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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

John W. Nicklow

to accomplish more than correct surface errors, but to improve the content andreadability of papers. Students were reminded that each paper should do more than summarize thetopic, but rather transform and integrate the subject with their experiences in the classroom. Thechecklist shown in Figure 1 was distributed several weeks prior to the review in order to guidestudents through the peer review process and ensure that adequate consideration would be givento items such as content and organization. Additionally, since the checklist pointed out specificcriteria that ultimately would be used to assess the paper, it became a guide that students could useto write their own papers. Finally, students were asked to expand upon these general criteria

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Matthew Ohland; Richard Layton

Session 3530 Comparing the Reliability of Two Peer Evaluation Instruments Matthew W. Ohland, Richard A. Layton University of Florida / North Carolina A&T State UniversityAbstractThis paper presents an analysis of student peer evaluations in project teams to compare thereliability of two different evaluation procedures. The project teams consist of junior-levelstudents in a mechanical engineering design course taught by Layton for five semesters in 1997,1998, and 1999.The peer-evaluation instruments were used by students to evaluate their teammates’contributions to the team’s deliverables—oral and

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Matthew Ohland; Richard Layton

Session 2330 Peer Evaluations in Teams of Predominantly Minority Students Richard A. Layton, Matthew W. Ohland North Carolina A&T State University / University of FloridaAbstractThis paper presents an analysis of student peer evaluations in project teams where the majority ofthe students are African-American. Peer evaluations were used to assign individual grades fromgroup grades for design projects in a junior-level mechanical engineering course taught byLayton for three semesters in 1997-99. This study is similar to and complements a 1999 study byKaufman, Felder, and Fuller. The results of the two

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Rebecca A. Pinkus; Craig A. Simmons

"focus" workshops that are offered separate from the seminar series.In an effort to make the seminar interactive, we incorporated various activities that required thestudents to participate actively. Not surprisingly, there was universal agreement that theseinteractive exercises were necessary to supplement the lectures. The students felt the discussionsas a class and in small groups were particularly valuable because of the variety of opinions thatcame out of these discussions. The students were generally less satisfied with the exercises thatinvolved peer review and in-class writing. Some students felt that because these exercises wereperformed in class under time constraints, they were unrealistic. Others felt the that their peers’comments

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Teresa L. Hein

Session 3230 Writing: A Novel Strategy to Bring Issues in Science and Engineering to Non-Majors Teresa Larkin-Hein American University, Washington, DCAbstractWriting has long been established to be an effective means of expressing one’s ideas, thoughts,and understanding about nature and the world. This paper will report on an ongoing researchstudy designed to address the role of writing in terms of the assessment of student learning. Tothis end, a new instructional technique for incorporating writing into

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Frances S. Johnson; Carlos C. Sun; Anthony J. Marchese; Heidi L. Newell; John L. Schmalzel; Roberta Harvey; Ravi Ramachandran; Paris von Lockette; Kevin Dahm

faculty as part of a teaching team has on students’ perceptions ofthe importance of writing to engineering and the overall quality of student writing.Sophomore Engineering Clinic I, planned and taught by faculty from the College ofCommunication and the College of Engineering, combines argumentative discourse,technical communication, and engineering design labs. While the course is jointlyplanned, it had previously been individually delivered. Worth four credits, three creditswere devoted to writing and one to engineering design. As part of the present study,engineering faculty are attending 2 of the 4 writing sections. They actively join in classdiscussions, assist in peer critiques, ask questions, seek clarifications, and provide reallife

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter J. Shull

the bottom line being a resulting lower grade. (This is in spite of discussions during the course on grading particulars and responsibility to review prior reports and work of others.)IV. Establish an Element of Peer Pressure Through Group Discussion of Graded WorkAmong others, the goals of the group writing project consisted of: • Improving writing skills through reviewing written material prepared by other students as they selected the positive and negative aspects of each other’s writing style. • Improving report quality through “peer pressure” of realizing that another student is reviewing your work. • Provide an opportunity for other students to review material for errors in

