Conference Session

Trends in Mechanics Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

R.W. Carpick; K.W. Lux; Buck Johnson; Wendy Crone

component to thecourse. The laboratory activities are self-contained modules which build upon each otherculminating in the production of a microfluidic device for the filtration of nanoparticles by theconclusion of the course. The individual modules are designed to coincide with the subjectmatter under discussion in the course such as surface characterization, synthesis techniques, andsoft MEMS. These modules utilize web-based lab procedures which were developed through theUW MRSEC and have been incorporated into the web-based lab manual which was developedconcomitantly with this course.On “Micro” vs. “Nano”When planning the course, the relative emphasis to place on micro- vs. nano-scale concepts wascarefully considered. While a course devoted

Conference Session

Trends in Mechanics Education

Collection

2003 Annual Conference

Authors

Scott Wirgau; Abhinav Gupta; Vernon Matzen

to the girder of the shear buildinggiving it an initial excitation. The control of these actuators could be implemented in LabVIEW,as was the control for the shake table. Another future consideration is the use of the web camera. Currently the camera beingused has relatively low frames per second with basic usage limited to showing the lab setup andverifying whether or not the table is moving. Purchase of a faster, higher quality camera thatwill be able to show the video of the experiment more fluently is planned. Furthermore, with ahigher quality camera combined with proper software, it will be possible to grab a selectednumber of frames per second matching or closely matching the frequency of various structuralmodes. This would

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

William Keat; Ann Anderson; Richard Wilk

either in pairs or individually. Percentage ofcredit is assigned up front in proportion to the amount of time planned for each: 70% industrialproject, 30% machine design projects.The industrial project was selected from those available based on the heavy dose of machineelements applications implicit in the following problem statement from the company: “Develop ageneric test facility to evaluate advanced bearings and control algorithms”. Prior to selecting it, afunctional decomposition of the design was prepared both to summarize the tasks at hand as wellas to explore opportunities for self-organization by the team. The result is presented in Figure 1.A design that does not easily decompose into sub-functions of comparable importance andworkload

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

David Kelley

values for each group.The purpose for planning for the use of a covariate was to reduce any differences between thegroups resulting from sampling error and to reduce the within group variation. Using a PearsonProduct Moment Correlation, neither the student’s GPA (p = .281), their ACT score (p = .063),nor their attendance (p = .062) had a significant correlation. Without a suitable correlationbetween obtained variables, a covariate was not used in the ANOVA research design. Levene’s test for equality of variance revealed no significant difference (p = .341)between the two sections on the variance of CAD problem-solving scores. As shown in Table 2,the ANOVA failed to reject the hypothesis, F(1, 28) = .233, MSE = 80.03. There was

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Terrence Freeman

can be achieved in addition to real insight on what it takes to do so.Coaches may not have achieved the goal, but they possess a critical eye and are good atproviding feedback on how well a student is executing the game plan for achieving success.Practice partners may not have the insight of a coach, but they are in the ‘same boat’ and thatgives them a genuine appreciation of what their dream teammates are experiencing. Cheerleadersare those people who have a genuine interest in seeing a student succeed even if they can’t fullyappreciate the challenges faced by the student. Forming this team can help a student obtain thefeedback and sustain the energy necessary to achieve a challenging goal.Resilience through Humor.Sultanoff (1997) describes

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Rajib Mallick

present, civil engineering studentsare not adequately prepared in newly developed technologies in asphalt pavement design andconstruction.II. Challenge for undergraduate educatorsHow can we make sure that today’s young and dynamic engineering students are educated in thelatest asphalt technology so that they can apply these techniques effectively into practice? Theanswer is by providing practical education and training in asphalt mixture production facilities,equipment of construction, methods of construction, contracts, plans and specifications, basicstatistics, and quality control techniques. With this goal in mind, the Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering (CEE) department at WPI has adopted a philosophy of strong practical experience inits

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Jace Hargis; Anne Donnelly

formats tailored to them might improve learning and therefore retention rates of these students. Future research into how students with different aptitudes and attitudes interact with traditional and traditional formats is planned. Best for Whom? A cautionary note is that educators should be careful not to use simple statistical methods that may obscure meaningful results. The search for the best pedagogical model will necessarily fail. Individual differences must be taken into account. This area is referred to as aptitude treatment interactions (ATI), in which an aptitude is defined as any learner characteristic that impacts how a learner responds to a given learning setting. The treatment refers to any variable in instruction such as pacing

