Conference Session

FPD11 -- Multidisciplinary Experiences

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kauser Jahan, Rowan University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

reflect our Engineering Clinic activities that are offered to ourincoming freshman engineering students. As such a brief overview of the Rowan engineeringclinics is provided below:Rowan’s engineering programs include hands-on, team-oriented laboratory and real worldexperiences with a strong interdisciplinary component. All engineering students take eightsemesters of required Engineering Clinic Courses4-5 a unique component of the engineeringprogram. Key clinic features include:• Creating inter- and multi-disciplinary experiences through collaborative teamwork,• Stressing innovation and total quality management (TQM) as the necessary framework for solving complex problems,• Incorporating state-of-the-art technologies throughout

Conference Session

FPD12 -- Novel Approaches to First Year Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christopher Rowe, Vanderbilt University; Stacy Klein-Gardner

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

teachers using their traditional teaching methods. The experimental sections of the studybegan the course with a grand challenge focusing them on determining the strengths andweaknesses of the different tools and computer software engineers might use. Instructors thenintroduced three challenges that helped students learn the content goals listed above for thecourse in addition to focusing continually on the strengths and weaknesses of the tools andcomputer software packages.Three types of data were used in this study: survey responses, answers to test questions, andreflective responses. The surveys were required of students in all eleven sections of this course.These surveys were completed on-line and submitted to a database. The reflection

Conference Session

FPD2 -- Highlighting First-Year Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joseph Schimmels, Marquette University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

of eachcourse is reflected in their respective titles. The first course in the sequence is titled,“Engineering: The Art of Creating Change”. The title of the second is: “Engineering Projects:The Practice of the Art”.Both courses use assigned reading followed by reflection, writing, and discussion related to adebatable question (or questions) posed by the instructor. Section size is limited to 25 students.A relatively senior member of the regular faculty and one teaching assistant facilitate classdiscussion using Socratic questioning.Both courses also use design projects as vehicles in developing student understanding of keyconcepts. In the first, the course requirements manage student-team project activities; in thesecond, the student-teams

Conference Session

FPD9 -- Teaching Methods & Technology

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John K. Estell, Ohio Northern University; Beverly Jaeger, Northeastern University; Richard Whalen, SUSAN FREEMAN, and BEVERLY JAEGER are members of; Susan Freeman, Northeastern University; John-David Yoder, Ohio Northern University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

amongst the team members, delegating roles for planning,design, and assembly of the structure. A testing protocol is developed and utilized following thebuilding of the towers in class. Finally, reflection is used to help summarize the learningexperiences in the areas of engineering design and teamwork, and how they can be applied in thefuture.The purpose of this paper is to examine the methodologies successfully used at two institutionsfor implementing the Tower of Straws assignment and provides an assessment of its usefulnessas an active learning exercise in introducing first-year engineering students to the engineeringdesign process. The paper will describe two very different approaches to the same exercise,along with the assessment results

Conference Session

FPD5 -- Placement & Early Success

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Beverly Jaeger, Northeastern University; Susan Freeman, Northeastern University; Richard Whalen, Northeastern University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

(NU), it was time for more concentrated reflection on the neweducational landscape we had created. As educators in general, we have worked to make theclassroom more than a “square” by venturing outside its traditional boundaries in order tobecome more effective and to retain students in our discipline on a genuine level. In makingthese incremental –and occasionally radical– adjustments in our course formats, it is alsoessential to continually evaluate the suitability of each of the activities and components of ourcourses in terms of learning effectiveness and the level of interest and engagement on the part ofthe students; this is to ensure that the modifications that have been made are worthwhile. We alsoneed to consider that just because we

Conference Session

FPD9 -- Teaching Methods & Technology

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Margot Vigeant, Bucknell University; Karen Marosi, Bucknell University; Ronald Ziemian, Bucknell University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

University of Virginia [7]. We felt strongly, however,that students needed to be able to explore at least two possible majors, and thereforesettled on the seminar model, starting in the Fall of 2002. We know of only one otherprogram running their introductory course in this manner; Vanderbilt piloted theirmodular program in the same year [8]. The change from the single-class to the seminar model represented a significantinvestment of faculty time and university resources. In this paper, we reflect on fiveyears of accumulated first-year data and one year of graduate data to conclude that, yes,the seminar model is superior to the single course model in numerous ways, bothquantitative and qualitative. We wish to note that the single-class model