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Nora Valeiras; Luis A. Godoy

first interviewed and fill a questionnaire which is used as a diagnosis ofthe situation.The name of the workshop has involved over time. In 1997 it was called “Peer-ReviewWorkshop” and the present it is called “Workshop on the Process of Publication inEngineering”. The workshop is framed on a wider activity called “Initiative to Strengthenthe Publications in Engineering Faculty” which is directed by the Dean of Engineering.3. Contents of the workshopThe workshop has an open structure formed by units. During the first unit the activitiesare centered on reading, analysis of texts, and writing using papers by other authors asbasic elements. Arguments and discussions are built using such texts. As the workshopprogresses, each participant uses his

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Mickelson

the AE curriculum.These options included Biosystems Engineering, Food and Process Engineering, Power andMachinery Engineering, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, and Structures andEnvironmental Systems Engineering. In all, nine different faculty developed ten labs.Intertwined with the hands-on laboratories was plant trips to local engineering companies, careerguidance, community building, peer mentoring, faculty mentoring, report writing, portfoliodevelopment, and registration guidance. Two sections of the new AE 110 were offered in the Page 5.530.2spring of 1999 and one section was offered in the fall of 1999. Each section allowed

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

John C. Anderson; David Kelso; Charles Yarnoff; Barbara Shwom; Penny Hirsch

may be patented by the students) • several prosthetics for a local woman whose hand was injured in a fire, allowing her to play tennis, cross country ski, and write with a pen.In both quarters of EDC, we make the problems faced by the student teams as open-ended aspossible. We emphasize conceptual design rather than detail design: students are responsible forcoming up with the best range of ideas they can, developing a good understanding of what theusers’ real needs are, and revising their concept until they strike a good bargain between thepossible and the desirable. And at every stage of the process students must explain, clarify, andillustrate their ideas for real audiences: users, clients, peers, and

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Nickolas S. Jovanovic

that purpose. The students work harder on their writing with this approach, not onlybecause they do not want their peers to see a poor effort, but also because they get excited aboutseeing their work on the web and about learning about how to create web sites.Finally, this approach to writing is a lot like the engineering design process. In this case, theproducts being designed are, at the very least, a web-based written report and an oralpresentation. Writing the proposals corresponds to the ideation phase of the engineering designprocess. Writing, modifying, and editing the drafts correspond to the refinement phase of theengineering design process, and the production of the final reports corresponds to theimplementation phase of the

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Mathias J. Sutton; Kathryne A. Newton; Duane D. Dunlap

strategy for implementing the program. The strategy provides studentswith a 30-credit-hour program completed in four, 15-week semesters and one summer session.Each semester, students attend three extended weekend sessions, featuring face-to-faceinstruction and live peer interaction. This is complemented throughout the semester withdistance education in a variety of forms including WebCT, listserve announcements, e-mail,audio files, facsimile, and telephone. The summer semester requires one extended weekend oncampus.Graduate Education at a DistanceWith the capability and affordability of today’s personal computers and related peripherals,distance education is becoming more popular across the country. “Formally defined, distanceeducation is a form

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Andrew N. Vavreck

Session 1566 Enhancement of an Introductory Course in Dynamics and Machine Elements Andrew N. Vavreck, Ph.D. Penn State University, Altoona CollegeAbstractThis paper discusses improvements which were made to an introductory dynamics and machineelements course at Penn State Altoona, in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in the Fall of 1998. Theimprovements included implementing two team design projects, one on kinematics and theother incorporating kinetics and machine elements as well; inclusion of peer assessment of thedesign projects; balanced incorporation of

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Hisham Alnajjar

pairing or clustering of courses in which a group of 20-plus studentstake two or three courses together. The goal was to get faculty to cooperate on the sharedoutcomes between the clustered (FIGed) courses, which are called “Integrative LearningBlocks (ILBs)”. The idea was very successful as far as students’ performance, interest,and their GPA. In 1998 the College of Engineering (COE) had a pilot FIG, involving anintroductory engineering course and a writing course. Recently, the COE received asignificant grant from the NSF for “Integrating Engineering Design with Humanities,Sciences and Social Sciences” where the experience gained from the pilot FIG comes invery handy. This paper is to explain the procedure of the FIG and the ILBs, assess

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Patricia B Spencer; Kathryn Hollar

