Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

David Adams; William Manion

semester 2004 began with two recent alumnae visiting the lecture class to talk about theimportance of communication in the workplace. Each spoke briefly about their first fewprofessional years and offered examples of how communication had affected their jobs, settingthe stage for an introduction to the ECP and the writing component of the lab course. During thefirst week of lab, wood variability testing was performed, and the first memo from the projectmanager was distributed. Following a short discussion of the assignment objectives, framed bythe three fundamental questions below, students were assigned to respond to the manager’smemo by email and on paper by 9pm the following day. 1. What is the answer to the most important question? 2. What

Conference Session

Documenting Success

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Carl Bern; Brian Steward; Amy Kaleita-Forbes; Steven Mickelson; Thomas Brumm

Session 2508 ABET is Coming! Getting Faculty Involved Thomas J. Brumm Steven K. Mickelson Brian L. Steward Amy L. Kaleita Carl J. Bern Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering Iowa State University Ames, Iowa USAAbstractFaculty participation in outcomes assessment is critical to a successful ABET

Conference Session

Issues in Computer Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Quinn

Java Applets to Reinforce Fundamental Computer Science Concepts Michael J. Quinn School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Oregon State UniversityAbstractWe describe a set of 15 interactive animations developed for college freshmen taking a computerscience orientation course. The purpose of using the interactive animations is to improvestudents’ understanding of conceptual and procedural knowledge fundamental to the field ofcomputer science. The animations have been implemented as Java applets. We explain howintroducing applet-enabled activities into lectures has affected the classroom

Conference Session

What's New in Engineering Economy

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Rafael Landaeta; Bryan Magary; William Peterson

. Thepractice of engineering seems to out pace the teaching in the application side. In the early 1980’spracticitioners were writing programs in Basic on PDP-11s and AIM 65s to find the IRR ofprojects – not using the trial and error approaches taught. The advent of PCs with spreadsheetsoftware made this even easier. The development of built-in financial functions in thespreadsheet software makes the use of tables in the practice of engineering obsolete.From an after the classroom standpoint, the only time tables are relevant to today’s engineer isduring the FE Exam. Since engineering economy is such a small part of this exam and since thisexam should also be evolving to meet the practice of engineering, this seems little reason to clingto the use of

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Rufus Carter; Lisa F. Bullard; Douglas G. Schmucker; Misty Loughry; Richard Felder; Matthew Ohland; Richard Layton; Cynthia Finelli

were introduced in earlier work.1 ABET’s requirement that engineeringgraduates have an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams2 has driven an expanded use ofcooperative learning in engineering curricula.3 A fundamental tenet of cooperative learning isholding individualThis will be achieved by improving individual accountability by adjustingteam members accountable for fulfilling their responsibilities to the team. An effective andincreasingly common way of addressing this tenet is to have team members rate one another’sperformance and to use the ratings to adjust the team assignment grades for individualperformance. The challenge is to devise a rating system that is fair, simple to administer, reliable,and valid.Our prior experience

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Elisa Linsky; Gunter Georgi

Technical Communication have beenintroduced. These include: technical presentations, software documentation, and proposalwriting. To introduce the fundamentals of persuasive writing, our students respond to an RFPand prepare a funding proposal for a fictional organization. This semester, the assignment hasbeen refined to include the preparation of a cover letter for the proposal.This paper will discuss teaching the skills necessary to produce good persuasive writing in ascientific or technical context. The differences in student writing when a full proposal is assignedto the writing produced when just a cover letter is assigned will be discussed. Particular attentionwill be paid to introducing these skills without eroding the preparation of

Conference Session

Education Ideas in Software Engineering

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

John Estell

such assignments, the writing ofgames promotes strategic thinking. A programmer must consider how to properly utilize datastructures to represent the elements of the game and how to establish the necessary heuristics forevaluating the status of the game.In the past, each card game program had to be essentially written from scratch, but what reallychanges from implementation of one game to the next? How does the concept of a card or adeck differ? There is a great deal of functionality that stays the same, regardless of the cardgame being implemented. This card game assignment is used in our third introductoryprogramming course, where after two quarters of C++ in a text-based context, students areintroduced to graphical user interfaces (GUI

Collection

2005 ASEE Midwest Section Conference

Authors

Judith Collins; Alysia Starkey; Beverlee Kissick; Jung Oh

journals, to provide students with practice preparing their documents for a job search in their field, including resume, cover letter, interview skills, online application processes, and portfolios of educational experiences.Each of the objectives above is central to developing technical writing skills, yet eachalso requires high-level IL skills. (Assuming that students entering technical writinghave already developed some library skills, basic information skills are distinguishedfrom higher-level skills in that fundamental functioning entails knowledge and tool skills,whereas IL, literacy, requires the addition of cognitive strategies)8.IL is also a process: “attitudes and knowledge; the ability to learn, or complex of ways ofexperiencing

