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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Mary E. Besterfield-Sacre; Larry J. Shuman; Jack McGourty

Session 2330 ABET’s Eleven Student Learning Outcomes (a-k): Have We Considered The Implications?* Jack McGourty, Mary Besterfield-Sacre, Larry Shuman, Columbia University/University of Texas – El Paso/University of PittsburghI. IntroductionThere has been a great deal of intellectual and emotional debate regarding the AccreditationBoard of Engineering and Technology’s (ABET) minimum set of eleven student learningoutcomes that are a major part of EC-2000 [1]. The issues range from serious questions as to thegenesis of these outcomes, general concern regarding validity, and

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Gregg L. Fiegel

believed that the comments inthis section should be valuable to all engineering programs, regardless of their size or focus.Of course, grants are one source of income for laboratory- or field-based instructional programs.Equipment grants related to both research and education are available through the NationalScience Foundation, the Department of Defense, and various foundations and institutions. Adiscussion of these funding sources and their available funding programs is beyond the scope ofthis paper. A great deal of information is available through the Web or through a universitygrants development office. It should be emphasized, however, that these agencies fund capitalimprovement projects. Rarely can funds be solicited specifically for

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Y-K Lai; W. S. Chung; Billy L. Crynes

Session 2213 Chemical Engineering Fundamentals -- Better Learning Through Computer-Based Delivery B.L. Crynes, Y-K Lai and W.S. Chung School of Chemical Engineering University of Oklahoma Norman, Oklahoma 73019 crynes@ou.eduI. IntroductionUse of information technology unquestionably, when done properly, leads to better learning. Theevidence is building to a compelling level (1). Unfortunately, there are still too many“experimental” projects that poorly match

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Matt C. Smith; David K. Gattie

“Session 1608" A Multi-disciplinary Fifth-Year Certification Program in Water Resources for Biological and Agricultural Engineering Students With a Capstone Interdisciplinary Project Course Matt C. Smith, David K. Gattie Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering University of GeorgiaAbstractThe Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at the University of Georgia is movingtoward a fifth-year certification program in water resources designed to broaden engineeringstudents’ basic science backgrounds and foster the

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Juan Lucena; Gary Lee Downey

technoscientificdevelopments, particularly Sputnik. The mutual shaping of Soviet and US engineering problemsolving practices clearly illustrates the point that engineering is always political.Engineering education reform. Through the history of the engineering pipeline, students learnhow engineering education reform in the 1980s was a response to an image of Japan as aneconomic threat to the American nation. Students analyze how engineers in policy-makingpositions used engineering-problem solving methodology to respond to the threat and developedthe engineering pipeline to demonstrate the need to educate thousands of engineers for economiccompetitiveness. Students come to realize that K-12 federal-sponsored programs in pre

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Jawa Mariappan; Anthony J. Marchese; James A. Newell; John L. Schmalzel; Beena Sukumaran; Ravi Ramachandran

Session 2225 The Sophomore Engineering Clinic: An Introduction to the Design Process through a Series of Open Ended Projects Anthony J. Marchese, James A. Newell, Ravi P. Ramachandran, Beena Sukumaran, John L. Schmalzel and Jawa Mariappan Rowan University Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701AbstractA major objective of the Sophomore Engineering Clinic I, which is the third course in an 8-semester design sequence taken by all Rowan University engineering students, is to introducestudents to formalized engineering design techniques employed by the various

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Judy Grimes; Huiming Wang; Virendra K. Varma

Session 3247 Exploring the Recruiting & Retention Paradigm: What Works & What Doesn’t Virendra K. Varma, Judith Grimes, Huiming Wang Missouri Western State CollegeAbstractThis paper addresses the challenges associated with recruitment and retention of students. Itdescribes a unique program at Missouri Western State College. It is called Access Plus. It is aprogram designed to enhance the mission of Missouri Western State College. The purpose ofAccess Plus is to increase retention and graduation rates. The Freshman Year Experience Officecoordinates Access

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael A. Kriss

Department. Eachdepartment, through individual faculty efforts, had begun to offer courses specializing in someaspect of electronic imaging. Each course, on its own, provided a real but limited service tostudents. The need for a harmonized, multi-disciplinary curriculum became self evident to thefaculty members working in the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems. The ensuing discussionsresulted in a very aggressive proposal combining current research efforts with a series of fivenew and six enhanced courses. The new curriculum would provide students with an opportunityto earn Bachelors or Masters degree in the discipline of their choice and a strong concentration inone of three areas of electronic imaging. This paper relates how the proposal was

