Conference Session

Trends in Mechanical Engineering

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Rana Mitra; John-David Yoder; Michael Rider

improvements can be made. Building and testing the part providesProceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright© 2003, American Society for Engineering Education Session 1566 them with this opportunity. 5. Maintainability: Several teams wanted their part to 'survive' the tensile test. Therefore they designed the parts with shear pins, which could easily be replaced after the initial test. This is a good indication of taking maintenance into account in the design.In addition to comparison with the prior year, students were given the following survey. Themean values are provided for each

Conference Session

Construction Engineering Advances II

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Stuart Bernstein

Engineering Education”as important as that being learned on the job.Due to the small initial data sample, and the format of the survey, a true statistical analysis couldnot be performed to determine any precise and consequential results. Therefore, this paper willnot attempt to correlate information such as semester GPA against number of hours workedduring the semester. Instead, this paper will serve as a comparative study to begin the process ofinvestigating the subject and opening channels between this author and other educators to dofurther research to discover whether there is a correlation between the two as well as otherpertinent comparisons. This paper will discuss the results of the survey which show the students’opinions of and attitudes

Conference Session

ABET Criterion 4 and Liberal Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Heinz Luegenbiehl; Kathryn Neeley; Jerry Gravander

between science (or the sciences) and practice. As Mead expressed it,“We were out in the research laboratory trying to figure out what was true. . . .Of course, thingsthat don’t work in the lab don’t work in the real world, but things that do work in the lab oftentake a long time to work out in the real world.”4 Mead might also have added that things thatwork in the lab sometimes do not work at all in practice. The “bridge” between the engineeringcurriculum and engineering practice matters, then, because it educates students about the realitiesof the disjunction between the laboratory and practical application. Ideally, educationalexperiences that fulfill the Criterion 4 requirement give the students an understanding of theintegrative nature of

Conference Session

Design in Freshman Year

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

H. Joel Lenoir

General Counsel hasreviewed our policies and plans and given her approval to our efforts.Wobbler EnginesA Wobbler steam engine is a valveless oscillating engine with the connecting rod and pistonformed as one rigid piece (no wrist pin). The cylinder serves as the valve porting system byoscillating (“wobbling”) on a pivot, moving an air inlet hole back and forth between steam (air)inlet and exhaust ports; see Figure 2 below. Figure 2: Operation of Wobbler Engine9Wobbler engines are common beginners projects among hobby machinists.9 A wide range ofweb resources are available for students to research their design10, with some even providinganimated models illustrating how the devices work.11Over 150 Wobbler steam engines

Conference Session

Manufacturing Laboratory Experience

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Davis Charles; Tony Lin

Molding Build the Manufacturing System with QA DOE and Injection Molding Product/Process Courses and Evaluation Projects (QA) AssessmentIn the summer of 2003, we started the integration of AQA and Polymer Processing by followingthe integration process shown in Figure 1 as the roadmap for future collaboration among facultyacross disciplinary engineering programs. The initial roadmap and timeline is shown in Figure 2.Before the term began, both

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Mark Wherley; David DiBiase; Eric Spielvogel; Jonathan Mathews; Sarma Pisupati

suite and reordered to make the sharing of answers moredifficult. Each question was offered one at a time with immediate answer with specific feedbackprior to receiving the next question. Eighty One percent of the students found this either useful(70 of the 179 respondents) or very useful (60/179) to their understanding and retaining theinformation.Reflection Papers:We also utilized variations of the “minute paper” to enhance student reflection both at thebeginning and the end of each lesson. The initial reflection was titled a “wake up the brain.”Submission of this reflection unlocked the lesson material. Consistent with constructivistlearning theory, our expectation was to help students learn by building upon what they know3.Allowing

Conference Session

New Ideas in Energy Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

John Krohn

deliver it to their homes, but very few of the details of this process are knownoutside of industry employees and university teachers/researchers. In short, the public’s “energyIQ” is rather low which may be a large contributing factor to the inability to arrive at acomprehensive energy policy for the nation. One of the aims of the course was to increase this“energy IQ” among the secondary science teachers who would then be able to reach a muchlarger audience in their classrooms.StructureThe course was taught in the summer over a two week period. A typical day’s schedule includeda morning lecture session lasting from 9:00 to 10:20 a.m., a ten minute break, and then alaboratory exercise or demonstration from 10:30 to noon. After the lunch break

