Conference Session

TC2K Issues and Experiences

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

James Higley; Jana Whittington; Joy Colwell

organizationalleadership and supervision programs. During those three years, the faculty members havelearned much about structuring course-embedded assessments and using those assessments forcontinuous improvement in support of program goals and ABET outcomes. This paper willoutline the basic premises and methods of our assessments, then compare data from traditionaland online courses, and discuss how “soft” skills such as teamwork, communication and peerreview, and creative problem-solving can be assessed in both traditional and online courses.Specific data from engineering technology, computer graphics technology, and organizationalleadership and supervision will be discussed, as well as statistical data comparing results fromonline courses and traditional

Conference Session

Capstone/Design Projects: Industrial ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Dana Ingalsbe; Jess Godbey

presents the results of his or her project to the faculty ofthe technology department. Students must demonstrate the successful solution to aspecific problem presented in the initial proposal.Upon project completion, the employer assesses the student’s technical and soft skills.The student is also assessed by the faculty advisor (for the written report) and by theentire faculty for the oral presentation. Because of the wide range of project topics thatare covered by the students, the assessment of the students’ skills focuses on the skillsthat should be learned during the core coursework in the Technology curriculum. Theseten courses provide the technical and soft skills that should be evidenced in anysuccessful project experience.V. Feedback

Conference Session

Lab Experiments & Other Initiatives

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Ali Sekmen

: Page 10.801.2 “Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education” 1. Students do not develop the technical and soft skills that industries need for immediate employment. 2. Student learning assessment is limited. The instructor is usually the only person who assesses the students learning. 3. Students develop limited professionalism skills since the project participants are limited to the instructor and students. 4. Students sometimes do not get motivated since they cannot see immediate real-life applications.The DoCS has partnered with several businesses to extend the

Conference Session

Industrial Collaborations

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

John Robertson

Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Educationas well as technical capabilities. It is significant that all the IAB members were able toreach consensus very quickly on the requirements. Interestingly, the outcomes wereremarkably similar to those defined by Wisler [3] for the aerospace industry.The requirements for graduate skills and capabilities fall into three categories: • Technical understanding and competency • Soft skills such as communication, team-working and business methods • How all skills are used and improvedWe set no priorities because the skills in all three categories must be used in concert if anindividual is to be effective. That

Conference Session

Systems Approach to Teaching ET

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Gary Mullett

skill sets of tomorrow’s graduates will becomes even more disconnected fromthe world of work than they are today. This change needs to embrace and emphasis a systems level approach to theteaching of electronics technology along with an infusion of the Scan’s report soft skills into the curriculum. Severalsuggestions of how this may be accomplished are presented here.I. OverviewApproximately forty years have past since the implementation of the first governmentrecommended two-year college electronics curricula. Although tremendous technologic changehas occurred in the electronics field and its manufacturing industry, little change has occurred inthe typical curriculum leading to an associate degree in this area. Except for the continuous

Conference Session

College/University Engineering Students K-12 Outreach

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Russell Faux; Meredith Knight; Brian Gravel; Christine Cunningham

/cooperativeexperiences to undergraduate research experiences, project-based coursework, laboratoryexperiences, and field trips.3 Over the last 20 years, a shift in engineering education to include“softer skills” has taken place. These skills include communication, teamwork, leadership,understanding of the diversity of people in engineering, appreciation of the societal impacts ofengineering, and an ability to apply these skills in engineering careers. Thus service learningbecame the vehicle through which many of these softer skills are taught. In fact, theAccreditation Board for Engineering and Technology’s (ABET) criteria for engineeringprograms emphasizes the importance of developing these soft skills. ABET requires,“Engineering programs must demonstrate that

Conference Session

TYCD 2005 Lower Division Initiatives

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Mohammad Shanehsaz; Michael Qaissaunee

, and integration of work-relevant, industry-driven curricula thatintegrates “best practices” in IT education with industry skills standards and certifications. Working with partners NCTT, NWCET, and NJCATE, the project staff is developingcredit courses through adaptation of industry standard materials. These courses incorporatemodular, industry-driven, competency-based curricula and work-based learning units in wirelesscommunications for two-year colleges that articulate with related curricula for a resulting B.S.degree. Key components of the curriculum are 1) modularity, 2) industry-driven, 3)competency-based, 4) integration of “soft skills”, 5) work-based learning components, and 6)well-articulated with B.S. degree programs

Conference Session

Capstone Design

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven Reyer; Stephen Williams; Owe Petersen

than those in even recent years. They depend greatlyon 21st century technology with cellular phones, Instant Messaging, email and the like tomaintain social contacts. Such communications often substitute for face-to-face interaction, asubstitution that can have profound effects, especially if the engineering student is at allintroverted (certainly not uncommon). What we are seeing is students limiting their practice andhoning of “soft” skills. Such behaviors may be the natural outgrowth of their experiences andtime spent “on the computer” as children.Employers are now reporting that our EE students do not always interview well, and that theirsocial skills and awareness are not as developed as they could be. Specifically, they often don’tmake

