implemented in an effort to determine whether the curriculum meets educationalobjectives set forth by ABET EC2000 as well as program criteria set forth by the AIChE. Theseare the eight tools: (1) a department “skills test” administered to graduating seniors who volunteerto take the test; (2) internal and external reviews of plant design reports and AIChE senior designprojects; (3) an exit interview of graduating seniors, conducted by the department head, regardingtheir views of the curriculum; (4) a survey, conducted by the College of Engineering, of alumnitwo and five years after graduation; (5) portfolio of written material in capstone andcommunications classes; (6) internal and external review of oral presentations in capstone courses;(7) student
Paper ID #24441Work In Progress: Synthesizing design challenges to improve student effec-tiveness in first year engineering design coursesJames R McCusker PhD, Wentworth Institute of Technology James R. McCusker is an Associate Professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering. Since joining Wentworth in 2010, he has been heavily involved with an array of interdisciplinary design courses that range from introductory to capstone courses.Prof. Aaron Carpenter, Wentworth Institute of Technology Professor Carpenter is an Assistant Professor at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. In 2012, he
seesuch projects as extremely valuable to student learning. Some of the more germanereasons are (1) an opportunity to reflect on the course materials and apply the knowledgelearned, (2) experience to improve independent learning skills, (3) a chance to solveopen-ended design problems, encouraging students to use their imaginations, and (4) anopportunity to exercise both software and hardware skills. The overall experiencesupports and enhances the students’ probability of success in their senior capstone designcourse.ConclusionIn this paper, we presented a case study of a student project, the Tetris game, in a secondmicrocontroller/microprocessor course at the US Air Force Academy. The projectprovided the student with ample opportunities to
Kathy Kasley, Ph.D, Emeritus Professor, Pamela Phillips, Professor, Joseph LaSalle, BSEE, Joe Bracha, BSEE, and Ashok Kavadapu. BSEE College of Engineering, Colorado Technical UniversityIntroductionThe key contribution is that two frameworks are described in this paper for an undergraduatecapstone course. The capstone project is the Compressed Air Controller Tire Inflation System(C.A.C.T.I.S.). The project’s intent is to design a system reducing the amount of time and effortinvolved in achieving proper vehicle tire inflation. The CACTIS uses a convenient touch screendisplay and a rugged air distribution box such that multiple tires can be inflated simultaneously.This project serves as another example in
instructors of each major’s seniordesign capstone project began holding multi-disciplinary “Engineering Ethics Lunches”.Students and faculty form small groups during scheduled lunches to discuss specificethical topics related to the engineering profession. The discussions are based uponassigned readings and suggested talking points developed jointly by the faculty.Afterwards, the students are required to submit essays reviewing their discussions andanswering an ethical question based upon the topic.Now in its fourth semester, the multi-disciplinary ethics lunches have receivedoverwhelmingly positive feedback from both the instructors and students. This paperwill discuss the format of the multi-disciplinary ethics discussions, the type of
Session Design of a Universal Robot End-effector for Straight-line Pick-up Motion Gene Y. Liao Gregory J. Koshurba Wayne State UniversityAbstractThis paper describes a capstone design project in developing an end-effector for robotic arm thatis capable of grasping objects of varying sizes. The design parameters are as follows. Thecenter point of end-effector should remain as close as possible to the same location, i.e. astraight-line path, over the range of gripper motion. The selected size and shape of the graspedobject are
Science, Fracture Mechanics, Process-Structure-Property Relationships, Finite Element Stress Analysis Modeling & Failure Analysis, ASME BPV Code Sec VIII Div. 1 & 2, API 579/ASME FFS-1 Code, Materials Testing and Engineering Education. Professionally registered engineer in the State of Texas (PE).Dr. Joanna Tsenn, Texas A&M University Joanna Tsenn is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University. She earned her B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin and her Ph.D. from Texas A&M University. She coordinates the mechanical engineering senior capstone design program and teaches senior design lectures and studios. Her
aspects of the design process, including iterativebrainstorming, hands-on prototyping & fabrication, CAD, materials, machining, assembly, andbasic microcontroller design. Seniors then complete a yearlong capstone sequence in which theypursue a client-mentored project and apply the skills they have developed in the prior courseswithin the curriculum [2]. All projects in the introductory design skills course and the vastmajority of projects in the capstone are client-sponsored, pre-identified problems or need areasthat the client pitched to potential teams, such that students who take these core design coursestypically do not have the opportunity to identify clinical or patient-centered needs as part of thecourse structure. However, a growing