Conference Session

FPD4 -- Hands-on & Real-World Studies

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jonathan Rice, University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Taryn Bayles, University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Greg Russ, University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Julia Ross, University of Maryland-Baltimore County

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

final design.System performance was judged based on the power generated, system efficiency anddevice cost index as used in the formula below: Power Generated x Overall System Efficiency x Device Cost IndexPower generated refers solely to the ability of the system to light the light bulb. It isdetermined by the maximum current and voltage that the device produces as measuredusing a multi-meter. The overall system efficiency is calculated by dividing the usefulwork output by the energy input. The useful work output reflects the amount of workthat the system outputs in lighting the light bulb while the energy input reflects theamount of energy put into the system during the collection time. The device cost indexsimply refers to the

Conference Session

FPD2 -- Highlighting First-Year Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Peter Burton, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

Islam in his 2001 paper “Reflections on large class teaching in the social sciences”2 talks about the need for students to be active, as opposed to passive learners, and the need forlarge classes to be interesting. An interactive teaching style helps significantly to achieve this.The Importance and Role of Tutorial GroupsTutorial groups are an essential follow-on from lectures and a valuable opportunity forstudents to get extra assistance in a small group environment after first attending the lecture.They are often opportunities, particularly in respect of large first year classes, for students topose questions that they might not want to ask in a large group, to go over material covered inthe lecture in more depth and to benefit from each

Conference Session

FPD8 -- Introductory Courses

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Darryl Morrell, Arizona State University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

problem solving process. For every assignment, the student is asked to self-assesswhether they have demonstrated the competencies associated with the assignment and to describethe evidence that supports their assessment. Every assignment also requires a short reflective state-ment, which includes what was learned and what was still unclear. Most of the assignments requirestudents to create a MATLAB solution (often MATLAB script files) from scratch-no sample or par-tially completed solutions are given as part of the assignments.Each assignment is based on a more-or-less real-world problem that is appropriate for the analyticalskills of freshman-level students. The MATLAB skills addressed in the assignments and associatedproblems used in the Fall

Conference Session

FPD3 -- Professional Issues for First-Year Courses

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Karen High, Oklahoma State University; Rebecca Damron, Oklahoma State University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

are in writing in the disciplines, discourse analysis of talk about writing and corpus-based analysis of written texts. Page 12.253.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Are Freshman Engineering Students Able to Think and Write Critically?Abstract“Critical Thinking is defined as reasonable reflective thinking that is focused ondeciding what to believe or do. More precisely, it is assessing the authenticity, accuracy,and/or worth of knowledge claims and arguments. It requires careful, precise, persistentand objective analysis of any knowledge claim or belief to judge its validity

Conference Session

FPD8 -- Introductory Courses

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Pieri, North Dakota State University; Ghodrat Karami, North Dakota State University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

Fig. Fig. 1. Courses of Mechanics in Engineering Curriculumreview of the basic engineering curriculum from both academic and industrial perspectives 3, 4.This is combined with a new technical realization that understanding the way materials gotogether at the most fundamental level, impacts the final application and properties of structures;reflecting the old material science saw that atomic structure influences properties, whichinfluence material utilization, which influences final design. It appears to the authors that thereis a nexus of communication technology, scientific development and engineering pedagogy thatwould make it auspicious for the incorporation of new approaches to traditional topics

Conference Session

FPD6 -- Early Intervention & Retention Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Pat Pyke; John Gardner; Marcia Belcheir; Janet Callahan; Amy Moll; Cheryl Schrader

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

corporations.Which of the above students would be deemed a positive measure of student success accordingto both standard indicators? The answer is: only Jim, the student who changed his major tobusiness. Stefano would reflect negatively on the university’s six-year graduation rate. Valeriewould reflect negatively on the freshman persistence (retention) rate, even though she returnedafter her tour of duty. And Lucy wouldn’t count as a success in either statistic, as she transferredin from a community college!Students like Stefano, Valerie and Lucy don’t fit neatly into the traditional model of highereducation where a student completes high school, immediately enters college on a residentialcampus, declares a major, and has adequate academic preparation and

