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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Biswanath Samanta

. Several novel applications of hybrid CI techniques proposed earlierby the author in engineering, manufacturing, biomedical and health care systems are discussed. Theexperiences of offering CI as a graduate course and a summer research project involving high schoolstudents are also presented. The importance of introducing CI techniques and their multidisciplinaryapplications as a senior level interdisciplinary engineering elective course and integrating these inresearch experiences for undergraduates and STEM education is discussed.1. Introduction Recently in US universities, there is a growing emphasis on multidisciplinary education and research,especially involving science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) [1-8]. The

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Kanti Prasad

A Consummate Model of VLSI Education for Preparing the Workforce towards Meeting the Challenges of the Hi-Tech Industry through Industrial Involvement Kanti Prasad Ph.D.; P.E. Professor/Founding Director Microelectronics/VLSI Technology Electrical and Computer Engineering Department University of Massachusetts Lowell Kanti_Prasad@uml.eduAbstract:In order to prepare the workforce for VLSI program, theoretical instructions must becomplemented with adequate laboratory facilities in order to validate the design from itsconception to

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Jerald D. Cole

to cover 10-15% more material per class.Instructors also concur that the level of student technology savviness has increased notably each year since theadvent of the program in Fall 2004. The environment lends itself well to the constructivist pedagogical frameworkused in the program, which is project-based. Our approach is to rotate among participants, bringing each to the foreduring video sessions while using GoToMeeting™ screen sharing for remote demonstrations and keyboard/mousecontrol.FutureFactors driving students to pursue distance education include reduced income, lack of job security, and less time fortraditional residential academic experiences. With the promise of increased bandwidth (including “fiber to the door”),commodification

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Buket D. Barkana; Nelson Ngoh; Allen Cook

content of the subjects they teach. Aparticular challenge in a graduate program for secondary mathematics and science teachers ishow to provide teacher candidates with subject matter content, on a graduate level, that does notreplicate undergraduate courses.The School of Education and School of Engineering at University of Bridgeport designed theEDMM 600D- STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) for TeacherEducators course for students of the School of Education. Designed course uses audio and imageprocessing techniques and technologies to teach fundamental STEM concepts to secondary pre-and in- service mathematics and science teachers. Designed to enrich the teaching and learningexperience, the course activities include: (a

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Cristian Craciun

Teaching Automation Using Real PLC’S and Virtual Factories Faculty Paper Innovations In Engineering & Engineering Technology Education and Curriculum Development Cristian Craciun, Instructor and Lab Engineer of Engineering Laboratories Fairfield University Fairfield, Connecticut1. Abstract It is a need to teach students in Engineering by showing the machines and tools used in industry, this can be accomplished by buying equipments and putting them in the labs, through field trips or creating virtual factories. The

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Barbara Fleck

from colleges across the US,including the author, to participate in a nine-day course on the design, installation, andoperation of renewable energy systems in Costa Rica. The program participants are nowdeveloping courses at their institutions that include international travel, renewableenergy, and sustainable technology. This program is an effort to increase the number ofengineering technology students who participate in international education programs.Recognizing that science, engineering, and technology students are underrepresented instudy abroad programs, this grant will fund two more groups of faculty to participate intraining and curriculum development in the next two years. The goal is for these facultymembers to develop new, short

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

James W. Smith

by faculty.This work presents observations on several courses where contemporary literature was used asthe primary text. In one course, a special topics course on electronic properties of engineeringmaterials, papers published in periodic peer-reviewed journals were used to present an overviewof a number of new and emerging materials and devices based on them. What was learned in thatcourse about using contemporary literature as a text provided the basis for teaching a course inphysical metallurgy three years later.The Problems This Paper Addresses: Engineering education is awash with textbooks, particularlythose dealing with foundational subjects. Moreover, the size and cost of many texts has grownmuch more rapidly than has the fundamentals

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Frank Caserta; Robert J. Lind; Loutfallah G. Chedid

-level analysis, modeling, and design”. This Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference University of Hartford Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education relatively new program also maintains the Wentworth Institute of Technology’s focus on hands-on laboratories with faculty instructors, small class sizes, and work-coop experiences. Theprogram is highly successful placing graduates in industry and graduate programs. More than35% of all Wentworth Institute of Technology students typically accept permanent employmentwith their co-op employer[16].The literature on studies of how or why students chose particular majors suggested, as well as

