Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Jeff Ashworth; Will Quinn

53 Research and Projects-Based Courses to Validate Practical Engineering Solution Techniques Jeff Ashworth and Will Quinn Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Prescott CampusAbstractMany courses in engineering education are based on teaching the undergraduate student how to solveengineering problems without including the knowledge of what they are solving or why they are using aparticular technique. Professors sometimes propose a computer solution or technique the student doesnot understand; therefore, the student cannot evaluate the accuracy of the results. Without knowledge

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Bruno Osorno

305 Assessment of Team Projects in an Electrical Power Systems Course Bruno Osorno California State University, NorthridgeAbstractWith team-project-based courses the challenge has been assessment. Various attempts have beeneffective in one dimension and weak in another. Utilizing a different method, a comprehensiveassessment of a team-project-course is discussed in this paper. In this 15-week course, twomidterms , a final exam, and weekly 15-minute quizzes and homework assignments wereadministered in addition to five team projects. The relationship between

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Jody Hamabata

154 First-year Experience for Engineering Lab Course: The Mini-Rose Parade Float Project Update – Year 6 Jody Hamabata California State Polytechnic University, PomonaAbstractThis paper discusses how our university integrates the Cal State’s “learn by doing” philosophyinto the curriculum by combining both a lecture and lab to prepare students for careers inengineering through hands on activities. Each Winter Quarter, each EGR 100 Lab section is giventhe task of designing and building a miniature Rose Float. Under given specifications the

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Stephanie Nelson; Brittany McCrigler

289A Service-Learning Collaborative Project in a Mechanical Engineering Technical Writing Class Stephanie Nelson and Brittany McCrigler California State University, Los Angeles/ iFixitAbstractIn collaboration with iFixit, a company that describes itself as “a global community of peoplehelping each other repair things,” Cal State LA mechanical engineering students taking an upper-division technical writing class designed and wrote repair manuals for older model cell phonesand PDAs. The students worked in groups to photograph the procedures and write the

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Andriani Parastiwi; Taufik Taufik

314 Microhydro for Rural Electrification as a Learn-By-Doing and Multidisciplinary Project: Lessons Learned Andriani Parastiwi and Taufik Taufik Polytechnic State of Malang-Indonesia and California Polytechnic State UniversityAbstractAs a polytechnic institution, State Polytechnic of Malang Indonesia (Polinema) strives to fulfillits mission to provide learn-by-doing education to its students through multidisciplinaryexperiences. Many efforts by the administrators and faculty have been implemented toaccomplish this. One

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Moe Tajvidi P.E.

388Application of Project-Based Learning (PBL) Method in a Senior Year Engineering Design Course Moe Tajvidi Utah State UniversityAbstractIn this paper, application of project based learning (PBL) methodology in teaching civilengineering courses is investigated. Project-based learning method, although closely related toproblem-based learning, has significant points of difference. While the latter addressesintroducing real life mainly ill-structured problems to students as a learning resource, the formeris known more in the

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Hen-Geul Yeh; Duc Tran; Paula Quintana

465 Green Energy Conference Experience – Integration of Class Room Research Projects to IEEE Professional Presentation Hen-Geul Yeh, Duc Tran, and Paula Quintana California State University, Long BeachAbstractGreen Energy is a typical multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary topic for researchers,practitioners, faculty and students. In general, energy generated from the combustion of a limitedsupply of fossil fuels presents environmental concerns. Renewable energy, such as solar andwind, dramatically lowers CO2 pollution emissions, reduces environmental health risks

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Bhaskar Sinha; Pradip Dey; Gordon Romney; Mohammad Amin; Debra Bowen

508 Structuring Technical Capstone Projects for Non-Profit and Low-Budget Community Organizations Bhaskar Sinha, Pradip Dey, Gordon Romney, Mohammad Amin, and Debra Bowen National UniversityAbstractStudents in most technical programs work on original capstone projects that integrate andsynthesize concepts and principles that are taught throughout the program. These capstoneprojects or practicums are usually the last course in the program. At our institution, School ofEngineering and Computing (SOEC), National University, many technology

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

David Dillon; Huseyin Sarper P.E.; Nebojsa Jaksic; Jude DePalma

118 Student Project: Demonstration of Production of Necessary Gases for Return from andSurvival on Mars – Automated Methane, Oxygen, and Hydrogen Production Using a Solar Powered Electrolysis Tank and a Table Top Sabatier Reactor David Dillon, Huseyin Sarper, Nebojsa Jaksic, and Jude DePalma Colorado State University, PuebloAbstractCurrent engineering education literature supports a number of approaches and methods to helpstudents learn. In this paper, an exciting, multi-year engineering project supported by NASA isdescribed as a means of retaining students in STEM and increasing their