Conference Session

Virtual Instrumentation

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Parten

willattend the lab sessions.To properly manage a project it is necessary to develop a clear and thorough plan and carefullymonitor the execution of the plan. In cooperation with the Product Engineering manager (facultyadvisor), the Development Engineering manager (lab instructor), and the resource/quality manager(lab director or staff) and within one week after receiving the project, the project team must developa detailed project plan. Although all projects and project plans are dynamic, it is imperative that adetailed plan be developed initially and continually examined to properly execute the project withintime and budget constraints.For all ECE laboratory projects, activities on a Gantt chart must be broken down into time intervalsno longer than

Conference Session

Intro to Engineering: Not Just 1st Year Engineers

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Suzanne Keilson

writing, conversation, and critical thinking.Faculty members in both the humanities and sciences have embraced this program. It posedsome unique challenges to integrate the idea of an elective engineering course into thisframework, which emphasizes reading, writing and conversation. The initial results suggest thatthis kind of course can provide much needed exposure to engineering design concepts to thegeneral undergraduate population. It also provided some ideas for improving the introductorypedagogy for engineering majors. The following is a detailed course description that was createdas part of the proposal for this new course to the Alpha program committee of the Office of FirstYear Programs. Some excerpted material from the student syllabus

Conference Session

Global Engineering Education

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

William Paterson; Samantha De Bon; Jean-Yves Chagnon; Deborah Wolfe

“Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright ©2002, American Society for Engineering Education”learning should be brought into accreditation criteria, how will the accreditation boardsmeasure the consistency of the experience and against what specific level or benchmark?Or should accreditation look to modular problem-based learning as a preferred model thatin some way will serve to initiate the internship earlier than at present, whileguaranteeing the consistency of the “teaching”?Alternatively, should experiential learning be removed from academic/accreditationconsideration and given over totally to the constituent members to administer as part ofthe internship process

Conference Session

Tricks of the Trade Inside the Classroom

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Paul Blowers

was not adhered to as there were only two exams and a finalinstead of three exams and a final. Students viewed the professor as incompetent and uncaringbecause of the little effort demonstrated through their initial contact with the professor. Clearly there must be more in a syllabus to engage students7-8. The syllabus is the firsthand-out that students will receive in a course and they will refer to it throughout the semester2,8as they apportion their efforts among their obligations. A more complete syllabus thatcommunicates information clearly will aid students in studying and eliminate many conflictslater on during the semester. Eliminating potential conflicts and student anxieties will certainlysave extra effort for the professor

Conference Session

Instrumentation Poster Session

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Puttiphong Jaroonsrisphan

conversion eliminates the need to write complicated parsing code and networkcomplexity. Therefore, users do not have to write the parsing code. Also, users can switchbetween data sources just by changing a simple URL. DataSocket is an ActiveX control;thus, users can use it to develop data-sharing applications in ActiveX containers such asVisual Basic, and Visual C++. This aspect simplifies the use of DataSocket to broadcastlive data. There are two modes of client operations under the DataSocket setup:1. LabVIEW based client program where a Virtual Instrumentation (VI) program runs within the LabVIEW environment in the client computer. This is the preferred mode for research activities as the user can interactively expand on the

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Edward Gehringer

“back end” to our database, we initially usedWebAssign, an Web-based testing and assessment system developed at NCSU.However, WebAssign had a lot of functionality that we were not using, and our userswere frequently bewildered by all the choices presented through the user interface. Thisled us to substitute a MySQL database for the WebAssign database, and create our ownUI using Java. Not only is this easier to navigate; it also returns search results muchmore quickly than WebAssign.The following sections will guide the reader through the various functions provided bythe Course Database. The first step in using the database is to obtain an account. Thiscan be done by sending e-mail to the author of this paper. You should provide someevidence of

Conference Session

Lab Experiments in Materials Science

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Nicholas Degnan; M.L. Meier; Aaron Broumas

look just like concentration profiles.In fact, the correlations suggested by equations 3 and 4 are indeed reinforced by the plotsshown in figures 3 and 4. Variables such as activation energies and diffusion coefficientsfound through hardness testing can be used to predict the hardness values and thereforethe relative concentration of oxygen at other temperatures, times, and depths.The Stability of the Value of HoHo is the initial hardness of the material, before any oxygen diffusion has taken place.Ho, however, can change due to other factors, such as recrystallization and grain growth.In this work annealed titanium was used to avoid this problem. Our results showed thatfor heat treatments done at 700oC and higher, and 20 hours and longer, the

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

William Haering

the quadriplegic student was sophomore- level EngineeringStatics. Given both my experience with having taught the student in ED&G 100 and also a half ayear to think about how to teach statics to this student, I arrived at several conclusions. I wasaware of the time consideration and initially concentrated on making sure that the student had agood process in place to solve problems. I wanted the student to be able to have as much controlon this process as possible and for him to use the same process to do homework problems as wellas to take examinations. I realized the student would be solving the problems using some sort ofcomputer tools. This point is important because I believe instructors must be very careful aboutwhat computer tools