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Mark Otter; Ken McLeod; Yi-Xian Qin; Partap Khalsa; Michael Hadjiargyrou; Danny Bluestein

ability to generate solutions andmake decisions), and pragmatic (i.e. experiential/ observational modes of thought whichfacilitate planning, implementation and evaluation) processes.In order to develop a curriculum that achieves the goal of producing a graduate engineer withvision and flexibility, we must re-think the distribution of material presented in our engineeringprograms. Specifically, the curriculum questions which are most commonly asked include3 : Isthere too much emphasis on tools and techniques? Is there a lack of emphasis on communicationskills, social sciences and humanities? Is there enough emphasis on systems and complexity?And, have we gone too far in specialization? In addition, we must think about how we aredelivering this

Collection

2001 Annual Conference

Authors

Thomas Harmon; Glenn Burks; Eva Baker; Gregory Chung

content scoreand deep propositions is consistent with our expectations of knowledge mapping as a measure ofdeep understanding. In general, deep understanding is reflected by a map that contains only themost important and substantive relationships. In contrast, poor maps tend to include shallow,trivial, or incorrect propositions.Additional evidence for the validity of knowledge mapping as a measure of studentunderstanding is provided by the set of correlations in Table 8, between the self-regulationprocesses of planning and self-checking, and the shallow propositions. The more studentsreported that they engaged in self-regulation cognitive processes, the lower the number ofshallow propositions they had overall in their posttest knowledge map

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Brian S Macherone; Jagdish T. Gajjar; Cherrice Traver

teamwork and communication skills to accomplish theirtask. The final results, illustrated on the web pages and the physical weather station, attest tostudents meeting the objectives. More pre-planning and a slightly longer term would be neededto complete the debugging stage to produce a working final product. However, the formation ofthe student-run weather club to complete the debugging also has many virtues.Although this type of large, realistic project has many advantages, and has been supported andpraised here at Union, the reality is that long term support is difficult to maintain. Since eachproject is a new experience, the time commitment on the part of faculty is very large, and thenumber of required faculty to provide the individual

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Winston Conway Link; Carlos G. Spaht II

doneusing the TI-83. Students are asked to interpret the entries (off-diagonal entries give the numberof groups of three in which i and j work together and diagonal entries give the number of groupsof three of which i is a member).Bibliography1 Beverly T. Watkins, “ Berkeley Mathematician Strives ‘to help People Get Moving’,” The Chronicle of HigherEducation, 14 June 1989: A 16.2 “Bleak Life Looms Over Louisiana Children,” The Times, 3 June 1996: 1A.3 Africa Gordon, “Prepared for College?: educators ponder why freshmen are not ready,” The Times, 25 June 1995: 1A.4 Mary Caffrey “Math Plan Failing Louisiana Students,” Shreveport Journal, 19 February 1988: 10A.5 “Louisiana Tops National Dropout Rate,” The Times, 21 September 1994: 3B.6

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Marilyn J. Smith

Velocimetry.In each of the experiments listed above, the students had to work in teams, and coordinateactivities with the schedules of graduate students as needed for facility safety and operations.They had to survey the relevant research literature and find what they needed for theirexperiment. They had to develop project plans from given specifications and deadlines,discussing these with various people. They learned to make their own drawings to get parts builtin the machine shop, dealing interactively with the machinists. They learned to do theexperiments, with a good deal of preparation as well as several iterations, going through periodsof great frustration until they got the variables under control, and learned to live with theimperfection of the

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Louis Cloutier; Jean-Francois Methot; Jean Brousseau; Bernard Larocque

challenges that touch on complementary subjects.Foreseen changesAfter having offered the program for five years, it is worth identifying the nature of the foreseenchanges. These aim to refine the program and to better achieve the goals of engineering degreeprograms, which include versatility, technical design, system engineering and integration of thecomplementary aspects of the formation. • We plan to combine a few required courses and make compulsory certain elective courses in order to offer an even more extended and balanced basic training in the fields of mechanical and electrical engineering. Page 5.42.8• We wish to increase the

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Martha C. Wilson

-teacher" relationship; the student is now a"consumer" of education who plans or demands a course of study suited to the their needs.These needs are frequently expressed in terms of career potential, without the input of the greatersociety which contributes financially (to a lesser and lesser extent) to the student’s education. Inshort, the student is in a position to shape their own education according to their own needs,perceptions, and values.One form of expressing student perceptions is through the use of student evaluations, intendedalso as a tool for assessing learning and the instructor’s teaching effectiveness. Although itmakes sense to survey customers who purchase washing machines to determine how the productcan be improved, the analogy