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Laura J. Genik; Craig W. Somerton

softwarethat allows the thermodynamic simulation of a user specified gas turbine system. Students wereasked to consider improvements in thermal efficiency through the optimization of operatingconditions and through the use of intercooling and compressor staging processes. An Excelspreadsheet program for the sizing of a plate-frame heat exchanger was used for the secondproject. The students considered several design alternatives in balancing the heat transferprocess with the pressure drop. The third project focused on the problem of turbine bladecooling. The problem was modeled as two-dimensional heat conduction with internal heatgeneration (actually a heat sink representing the internal cooling). The differential equation waswritten in finite

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter Avitabile

forgotten and others he may have never taken. Inaddition to traditional topics, the student must become familiar with vastly new and diversesubject matter.In order to expose undergraduate students to experimental modal analysis to support capstonedesign projects and other related projects, a simplified approach is necessary. Complexmathematical concepts can be easily illustrated using detailed pictures where color becomes anextremely important contribution. These concepts can be further explained through the use ofmultimedia format presentations. Multimedia provides a mechanism for students to reviewmaterial as often as needed to fully understand complex concepts. This paper addresses some ofthese issues through the use of some typical teaching

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Frank J. Fronczak; John G. Webster

structure to guide them through the process. The topics that werecovered included:• Overview of the design process• Development of design specifications• Generating solutions• Intellectual property• Project planning and scheduling techniques• Giving a presentation• Types of drawings and their usesThese topics were selected for presentation to the entire class because they were considered to beof importance to all the groups, and this provided a more efficient use of time. The material wasintroduced in a timely fashion, that is, just as the students were dealing with the issues covered.For background reading on some of these topics, the students were referred to a textbook beingdeveloped by one of the instructors and made available to the students

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

J. Morehouse; Edward Young; Jed S. Lyons

produce graduates who candesign experiments. Page 4.166.5AcknowledgementThis work is supported by the National Science Foundation through Award DUE-9850749(Instrument and Laboratory Improvement Program) and Award EEC-9109794 (GatewayEngineering Education Coalition) and by the University of South Carolina.Bibliography1. Abu-Khalaf, A. (1998), “Getting The Most Out Of A Laboratory Course,” Chemical Engineering Education, v 32, n 3, p 184.2. Burke, A., Phatak, A., Reilly, P. and Hudgins, R. (1993), “Introducing Statistical Concepts in the Undergraduate Laboratory,” Chemical Engineering Education, v 27, n 2, p 130.3. Ludlow, D., Schulz, K, and

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Melissa S. Tooley; Kevin Hall

engineering capstone design course (Senior Design) at theUniversity of Arkansas has been structured to facilitate ABET 2000 Outcomes. Criterion 3Attributes “a” through “k” are listed and a discussion of how each of these attributes areenhanced in the course is provided. For example, capstone design courses offer a uniqueopportunity to learn about professionalism and ethics (attribute “f”) in a realistic, appliedcontext. Because the department does not have a separate ethics course, an ethics unit is taughtin Senior Design. The concepts learned are applied by the project teams to hypotheticalscenarios specific to their projects. The key is to make the ethical dilemma relevant to theirproject work.The University of Arkansas was one of the first two

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Kuruvilla Verghese; Douglas Peplow

are often lost on the students while they strug-gle with the mathematics. The result is a lot of rote learning without much understandingand critical analysis. This problem is exacerbated when the course is a prerequisite forupper level courses and coverage of the syllabus is deemed important. Over the last fouryears we have been trying the approach of collaborative learning in small groups in a juniorlevel course in reactor analysis to overcome some of the de ciencies. We have found thatformal classroom lectures are important in such a course but student understanding canbe improved through mandatory collaborative learning sessions in small groups outside thelecture classes. Groups of two to three students meet in separate rooms once each

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Qiuli Sun; Michael A. Mooney; Kurt C. Gramoll

Session 3353 Self-Paced Instruction to Introduce Traffic Engineering in Virtual City (Sooner City) Qiuli Sun, Kurt Gramoll, Michael Mooney University of OklahomaAbstractThis paper presents the results of one portion of a larger program conducted at theUniversity of Oklahoma to introduce students to engineering and design through the useof a virtual city called ‘Sooner City’. This particular module is used to introduce thestudents to traffic engineering through an easily-understood, internet-based learningenvironment. Since most freshman engineering students have little

