Conference Session

Approaches to Learning Outcomes Assessment in Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Lorraine Fleming, Howard University; Kami Carey, Howard University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

student with tools that will foster the development of global engineers.Students were required to not only prepare traditional designs and write reflections inessay format about the impact of their designs. The reflections provided rich data for thisstudy. The data gathered offers a glimpse of the characteristics of a global engineer andprovides an insight into the role that engineering educators can play in creating engineerswho are flexible, adaptable, resilient and ultimately lifelong learners. A proposedmethod that provides an opportunity to reflect on integration of liberal arts courses isoffered. This method can be utilized in the classroom to ensure that engineeringeducators are molding a global engineer

Conference Session

Approaches to Learning Outcomes Assessment in Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Zhiwei Guan, University of Washington; Jennifer Turns, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

promising strategy for promoting knowledge integration and professionaldevelopment. We define a course-specific professional portfolio as a portfolio in which astudent makes claims about his/her preparedness for professional practice and supportsthe claims through artifacts drawn from a single course. We believe that having studentscreate such portfolios represents a promising practice for helping students consolidatetheir knowledge and reflect on the connection of this knowledge to engineering practice.In our work, we have been studying the practice of course-specific portfolio construction.To this end, we conducted a study in winter of 2006 in which 35 junior and seniorengineering students in a mechanical engineering class (ME 355 Introduction

Conference Session

Redefining the Boundaries of Engineering and Liberal Education: Contributions to the Year of Dialogue

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Erin Cech, University of California-San Diego; Kara Boettcher, Montana State University; Heidi Sherick, Montana State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

. Page 12.1436.1© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 The Incredible Shrinking Job Description: Trends and Consequences of an Increasingly Technical Engineering ProfessionAbstract: ASEE promotes the importance of graduating engineers who possess a host of non-technical skills to complement their technical competencies. As this year of dialog draws to aclose, the authors are interested in the extent to which such well-roundedness is reflected in theactual work that engages engineering graduates. Using quantitative data from the 1993, 1997and 2003 National Survey of College Graduates, this paper analyses the changes in workcharacteristics of jobs that employ graduates of U.S

Conference Session

Approaches to Learning Outcomes Assessment in Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Steve Lappenbusch, University of Washington; Jennifer Turns, University of Washington

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

built portfolios through a semi-structured curriculum with each week ofthe course focusing on one of the previously mentioned portfolio elements (artifacts, annotations,etc.). Each week students worked to achieve the goal of describing their preparedness tofunction as an engineer. During this portfolio work, students sought to portray themselves asengineers and to provide evidence of their preparedness. The six students from whom wecollected data were the ones who agreed to work with us on our research. Our data includeweekly written reflections from the students about their activities and the challenges they wereexperiencing, periodic interviews with the students focused on the same issues, and pre and post-portfolio construction interviews in

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary and Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Martello, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering; Jonathan Stolk, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

through peer- and self-evaluation, and studentsassess their development of life-long learning skills through reflective essays. Course lettergrades are computed as a weighted average of the individual competency grades. The thread ofcompetency assessments provides students with valuable information concerning theirdevelopment of nontraditional skills that they could use to further their learning by identifyingand reacting to their specific strengths and shortcomings. The emphasis on the formativefeedback provided through the instructors’ competency assessments is illustrated in thefollowing student quotations. One particular thing that sticks out for me is your grading. Rather than saying, "You're a smart guy, this is a pretty good paper

Conference Session

Redefining the Boundaries of Engineering and Liberal Education: Contributions to the Year of Dialogue

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

William Grimson, Dublin Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

and their relevance to EngineeringHistorically the five main branches are generally agreed to be Epistemology, Metaphysics,Ethics, Logic, and Aesthetics. The contention is that by careful reflection on what constitutesengineering from the perspective of each of the above five branches, something definitiveemerges about ‘engineering’: in effect the branches are the ‘microscopes/telescopes’ that areused to examine and observe the subject.Table 1 summarizes the five branches of philosophy, and provides a simple description of eachbranch, and gives some examples of the categories within each division. It is admitted that the‘question’ that each branch attempts to address has shifted over the centuries but the definitionsgiven in the Table are

Conference Session

Writing and Communication I: Innovative Models for Curriculum and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Marie Paretti, Virginia Tech; Lisa McNair, Virginia Tech; Diana George, Virginia Tech; kelly belanger, Virginia Tech; Lisa Norris, Virginia Tech

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

discipline-specific intellectual problems or help them understand the complexities of their chosen professions” 17 • “English professors are ill prepared to engage engineering students in a discussion of technical issues currently relevant to the students’ course work, or to share personal experiences with engineering report writing, or to understand students’ writing from an engineer’s view point. English professors are not familiar with engineers’ thought processes and are not prepared to direct students in clarifying engineering concepts through writing.” 61Such comments, though they certainly reflect individual faculty’s experiences, suggestsignificant misunderstanding of current work in the field of