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Valerie E. Taylor; Rudolf Eigenmann; Renato Figueiredo; Nirav Kapadia; Luis Vidal; Jose A.B. Fortes; Jan-Jo Chen; Alok Choudhary

infrastructure are also describedin this paper via a detailed example of a virtual lab" assignment using PUNCH. This paper also reports on usage of the system in classes at the authors' universities, andon student evaluations of their experience with the web-based interface. Planned extensions to the system include support for a text-based, terminal interface tothe infrastructure. This interface will enable fast execution of text-based interactive tools,such as debuggers, as well as a Unix-like interface to user le management. Another plannedextension is to support controlled program execution. Current users of the Parallel Program-ming hub can compile and analyze their programs on PUNCH, but then have to post-processand run their executables on a

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Geoff Swan; S P Maj; D Veal

expected for students should drivethe curriculum planning” 1. The computing science department at ECU conducted anexploratory market audit covering a wide range of companies offering employment in the area ofcomputer and network support (CNS) within Western Australia. This took the form of a survey Page 5.492.1intended to ascertain the level and extent of the CNS related skills that prospective CNSemployees needed to possess. Subsequently a checklist of basic required CNS skills wascompiled. A random selection of ten, final year ECU computer science undergraduates wereinterviewed from a graduating population of approximately one hundred. According to

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Rebecca A. Pinkus; Craig A. Simmons

communications has the opportunity to act as a rolemodel for his or her students, and by emphasizing the importance of clear communication, mayhelp to remove the stigma many engineering students currently associate with non-technicalelectives.AcknowledgementsWe gratefully acknowledge Dr. Rob Irish for his support and encouragement with the planning,implementation, and evaluation of the seminar, and for his contributions to this paper. We wouldalso like to thank the students who participated in the seminar and who provided valuable Page 5.503.7feedback.Bibliography1. Irish, R. “Internal Report to the Dean: Survey of Technical Writing Courses.” Faculty of

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Robert S. Thompson

Revise Objectives and Scope?Step 2 Identify Critical Information Identify Areas of UncertaintyStep 3 What Data Are Available?Step 4 Identify Critical Data Needs Develop Criteria for Judging Value of Incremental DataStep 5 Identify and Compare Alternatives Develop Criteria for Comparing AlternativesStep 6 Recommendations - Plan of ActionFigure 2: Task performance strategy for multidisciplinary teams Page 5.526.11 Project 2 Team 5 5.0 Average

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Mickelson

how we were doing in classes, etc.• I enjoyed having him as our mentor; he helped us when we needed it, and was fun to work with.The mentor’s comments were very positive and insightful. Here are just a few of their commentsabout this experience:• I thought it was a great chance to meet younger students. It also got them involved with club activities. It is about the only way I can get to know them!• I got to meet 4 great new Ag Engineers. Through talking with them about their plans – I got to share my experiences and hear different perspectives.• I hope I provided a few younger students with some insight to the future (i.e., classes, professors, industry experience) and I learned a lot (some review, some new). I wish I had

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Saleh M. Sbenaty; Claudia House

multimedia components to these case study modelsand two cases are being produced in CD-ROM format, with plans for more CD-ROM versions tobe created in 2000-2001.V. Field Testing and AssessmentFor the purpose of constructive assessment of the SEATEC approach to curriculumdevelopment, the Learning Technology Center (LTC) http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/ctrs/ltc/ atVanderbilt University was contracted to assess the effectiveness of the case study approach intechnology education. Each of the SEATEC teams identified the courses where field-testing willbe conducted. Assessments are currently being performed at community colleges and four-yearuniversities across Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky. A National Advisory Committee was

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Munir Mandviwalla; Chang Liu; Azim Danesh

distance education is more widely accepted, there has been and continuesto be a large debate as to the true definition of “distance education”. Desmond Keegan’s reviseddefinition is most often quoted. He proposes that the following elements are needed to havedistance education:• The quasi-permanent separation of teacher and learner throughout the length of the learning process;• The influence of an educational organization both in the planning and preparation of learningmaterials and in the provision of student support services;• The use of technical media: print, audio, video, or computer to unite teacher and learner andto carry out the content of the course;• The provision of two-way communication so that the student may benefit from or

Collection

2000 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen M. Batill

human activity of planning, describing or is someother way formalizing the description of an artifact, activity or process. The design, as a noun, isthe resulting artifact. Engineers have traditionally viewed the process of design as beingobjective and quantitative and involving the application of science and technology. The termdesign is also often associated with another perspective that involves a strong subjective,qualtitative or artistic content. The automobile is a good example. The engineer might see thenew automobile design in terms of performance capabilities such as speed, fuel consumption,weight, etc., all objective measures of the product, where the style designer sees shape, color andvisual appeal, all typically subjective measures