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

W. Steele; B.K. Hodge

in the 1940’s is a goodexample of the drudgery and tediousness of extended pre-computer calculations. The digitalcomputer fundamentally altered the use of “manual” calculations and replaced it with machine-based computations. Initial efforts were hard-wired (literally) with patch boards, but by the early1950’s higher-level programming languages evolved. For engineering computations,FORTRAN became the dominant programming language. However, as these advances weretaking place, both the engineering workplace and engineering education struggled to effectivelyutilize the promise of the “computer” and to define the relationship between the computer andengineering. Indeed, one could argue that these struggles are ongoing.The situation is much

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Zbigniew Prusak

heavy emphasis on process organization and teamwork. The goal of the exerciseis not only to solve a given problem, which is intentionally not clearly defined, but also to come upwith a range of solutions based on the understanding of the underlying scientific principles, and todevelop metrics to evaluate these solutions. Stating and solving engineering contradictions presentin the design and functioning of the apparatus have proven to be one of the prime areas ofstudents’ problems. An initial assessment of areas of biggest problems encountered by studentsduring the course of the whole process is included along with proposed remedies.1. IntroductionProblem solving skills are the very essence of engineering know-how. It is not only the

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Tak Cheung; David Lieberman

afunction of voltage. The exercise is the same as described above except with the e-o cellreplacing the quarter-wave plate in front of the laser (figure 9).Figure 9 Schematic of Electro-optics experimentV. Lessons from DevelopmentAs the materials were developed they underwent testing and modification. Initially, we thoughtwe would not need to modify our original drafts very much because when tested on QCCstudents there were few problems. We were wrong. Once we started to test the materials withSCCC students many problems became apparent. We realized that when we tested the materialswith our own students, we were around to answer their questions and help them out. The distantlearners did not have that advantage. A poor laboratory write-up is not

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Susan Vernon-Gerstenfeld

efficiency will come only with experience in managing culturalcues.Likewise, the greater the range of situationally appropriate behaviors, the higher the levelof cultural competence, according to one group of authors 6. In a study comparing collegestudents from Costa Rica and the United States, researchers found that Costa Ricanstudents, because they represent a more collectivist society were significantly lesscomfortable than the students from the U.S. in expressing negative emotions. Theauthors suggest that people from the U.S., in dealing with Costa Ricans, may do well tocurb their tendency to express negative emotions because such emotions may not bereceived well 7. That finding may carry important implications for U.S. business peopleoperating

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Yogesh Potdar; Patricia Spencer; Kathryn Hollar

Streett, engineering instruction originated in military schools suchas West Point, and many engineering colleges have inherited the rigid discipline and competitiveand exclusive culture of military education5. This little known piece of history has been wellreceived by the participants, and as intended initially has spurred discussion of the presentengineering culture. Page 6.476.6 Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright  2001, American Society for Engineering Education• Does This Apply To You?Peggy McIntosh’s article on “white privilege”6 has

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Wesley P. Lipschultz; Jean Landa Pytel; Jayne Klenner-Moore

with faculty and current students in specificmajors. Advisors made suggestions and expected students to act upon them. Other activitiesincluded encouragement to attend a career fair and an open house sponsored by the College ofEngineering. This process of major selection depended on student initiative and ability todiscuss personal issues with an advisor and/or with students in a major. One of the problemswith this process was timing. Students were generally unable to schedule a meeting just whenthey wanted answers. Another problem was location. Faculty and students in a major are onlyavailable at one location, leaving about half the students without easy or direct access totraditional sources of information about majors.The major decision

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Maarij M. Syed; Sudipa Mitra-Kirtley

found this new method more enjoyable, lessmonotonous, and more fun. This new method seemed to build their team spirit, and helpedthem develop problem-solving techniques.The class-room/laboratory environment proves to be friendlier for the students. Discussionson the topics are initiated readily, and even the shy students open up after a few classes. Theinstructors get to know the students individually in only a few days’ time, and the atmosphereis much more relaxed than the traditional class atmosphere. The end-of-the-term evaluationshave indicated that, overall, the students find the class activities helping them develop a clearunderstanding of the course material. Majority of the students stated that the small grouparrangement is not only