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Trine Kvidal; April Kedrowicz

collaborated to create a series of required engineeringcourses that contain an integrated communication component. Communication isintegrated such that engineering undergraduates speak about and work on projects as theywould in the workplace. Specifically, Mechanical Engineering 1000, An Introduction toDesign, is a project based course in which students work in teams to learn the basics ofdesign, computer programs, and communication fundamentals while competing againstone another to design a device in accordance with various parameters and win thecompetition. As a part of this process, teams formally present their work twicethroughout the semester. These presentations are delivered to the professor and

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Alley; Kathryn Neeley

“paradigm thatresults in people presenting certain types of information in limiting, linear ways. . . .But there’sno reason the bullet-point mindset has to prevail” (in Simons March 2004). He emphasizes theimportance of the “fundamental mindset that gives form to [a speaker’s] presentations” and asksthe question: “Is your PowerPoint static, inflexible, and fixed in stone; or is it fluid, flexible, andliving?” He sees PowerPoint as a second language in which it takes significant effort to becomefluent, and as an entirely new media category, “in order to use the tool most effectively, we needto honestly admit that it doesn’t fit into any other media category” (Atkinson 2004d). One key distinction for the intelligent use advocates is between

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert Askew; Cari-Sue Wilmot; Colley Hodges; Richard Bannerot

” (unpublished research report completed August 2003 for the University of Houston Office of Institutional Research).BiographyCOLLEY HODGESColley Hodges is the Program Manager of the Writing in the Disciplines (WID) Program at the University ofHouston Writing Center (UHWC). He holds a B.A. (summa cum laude) in Creative Writing from UH. He workswith faculty of various colleges to help integrate writing instruction into their courses and articulate effectivesolutions to address student writing needs.CARI-SUE WILMOTCari-Sue Wilmot is a Senior WID Writing Consultant at the UHWC and a B.S. candidate in Electrical Engineering.She has taught English 1300: Fundamentals of English, and has worked as a Writing Consultant in severalengineering projects

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

James Giles; Donald Roberts; David Mitchell; Anthony Richardson

Using Robotics Competitions to Teach Teamwork Principles And Fundamental Engineering/Computer Science Concepts James Giles, Anthony Richardson, Donald Roberts, David Mitchell University of EvansvilleAbstractAll freshmen in the electrical engineering, computer engineering, and computer scienceprograms at the University of Evansville take a common “Introduction to Engineering” courseduring their first semester. The course is focused on exposing students to team-based,multidiscipline, and project-oriented learning. Two robotics contests are used to teachfundamental principles in electrical engineering, computer engineering and computer science.The contests have also been very

Conference Session

Useful Assessment in Materials Education

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Kendree Sampson; Darin Ridgway; Valerie Young

that occur outside of class and before the material is covered in class. Classroomtime is devoted to some combination of lecture, student presentations, general discussionbetween the students and instructor, peer review, critiques of sample responses from previousyears, and practice quizzes. Writing assignments are checked immediately before or duringclass; but the evaluation of homework is limited to whether or not a good faith effort was made.The instructors do not provide a “correct” answer. Instead, they moderate and guide classdiscussions and provide their own critique of the answers as needed. Closed-book examquestions are chosen from the homework questions so students know ahead of time whatmaterial will be tested on the exams. All of

Conference Session

Integrating H&SS in Engineering II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Christy Moore; Billy Koen

Using the Engineering Method To Research and Write about Corporate Practice: A Model for Teaching Engineering Ethics O. Christene Moore, Senior Lecturer Billy Vaughn Koen, Professor The University of Texas at AustinIntroduction The pressure to include, if not emphasize, the importance of ethics in the engineeringcurriculum is one of the most perplexing challenges facing engineering educators today. For onething, it is difficult to decide where exactly to put ethics in the curriculum. With courserequirements that are already bursting at the seams, it’s hard, as Michael Davis suggests in hisarticle “Teaching Ethics Across the

Conference Session

ELD Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Kiem-Dung Ta; Helen Clements; Kevin Drees

in progress.IntroductionThe goal for the library component of ENGL 3323 is to address the following: 1) Engineering faculty recognized that their students in ENGL 3323: Technical Writing needed an instructional component highlighting library resources because they were not locating the print and electronic resources that would yield the citations needed to round out the development of their papers. The same students displayed a deficiency in the skills needed to utilize the library effectively, specifically those pertaining to searching and using a variety of resources. The College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology enrolls 3,500 of the 23,000 students enrolled at