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Karl Stephan

environmental points of view. Following a review of domestic American housekeeping andthe problems associated with food preservation, the history of the natural ice industry in the U. S.is traced from its beginnings in the 1820s through its demise after the advent of mechanicalrefrigeration. We then introduce enough qualitative thermodynamics concepts to enable studentsto understand the basic vapor-compression refrigeration cycle, aided by instructional softwaredeveloped specifically for the course. In the last part of the course, students learn how thechlorofluorocarbon refrigerants hailed as “wonder chemicals” in the 1930s turned into a globalenvironmental problem in the 1970s, and write term papers in which they explore a particularconcept or issue

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Shih-Ming Lee; Sergio Martinez; Anabel D. Ramos; Martha A. Centeno

: Knowledge (K), Comprehension (C),Application (A), Analysis (N), Synthesis (S), and Evaluation (E).Students prepare for classes using different techniques. Those techniques vary from student tostudent and from course to course. This model proposes that the instructor provide study aidssuch as additional exercises or reference material that would help the student achieve thelearning outcomes.The model utilizes Competency Based Evaluation to assess student’s proficiency of the learningoutcomes. This evaluation system was selected because it has the characteristics that Chizmar(1994) and Gilbert et al. (1993) identified as necessary for the continuous improvement ofteaching and learning. Some of the evaluation tools and methods presented by McNeill

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Raji Sundarajaran; Christina Sisterna; Charles A. Lipari; Robert W. Nowlin

by the instructor. The APS X84 board FPGA4 protoboard is used to realize the design in the laboratory for testingand verification. It uses any 5 volt 84 pin Xilinx FPGA. The Xilinx FPGA, that is part of ourprototyping system, is a fixed array of logical function cells connectable by a system of passtransistors driven by static RAM cells. The internal function cells are identical and can besimply reconfigured through a serial interface. This makes the FPGA useful for rapidprototyping. The FPGA, while being a very general programmable logic device, is still restrictedin terms of the logic structures that it can realize as compared to a custom or ASIC technology.The key here is to create behavioral code that will synthesize to the restricted

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Francisco Ruiz; Michael E. Gorman; Phil Weilerstein

Page 4.532.3"inter-professional projects”. These projects are intended to expand the views of thestudents beyond their academic major. Our "Invention and Innovation" classes combinetechnical aspects (a working prototype must be built) with law (a patent must bewritten), business (through a business plan) and social aspects.The program has run continuously for three years under funding from the Fund for theImprovement of Post-Secondary Education and the NCIIA. . Class size is small (underten students), and it has consistently been one of the most popular choices of "inter-professional project" during the prototype phase of this new degree requirement. Theidea of the course is to help students become more creative by engaging in actualinventions

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Daniel Davis

faculty tospecialize, resulting in a faculty group of specialists who are more focused than you will find inmost architectural or engineering offices.Results suggest that efforts to enhance the value of teaching in AET programs cannot beaddressed solely through efforts to reform the attitudes of existing faculty. Instead, addingexperience in industry as an important criteria in the hiring new faculty and the awarding oftenure to existing faculty with industrial experience may be fundamental to changing theexisting culture. These efforts would also place a greater emphasis on teaching, for studies haveshown that industrially active teachers typically spend a greater percentage of their time onteaching above and beyond their work assignments15

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Kip P. Nygren; Wayne Whiteman

measurements could be taken directly in future semesters. Page 4.104.2Student design groups are required to meet with their senior design consultant (theirprofessor) to review and approve their physical model and methodology to complete thedesign prior to continuing beyond this point. This in-progress review allows theinstructor quality control and a programmed interaction with the students that enhancesthe learning experience.The remainder of the problem statement is left quite open-ended. Students are told tosubmit a design that limits the unwanted vibration and generates transmitted forces at alevel that preclude oscillatory walk of the machines.V. Design

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Anthony J. Muscat

. K. S. Mangan, “Lani Guinier Starts Campaign To Curb Use of the Socratic Method,” Chronicle of Higher Education (1997), vol. 43, no. 31, p. A12-A14.24. V. C. Polite and A. H. Adams, “Critical Thinking and Values Clarification through Socratic Seminars,” Urban Education (1997), vol. 32, no. 2, p. 256-278.25. K. Watson, “The Socratic Method and Levels of Questioning,” College Student Journal (1980), vol. 14, no. 2, p. 130-132.26. L. L. Lambright, “Creating a Dialogue: Socratic Seminars and Educational Reform,” Community College Journal (1995), vol. 65, no. 4, p. 30-34.27. L. Tredway, “Socratic Seminars: Engaging Students in Intellectual Discourse,” Educational Leadership (1995), vol. 53, no. 1, p. 26-29.28