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Wendy Otoupal-Hylton; Pete Hylton

challenges, including how well they learn math and science in secondary schools. [4] As to thesechallenges, Clark states “Minority students, those who form the most rapidly growing portion of ourschool-age population, are the ones that are most left out of science and mathematics.” She continues,“Curricular and instructional methodologies need to be updated to include cooperative learning andaccommodate alternative learning styles. The program should be designed to foster enthusiasm, interest,and competence both for pursuing careers in the field, and for the acquisition of skills and knowledgedemanded by an increasingly technological society.” [5] Cavannaugh wrote in Education Week, “Studiesshow that girls have less confidence in their math and

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

William L. Cleghorn; Hapreet Dhariwal

lectures are excellent for reviewing certain sections that were not understood at the time during class. I also like how all the videos have the topic covered in the title so it's easier to go back the specific section needed.”ConlusionsBecause of the favorable feedback, the authors will continue using the MEETS and capturelectures.References[1] Cleghorn, W.L. and Dhariwal, H. “Pedagogical Impact of the Multimedia EnhancedElectronic Teaching System (MEETS) on the Delivery of Engineering Courses”, ThirdInternational Symposium for Engineering Education, July 1-2, 2010, Cork, Ireland.[2] Gosper, Green, McNeil, Phillips, Preston & Woo, 2008, “The Impact of Web-BasedLecture Technologies on Current and Future Practices in Learning

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Hassan Bajwa; Mohammad Seddik

’ creativity [2].Pedagogies of engagement such as discussion and debates are easily implemented in artand humanities courses, but are rarely implemented in engineering education courses.Traditional teacher oriented lectures and blackboards are still commonly used inengineering classrooms. In this paper, we will present a few simple, hands-on labexperiments that can be used in interactive teaching modules. One challenge in teachinglab based courses is the acquisition of resources to develop labs and experiments. Wewill present experiments developed from kits and materials that can be acquired forminimal cost.Development and integration of labs into engineering curricula also function as academicadjustment programs as well as a platform for student

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Saeid Moslehpour; Hesham Elsaghir

programs.TCP, on the other hand, provides a more reliable transport with an increased programmemory requirement. When employing a UDP, most of the SNMP-managementapplications perform extra timeout and error checking to ensure a reliable managementconnection. As a result, the choice of using UDP or TCP as a transport service reallydepends on the amount of resources available. For small embedded systems with limitedprogram and data memory, UDP is the choice of transport.System design:To design this complex system using a small embedded microprocessor, I had to combinetwo parts, one is the microcontroller from Renesas Technology [1] M30626FHPFP andinterface it with the Lan91C111 10/100 Non-PCI Ethernet Single Chip MAC + PHY toachieve a full embedded

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Louis Manzione; Akram Abu-aisheh

PREPARING ENGINEERING STUDENTS FOR THE GLOBAL SOURCING ENVIRONMENT Faculty Paper Glogalization Louis Manzione and Akram Abu-aisheh College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture University of Hartford manzione@hartford.eduAbstractRapid changes in modern product development and realization and the move towardsglobalization are creating gaps in the engineering education systems around the world.The global economy has changed the way that engineering firms design, develop, andproduce their products, and the new global

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Ladimer S. Nagurney

PREPARING ENGINEERING CONTENT FOR A KINDLE E-READER Faculty PaperInnovations In Engineering & Engineering Technology Education and Curriculum Development or Web-based Learning Ladimer S. Nagurney Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture University of Hartford West Hartford, CT 06117 nagurney@hartford.edu AbstractE-book readers, such as the Kindle, are becoming more popular due

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Gaetan Garcia; Matthew R. Stein

see that the majority of Fundamental Objectives of EngineeringInstructional Laboratories are accomplished by the laboratory in remote form, and we conclude thatthe concept is worth pursuing. The significant issue to be resolved is to what degree the remotelaboratory experiences matches our expectations.ImplementationThe authors have developed and tested a proof-of-concept system assembled from off-the-shelf andinexpensive components. For application sharing and video communication we used the Elluminatelearning suite. This learning suite is a commercial distance education system providing coursemanagement and communication tools. We utilized a free service of Elluminate named “learn central”,which offers a full-function version of the