Session 3230 1 + 1 = 3: Unanticipated Benefits of an Integrated Teacher Development Curriculum at Cornell Kathryn Hollar, Patricia B. Spencer Cornell UniversityAbstractOne of the strategic goals of the Office of Instructional & Research Support in the College ofEngineering at Cornell University is to enhance the undergraduate experience throughexcellence in peer instruction. Through curriculum integration and expansion of existingteacher development programs, we have been able to construct a student community whereteaching is discussed and valued. Since our

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Marilyn Dyrud

anexpressed interest in ethics, a willingness to participate, and openness about sharing materialswith departmental peers. During the first year, participants hailed from our School ofEngineering and Industrial and Technologies (engineering, engineering technology, andbusiness). The second year drew from the School of Health and the Arts and Sciences(communications, social sciences, mathematics, physics, natural sciences, dental hygiene, andmedical imaging). And for the past two years, faculty were invited from all of these fields. Inaddition, administrators have attended, including the deans from both schools as well as theprovost. Conspicuous administrative involvement has lent support to the whole venture andgiven a tacit seal of approval.I have

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Kisha L. Johnson; John Albert Wheatland; Grace E. Mack

engineering community; and serve as successful rolemodels for some freshmen who may lack confidence and who may perceive engineering asdifficult and unattainable. Freshmen can relate better to upperclassmen who are their peers andwho more recently have experienced what it takes to “make it in engineering.” Upperclassmen,particularly those with a proven track record of academic achievement and leadership, are morecredible sources and powerful role models for engineering freshmen. This assumption formedthe basis for development of a pilot freshman retention program, “Fast Track to Achievement.”The primary strategy of this program is to engage teams of upperclassmen in dialogue withgroups of freshmen in a series of workshops focusing on three themes

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Susan M. Lord; Jose A. Macedo; Rick T. Olson

4/9 21 Draw state-transition diagram 22 Write software 23 Test & debug software modules 24 Test & debug software (integrated) 25 Test & debug system 26 Fully functional system 4/16 27 Documentation 28 Prepare User’s Manual 29 Submit User’s Manual Draft 4/26 30 Peer-review of User’s Manual 31 Submit User’s Manual 4/30 32 Faculty Return Graded User’s Manual

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven T. Walsh; Frederick Betz; Donald D. Myers; Halvard E. Nystrom

the same end, the legal education profession utilizes actual recorded courtcases documenting the development and applications of principles and concepts to facts. The businessand management higher education profession has followed the law schools in utilizing cases forexperiential purposes for the students in applying the various concepts. One disadvantage thatbusiness and education has is no ready accessible cases, i.e., someone must write the cases.The result is that there are desirable aspects of business and management cases that are not available.One is a lesser emphasis in business and management cases reinforcement of principles: Cases should be used with the clear consciousness that the purpose of business education is not

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Albert Lozano-Nieto

work on their tasks in an asynchronous mode and have asuccessful interaction with their peers. Our main goal in structuring this course around FirstClass™ is to create a virtual learning community that will provide the students with the bestenvironment to nurture their intellectual curiosity. This paper will also focus on tools used toassess the effect of the use the Intranets in the course as well as the student's perceptions fn using Page 5.694.1technology for this kind of courses.COOPERATIVE LEARNINGThere is a strong interest in today’s Higher Education, especially in Engineering and EngineeringTechnology, in promoting cooperative

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Albert Lozano-Nieto

starting. Most clinicalengineering departments in hospitals limit the number of students taking an internship there toonly one at a time, mostly because of the size of the department, which prompts us to secure aplace in the student’s hospital choice as early as possible. Other types of industries may not havethis limitation, although it may be desired by the faculty to limit to only one the number ofstudents in this cooperative process at a given time. In this way, they will be sure that studentstruly interact with professionals from the company instead of with peers from school andconsequently obtain the maximum benefits from this experience. Another reason for theadvanced contact between faculty and the responsible industry contact is to have

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Pete Tschumi

70 General writing skills 63 Leadership (interactions with peers, servant leadership) 58 Technical writing 51 Presentation skills 34 Diversification (different cultures) 34In the category of business concepts, the upper half of the competencies are listed. Business Concepts Be the customer mentality 78 Investigative skills (probing questions

