Conference Session

Educating Students for the 21st Century: History, Reflection, and Outcomes

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Swaminathan Balachandran, University of Wisconsin, Platteville

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

AC 2011-275: STUDENT REFLECTION IN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNINGPROJECTSSwaminathan Balachandran, University of Wisconsin - Platteville Bala has more than 35 years of teaching, five years of industrial and about 10,000 hours of consulting experience. He is a fellow of IIE and senior member of SME, ASQ, APICS, HFES, INFORMS, INFOMS, ASEE, and IIE. He is a life member of Phi Kappa Phi, Alpha Pi Mu, and SME. He was the chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering at UW Platteville from 1986 to 1995, established the IE laboratory facilities and secured the accreditation of the program by EAC of ABET in 1987 and 1993. He serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Production Planning and control. He is a

Conference Session

Educating Students for the 21st Century: History, Reflection, and Outcomes

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mani Mina, Iowa State University; Eugene Rutz, University of Cincinnati; Iraj Omidvar

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

trades, but hiring experts whose expertise doenot necessarily reflect their capabilities in practical engineering. The masters at the universitiesare becoming more and more, faculty with the right mathematical, scientific, and neededcapabilities that do not include the mastery of the practical engineering needs as before.Consequently, the model seems to be working more effectively at the graduate level. However,the undergraduate, where students need more practical and hands on tools of the trade does notseem to be as effective as it used to be in early to the middle 20th centuryEngineering in US universitiesEngineers in university systems who were in touch with newest development and are master ofwhat they do in each field were to help the

Conference Session

Educating Students for the 21st Century: History, Reflection, and Outcomes

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Anthony Joseph, Pace University; Mabel Payne, Independent Education Researcher

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

employees. This scenario seems to reflect the behavior of coop ed participatingfinancial and education industry companies in hiring computing students for full-timeemployment – they respectively hired 6% and 10% more non-coop ed computing students thancoop ed ones. Moreover, the non-coop computing students might have been professionally moreexperienced than their coop ed counterparts and were therefore hired as more knowledgeable andskilled lower risk new employees.According to Huggins6 local market forces strongly influence student and employer participationin coop ed programs. Local markets can be complicated with the mix of non-profit organizationsas well as for-profit large, medium, and small entrepreneurial companies that might beexperiencing

Conference Session

Pay It Forward: Critical Thinking, Reflection and Faculty Engagement Promote Success in Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Caroline R. Noyes, Georgia Institute of Technology; Jonathan Gordon, Georgia Institute of Technology; Joe Ludlum, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

Conceptualization) and two transforming experiences (ReflectiveObservation and Active Experimentation). In this model, these four experiences produce a four-stage cycle of learning where concrete experiences are reflected upon, and these reflections areintegrated and distilled into abstract concepts which provide the foundation for actions that canbe actively tested and which, in turn, create new concrete experiences. David Kolb’s work onexperiential learning has shown that “experiential learning is a process of constructingknowledge that involves a creative tension among the four learning modes” (10, p. 298).As Sakofs notes: Broadly defined, experiential education is a philosophical orientation toward teaching and learning that values and

Conference Session

Pay It Forward: Critical Thinking, Reflection and Faculty Engagement Promote Success in Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mary R Goldberg, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology; Rory A. Cooper, University of Pittsburgh; Dan Ding, University of Pittsburgh, Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology; Alicia Koontz, Human Engineering Research Laboratories

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

Conference Session

Pay It Forward: Critical Thinking, Reflection and Faculty Engagement Promote Success in Engineering

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Annette Mallory Donawa, Independent Consultant

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

University, an HBCU, where participating studentsexperienced higher scores and more positive experiences. In another engineering study at Memphis State University, Drouin (1992) suggested thatundergraduate engineering programs have been criticized for not producing engineers who canthink critically23. Rote memorization, perhaps useful in some educational environments, can beharmful in many work environments, particularly technical fields where skills such asunderstanding, comprehension, and application are critical to the success of the organization(Drouin, 1992). Unfortunately, the lecture-homework routine in an engineering curriculumleaves little to no time for reflection, critical and creative thinking, and association. While the

Conference Session

Expanding the Borders of Engineering Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John Farris, Grand Valley State University; Paul Merritt Lane, Grand Valley State University

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

Afternoon Evening Week 1 Culture Class Repair Products for Reflection, processing, Culture Business and Residents faculty led discussions, language debriefings and journaling Weekend Visit Revolutionary Monument, Entrepreneurial Cookie Factory, Solar Center, Typical Mountain Community, and Somoto Canyon Faculty Lead Discussions and Debrief. Week 2 Spanish Class Work in Local Reflection, processing, Culture Business and Manufacturing Companies faculty led