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Jeremy Li

delivers and guides plastic block with proper orientation to the production line. Oneconical shape vibrating bowl is used to supply the plastic block at correct orientation to the metalrail conveyor. The metal conveyor is used for transporting plastic block from the vibrating bowl Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference  University of Hartford  Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education to the location where block is picked up by a gripper. At the same time, many blocks arecontinuously fed to the metal conveyor rail and stopped by a stop mechanism that keeps blockdelivered one by one at end of the rail, indicated in figure 2. The

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Michael J. Rust; Abe Kamal

Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference University of Hartford Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Educationwide range of mathematics and science concepts can be explored through the use of simpleactivities that are fun, low-cost, and easy to implement in a classroom setting. Thus, if teachershave the opportunity to experience such activities themselves, they may be more likely toincorporate similar activities in their own classrooms. As a result, outreach programs that targetexisting curricular topics with hands-on engineering activities may provide significant value toboth educators and students in the K-12 school system

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

David Kazmer

: American Society of Engineering Education. p. 19.6. Employment Projections Program, U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2010. v. 17-2x.7. Michel, J.B., et al., Quantitative analysis of culture using millions of digitized books. Science, 2011. 331(6014): p. 176.8. Ciecka, J., T. Donley, and J. Goldman, Markov Process Model of Work-Life Expectancies Based on Labor Market Activity in 1997-98, A. J. Legal Econ., 1999. 9: p. 33.9. Ikenson, D. and C.I.C.f.T.P. Studies, Manufacturing Discord: Growing Tensions Threaten the US- China Economic Relationship. 2010: Cato Institute, Center for Trade Policy Studies. Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Steve Klosterman; Simon Pitts; Steven McGonagle; Carey Rappaport

grasping and learning new areas of knowledge confidently, competently andcontinuously throughout their careers.Left unattended, this skill deficit will continue to limit and impair the capacity of manycompanies to attain and maintain an enduring competitive edge. What is the GEL approach?Dr. Bernard Gordon, an engineering innovator and visionary, founder and chairman of Analogic,co-founder and CEO of NeuroLogica, holder of over 200 patents and recipient of the PresidentialNational Medal of Technology is most renown as the father of analog-to-digital data conversion.Beginning with his treatise on the dilution of engineering education, “What is an Engineer?”delivered as the keynote address at the European Society for

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Tahany Fergany; Amal Abd El?Raouf

illustrates the learning tool and the different modules it includes. Section fourpresents the expected results. Finally, the last section provides remarks and conclusion.2. Learning Activities The Internet is a telecommunication medium providing open platform through acommon browser user interface and a common network platform. This platform allowsnumerous information handling technologies to coexist. This technology is widelyapplied to education; providing sophisticated teaching and learning systems based on thecommon browser interface. Authoring and Web publishing are also developed assupporting tools and to provide better environment for education [5, 6, and 7]. A major challenge in engineering education today is making better use

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Scott Grenquist

that most Engineering students have a basic understanding of the SISystem of Units. In fact, many students readily feel that they have a good understanding of the SI System of Units when theyinitially begin their college educations. However, it readily becomes apparent that even though they can apply the equationsthat they have learned in their lectures toward problem solution, that they have little understanding of the inherent interactionof the units within those equations. Many engineering students could not use dimensional analysis to determine the correctequation on a test, if they had forgotten the proper order of the variables in the equation. Having Engineering studentsproperly learning dimensional analysis and similitude in the first

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Tom Goulding; Durga Suresh

that the internalclass as a guest lecturer eight weeks after the course alphabetic mappings change after each character isbegan. At this point most of the students would have entered on the keyboard.had reasonable familiarity with the Intel opcodeinstruction set. 5.0 Guiding the Project Using the GM-Method The pedagogical method, used to guide ProfessorThe Socratic instructor assiduously avoided Suresh’s students is a Socratic variant that uses bestdiscussing the Intel instruction set. However, in the practices from both educational and engineeringSocratic style guided the students into an development

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Bhushan Dharmadhikari; Prabir Patra; Navarun Gupta; Lawrence V. Hmurcik