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Craig W. Somerton

: Page 5.702.4Team #3: The grade for Partner A was 20 points less than the project grade. Partner B gave hispartner an effort grade of 2.5 and 3.5 for himself. His comments were: No help in writing programs. Of the remaining work, it was about 65- 35 split to her benefit. I ended up performing the majority of the work, > 70%, in order to meet the deadline.Partner B also came to the instructor midway through the project and expressed his difficultywith his partner. Once again Partner A did not submit an evaluation form.Team #4: The grade for Partner A was 20 points less than the project grade. Partner B gave hispartner an effort grade of 30% and 70% for himself. His comments were: He made

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

David R. Haws

Session 1453 Freshman Mentoring: Creating a Baseline for Faculty Involvement David R. Haws Boise State UniversityAbstractMentoring may have become a lost art in higher education. Even at its best, faculty mentoringwas typically limited to the paternal protection of a promising young colleague. Occasionally,this involved a gifted undergraduate. Seldom was such benevolence exhibited toward those “at-risk” freshmen most in need of developing a connection with the university.In more recent years the mentor function has been transferred to peers. While this may be lessstressful

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robin H. Lovgren; Michael J. Racer; Anna P. Phillips

received her B.A. in English from Memphis State University, an M.A. in English from TheUniversity of Memphis and is completing her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology, with a concentration on cognitivepsychology. She has been an Instructor of composition, technical and professional writing and an inter-disciplinaryinstructor with the Department of Civil Engineering. Her research interests include: team teaching, learningcommunities and academic success; peer editing/peer feedback in composition, and underrepresentation of girls inscience and engineering fields. Page 5.311.13

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Scott D. Baldwin

Session 2793 The Style Guide as an Instruction Tool for Structured Programming Scott D. Baldwin Oklahoma State UniversityAbstractStructured programming skills are a must for anyone writing computer software. This paper willpresent to the reader the concept of the style guide as a tool for insuring structured programmingskills are developed by both novice and experienced programmers.A style guide is normally a written document, either hard copy or on-line, that provides rules forformatting, documenting, variable naming and other important skills that are required forinsuring

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Francis J. Hopcroft

Page 5.657.5ATTACHMENT PROGRAM LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1B ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT EMPLOYABILITYSEMESTER SKILLED SOUND COMPETENT TEAMING KNOWLEDGE PROJECT IMMINENT PERFORM COMFORT ENGINEER FOUNDATION WRITING SKILLS TRANSFER MANAGEM’T EMPLOYAB. ENTRY LEV’L w/PEER REVFR - FALL A A A A A A A A AFR - SPRING A A A A A A A A ASO - FALL U A/U U

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Rhett J. Allain; Jeff Saul; Duane L. Deardorff; David S. Abbott; Robert J. Beichner

peers 88% of the time.During the spring semester, the SCALE-UP students had higher scores 69% of the time. Ingeneral, when the traditional students did better, the problems tended to be one-step problemslike simple unit conversions and the performance differences were smaller.In addition, the students in both the first and second semester SCALE-UP classes performed wellon qualitative and complex quantitative problems. The students learned to reason qualitativelyand to write short essays using physics concepts without calculations. In general, theydemonstrated a high level of understanding. The SCALE-UP students’ performance on all threetypes of exam problems suggests a better understanding of the main concepts

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Scott Danielson; Sudhir I. Mehta

, writing assignments,technology, high standards of learning and teaching, and a learning support system for students.These principles are being used as a basis for teaching two sections of statics at North DakotaState University (50 and 100 student enrollments) and one section of 22 students at Arizona StateUniversity East during the fall semester of 1999. This paper describes the NG principles, theirimplementation in these statics sections, and initial results. The fundamental intent in using NGprinciples is to enable high-performance student learning and encourage faculty and students tobe active partners in acquiring, constructing, and transforming knowledge.I. IntroductionPatricia Cross, a leading educator, recently indicated in her keynote

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2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael S. Pritchard; Edmund Tsang

result of a reflectivecomponent explicitly designed to foster learning and development. Reflection shouldinclude opportunities for participants to receive feedback from those persons beingserved, as well as from peers and program leaders” [1]. Page 5.544.2Moffat and Decker, in “Service-Learning Reflection for Engineering: A Faculty Guide”[6], state “engineering relies heavily upon linear, black-and-white thinking with littleroom for personal introspection and reflection.” Service learning “demands that studentsconsider the gray areas which inevitably arise when dealing with social issues andincorporate them into problem-solving.” Therefore, “Successful