Conference Session

Information Integration

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Azzedine Lansari; Akram Al-Rawi, McKendree University; Faouzi Bouslama, Université Laval

least 30 semester-hours of study in general education to broaden the background of the student.Detailed description of each general requirements are summarized below:Information Systems: • All students must take a broad-based core of fundamental information systems material consisting of at least 12 semester hours. • The core materials must provide basic coverage of the hardware and software, a modern programming language, data management, networking and telecommunications, analysis and design, and the role of IS in organizations. • Theoretical foundations, analysis, and design must be stressed throughout the program. • Students must be exposed to a variety of information and computing systems and must

Conference Session

Faculty Development II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Justin Davis

new professors1-5. Page 10.1141.1 “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education” Most advice contains some or all of these general areas of advice: • Setting goals • Writing papers • Writing proposals • Getting good teaching evaluations • Managing graduate students • Sustaining good mental health This paper is no different, but it will give specific advice on not only what to do,but how to do it.2. Setting goals

Conference Session

Developments in Chem Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Joseph Holles

retained, additional topics and assignments havebeen included to more completely cover the graduate school experience. A typical classschedule is shown in Table 1.Table 1: Typical Class ScheduleWeek Class Topic Week Class Topic1 1 Welcome/Introduction 8 1 Paper Writing 2 Library 2 Paper Writing 3 Why Grad School? 3 Paper Writing2 1 Holiday 9 1 Ethics 2 Communications Basics 2 Ethics 3 No Class 3 Ethics3 1 Presentations 10

Conference Session

First-Year Design Experiences

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michelle Sabick; John Gardner; Patricia Pyke; William Knowlton; Amy Moll

operations for ten minutes. The module handouts are included at the end of this paper.Activity I — Modeling. Many students want to jump right in and start designing their process.However, their first class requirement is to develop a mathematical function that expressesmanufacturing costs and to graph the cost of a sandwich as a function of production time. Giventhe selling price, the students also perform calculations related to profit and yield. Thesecalculations, which may be done on paper or in Excel, give the students a realistic starting pointto begin their process development.Activity II — Writing procedures. The subtleties of communicating specific instructions areexplored in this activity where students write a simple procedure to make a

Conference Session

Engineering Education Research and Assessment I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Frederick Berry; Patricia Carlson

a junior-level introduction to engineering designcourse. Rather than elaborating on the course itself, we focus in this paper on the data collectioncapabilities of CPR and give samples of the types of analyses made possible by the tool.I. Using Writing as an Analog for Thinking in Engineering DesignWe base this paper on experiences with Calibrated Peer Review (CPR), largely over the past twoyears. We demonstrate how the CPR learning platform moves well beyond traditional web-delivered, course enrichment software. More specifically, data collected in a junior-levelengineering design course is used to illustrate how CPR system features help to make formativeassessment an integral part of using writing in the learning process. In fact, the

Conference Session

Improving Mechanics of Materials

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Ing-Chang Jong

physics usually intheir freshman year. In mechanics, a body receives work from a force or a moment that acts on itif it undergoes a displacement in the direction of the force or moment, respectively, during theaction. It is the force or moment, rather than the body, which does work. In teaching and learningthe virtual work method, it is well to refresh the following fundamental concepts: Work of a forceThe work U1→ 2 done by a force F on a body moving from position A1 along a path C to positionA2 is defined by a line integral. It is given by 1-4, 6-7 A2 U1→2 = ∫ F⋅ dr (1

Conference Session

Computers in Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Filsinger

. However, I have found in my Computer Architecture class that making the studentswrite their own simple simulator programs results in a better understanding of some of the designissues involved in CPU performance. In this way, students can study the effects of the pipelinewithout needing to worry about any of the other details.IntroductionAll students in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology programs at the Universityof Cincinnati take a Junior/Senior level course in Computer Architecture. One of the mostimportant concepts from this class is the effect of pipelining on Central Processing Unit (CPU)performance. This is one of the most fundamental issues facing CPU designers today.Unfortunately, it is difficult to demonstrate the

Conference Session

Problem-Solving & Project-Based Learning

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Elisa Linsky; Gunter Georgi

, we watch them present 13 talks overthe course of the term. It is not hard to see how much better they become. But it is critical thatwe attempt to measure this improvement.Recently, an assessment program was added to EG 1004 to measure the progress our studentsmake in their technical writing skills. In the future, we plan to modify the survey we use in thisprogram to quantify their improvement in designing and delivering presentations.To do this, we plan to prepare questions that will be added to our Entry Skills Survey that areintended to determine our student's familiarity with the fundamentals of an effective technicalpresentation. After establishing a baseline, our Midterm and Final Surveys can be modified inorder to gauge what our