Conference Session

Expanding the Borders of Engineering Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Paige Davis, Louisiana State University; Summer Dann Johnson, Louisiana State University; Emma M. Allain, Louisiana State University; Harald Thomas Leder, Louisiana State University; Warren N. Waggenspack Jr., Louisiana State University

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

their notes with the pictures to completely document their excursion.These debrief sessions lasted approximately forty-five minutes and were critical to the learningprocess. Many times the students were not able to capture everything that was going on whiletouring and these sessions allowed the students the opportunity to digest the information,document the experience and reflect on the experience. In addition to the students keeping formal documentation on each excursion, they kept adaily journal for the 35 day program and a group blog. Students were required to make journalentries on their free days and weekends, without exception. In addition, students wereresponsible to make blog entries for specific days. The purpose of the journal

Conference Session

Assessing, Developing, and Enhancing the Engineering Experiential Education Experience

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Emilia Andreeva-Moschen, FH Joanneum University of Applied Science, Graz; Adrian J. Millward-Sadler, FH Joanneum University of Applied Science, Graz

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

institutions. For this purpose, we surveyed the extended departmentalacademic council (33 responses from 24 engineers as external lecturers, 9 universitylecturers) and our alumni (41 responses). The survey included 10 questionsregarding a graduate automotive engineer’s most important characteristics, the mostessential components for the curriculum, the minimum duration for Bachelor’s andMaster’s degrees, etc. We collected and evaluated the data 4 and reflected the resultsin our Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs design.The salient points were that we needed an undergraduate curriculum which focusedon technical and technological basics (mechanics and electronics), automotiveengineering disciplines, soft skills, including at least one foreign

Conference Session

Comparing Different Aspects of the Cooperative Education Experience

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kevin Anderson, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Kathy J. Prem, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Engineering Career Services; Sara Wirsbinski, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Sandra Shaw Courter, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

lesslikely to say that their mentors were always available for questions. In discussing their learning,females were more likely to cite improved professional communication skills and timemanagement skills, while males were more likely to describe improved technical skills. Thesefindings suggest that students should reflect on what they hope to learn within cooperativeexperiences in order to find a best fit for them and suggest learning experiences to their mentors.Additionally these findings imply that cooperative program coordinators and mentor engineersshould ensure broad based experiences for interns in order to best meet diverse needs and wants.Key words: cooperative education, internship, gender differences, values, learningIntroduction

Conference Session

Post Graduate Experiential Programs and Insights

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Anne Marie Coolen, Dalhousie University

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

through a series of assignments and the narrative will bebased on a series of reflective questions.The intention is for the curriculum to not only allow students to track and articulate thedevelopment of the selected attributes but to also enable them to acquire a deeper understandingof how their work place experiences contributed to their professional growth with respect to theattributes.The paper includes a summary of the pilot study of the initial curriculum design, a description ofthe current iteration of the curriculum, an outline of the implementation strategy and a shortdiscussion of several operational challenges associated with implementation.Initial Work Term Curriculum Pilot StudyThe Faculty of Engineering has been examining ways to

Conference Session

Expanding the Borders of Engineering Education

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Sandra Ingram, University of Manitoba; Anita H. Ens, University of Manitoba; Marcia R. Friesen, University of Manitoba

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

to group participants[29].Co-op work term reports from IEEQ participants fulfill a written requirement of the IEEQprogram and are submitted to the program director upon completion of the work term. Theydescribe the nature of the work carried out and are also a reflective account from the student’sperspective of how the term fulfilled their professional and personal goals. Four of the sixparticipants submitted co-op reports for our analysis. This study complied with the university’sethics review process ensuring respondents’ anonymity, confidentiality and opportunity towithdraw without penalty, and was approved by the university’s human ethics committee. Eachparticipant in the research group has been assigned a pseudonym. For the purposes of

Conference Session

Assessing, Developing, and Enhancing the Engineering Experiential Education Experience

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dean C. Millar, University at Buffalo, SUNY

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

the value theirorganization places on preparation in that area. Figure 1 shows the results for each area.” “With the exception of ‘Math and Science’ there appears to be a wide discrepancybetween the value expectations of the employer and the extent to which their employees are seento be well prepared. This would further appear to reflect on the mismatch between curricularemphasis and employer expectation. It must be recognized, of course, that math and science arewithout argument the key ingredients—at least in the lower division—of an undergraduateengineering education.” These research findings are, more than ever, valid today. For proof of this one canGoogle search “engineering soft skills” and find hundreds of articles

Conference Session

Assessing, Developing, and Enhancing the Engineering Experiential Education Experience

Collection

2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Mysore Narayanan, Miami University

Tagged Divisions

Cooperative & Experiential Education

Synthesize Support What Data is from Exhibiting Literature Survey Generate Page 22.258.15 Informative Graphs Experimentation Modeling AnalysisHypothesis Scientific Inference Method Research Verification Observation Page 22.258.16 Metacognitive Learning Reflective Learning