Society for Engineering Education The threshold or percolation threshold details the mechanism by which electrons conductthrough a plastic/metal composite. The phenomenon of percolation is well understood,and it will not be discussed here [4]. The threshold is the point where just enoughconductive material is added to the plastic to make the composite structure conductive.This is a function of the conductivity of the conductive material used – metal or carbon.But it is a much stronger function of the aspect ratio (AR). The AR can be defined byfirst considering one particle of the conductive material. This particle can beapproximated as a cylinder of diameter D unit and length L units. The AR is just L/D.Suppose the conductive particle is a

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

S Claudina Vargas

graspcomplex DAE concepts and produced simple but well-designed experiments. This pilot providedvaluable insights to ways in which to improve the curriculum design. A new test will beconducted in summer 2011. We believe this curriculum will be useful to educators. It dealsexplicitly with the subject of designing effective experiments.Keywords:Experimentation, Language-Infused, Design of Experiments, Engineering Education,Engagement, High SchoolIntroductionExperimentation is a typical element in science and technology activities intended for pre-college students, but principles of the design and analysis of experiments (DAE) are rarely1 © 2011 COSOLA,USA .All Rights Reserved.A language-infused approach to introduce Dominican high school students to

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Kenneth Edward Dudeck; Wieslaw Grebski

engineering technology programs in the country. TheUniversity offers five baccalaureate degrees and nine associate degrees at twelve locations inPennsylvania. Engineering technology students complete their associate degree at one of the Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference University of Hartford Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education campuses and then enter the work force, or continue on for an additional two years to earn abaccalaureate degree in engineering technology.For well over the past decade, engineering technology enrollments program have continued to beon the decline at major universities across the country [1]. This has

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Christian Bach; Salvatore Belardo; Hassan Bajwa; Pushpa Kantharaju; Praveen Prasanth

only must firms makethe right decisions with regard to what products/services to offer and what markets to serve, butthey must also ensure that their investments in the information systems and technologies ensure Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference University of Hartford Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education that they are competitive in their industries. Put another way, investments in IS/IT mustultimately improve performance and deliver value to the firm. Improvements as such cannot beimplemented without the intrinsic knowledge and understanding about the system’s currentstatus and equally about the changes that might

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Bruce Char

(analysis, testing, and design) than a typical one-paper/single-use assignment or exam question.However, the cost may be amortized by grading savings in several offerings over time of large courses. Moresophisticated question variant generation awaits instructor-ready tools.References [1] Maplesoft, Maple T.A. 7 User Guide. Maplesoft, 2011. [2] ——, Maple 15 User Guide. Maplesoft, 2011. [3] Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning for the Commission on Behavioral and So- cial Sciences and Education, How People Learn, expanded edition ed., J. Bransford, A. Brown, and R. Cocking, Eds. National Research Council, 2000. [4] H. Anton, I. Bivens, and S. Davis, Calculus, 8th ed. Wiley, 2005. [5] B. Char, “Developing questions

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Akram Abu-aisheh; Omar Hassan; A. Y. Al-Zoubi

rectifier was used to allow only the positive portion of the AC signal tp gothrough the circuit. The input and output of the rectifier are given in figure 5. Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference University of Hartford Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education Figure 5: half-wave Rectifier simulated circuit input and output signals. 4- Low Pass Filter (22kHz)A two pole Low pass filter was designed with a Butterworth response. The filter output isgiven in Figure 6. Figure 6: Low Pass Filer simulated circuit output signal. 5- ComparatorThe comparator circuit compares the input level coming from the LPF to a referencevoltage

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Ying Yu

Elevating Students’ Academic Motivations through Peer Instruction Faculty Paper Innovations In Engineering & Engineering Technology Education Ying Yu Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Hartford yyu@hartford.edu A typical class body consists of students who are fast-learners, slow-learners andthose in between. The differences can sometimes be quite significant. Thus, one of thebiggest challenges that an instructor always face is how to engage students of every levelin the classroom. Well-designed peer instructional methods have

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2011 Northeast Section Meeting

Authors

Sarah Tasneem

unrelated to computers and information technology [1]. Arecent National Academy of Sciences report states that programming knowledge and experience isbeneficial to everyone in an information society. “The continual use of abstract thinking in programmingcan guide and discipline one's approach to problems in a way that has value well beyond the informationtechnology-programming setting. In essence, programming becomes a laboratory for discussing anddeveloping valuable life skills, as well as one element of the foundation for learning about other subjects[2]”. It is identified in the report that exposure to programming is one of the essential elements that isnecessary for a person to achieve fluency with information technology. NSF researchers