Conference Session

Issues in Physics and Engineering

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Harold Evensen

“identify, formulate, and solve engineering physics problems that cross the traditional boundariesbetween physics, electrical, and mechanical engineering.1” Thus far the change to EP has beenwell-received by both students and employers; we have already met our initial goal of ten tofifteen graduates per year, and our students are increasingly desired for internships, co-ops, andemployment. This desirability is expected to increase further now that ABET accreditationprovides a reference point for those not familiar with EP.Before changing to EP, the Physics program at UW-P had several tracks: a major in physics,with or without an emphasis in engineering or education, and a minor in physics with anemphasis in arts and sciences or education. The

Conference Session

Assessment & Quality Assurance in engr edu

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Carl Griffis

(Criteria 4). The matrix is a large table (Figure 3) with a column for eachcourse in the curriculum and a row for each outcome. The main entries in the table arekeywords that we defined to indicate the level or depth at which each course addressesthe particular outcome. The keywords include ‘Introduction’, ‘Bridging’,‘Development’, ‘Comprehensive’, ‘Practice’ and ‘Capstone Experience’ to represent aspectrum of experiences from initial exposure through terminal professional practice.Also included are detailed entries (inserted as ‘comments’, described in the ElectronicTools section below) which give specific examples of how the course contributes. Thesecomments are mapped from the course syllabi, in which our standard format includes

Conference Session

Programming and DSP Potpourri

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Jordan Rosenthal; James McClellan

on-screen controls. The GUI not only plots a graph of the signal, but it also provides thewritten formula that describes the signal. We believe that this juxtaposition of the visual and thewritten representations of the signal are essential in allowing a student to discover the connectionbetween the analytical paper-and-pencil world and the hands-on world of numerical computing.After initializing the GUI by choosing the two signals to be convolved, the user is presented withplots that describe the various components of convolution. Figures 1 and 2 illustrate the two GUIs inthis state. One of the trickiest parts of learning convolution is understanding the “flip and slide”viewpoint. The GUI supports this visualization by letting the user drag

Conference Session

Real-Time and Embedded Systems Education

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Milan Soklic

Session 1420 Laboratory for Real-Time and Embedded Systems Milan E. Soklic, Ph.D. Software & Electrical Engineering Department Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ msoklic@monmouth.eduAbstractThis article discusses the design and implementation of laboratory equipment suitable forteaching and research in the area of embedded and real-time systems.Basic characteristics of real-time systems are that they are embedded and inherently concurrent.Being embedded implies that interfaces of software modules

Conference Session

ASEE Multimedia Session

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Roger Wallace; David Adams

department committeditself to hiring a full-time technical writing specialist as part of a three-year plan tointegrate technical writing instruction into its curricula. At that point, only one otherdepartment (Mechanical Engineering) in the college had such an effort in place, and therewere no college-wide or university resources available to build such a program. Thatsituation remains current. In addition, at MSU engineering students take the bulk of theirfirst and second year courses outside the college of engineering, and do not choose theirengineering majors until their junior year. Furthermore, a new engineering dean washired with the expressed goal of improving the research reputation of the college. All of

Conference Session

Design, Assessment, and Curriculum

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

William Dempster

should be emphasised. This allows the important features of optimisation in the design process to be explored.(vi) The reporting of design calculations as part of design do cumentation should be includedAn example of a truss design is used in the initial parts of the class and is shown in Figure 5.The knowledge of statics was taught in the previous year and the particular formulationrequirements introduced in part 1 of the Engineering Analysis II class. The example asks thestudent to design a truss to support a load but leaves the overall truss shape to the student, (ieis open ended). The equilibrium equations to calculate the loads in the truss require to beformulated, transformed into matrix form and solved in

Conference Session

Mobile Robotics in Education

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas Morel

Session 2620 USE OF ROBOTS TO TEACH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND PROBLEM SOLVING AT WEST POINT Tom Morel, Rusl Flowers, Jerry Schumacher, Don WelchAbstractAs part of an ongoing initiative to continually revise and improve its introductory computerscience/information technology courses, the Department of Electrical Engineering and ComputerScience at the United States Military Academy has added the use of LEGO MindStorms robotsand Java as part of the active-learning environment used to teach Information Technology (IT)and problem solving with computers. The use of robots and a robot

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Walter Kaminski

velocity profiles for the straight duct and nozzlevary by approximately 10%. The velocity profiles for the elbow show an interesting trend. Thereis a negative velocity region near the inside curved portion of the elbow. This area was furtherinvestigated by using tufts of cotton fibers which showed an inflow to a separated region just pastthe inner curvature of the elbow as shown in Figure 15. The hot wire anemometer is our newestaddition and has not as yet been fully tested. An initial test with thehot wire aligned with the duct centerline indicated a turbulence level of 5.5% (VFLUCT/VMEAN).Figure 10. Schematic of airflow tunnel.Figure 11. Photograph of airflow tunnel showing computer to control experiment