Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert J. Voigt

Session 2632 Introducing Information Technology Fundamentals into the Undergraduate Curriculum Robert J. Voigt United States Naval AcademyAbstractWe have been challenged to introduce our students to “information technology” as part of theirundergraduate education. This is not an exercise in training people how to use a word processor,rather it is teaching the undergraduate student, from any discipline, the underlying fundamentalsof the technology which pervades our daily lives. The genesis of the course is a result from asurvey of senior people at

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Joseph A. Shaeiwitz

Session 3513 Assessing Chemical Engineering Education as it is Delivered Joseph A. Shaeiwitz West Virginia UniversityIntroductionIs the typical response to the need to develop an outcomes assessment plan to leave thecurriculum and routine teaching activities fundamentally unchanged and to implement alumniquestionnaires, exit interviews and questionnaires, and perhaps some type of portfolioassessment? These are mostly summative assessment instruments that are added on to theexisting curriculum. Feedback from this type of assessment plan has a significant time lag sincemost of the

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

John W. Nicklow

that resounds throughout theprofession. Although writing does not frequently become the final product for those in practice, itis most often the essential means by which the product is created8. Engineering employers haveconsequently expressed the importance of effective communication skills and its central role incareer progression. Accordingly, the same skills have been targeted by ABET Engineering Criteria2000 as a program outcome. In addition to being important in practice, writing can also be used asa pedagogical tool to promote independent, critical thinking about an array of engineering topicsand interests7. It can similarly deepen the fundamental understanding of technical ideas, designconcepts, or critical issues covered in a

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Rebecca A. Pinkus; Craig A. Simmons

seminar that we hope may be used as a foundation for a mandatory (or at least credited)course for senior-level undergraduates.While many American universities have at least two writing requirements in their engineeringcurricula, such as freshman composition and technical writing, Canadian universities typicallyrequire only one technical writing course, often given in the first year of the engineeringcurriculum1. The Canadian engineering curriculum tends to be based on the more traditional,technical-based style of teaching. This is partly due to the traditional emphasis on science andengineering in this field, and partly due to the fact that few English Departments in Canadianuniversities include Rhetoric and Composition in their curriculum.2 As a

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Timothy C. Scott; John P. O'Connell

Session 2333 Workshop Exercises for Connecting Fundamentals to Equipment in the First Thermodynamics Course J.P. O’Connell, T.C. Scott University of VirginiaAbstractUsing balance equations for mass, energy and entropy and property diagrams for analysis,design and intuition about thermodynamic processes is a basic skill which many students finddifficult to master. The abstractness of these fundamental relationships and graphs requiresstudents to have moved from concrete to abstract thinking, but this often has not occurred by thesecond year. Further, many

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Molly M. Gribb; Elisabeth M. Alford

of helping students progress. In contrast, focusing exclusivelyon the fundamentals of technical writing in the freshman year is probably not the best way tohelp students discover the excitement of engineeringAs Hillocks writes, “Writing is at the heart of education when it is connected to inquiry andwhen inquiry is in the hands of the students. . . .Writing is a chief means of extending, shapingand rethinking that inquiry and carrying on the dialectical processes involved.3 But equallyimportant, writing can play an enormous role in the intellectual and personal growth of theemerging professional. “With each writing,” Hillocks observes, “ we review our knowledge. Indoing so, we have an opportunity to rethink, realign, and reintegrate it, a

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter J. Shull

Session 2559 Formal Laboratory Reports Pros and Cons: An Interim Report Peter J. Shull Penn State University, AltoonaI. IntroductionEngineering programs have historically faced the major challenge of providing engineeringstudents with a solid foundation in written communication skills. In response, most engineeringcurricula include fundamental writing courses focused on developing and improving writtenperformance. With this emphasis in mind, the use of writing exercises in the classroom providesan opportunity for engineering

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Jr. , John A. Hamilton; Jeanne L. Murtagh

fundamentally flawed approach. Evaluating the students’detailed designs before they proceed to coding provides a similar, although slightly less critical,benefit. Although both of these design reviews do take instructor time early in the project cycle,the reviews may actually save time overall. Instructors will see fewer panic-stricken studentsasking for help as they frantically try to get running code from a fundamentally flawed designduring the last week (or perhaps even the last few days) of the project cycle.The design submission requirement has the additional benefit of supporting "writing across thecurriculum" initiatives. Students gain practice in technical writing, which is essential to theirability to function effectively in industrial