), specifically supported five of the 14 outcomes: a, b, e, g, andk. The assessment tools comprised prelab homework, exams, an experimental design project,written reports, oral presentations and team/peer evaluation. The senior capstone design course,taken in addition to ME Lab, accounted for another seven outcomes. It was decided by thefaculty that one or two courses are not sufficient to demonstrate the necessary assessment of theprogram outcomes. There were several outcomes, though, which made more sense to beassessed by a laboratory course. For instance, all accredited engineering programs must have acomponent of experimental design in their curriculum. ABET Criterion 3b states “Engineering
al., Technical Drawing, 7th Ed. (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980)9 Dym, op. cit., p. 11110 The percentage of the semester grade that is allocated for this project has changed in the six years the course has been offered. When the course was an elective course (2002-2004) there was an additional Project #4 that was an individual project usually tied to the capstone project that students took at the same time as this course.11 Artobolevsky, Ivan I., Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design, Vol. II, Lever Mechanisms, Part 1, trans. Nicholas Weinstein (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1976)12 ME 481 Syllabus, Fall 200713 Toogood, Roger, Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 Mechanica Tutorial (Structure/Thermal), (SDC Publications
al., Technical Drawing, 7th Ed. (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980)9 Dym, op. cit., p. 11110 The percentage of the semester grade that is allocated for this project has changed in the six years the course has been offered. When the course was an elective course (2002-2004) there was an additional Project #4 that was an individual project usually tied to the capstone project that students took at the same time as this course.11 Artobolevsky, Ivan I., Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design, Vol. II, Lever Mechanisms, Part 1, trans. Nicholas Weinstein (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1976)12 ME 481 Syllabus, Fall 200713 Toogood, Roger, Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 Mechanica Tutorial (Structure/Thermal), (SDC Publications
al., Technical Drawing, 7th Ed. (New York, NY: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1980)9 Dym, op. cit., p. 11110 The percentage of the semester grade that is allocated for this project has changed in the six years the course has been offered. When the course was an elective course (2002-2004) there was an additional Project #4 that was an individual project usually tied to the capstone project that students took at the same time as this course.11 Artobolevsky, Ivan I., Mechanisms in Modern Engineering Design, Vol. II, Lever Mechanisms, Part 1, trans. Nicholas Weinstein (Moscow: Mir Publishers, 1976)12 ME 481 Syllabus, Fall 200713 Toogood, Roger, Pro/Engineer Wildfire 3.0 Mechanica Tutorial (Structure/Thermal), (SDC Publications
professional network, courses, capstone design projects, and research. We describe thesemechanisms and respective activities to date in Table 1. Table 1: Engineering Exchange for Social Justice (ExSJ) Mechanisms and Activities.Mechanism Description Activities to Date Thematic gatherings on a specified issue like Hosted 2 community forums to bringCommunity “waste”, where community groups, non- various community and universityForums profits, engineers and other professionals, stakeholders together around the theme of faculty, and students are brought together to waste reduction. One was held on campus exchange
-based, active learning environmentsfor improvement of student comprehension and engagement.1,2,3 Active-learning requires Page 13.414.2students to be involved in key activities of analysis, synthesis and evaluation. 4 For universitystudents, these activities are most clearly present in the context of directed and independentresearch.5 While certain active-learning activities can (and should) be built into the structure ofwhat would normally be a lecture class (such as group discussions, demonstrations, and groupdesign projects), the level of student engagement supported by a research project would be hardto duplicate in a classroom environment
reflections is analyzed elsewhere but shows that overwhelmingly students felt a sense of vulnerability during the simulation which could have influenced their chosen design solution. Design Quality Rubric: Each final project was evaluated by two researchers using a design quality rubric, as described by Sobek and Jain [14]. The assessment rubric was developed to evaluate the outcome quality of engineering design capstone projects. The rubric is designed to be objective so only the prototype quality is assessed. For the present study, the satisfaction of the end user was not considered because there was