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Tina Smilkstein

374 A Graduate/Senior Level Interdisciplinary Medical Technology Design Class Tina Smilkstein California State Polytechnic University, San Luis ObispoAbstractThis paper is a report on an interdisciplinary graduate/senior level medical technology designclass offered through the electrical engineering department at California Polytechnic StateUniversity at San Luis Obispo Spring 2013. Participating students were from electricalengineering, biomedical engineering, computer engineering, psychology and computer science.The course had a major project component where student self

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Jose Macedo; Nick Sweeney

this course, as well as examples of student projects from Fall 2013.The course and laboratory materials were evaluated for learning effectiveness and technicalcontent, which are included in this paper.IntroductionDuring the past ten years, manufacturing automation has changed dramatically. Developments insoftware and new standards allow rapid development and integration of sophisticated automationapplications. It is possible now to develop applications that require integration of machine vision,programmable logic controllers, control of multi-axis servomotors, and robot manipulators frommultiple vendors in a fairly short amount of time. It has become an accepted technology withmany successful industrial applications. These changes have

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Christopher McComb; Fariborz Tehrani

255 Research and Practice Group Methodology: A Case Study in Student Success Christopher McComb and Fariborz Tehrani Carnegie Mellon University/ California State University, FresnoAbstractExperiential learning is a key component in engineering education. In civil engineering, thiscomponent is typically delivered through multiple projects. These projects may include termprojects for individual courses, senior design projects, theses, or independent studies. The focusof these experiences may gradually shift from practice-oriented projects in undergraduate studiesto research-oriented projects in

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Thomas Korman; Hal Johnston; Kay Gore

students. Apartnership built through the use COINS seeks to educate civil and construction engineeringstudents at the lower division and to introduce students to core engineering fundamentals thatform a basis for the knowledge on which they can build in upper division courses and at the sametime increase interest and excitement about engineering by incorporating project-based learningearly in the curriculum. The benefits for students include better preparation of students, asdemonstrated by increasing deeper understanding of project controls and constructability issues,for upper division coursework by implementing project planning and control systemsengineering design and implementation, realize an increase of 25% in the retention of studentswho

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Jin-Lee Kim; Talal Trabolsi

request. Being able to fill out forms, incident reports, and daily progress reports in thefield increases efficiency and overall accuracy of such reports. These technologies also save timeby reducing the amount of trips back and forth to the job trailer to acquire needed information, Proceedings of the 2014 American Society for Engineering Education Zone IV Conference Copyright © 2014, American Society for Engineering Education 167allowing for more immediate decision making in the field. Ultimately, readily availableinformation allows companies and project teams to reduce risk and exposure to failure as projectteams will

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Carlye Lauff; Joanna Weilder-Lewis; Kevin O'Connor; Daria Kotys-Schwartz; Mark Rentschler

in a large publicuniversity in the United States, a general engineering freshman cornerstone design course and asenior Mechanical Engineering design capstone course. These were analyzed throughobservations and other ethnographic methods. The third design setting is professionalengineering companies. This setting was analyzed through the research team’s experiencesworking on design teams for multiple companies. Data suggests that engineering education andindustry organizational contexts constitute processes of design differently. These findingschallenge the typical rhetoric that undergraduate education project courses are intended toprovide students with real-world design experiences.IntroductionEngineering design has been defined as a

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

John Murray; Erin Elder; Ryan Bingham; Glen Longhurst; Desmond Penny

268 The Design and Construction of a Tiny House: Small Is Beautiful John Murray, Erin Elder, Ryan Bingham, Glen Longhurst, and Desmond Penny Southern Utah UniversityAbstractThe Danish scientist and poet, Piet Hein said, “Art is solving problems that cannot be formulatedbefore they have been solved. The shaping of the solution is part of the answer.” Hein’sstatement sets the stage for a senior capstone project involving two Southern Utah University(SUU) students majoring in Integrated Engineering, and justifies their undaunted roving

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Armineh Noravian; Patricia Irvine