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Jianping Yue

applications software, oral and writtencommunications, technical report writing, and data analysis. A number of institutions are alsoteaching the fundamentals of engineering design to freshmen. By working in teams to designpractical products, students not only immediately apply the basic skills that they have justlearned, but also are involved in the activities of the engineering design process, technicaldrawing and computer-aided design, team work, report writing, and presentation. This alsoallows students to become involved in engineering content at an early stage and helps themdevelop interests in engineering and technology disciplines. Therefore, they will have a betterchance to successfully complete their programs. This paper also discusses some

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Sheldon M. Jeter; Jeffrey A. Donnell

writing. This guidance should include a manual incorporating a uniformwriting standard that represents industrial and academic practice. Instruction can then refer to asingle consensus standard. Consistent grading and feedback based on this standard can thenreinforce the instruction. However, the instruction cannot be planned, nor the writing standard bedeveloped without a practical objective. The practical objective is the kind of technical writingand production quality that fits the needs of the curriculum and professional practice and that canbe expected from undergraduates. The objective is defined in terms of representative report typesand the corresponding contents, formats, and production qualities. Without such a common andwell defined

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Douglas H. Baxter

capabilities of today's solid modeling packages, solid modelingexamples can be used to enhance the students' abilities to grasp fundamental engineering conceptsin their studies. The effective use of solid modeling for design and documentation of parts andassemblies is well established. In this paper, uses for solid modeling outside of traditional graph-ics courses are examined. It is shown how solid modeling can be used to visualize concepts taughtin undergraduate studies; including vector properties, differentiation as applied to shape optimiza-tion problems, and simple structural optimization. While the focus of this paper will be on devel-oping visualization skills at the freshman and sophomore levels, it will can seen how solidmodeling can be

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Nickolas S. Jovanovic

Education, 1997.8. Stephen R. Cheshier, Studying Engineering Technology: A blueprint for success, Discovery Press, Los Angeles, 1998.9. Raymond B. Landis, Studying Engineering: A road map to a rewarding career, Discovery Press, Los Angeles, 1995.10. David Beer and David McMurrey, A Guide to Writing as an Engineer, Wiley, New York, 1997.11. Gary R. Bertoline, Eric N. Wiebe, and Craig L. Miller, Fundamentals of Graphics Communication, 2nd edition, WCB McGraw-Hill, Boston, 1998.NICKOLAS S. JOVANOVICDr. Jovanovic received the B.S.M.E. degree from Northwestern University, the M.S.M.E. degree from RensselaerPolytechnic Institute, and M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering and Applied Science from YaleUniversity. He is an Assistant

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Bernard Hoop; Thomas E. Hulbert; Robert B. Angus; Eric W. Hansberry

writing skills will write the report,and those accomplished in drafting will produce the drawings. While this may be efficient andwidely done in industry, students seldom work in areas where they need the most improvement.In an effort to fairly determine deserving grades, each student may be asked to write a briefdescription of their contribution to the project and a percent estimate of each group members’contribution.II. Design Project FormatEngineering and design textbooks suggest various project formats, many of which are generaland may be altered to accommodate specific designs. One such design as suggested by GerardVoland, is a complete thirteen-part outline developed to familiarize first-year students with thedesign process and prepare them

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Vincent Wilczynski

Session 3226 A Virtual Instrumentation Based Engineering Experimentation Course Vincent Wilczynski United States Coast Guard AcademyAbstractThe modern engineering experimentation course must not only cover experimental techniques,transducers, signal processing, and data analysis, but must also include fundamental concepts incomputer based data acquisition. Though this list of topics is large and each topic could be thesubject of an entire course, a single course introducing all of this material has been developedin the Mechanical Engineering major at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy (USCGA). In

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

M. David Burghardt

belief system is thatwhile some informational knowledge is useful, its real value lies in its application in apurposeful activity. This is consistent with the active-learning, constructivist instructionalpedagogy employed in modern science education and in children’s engineering. Page 5.210.3 Session 2530III. Fundamental Tenets of Science EducationIn learning science, it is our hope that children will learn and understand scientific concepts,ideas, and scientific process--the how of science. A scientist may pose a hypothesis, e.g. forstatic equilibrium the sum of the