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

John Schmalzel; Steven H. Chin; Shreekanth Mandayam; Ravi Ramachandran; Linda Head

bettercomprehend the conceptual relationships of COMM, DSP and VLSI. Implementation of ourideas is facilitated by the fact that the three courses are run in the same semester. Each course hasthree hours of lectures and three hours of laboratory per week. Illustrative laboratory experiencesthat enforce the conceptual relationships are planned. This philosophy is further motivated by theneed to promote the two main learning styles that students have [4]. Most students, instructorsand curricula are sequential in that the process functions with partial understanding, there issteady progress, and details are emphasized [4]. Global learners need the big and overall picture

Conference Session

Trends in Engineering Economy Education

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Gunter Sharp; Jack Lohmann

Retirement Planning Example Uncertainty Scenarios and Expected Net Present Value Breakeven Analysis Page 7.1149.6 Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering EducationObservations and ExperiencesDuring the first offering the most notable student reaction was surprise and frustration. Therewas little if any advance notice of the internet-only method of lecture delivery. Incompatiblesoftware, poor quality video streams for the 56K download for off-campus students, interrupteddownloads, and improper

Conference Session

What's in Store for the ChE Curriculum?

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Anthony Dardy; William Krantz; Kettil Cedercreutz

Division of Professional Practice at the University ofCincinnati. Participation in the co-op program is mandatory for undergraduate students in theCollege of Engineering and the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning. It is optionalfor students in the College of Business Administration, College of Applied Science, College ofArts and Sciences, and University College. The focus of this article will be on the co -op programin the College of Engineering and College of Applied Science.The University of Cincinnati operates on a quarter system, in part because it lends itself so we llto the co-op program. All students in the co-op program are enrolled in the Division ofProfessional Practice, which is administered by Professor Kettil

Conference Session

ET International Collaborations

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Rafiqul Islam

assignments of informal and formal reports will encourage students to gather information from recent publications, journals and Internet home pages. If time permits the information and knowledge acquired by one group can be shared to the rest of the class through short presentation. Not only will such experience prepare the students for industry (ultimate goal), it will give them opportunities for positive human relations and goal-oriented behavior. An innovative approach to conduct laboratory courses in an electronics sequence at the University of North Dakota has provided the students with many opportunities for leadership, communication, teamwork, planning and originality. In this approach the

Conference Session

Freshman Design

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Hazel Pierson; Daniel Suchora

made up of students planning to enter the Chemical Engineering program had aQuick Dissolve Benadrylä tablet at the bottom of a ramp. Water trickled down the ramp,dissolving the tablet to set off another event. The students in this group informed the class thatthe Benadrylä tablet dissolved at a very precise rate, hardly changing within a reasonabletemperature range. The machine previously shown in Figure 1, constructed by a group ofintended Electrical Engineering majors, completed a circuit to set off a car alarm using theneedle from a scale. Another team had steel balls push a piece of copper against a piece of steelto complete a circuit. Many groups used levers and dominoes as a transfer between events. Thefavorite seemed to be setting off

Conference Session

Trends in Engineering Economy Education

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Joan Burtner

theinvestigation themselves offer their own explanations through their Web sites. 31, 32However, there is one important difference between the two cases. In contrast to the Challengercase, the Ford/Firestone situation is a work in progress. It is unlikely that students have studiedthis case in other courses or formed lasting opinions on the causes of the problem. I plan tointroduce a case study on the Ford/Firestone controversy the next time I teach engineeringeconomy. The use of the Ford/Firestone material will allow me to compare student reaction to acase study with a known outcome (Challenger) with a case study whose outcome is stilldeveloping.ConclusionAlthough including real-world case study materials in an engineering economy course has

Conference Session

Rethinking Culture and Engineering

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

Diana Dabby

of the enemy. (2) I know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions. (3) Item. If, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place, and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, I have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were on a rock, &c. (4) Again, I have kinds of mortars, most convenient and easy to carry; and with these I can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke

Conference Session

Teaching Teaming Skills Through Design

Collection

2002 Annual Conference

Authors

John Feland

§ Creates action plans and timetables § Ensures team understands goals and prioritize getting results o Process Manager § Keeps team on task during work sessions § Identifies ways to proceed curing sessions o Consensus Builder § Solicits inputs from all team members § Involves team members in decisions that affect them §Team InterventionThe final intervention took place after a major deliverable for the design contest. Each team wasasked to submit peer reviews to the instructor evaluating their teammates as well as themselvesin the task to date. The peer review used a monetary bonus and qualitative evaluation system toassess the