Conference Session

FPD12 -- Novel Approaches to First Year Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Janet Meyer, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis; Nancy Lamm, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis; Joshua Smith, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

. Widelyread popular press rankings such as US News and World Reports publish graduation rates.Lower rates reflect poorly on an institution. Additionally, the failure to retain students impactsboth an institution’s budget and planning. A student who drops out no longer contributes tuitiondollars. According to Mangold, Bean, Adams, Schwab and Lynch1 “low graduation rates costuniversities scarce resources.” For these reasons and more, colleges and universities have turnedtheir attention to finding ways to retain the students that do enroll.A widely-implemented tactic used to improve retention is the learning community or first-yearseminar course. (For the purposes of this paper, the terms “learning community” and “first-yearseminar” are used

Conference Session

FPD2 -- Highlighting First-Year Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jean Kampe, Virginia Tech; Whitney Edmister, Virginia Tech; Matthew Stimpson, Virginia Tech; Brad Matanin, Virginia Tech; Amanda Martin, Virginia Tech; Cory Brozina, Virginia Tech; Bevlee Watford, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

that this difference in the time within semester that the survey was given had animpact on the amount and type of reflection that each response received. However, thepercentages for each response are fairly close.Table V. Survey results for Hypatia/Galileo 2006-07 on reasons for participation in the living-learning community. Students were instructed to indicate their top three reasons from among theresponses listed in the first column of the table. Living-Learning Community Hypatia 2006-07 Galileo 2006-07 Participation Reason Cited 71 Respondents of 75 146 Respondents of 180 women men

Conference Session

FPD11 -- Multidisciplinary Experiences

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

John-David Yoder, Ohio Northern University; Beverly Jaeger, Northeastern University; John K. Estell, Ohio Northern University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

viaemail in order to ensure that the topic was relevant, unique, and of a reasonable scope. Topicswere selected on a first-come, first-served basis. Presentations were ideally one minute and up totwo minutes. Students were allowed to use PowerPoint only for the presentation of visual aids(photos, diagrams, etc.). In general, this was done at the beginning of each class period, thoughin one section where multiple students presented each day, one presentation was done at the endof the class period.AssessmentSeveral forms of assessment were completed in this course. First, students completed pre- andpost-surveys on a 5-point Likert scale. Second, the post-survey included several open-endedquestions for student reflection. Third, faculty reflection

Conference Session

FPD7 -- Service Learning

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Dan Cordon, University of Idaho; Barbara Williams, University of Idaho; Steven Beyerlein, University of Idaho; Donald Elger, University of Idaho

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

reflection about past activities associated withsimilar situations. Classification continues by recognizing the situation as most like problemsolving, design, or research. In doing so, prompts in each of the eight areas remind the user aboutnecessary ingredients for the selected process to be successful. Users should be aware that it iscommon to transition between processes, but understanding which process you started from willhelp you return to this when a needed excursion into one of the other processes is completed.Essential Skill SetsIn creating Table 1 it appeared that a large source of the variation in problem solving, design,and research performance, could be traced to a subset of critical learning skills. Learning skillsare used across many

Conference Session

FPD8 -- Introductory Courses

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steven Lehr, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; Christopher Grant, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University-Prescott

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

was a better way after he had reflected upon his own work.“I had a great time programming my game. I also had a great time showing it to myfriends.” Azden C 2004.” Some of the students get a bit obsessed with the code theydeveloped, and spend hours on hours developing a big program. In fact one student whowas almost failing, and could not get an idea for a project, and I asked him what he liked,Brian liked baseball. He went on to write a 2000 line of code C program that played abaseball game. Reading batting averages and pitcher ERA’s from files and computingrandom hits based on the hitters average, slugging percentage, and the pitchers ERA.“When this end of semester project was assigned to me my first reaction was fear, completelygut