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

George M. Swisher; Corinne Darvennes

have not found it necessary to have thestudents purchase a separate MATLAB reference although there are several good ones on themarket.6 In addition, about 30 percent of the students have a student version of MATLAB ontheir personal computers at home, and a very good user’s guide comes with the software. 2At least three class periods are devoted to hands-on and instructor supervised student work in thecomputer labs. Parts of these lab periods are used for instructor demonstrations. A two-labtutorial is used to "walk them" through the basic MATLAB matrix computational functions andsimple plotting routines. In the third lab, they are given instructor-written sample programs toexperiment with. The most advanced of these is a program (with a

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

John H. Ristroph

alternatives that are not replacedand for which all costs and benefits are known. Further analysis is required for other situations. Capital BudgetingThe foregoing analyses deal with mutually exclusive projects in an unlimited capital environ-ment. Now consider the capital budgeting problem wherein projects are independent and capitalis limited. Maximizing present worth and hence final balance in this environment is a complexbinary programming problem.Benefit / Cost Ratio. Project's benefit / cost (B/C) ratios provide an easily implemented capitalbudgeting heuristic. Let B/Cj equal the ratio of the present worth of project j's cash flows at times1 through n to its first cost. Thus B/Cj equals the rate at which

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Kenneth Bryden

-timetable” learning opportunities as valuable as the “on-timetable” classes and labs. Many of the desired ABET 2000 5 outcomes are enhanced by “off-timetable” experiences, and some are probably best taught through “off-timetable” experiences.Team work, ethics, professional practice, application of engineering principles, and projectmanagement all can come to life when the students work on real projects, with real risks, andreal rewards.The comment most often made about undergraduate involvement in activities beyond theclassroom is that it requires too much of a professor’s time and that the quality of the finalproduct is often disappointing. During the tenure process there is no extra time and so anyopportunity to become involved with

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Don Lewis Millard

. What is the problem? Relying on HTML or even Java, the Webpredominantly offers only point-and-click interactivity, yet full interactivity is an essentialcharacteristic of effective learning systems. Bork and Britton have further commented that "forstudents to learn most effectively, they need a high degree of interaction. Effective learning materialscontinually diagnose student learning problems and provide immediate assistance to address thoseproblems." Most of the courses they've seen on the Web "resemble poorly designed books with somehypertext capabilities. The kind of interaction that is needed can be provided only through systems thatcan understand natural-language responses from students to analyze the students' difficulties and totake

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

William Durfee

all companies since multiple agreement forms or allowing companies to modify agreements just leads to endless rounds of negotiations.• The formal academic component of the course should center on learning a product development process. This is what differentiates the course from a work-study program or company internship which does not require formal academics. Through targeted lectures and readings, we advocate a total development process, from needs identification through product launch and beyond. By absorbing the didactic instruction and by observing all teams working, students can generalize beyond their own specific projects to deepen their understanding of product development process

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Francesco Costanzo; Gary L. Gray

Session 3268 Collaborative Learning in Undergraduate Dynamics Courses: Some Examples Francesco Costanzo and Gary L. Gray Engineering Science and Mechanics Department The Pennsylvania State University Abstract At Penn State University, we are in the midst of revising the way undergraduate dynamics is taught through an approach we call Interactive Dynamics. Interactive Dynamics is designed to engage students in a collaborative learning environment in which they also perform ex

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Robinson

with the chosen test also performed close to the historicalaverage on other tests given in the course. The test appears to provide a reasonably validcomparison between traditional and cooperative group achievement.References1. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A., “Cooperative Learning: Increasing College Faculty Instructional Productivity,” ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 18 (4), 1991.2. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., (1996). “Cooperation and the Use of Technology”. In Jonassen, D. H. (Ed.), “Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology,” New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Macmillan, p. 1022.3. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A., “Maximizing Instruction Through Cooperative

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1999 Annual Conference

Authors

Ronald E. Terry; Kurt Sandholtz

person into Stage II. Think of Stage II asthe time to build a solid technical foundation -- essential for building a long-term career. In thisstage, peer relationships take on greater importance, especially in a team context. People inStage II are true team players, pulling their weight without the need for a lot of guidance, andwillingly sharing information with their fellow team members. Stage II individuals rely less ontheir supervisor or mentor for direction, and more on their fellow team members. In fact, theybegin to resent being “micromanaged.” This stage is an extremely important step in one’sdevelopment. People should resist the temptation to rush through Stage II. If they move toofast into a management or leadership role, they’ll find