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Robert Meyer, Clarkson University; Dick Pratt, Clarkson University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

become more intentional in the waystudents and courses address expected learning outcomes. Under the old curriculum, studentsselected electives to meet distributional requirements without a real understanding of why suchcourses were required. These courses were often viewed as simply obstacles to be "gotten out ofthe way". Under the Clarkson Common Experience, students select electives which align withthe established set of required outcomes. We believe it is important that students have anunderstanding of the purpose and the role each course plays in their overall educational program.The curriculum implementation should reflect a direct and visible connection among learningexpectations, outcomes and specific courses. This connection is

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Joanne Lax, Purdue University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

rules of emailetiquette and style for various audiences; how email reflects the author, positively or negatively;and how to establish appropriate tone in the message. At the end of the class, I informallyquestioned each section of the class about whether their emails had been suitably written, giventhe designated audience. For instance, I asked the section which wrote emails to potentialemployers whether any of the students had used emoticons in their writing.ResultsAfter I collected the papers from the two classes, I separated them according to the intendedaudience. Taking two of the eight common rules for email writing documented16--“Use ‘onlinelingo’ abbreviations cautiously” (for example, “C U” and “OMG”) and “Reserve emoticons forpersonal

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Tom Moran, Rochester Institute of Technology

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

early responses relative to the educational experiences of theseengineers and their reflections on them.An examination of the experiences of the contemporary engineer-writers raises several questionsabout both engineering education and the practice of engineering, especially as it is seen byyoung, creative entrants into the profession. The paper introduces and discusses these questions,positing some possible future areas of exploration.Homer HickamHomer Hickam, Jr., is best known for his story of growing up in a small West Virginia mining Page 12.1022.3town, designing and test firing rockets, and yearning to join Werner Von Braun in

Conference Session

Approaches to Learning Outcomes Assessment in Liberal Education

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Kyle Oliver, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Traci Nathans-Kelly; Sandra Courter, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Laura Grossenbacher, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

students who were enrolled for twocredits completed a formal research paper in which they could explore an issue of interest ingreater depth.Although the pilot course could not be formally assessed, we have some evidence of its positiveoutcomes because the participants were so moved by their experience that they felt compelled toshare their thoughts with others; the instructor and five of the six students presented papers aboutthe course at their regional ASEE section’s annual conference in fall 2005. Reflecting on whatsome of the students wrote, we’re glad we chose a flexible, open-ended, egalitarian modelbecause we believe it did help bring about the three goals Haws mentions—what he calls“‘enabling’ objectives.” For instance, one student

Conference Session

Ethical Responsibilities of Engineers in the World of Corporate Business

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Donna Riley, Smith College

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

projects, the models on which they were implemented,and factors in their success or failure is instructive. Riley and Miller20 discuss the structure andcontent of the Smith course in greater detail. Using pedagogies that focus on praxis, connectinglearning with action, will ground student critiques of neoliberalism in the real world, informingand transforming their perspectives and ultimately resulting in reflective action for change.342. Ask who wins and who loses. Students need to develop an understanding of powerrelationships, a sense of the history of colonialism and its relationship to globalization today.Neoliberal economic policies produce winners and losers, and students need to develop a senseof how market economies play out to help

Conference Session

Liberal Education Division Poster Session

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Daniel Walsh, California Polytechnic State University; Stacey Breitenbach, California Polytechnic State University

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

understanding their basis, their capability ortheir inherent limitations. Neither of these situations is optimal, engineers must become moreaware of the implications of their work, and societal leaders and citizens must become moretechnology - literate. It is critical that higher education reflect these complexities and providethese connections.It is almost too fashionable to point out the shortcomings in American education. However,whether the investigator is concerned with engineering education, science and mathematicseducation or education in the liberal arts, it is critical to recognize that our traditional academicstructure does not provide proper motivation for comprehensive learning that is appropriate for

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II: Practical Perspectives on Teaching and Assessment

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Luke Niiler; David Beams

Tagged Divisions

Liberal Education

. We make the followingobservations from Fig. 1: • Organization was noticeably improved; this could probably be attributed to the fact that all assignments in this sample were laboratory reports were apparently created using standardized guides or templates. • Neither author noted much change in the quality of the content of laboratory reports. This is somewhat surprising, given the expectation that students at this level would be adapting to the idiom of their professional communities of discourse. A possible explanation is that wide discrepancies in participants’ writing samples were noted, and this range of responses was reflected in the overall rating. • Evaluations of mechanics showed problems