Conference Session

FPD5 -- Placement & Early Success

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Christopher Papadopoulos; Karen Brucks, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Eric Key, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Ethan Munson, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; K Vairavan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

degree in one of these disciplines from any institution(67.5%, reflecting the fact that 4 students left in good standing) and from any discipline at UWM(73.0%, reflecting the fact that 4 students have already changed majors out of the targeteddisciplines, and we estimate that about 3 others will do likewise). For comparison, the overallgraduation rate derived of entering freshman in CEAS is about 30%4, and is 52.9% for thecomparison group (50.0% for those initially enrolling in Calculus I or higher, and 55.3% forthose initially enrolling in College Algebra or Trigonometry).Thus, it is clear that the CSEMS Program has a positive effect on retention and graduation, evenwhen compared with performance of students of similar profile. We suspect that

Conference Session

FPD6 -- Early Intervention & Retention Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Ken Yasuhara, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do notnecessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Page 12.1589.7[1] J. Vegso. Interest in CS as a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen. Computing Research News, 17(3), 2005 May. Available online: http://www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may05/vegso[2] J. McGrath Cohoon and W. Aspray, eds. Women and information technology: Research on underrepresentation. MIT Press, 2006.[3] J. Margolis and A. Fisher. Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing. MIT Press, 2002.[4] J. Cushing, E. Roberts, et al. Final Report (first draft) of ICER-West, 2006

Conference Session

FPD6 -- Early Intervention & Retention Programs

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Daniel Knight, University of Colorado at Boulder; Jacquelyn Sullivan, University of Colorado at Boulder; Beverly Louie, University of Colorado at Boulder

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

requirements to include agreater emphasis on professional skills. [8, 10]In the retention analysis, the more assertive students — those exhibiting the Driving andExpressive styles — had a higher rate of retention (Figure 4). Perhaps this reflects the goalorientation of more assertive people. High retention rates for students with a Driving style werenot surprising, as these folks make decisions early and tend to stick by their decisions. Higherretention rates for students with an Expressive style were perhaps somewhat surprising, as thesefolks are more likely to change courses to follow new dreams. Here again, the interactive natureof the FYEP course may have helped with the retention of students with an Expressive style.Alternatively, those with an

Conference Session

FPD7 -- Service Learning

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Paul Pagano, Western Michigan University; Amanda Rossman, Western Michigan University; Kendall Vasilnek, Western Michigan University; Betsy Aller, Western Michigan University; Edmund Tsang, Western Michigan University; Andrew Kline, Western Michigan University; Edward Brabandt, Western Michigan University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

experience went, and, we believe, will continue to reach, farbeyond the first year of college.Acknowledgements and DisclaimerFunding for this project was provided by grants from the National Science Foundation and theLearn and Serve America program to the Engineering Design Center for Service-Learning atWestern Michigan University. Opinions and findings presented in this article are those of theauthors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation nor Learn andServe America. Page 12.750.11Bibliography1. “Bragg’s Law.” X-ray diffraction. 2002. The Cavendish Laboratory, The University of Cambridge. Retrieved 10 Oct. 2005

Conference Session

FPD3 -- Professional Issues for First-Year Courses

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Jennifer Light, University of Washington; Russell Korte, University Of Minnesota; Ken Yasuhara, University of Washington; Deborah Kilgore, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

address specific engineering problems devised first toelicit responses that reflect aspects of their engineering knowledge and skills, and second, toreveal how they apply this learning to engineering design practice. One of the problems given tostudents in the first year was a closed-ended question about the information they would need todesign a playground. Figure 1 contains the text of the question. You have been asked to design a playground. You have a limited amount of time and resources to gather information for your design. From the following list, please put a check mark next to the FIVE kinds of information you would MOST LIKELY NEED as you work on your design: - Availability of materials - Body proportions - Budget

Conference Session

FPD4 -- Hands-on & Real-World Studies

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Larry Bland, John Brown University

Tagged Divisions

First-Year Programs

, mouse trap, tape, pins and similar items; aregiven to the students with some form of fun problem to solve. Time is given to develop anddemonstrate their solution and class time is set aside for evaluation and reflection on the process.The project for the past two years was to launch a marshmallow a distance of ten feet and have ateammate catch it in their mouth.Throughout the semester various assignments are developed to integrate the SolidWorks andMultisim computer tools, technical writing assignments and ethical discussions into the othercourse activities. Students are aware that this is only a beginning. 1) They will see many differentcomputer tools throughout their time at the university. 2) Writing is not just an exercise for theEnglish