Brian Savilonis; David Spanagel; Robert Traver; Kristin Wobbe

Great Problems Seminars: A New First-Year Foundation at WPI Arthur Heinricher1, Brian Savilonis2, David Spanagel3, Robert Traver4, Kristin Wobbe5AbstractThe Great Problems Seminars are a new program designed to engage Worcester PolytechnicInstitute’s first-year students with current events, societal problems, and human needs. Eachseminar starts with an important global problem and helps students to find a place where they canmake real progress, no matter how small, in solving the problem.Four WPI faculty representing Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, and Humanities developedand delivered two Great Problems Seminars in 2007. Feed the World

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Bassem Alhalabi; M. K. Hamza; Ali Abu-El Humos

were fardistant from constructing real experimentations online. Such a lack of real experimentation-- over theInternet, gave birth to an authentic rise beyond the restrictions of the antiquated virtual laboratories [4-7].The birth of Remote Labs Environment (RLE) at the Centre of Advanced Distance Education Technologies(CADET), a few years ago, carries with it a world of possibilities and pioneering computing technologies.Therefore, this article conducts a survey of students’ perception of on-line (virtual) labs and in comparisonto real labs. The results are analyzed and discussed to put forth an opportunity to learn about a newtechnology that might change how students conduct experiments, virtually.Keywords: Remote Labs, Distance Lab

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Hudson V. Jackson; Evelyn A. Ellis

anticipated that both teaching and learning will be enhanced when teachers intentionally makeconnections between the subject matter being taught and real-world examples that demonstrate howengineering impacts the world in general and the quality of their students’ lives in particular. 5 Background •History Math •Societal issues •Needs at the time Applications Theory/Principles Example

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

David I. Schwartz

represents certain kinds of games, and the study of algorithmic gamecomplexity involves a deep study of algorithms. However, when confronting a “realistic” game, themultitude of choices, especially in “real-time” games, can bog down both approaches. Although atheoretician might wish to explore the mathematical and computational complexity, a practitioner mightfind the theory too computationally expensive for design and implementation. For educational purposes,students learning about game design and development early in academic studies lack the proficiency andtheoretical depth. 2Instead, consider the notion of studying games as simulations. A game can simulate a real-world system,creating an abstraction

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

John Adams; Charles Kochakian

material, the expectation is that the students will gain quitea bit of value from the combination of business and technical topics. Also, while the CS studentsmay not understand all of the hardware aspects of the course material, they will understand someof the software issues much better than the EE students. While it is a significant challenge for theinstructors to present course material to students from different majors at the same time, thedepartment believes that the advantage of being able to form true multidisciplinary teams makesthe challenge worthwhile. A major component of the course is a project involving looking deeperat the application of RFID in a real world context. The most positive experience to date has beenthe four-person team

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

M. Ali Montazer

Sigma initiatives, (2) to provide the students with industrialprojects for which they have the opportunity to work on the various stages of real worldprojects from problem definition to final reporting and presentation, and (3) to furtherpromote amongst the students the concepts and techniques of modeling and simulationand their applications to manufacturing. The center is equipped with the state-of-the-artcomputing hardware and simulation software including ARENA and QUEST as well asother modeling and computational analysis software. It is staffed by a part-time director,a fulltime graduate student, technical and secretarial support. The program wasinaugurated with graduate and undergraduate student teams working on two projectsprovided by

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Evolution of a Senior Capstone Course Through the Assessment ProcessAbstractThe civil engineering senior capstone design course at the United States Coast GuardAcademy has evolved over the past fifteen years. Historically teams of cadets worked inparallel on one design problem with a single faculty advisor. The senior design projectsnow actively involve students in a variety of real world consulting projects to help theCoast Guard and local communities meet technical challenges. Each student team workson a unique project with a faculty advisor. The departmental assessment processconfirmed the educational benefits of student exposure to real world projects with clients,budgets, and deliverables