Conference Session

NSF Funding for Educational Scholarship

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

David Jeff Jackson

the development of nationally competitive grant proposals. Withmany components required for a successful grant proposal, it is important for a potential granteeto develop a set of best practices when undertaking grant proposal writing efforts.The author of this paper has written a successful NSF Adaptation and Implementation grantproposal [1] entitled “An Integrated Internet-Accessible Embedded Systems Laboratory” and asuccessful NSF Department Level Reform grant proposal [2] entitled “Developing a ModernComputer Engineering Curriculum Focusing on Embedded Systems.” The goal of this paper is tosuggest best practices for proposals for people considering writing similar grant proposals.Considerations include properly addressing program

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Tom Bazzoli; Blair Rowley

homework andlaboratory reports there are three teaming events. The first one occurs during the first week andhas teams of four students building a bridge using K’Nex pieces. The bridges are then tested todestruction. There are no labs the first week. The second event involves construction and flyingof the airplane mentioned in the introduction. The third event requires designing, building andpresenting a device using the knowledge they gained from the electrical portion of the course.The course was also qualified as the college’s writing intensive course to meet the university’swriting across the curriculum requirement 2. The course outline for winter ‘05 is presentedbelow. EGR 190 Course Outline Winter Quarter 2005Week

Conference Session

Capstone/Design Projects: Information/Computer ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Paul Chanley; Michael Pelletier

Digital Design in Community College Courses Michael E. Pelletier, Paul J. Chanley Northern Essex Community College, Haverhill, MassachusettsBackgroundNorthern Essex Community College offers three courses in digital circuits: Fundamentals ofDigital Logic (a 3-credit course which meets for 3 hours per week for 15 weeks) and itsaccompanying Digital Logic Lab (a 1-credit lab course which meets once a week for 3 hours for15 weeks) are taken in the first semester at NECC. The third course, Digital Electronics (a 4-credit course which meets for 3 hours of lecture/recitation per week and one 3-hour lab per weekfor 15 weeks), is taken in the sophomore year. These courses are required

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Electr-Mech ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Wm Evans

/write command blocks. To test the read/write block, a computer is set up assimple terminal for text transmission instead of a typical bar code reader.Handling Faults and Interrupts:To recover from a fault or handle an interrupt requires the same type of command fromthe PLC. A lab experience to cause a fault and then recover from the fault is required.Stepper Motor Configuration:The excitement of actually moving a device to an exact location is the object of this lab.Stepper motors may be configured manually using the data table of the stepper controllercard to manually enter configuration and control information and move the stepper. Thelab is enhanced when the HMI is programmed to enter the same information.Servo Motor Configuration:After the

Conference Session

EM Skills and Real World Concepts

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Sam Geonetta

information technologyplays a role. 5. Learners should demonstrate professional attitudes and practices as participants inclass. 6. Learners should demonstrate an ability to communicate on several levels:1) rhetorically, as presenters within the atmosphere of a seminar in which there is an intensiveexchange of information and ideas; 2) interpersonally, as colleagues who are analyzing andassessing information and ideas presented by others, 3) interpersonally, as learners interactingwith professional practitioners of information technology, and 4) in writing, as learnerscommunicating their research-based analysis and evaluation of information and ideas. Management in Information Technology is built around the premise that most

Conference Session

Programming for Engineering Students

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Andrew Sterian; Bruce Dunne; Andrew Blauch

-solving and subprogram concepts6,7,8. Teaching C provides the foundation for the diverseprogramming skills required in our advanced course offerings in all areas of engineering. Wealso describe how fluency in C affords the practicing engineer a range of programming skills thatare easily extendable.We further discuss the benefits of possessing fundamental programming knowledge for thepracticing engineer in industry. The majority of our graduates are tasked with writing programsin a variety of programming languages and environments at some point in their careers. Forexample, mechanical engineers often use MATLAB for modeling and analysis while

Conference Session

Academic Standards & Issues/Concerns & Retention

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Tobia Steyn

the curriculum of the extended study program so that the students can comply with the exitlevel outcomes for engineering graduates set by the Engineering Council of South Africa. Faculty is faced with thechallenge to redress and enhance the under-prepared students' understanding of the fundamentals underpinning astudy in calculus, to develop their personal, academic and communication skills and to introduce them to basic skillsin information technology.To meet this challenge and address these aspects, a developmental course, Professional Orientation, is presentedduring the first year of study. The main pedagogical approach in the Professional Orientation course is to develop theacademic potential of the under prepared students. Therefore, the