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

N. W. Scott; B. J. Stone

firstdiscussed and it is concluded that such applets should encompass what has been found to beuseful in previous non-WWW platforms. Thus animation and the ability to vary parametersare a prime consideration. However the ability to animate some shapes on a computer screencan be abused; a static diagram is open to misinterperetation and a moving diagram even moreso. Each new animation has to be thoroughly tested and revised to ensure that students learnwhat was intended. The latter part of the paper gives helpful hints on writing Java appletswhich include animations.1. IntroductionIn a companion paper [1 - in these proceedings] a description is given of the current state ofteaching vibration via the WWW. A comprehensive set of WWW notes, animations

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Yosef Gavriel; Robert Broadwater

conceptsintroduced in the lecture. An example of such a question isWhen you write code, one way you communicate with other programmers is to embed___________ in the code.By picking on the hot spotted blank in the above statement, the student would see the word“comments” appear in a popup window. All together, over 400 hot spotted questions weredeveloped for the course.IV. Software development practices and principlesThroughout the course, emphasis was placed on nine software development practices andprinciples [1,2]: • Experiment in small programs • Step through the code line-by-line • Programming is first of all communication • Analyze and plan before you act • Clearly understand your program

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

V. Ramachandran; Ravi Ramachandran

6 d3 d6from which FAB and FAD are determined given f1. To use KCL, we make use of a fundamental system modeling concept that statesthat a force and current are analogous through variables [4][5]. This enforces the fact that theconcept of the vectorial sum of forces at a joint being zero is the application of KCL to a Page 5.656.3structure. Continuing with the example, we construct a vector phasor diagram which is identicalto the shape of the truss at junction A. This is as shown in Figure 3. f1

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

John K. Estell

fundamental understanding regardingevent-driven graphical user interface (GUI) programs. A minimal, but sufficient, amount ofcoverage is presented at this time regarding the use of Symantec’s Visual Café Java rapidapplication development tools, the button, label, and text field GUI components, a small numberof methods associated with these components, and how one handles action events generated bycomponents. As our students have previously been instructed as to web page development, oncethis material is covered they are able to write simple Java applets.Now that the students have a basic understanding of event-driven GUI programming usingapplets, the interactive programming portfolio (IPP) is introduced. The IPP is presented throughthe examination of

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Geoffrey A. Wood

students whoneed to view the information.III. Multimedia SoftwareAuthoring SoftwareAuthoring Software is the glue that holds all the presentation elements together. It provides theauthor with the ability to create a user interface and to set the rules of the presentation. Thechoice of which authoring software to use is fundamental to the success of the presentation. Aspreviously discussed, the multimedia engine, or code that controls the presentation is subject tovarying amounts of freedom11. The more restrictive it is the easier it is to learn and the morelimited it is. The following list begins with the two authoring software programs that provide thebest compromise between control and ease of use

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Jeffrey B. Hargrove

courses in mechatronics, twomechatronics laboratories and a website to support the educational endeavors of themechatronics students. As will be described in this paper, the first course and its laboratoryexercises are designed specifically to provide the students with meaningful experiences in theapplications of mechatronics design principles. The knowledge gained in this first course willbe applied in the second course, where the fundamental focus is to provide a completeexperience in the innovation, design and fabrication of a new mechatronic product. This is alldone in a team environment. The long-term goal is to integrate business management studentsinto the product development team to provide marketing support.I. IntroductionThe consumer

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Jeffrey L. Ray

Effective Meeting Management 6 Time Management and Delegation 7 Resource Availability 8 Project ManagementThe remainder of the first semester is utilized for student teams to prepare a design proposal fortheir assigned project. In addition, teams must present their design choice, budget, and projectschedule to the sponsor for approval. The second semester course is utilized for design andconstruction of the project. A description of each module developed follows. Teambuilding – The module is designed to assist students in the fundamental knowledge of leading a team, including strategies for developing, maintaining, and building a

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert J. Hofinger

another, and arrive at a “real world”application. This way, students will gain experience in seeing how a complicated design is builtup of many simple circuits. A set of laboratory courses, which are presently used in theElectrical Engineering Technology program at the Purdue University School of Technology siteat Columbus, will be presented to show how this has been achieved.IntroductionMany incoming students in the Purdue Statewide Technology program come to us withouthaving any experience with electrical or electronic pieces of equipment. They have spent moretime with interactive video, educational rock, and VCRs and minimal time with erector sets,with lawn mower engines, with the use of tools, and with the exploration of the fundamentals