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Matt Armstrong; Richard L. Comitz; Andrew Biaglow; Russ Lachance; Joseph Sloop

Interdisciplinary Learning for Chemical Engineering Students from Organic Chemistry Synthesis Lab to Reactor Design to Separation Matt Armstrong, Richard L. Comitz, Andrew Biaglow, Russ Lachance, Joseph SloopAbstract A novel approach to the Chemical Engineering curriculum sequence of electives here at WestPoint enabled our students to experience a much more realistic design process, which more closelyreplicated a real world scenario. Students conduct the synthesis in the organic chemistry lab, then conductcomputer modeling of the reaction with ChemCad and Mathematica, analyze chemical separationprocesses, and design a reactor system. This interdisciplinary learning approach

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Aaron S. Bradshaw; Gary N. McCloskey; Franklin Miguel

various levels, the ability to understand and continually evaluate the problem athand, the ability to consider the impacts that a solution may have on the community and the environment,and the ability to deal with uncertainties that are prevalent in the natural world. For most students, theirfirst exposure to these aspects of engineering may not be until after graduation when they enter theprofession. However, it is also possible to give students “real world” exposure in the classroom if thecourse can bring in some of these elements.This paper presents a design for a civil engineering design course where the students apply learnedtechnical skills while fostering their “soft” engineering skills that are critical for success in practice. Thecourse

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2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Christopher W. Swan; Julia Carroll

2.5 25 0Conclusions and Recommendations This paper presented a new course that was developed with an overall goal to presentmany of the non-technical skills desirable in the engineer of the 21st century, namely effectivecommunication, knowledge of leadership skills, and an appreciation of professionalism andethics. Through lecture, assignments, workshops, and a term project, students are exposed tothese and other issues engineers face in professional practice. The term projects have bothtechnical and non-technical challenges, thus providing direct experience in how these skills arecombined to execute and deliver real-world engineering projects. Shortcomings of the course included insufficient time to delve

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Dean M. Aslam; Zongliang Cao; Cyrous Rostamzadeh

on a restructuring of schoolscience around real-world problems [1], inquiry based studies [2][3][4][5] including Design-Based Science(DBS) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] and Learning By Design (LBD) [16][17][18], augmented reality(AR) [19][20][21][22][23][24][25], and Technology Assisted Science, Engineering and Mathematics (TASEM)[26][27][28]. A unique feature of the TASEM program is that it, encompassing a number of inquiry-basedhands-on ideas, focuses on current and future technologies and it is capable of dealing with a variety of learningconcepts and environments studied by other researchers [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]. BecauseTASEM is based on technology, it can address (a) technological learning issues in a

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Bahram Nassersharif

, to name a few. Virtualenvironments provide the sensory experience of being in a computer generated, simulated space. Theyhave potential uses in applications ranging from education and training to design and prototyping. Animmersive environment simulates a virtual environment by “imbedding” the learner in an environmentwhere “discovery” becomes part of learning. Therefore, we have chosen the term discovery learningwhere professors and students are enabled to “explore” through immersion, simulation, and animation.This article discusses the implementation of a Discovery Based Learning Classroom for Engineeringcourses. The Discovery-based Learning Center is a sophisticated viewing facility, theater, and lectureroom for interactive real-time

Collection

2008 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Elif Kongar; Tarek Sobh

is provided in the following section. Model development is the focus of Section 3. Casestudy data and modeling is provided in Section 4. The paper concludes with considerations regardingfuture enhancements.2. Introduction to the Preemptive Goal Programming ModelA large number of real world decision-making and optimization problems are actually multi-objective.Even so, many important optimization models, such as linear programming models, require that thedecision maker express his/her wishes as one aggregate objective function that is usually subjected tosome constraints. Goal programming (GP), generally applied to linear problems, deals with theachievement of prescribed goals or targets. First reported by Charnes and Cooper1, 2, it was then