engineering practice of sustainability in general. Furthermore, the coverage ofsustainability is not reinforced in a systematic way through readings, homework, projects, etc.such that it could be assessed as a learning objective.Of the upper level courses incorporating lessons or modules, the capstone senior design coursehas the most encompassing coverage of sustainability. A dedicated lesson on EngineeringSustainability is delivered near the beginning of the semester. The lesson includes coverage ongeneral sustainability concepts including the three spheres of sustainability, the U.S. GreenBuilding Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) professionalaccreditation and project certification programs, and ASCE initiatives and
anddistance delivery2, but this paper will focus on using these systems strictly for face to faceclasses.One of these systems, Moodle, has been used for two years in three Electrical and ComputerEngineering Technology courses at New Jersey Institute of Technology. Of the three courses,one is a senior design capstone project course, one is a traditional lecture course, and one is acombination of lecture and laboratory. This paper will describe the attributes of this coursemanagement system, and how it can be effectively incorporated into a face to face course. Someof the attributes that will be described in this paper include: Students can upload assignments, and be able to see their grade, comments from the instructor, and have their
, projects, and collaborationshave been developed using this computer program over the world.In this paper, we propose a methodology where students can build their own system, perform numericalexperimentation and evaluate the results using TRNSYS environment. One comprehensive case studywill be introduced and demonstrated. Page 24.1282.3ASEE Annual Conference, 2014We discuss the process from students’ point of view, and the experience earned in modeling, design,experimentation, and also in written and oral communication skills. Future plans to evaluate theeffectiveness of this capstone in term of learning outcomes. 2. Modeling using
learning in the form of team projects in various courses ranging from theintroductory engineering courses to capstone courses to help students develop this important skill[3-10]. Though these team based projects do provide students with opportunities to gainteamwork experiences, it does not necessarily mean that students will develop effectiveteamwork skills from these team project experiences. In many cases, students are left on theirown to make their teams work, as little formal training is provided to students due to variousrestrictions/constraints. Some examples may include: limited time is available in the courseschedule for in-depth discussions about teamwork skills, and engineering instructors may not beaware of the fundamental research and
stronger research component and span the breadth of the semester withperiodic update presentations being required.SPIRIT Program - Vertically Integrated PBLThe degree programs in the host department include a series of project-based learning (PBL)courses. The PBL component incorporates open-ended problem solving and project managementto broaden student involvement in practical scenarios and to prepare students for the challengesof their senior capstone project and professional practice. The PBL sequence consists of fivecourses, each with expanding levels of autonomy in the execution of class projects.These courses are: ENGR 199 (freshman year), ENGR 200 (sophomore year), ENGR 350(junior year), and ENGR 400/450 (first and second semesters of senior
• Team taught management • Capstone Conference Figure 1: Overview of the four core Design4Practice courses, highlighting key features of each course. Each course also teaches discipline-specific technical skills associated with completing the project.2.1 An integrated curriculumThe Design4Practice curriculum is built around four core design courses, one for each of the fouryears of the degree program: the freshman course, EGR 186 Engineering Design – Introduction;the sophomore course, EGR 286 Engineering Design
Page 23.424.1 c American Society for Engineering Education, 2013 Development of a Mechatronics Course for Senior Mechanical Engineering StudentsAbstractThis paper presents the development of a mechanical engineering senior elective course titled:“ME472 Principles and Applications of Mechatronics System Design”. The main objective ofthis course is to teach students the principles and applications of mechatronic systems. Tenhands-on laboratory projects and two course projects were integrated into the course to enhance astudent’s comprehension of mechatronics concepts. Students were required to complete eachcourse project independently. The outcome of the course was
students would gain more confidence using hand tools. At the end ofthe project, it was reported that all students reported an increase in confidence with using simplehand tools.Future WorkOverall, it is believed that the engine dissection and testing project was successful and only smallchanges should be made in the future relating to clarity and timing throughout the class periodsused to conduct this project. One area for future work is assessing the retention of theengineering design process. At VMI the students complete a design and build project duringtheir sophomore year in Statics and Solid Mechanics, again in their junior year in MechanicalAnalysis, and lastly in their senior year in Mechanical Design and Capstone Design classes. Itwould be