. The research question for thisstudy is: What is the role of problem- oriented pedagogical strategies in developing technicalcapital among community college students in advanced technological education?To understand how students might acquire technical capital, this study investigated theperspectives of students enrolled in a two-year technician level program at North-WestCommunity College (NWCC). In the first year, learning takes place in courses that incorporateprojects with well-structured problems 9, often with both a theoretical classroom and a labcomponent. In the second year, students engage in ill- structured problem 9 solving in theircapstone projects that integrate the principles that students have learned during the first year

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Samuel Landsberger; Artin Davidian; Juan Garibay; Richard Valenzuela; Barbara Wheeler

minorities and women, find projects to helpthose with disabilities immediately relevant and highly engaging. The Hands-on Experiencesin Rehabilitation Engineering Program (HERE) provides a stimulating, hands-on learningexperience while fostering mentoring among students at different ages and levels ofengineering training. The student participants – frequently from the poorest and least servedcommunities of Los Angeles, range from 6th graders in Compton, CA to graduate students andinstructors at the California State University, Los Angeles and the University of SouthernCalifornia. HERE provides direct contact between students and individuals with disabilities inthe context of team design projects. Projects often build upon earlier student work, with

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Gordon Romney; Pradip Dey; Mohammad Amin; Bhaskar Sinha

authors1,2,3,4,5,6. This has been an on-going process for seven years,and has made SOEC an agile “incubator”. The emphasis upon “Agility” in engineering andsoftware development was signaled by the Agile Manifesto in 2001. Seventeen industry softwareengineers declared a change in the software development process. Thomas, one of the group ofseventeen, became a noted Ruby on Rails evangelist and publisher8. Rails invites agility. Agilesoftware development, unlike the rigid, sequential “waterfall” model for software development,consists of development methods based on incremental and iterative steps. In agile development,project requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between cross-functional teams.It facilitates adaptive planning, development

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Projects-Based Courses to Validate Practical Engineering Solution Techniques ........... 53Student Learning and Engagement through First Year Programs .................................................................... 61The Study of Gyroscopic Motion through Inquiry-Based Learning Activities ............................................... 69Cyber Education Motivated the Creation of the Virtual Instruction Cloud CLaaS, a New DistanceLearning Modality ................................................................................................................................................................ 81Learning by Doing, a Method to Engage Underrepresented Minority Students Learning ElectricalCircuits

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Kurtis Kredo; Dale Word

-the-art low cost components into a sequence of embedded and digital systems designcourses so as to maximize the learning opportunities provided to students for the resourcesinvested. The resources required, both time and monetary, are minimized in several ways.Low cost, but flexible and current, components are selected, which minimizes costs to theuniversity or student. The investment is further leveraged by using the components in multiplecourses throughout the curriculum and allowing students to maintain possession of thecomponents for independent learning and capstone projects. Integrating the componentsacross multiple courses also simplifies managing replacement parts, if desired. Judiciousselection of components and projects can also

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Shadnaz Asgari; Burkhard Englert

ofappropriate topics, and development of realistic educational objectives to promote cooperation andintegration between students with various backgrounds.Aiming for such a goal, in the spring of 2013, a graduate level course on “pattern recognition” waspiloted in the Computer Engineering and Computer Science department of California State University,Long Beach. The course was offered under the name “CECS 590-Special Topics in Computer Science”and several graduate students from various backgrounds (Biology, Mathematics and Computer Science)were enrolled. Throughout the semester, students learned about different machine learning techniquesand algorithms, and implemented multidisciplinary projects which required the application of thosemethods in order to

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Agustin Robles; David Alvarez; Jasmine Flores; Cham Htun; Cheng Chen; James Enright; Amelito Enrique; Wenshen Pong; Hamid Shahnasser; Hao Jiang; Hamid Mahmoodi

334aims to strengthen community college students’ foundation in the academic fields of science,technology, engineering and mathematics. Four community college students participated in thisprogram in 2013 and were trained to perform seismic design and evaluation of a three story steelplate shear wall.Student Project DescriptionThe team of four students was asked to design a three-story SPSW structure located at 1300Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103. A SPSW frame is comprised of a rectangular system ofrigidly jointed columns and beams with a thin steel infill plate which resists the lateral forcesdeveloped during earthquake ground motions. The flexural rigidity of the frame and the shearstrength of the plate is the source of lateral stiffness