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Sharon A. Jones; Indira Nair

suggest that thiscurriculum be used by the teacher in conjunction with a disciplinary text, or a reader ofenvironmental writings depending on the teacher’s course objectives. What our text does is toprovide teachers with materials that can be used in class to achieve a participatory, project-basedfocus that we feel enhance the instruction of environmental literacy.Target Audience: The potential audience for this text is large and varied. As stated in theintroduction, the curriculum in this text is designed to help the citizen gain a workingunderstanding of environmentally responsible decision making on several levels. The citizenmay be a student of engineering who needs to understand the impact that engineering decisionscan have on the

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Greg Smith; Richard E. Pfile

. Ourprocessors had a cycle time of .0625 microseconds with most instructions completed in onemachine cycle. The processor interrupt latency is under two microseconds. Page 5.24.2IV. Software The machine architecture is optimized for high-level languages such as C. C languagewas used for most of the programming with exception of the interrupt service routines, which areprogrammed in assembly language.• PWM Control Techniques When using PWM the fundamental PWM interval must be determined.2 Factors that willinfluence the interval are the inertia of the plant being controlled and the granularity required inthe control steps. For this problem

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Howard A. Canistraro

dynamic loadsthat they are subjected to.These relationships are then applied to the more complex right-angle bevel gear system found inthe commercial hardware system. In this case, three dimensional loads must be considered andagain fundamental aspects of statics are reinforced. A modified version of the Lewis FormFactor method as is pertains to bevel gears is employed. The students are required to conduct allcomputations using the program MathCAD and a factor safety for the bevel gear teeth aredetermined. Next the reactions at the bearing supports for the pinion and gear shafts are foundwhich will be used in determining the equation for slope and deflection of each shaft as well asthe loads that will be transmitted to bearings.Various methods

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Mauricio A. Colombo; Maria R Hernández; Jorge E. Gatica

requiring students to develop their own solvers, whenlearning fundamental engineering principles, is typically an overwhelming and frustrating practice.Indeed, besides a solid understanding of the principles being demonstrated, developing a solverrequires mastering programming and numerical analysis skills. The most common route to overcomethese roadblocks, is to train students to use pre-packaged commercial, instructor-developed solvers,or some combination of both. The shortcoming to this approach is that students use these programsas "black boxes" that implement some "esoteric" algorithm or numerical method. Moreover, the lackof motivation to understand the software, typically results in students losing interest in understandingwhat happens

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Pete Tschumi

specialist is also small enough to allow both the highly desired anddesired items to be shown. Page 5.63.7 Network Specialist (Highly Desired and Desired) Knowledge of Network Protocols 95 Knowledge of Networking Hardware 95 Ability to Troubleshoot 95 Knowledge of Communication Fundamentals 93 Knowledge of Connectivity Methods 92 Knowledge of Network Security

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

James J. Alpigini

program is CSE 431: Introduction toComputer Architecture, which is offered at the level of a senior undergraduate or first yeargraduate. Despite its fundamental nature, teaching the course represents a major challenge forthe instructor due to the technically diverse background of the students, many of whom havenon-technical backgrounds such as business or human services. Within this paper, the approachused to teach computer architecture to such a mixed student background is presented. Emphasisis given to the course content and tools utilized, as well as efforts to make the course challengingfor the student, regardless of the student’s technical level.I. IntroductionThe Master of Science in Information Science (MSIS) is a relatively new and

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Mark L. Smith; Kenneth E. Rowe; Carlos R. Morales; Rick L. Homkes

. Bloom’s taxonomy is used to prepare for teaching and also to assesslearning. Laboratory development includes making that first contact with prospective industrialpartners and writing a grant proposal. The service area includes not just the committee workupon which academia thrives, but also outreach activities to the community. This outreachincludes both working as a consultant and reaching out to possible new students. Publishingincludes the research and preparation of a first paper for conference presentation along with therelative worth of different venues for a published paper. Finally, the fourth member of the team,one who made the move from industry eight years ago, describes how to put these activities intoa winning promotion and tenure