from the CMCET 691 Senior Projects course, students are required toproduce time and cost estimates then track their adherence to the proposed schedule and budget.The majority of capstone style courses in construction management programs provide thestudents with a given program, typically including a client provided design and budget. Thevariance comes when students need to mock-up prototypes of joints and assemblies in addition tothe full scale production of the project. Students working on the Transitional Disaster Sheltercompetition learned to develop a secondary budget for mock-ups that ran concurrent with themain shelter construction and schedule the mock-ups to allow time for design changes based onthe results of those mock
“processes for producing new materials.” Pahl and Beitz11 consider the integration of technical,psychological, systematic, and organizational aspects of engineering design as “prerequisites forthe physical realization of solution ideas.” Still others have argued that design includes teamworkand management skills12, 13. Based on these different views of engineering design, Bieniawski14has argued that design is not typically learned in a classroom setting, but rather through practice.CSM has responded to this concern in the development of the design stem. The design stemconsists of four courses: freshman EPICS (Engineering Practices Introductory Course Sequence),sophomore EPICS, Field Session (junior year) and Senior Capstone design. An
director of the service learning program at Purdue University, EPICS(Engineering Projects In Community Service). In the past when Dr. Oakes would reviewstandard student capstone engineering projects, that is non-service learning, he would oftenencounter projects that didn’t work. The students could show that they worked hard on theirprojects but many aspects of their projects, and much of their understanding of the technologies,were incomplete. Dr. Oakes would contrast these experiences to his experiences reviewingservice learning projects. The service learning projects were almost always complete andworking, and the students had full and deep understanding of the technologies. The reasons forthis difference are likely twofold. First, the students
ways of thinking)” (p. 2). Theyimplemented a studio requirement each year, where project based learning, community service,and reflection are highlighted. Kellam et al.8 drew from student reflections and focus grouptranscripts in their evaluation of this long-term integration. Guthrie et al.6 used quantitativestudent self assessment and collected student comments to gauge the effectiveness of theirinterdisciplinary capstone design course. Rhee et al.9 in “A Case Study of a Co-instructedMultidisciplinary Senior Capstone Project in Sustainability” discussed a senior capstone coursewhere students engage together with specific shared projects, share classroom space and meetingtimes. Mentors from several engineering and non-engineering disciplines
and patterns of expression, we find the gaps and lack of force that thinking alone oftenfails to identify. Writing has tremendous potential variety, each format serving specificpurposes. Yet the ultimate intent is to convey a message, ranging from precise clarity tointentional ambiguity.A central intent of the MSOE Electrical Engineering program and curriculum is to instill theimportance of professional skills, in addition to the normally expected technical skills.Communication, with an emphasis on writing, culminates in the capstone senior designexperience. While the nominal purpose of the three quarter course sequence is to teach theprocess of design, the project itself is the vehicle used to bring “to life” the design process and todevelop
nine highly and self-motivated undergraduate students and oneprofessor trying to, and at times succeeding in, being inconspicuous. We are aninterdisciplinary team from several areas of the Computer and ElectricalEngineering programs at the University of Puerto Rico, exploring novel ideas ofproducts that can become feasible projects for the capstone design course. Theapproach to our work contrasts with many conventional engineering educationpractices, which place emphasis on highly structured and formal procedures andsolving problems proposed by faculty members or by industry partners. Althoughwe still meet in the formal setting of a classroom and one research laboratory, thesessions differ significantly from regular classes, appearing more
the problem given to them. Students oftengain confidence from these projects and provide statements such as “made me more excitedabout the major”, “made me want to take more classes to learn all that I still don’t know”, “whatI had been waiting for”, “what we are here for”, and “one of the few times where you actuallyapply, hands on, the theory that you learn all through school.” 10 These ‘capstone’ projectsusually take place during the student’s senior year.In the conventional senior-level ‘capstone’ project-centered learning project, the student has norole in the problem’s conceptual development. The problem along with all of its parameters isgiven to the student, and the student’s sole responsibility is generating the solution.Conversely