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

David Naish

courses. A course in computer-aided design and analysis in civil engineering hasevolved over the past few years to meet the changing demands of the workplace. This coursenow incorporates learning practical engineering software and developing students’ ability tolearn new software in an efficient manner. Students are taught the importance of fundamentaltheory beyond rote memorization of the mechanics of the software implementation. Additionally,students are taught to investigate multiple solution methods for similar problems and choose themost efficient method. The course concludes with a project aimed at allowing students to learnnew software on their own, quickly and efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to outline thebasics of this course

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Edward Smaglik; Terry Baxter; John Tingerthal P.E.; Chun-Hsing Ho; Mark Lamer

increased by 46 percent and itis projected to increase by an additional 15 percent by 2021, resulting in larger demands onfaculty and other resources1. This resource imbalance presents the opportunity to explorealternative approaches to course delivery with the aim to simultaneously improve the studentlearning experience while more efficiently utilizing classroom space and faculty time. Onepromising method for doing this is to move the acquisition of content knowledge out of theclassroom, leaving classroom time for the assimilation of that knowledge2. This is known as the‘inverted’3 or ‘flipped’4 classroom that relies on ‘blended learning’5,6 techniques. Such methodshave been historically called ‘hybrid courses’ when online learning management

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Frank Sanchez; Cheng Chen

performreliability assessment of RTHS results to appropriately interpret structural performance subjectedto selected ground motion. Research findings from previous studies on single-degree-of-freedom(SDOF) structures is not directly applicable due to multiple mode participation when the RTHSinvolves multiple-degree-of-freedom (MDOF) structures. Integrated with the engineering seniorproject at San Francisco State University and supported by the NSF BRIGE project, this studypresents computational analysis of RTHS of a two-degree-of-freedom structure by a senior civilengineering student. Modal analysis developed for linear elastic structures is evaluated for time-delayed RTHS of nonlinear MDOF structures. Frequency response analysis is also utilized todecouple

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Lisa Wang

the senior projects in the area of earthquake engineering arerigorous in the technical contents and that the students demonstrated their knowledge on thedynamic response of structures such as buildings and bridges to dynamic loads. The integrationof such components to structural engineering education promotes students’ interest in the subjectarea and motivates them to stay in the field and earn their BSCE degree.IntroductionThe importance of understanding the effects of earthquakes on structures to the civil engineeringcommunity is apparent. Recent catastrophic earthquakes (such as 2011 Japan Earthquake and1993 Northridge Earthquake) have caused severe damage to buildings, bridges, and cruciallifeline infrastructures. During the Northridge

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Marissa Buell; Nehad Dababo; Rene Figueroa; Peter Moala; Amelito Enriquez; Kanjun Bai; Hamid Mahmoodi; Cheng Chen; Kwok-Siong Teh; Hamid Shahnasser; Wenshen Pong; Hao Jiang

., LT-spice) to optimize the existing previously designed circuit.Then, they designed their own board and assembled the components. In the end, they thoroughlycharacterized the circuit that they put together. In the ten-week period, the students went over thecomplete board-level circuit development flow: from the design to the test. Their understandingsof electrical circuit theory was dramatically improved as manifested in their project report andfinal presentation. The feedback from the students demonstrates that the NASA CIPAIR is aneffective method to engage underrepresented minority students to learn electrical circuit theorywith the learning-by-doing method.IntroductionElectrical Circuit Analysis is a fundamental course that is of great

Collection

2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Fariborz Tehrani; Nell Papavasiliou; Frederick Nelson; Carol Bohlin; Mara Brady

, as well as the Next GenerationScience Standards. Specific engineering outcomes include the ability to design, plan, and managecreative projects and products with respect to principles of sustainability. Liberal studiesoutcomes addressed in the Engineering Literacy course include accessing and using informationsources, as well as the application of humanities and social sciences to engineering solutions.Common goals such as developing critical reasoning, effective communication, and recognitionof life-long learning are emphasized. Students understand how an engineering solution workswithin technical and economic as well as social and political constraints.In this course, students experience development of an engineering project from inception

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2014 ASEE Zone 4 Conference

Authors

Loukas Lazos; Elmer Grubbs

Society for Engineering Education 241on C Programming and another text on UNIX, where the lecture was used to go overprogramming concepts and work example problems for the students. Students were assignedhomework problems, which were all programs. The class had no lab component, but TAs wereassigned to hold extensive office hours in a computer lab to help the students with homework onan as needed basis. The lab was typically underused most of the semester, but became crowdedat times just before the programs were due. There were two semester exams, and a final, team-based project. Most ECE majors seemed to do fairly well in the class, some with minimal