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Charles Pezeshki

understandingengineering from a business perspective, which could be introduced in the undergraduatecurriculum. A final point made was that enhanced formal and informal communicationskills open doors for young graduates as they move up inside companies. And in a globalmarketplace, though much of the technical work is done in English, knowledge of foreignlanguages on a social level helps build stronger, more productive business relationships.Hoffman also commented on the development of soft skills such as negotiation as animportant part of an engineer’s toolkit. When teaming with other companies in othercountries, specifications and division of labor must be negotiated, and this is often doneat the mid- to lower- management level. He was also more optimistic about

Conference Session

Manufacturing Program Innovation

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Daniel Johnson

programs in a similar fashion.The Opportunity for Improvement, AKA the Problem:When developing what would be our first set of official PO’s and PEO’s the focus was ongetting the right things included based on the need of our various constituents. Of theconstituents the ones with the primary impact on this list of needs were; RIT, ABET, SME andthe companies that typically hire our graduates. RIT of course has a set of minimumrequirements for a bachelor’s degree, some of which are specified by the State of New York.ABET presents us with A-K, SME with the specifics of the technical specialty and industry inputrestates much of what ABET and SME prescribe and add additional specifics primarily in thetechnical and soft skills area. Describing all of

Conference Session

Undergraduate-Industry-Research Linkages

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

John McMasters

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Engineering Programs II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Kimberly Whelan; Sharon Jones

relate to the issue of broadening the undergraduate engineering experience. The obvious conclusions are: • No two undergraduate engineering curricula are the same. • It is difficult (if not impossible) for current undergraduate engineering curricula to capture all of the combined ABET/NAE skills at the same coverage. • In general, current BS Engineering curricula include much more coverage of technical courses as opposed to the “soft” skills such as business, policy, leadership, ethics, and adaptability. Page 10.149.3“Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education

Conference Session

TC2K Assessment: How to Really Do It

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Satyajit Verma

Conference Session

Teaching Software Engineering Process

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Lee Vallone

: teamwork, communication skills suchas listening & supporting, conflict resolution, leadership, risk management, presentation,political skills, and finally, knowing how all the technical and interpersonal pieces fit together.Most software engineers learn these skills the hard way, by trial and error on the job. Somenever learn. Consider the typical engineering career progression where a developer does anoutstanding job designing and implementing software and is thus promoted into management, aposition that relies almost entirely on the “soft” skills. While one might argue that the highfailure rate of software projects is due to aggressive schedules and unrealistic customerexpectations, it is certainly conceivable that the Peter Principle1 is a

Conference Session

Unique Laboratory Experiments & Programs Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Steven York; Lynn Nystrom; Elizabeth Joyce; Michael Gregg; Richard Goff; Jeffrey Connor

. Employers are searching for well-rounded professionals. As a result, traits suchas communication skills, leadership skills, creativity, and the ability to work in a teamenvironment are in high demand. Unfortunately, these skills are not often a part of thecurriculum.There are a variety of roles that the SEC plays in the College of Engineering. The SEC providesa forum that allows student representatives to speak directly with the dean, to keep him abreastof student concerns about the education provided by our College of Engineering. There is afreshman mentoring program that helps new students adjust to the rigors of the engineeringcurriculum, as well as the college environment. The Leadership in Engineering Conferenceteaches soft skills to young

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Jake Ingman; Camille Schroeder

professional, being a leader, interacting with others, andpublic speaking. Many of these skills fall within the ABET Criteria a-k. At a very early age,these students are preparing themselves for a future career by having these types of engineeringand social experiences. These experiences qualify them to lead the next generation asoutstanding engineers. In particular, it is very difficult to teach young college students the skillsnecessary to speak effectively (criterion g) or how to work on a team (criterion d) when they areheavily involved in their basic program of study. The participants of FLL are alreadyexperiencing and learning many of these “soft” skills prior to enrolling in higher education,making them an enhanced group of potential

Conference Session

Exploring Trends in CPD

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

M. Zoghi

non-technical tools (or “soft skills”) to be able to face newchallenges. They will be expected to interact with people of varying educational and socialbackgrounds. Several outcomes specified in the so-called “Body-of-Knowledge” initiative,proposed by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), advocate skills in business andpolicymaking, project management and leadership, etc (ENR December 2004). Also, theABET’s Engineering Criteria 2000 students’ performance outcome mandate the “knowledge ofcontemporary issues” and “the broad education necessary to understand the impact ofengineering solutions in a global and societal context” (ABET 1998). Many of these topics areintegrated within the revised Civil Engineering Practice (formerly seminar

Conference Session

Teaching Software Engineering Process

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Harry Koehnemann; Brian Blake; Gerald Gannod; Kevin Gary

task for thefollowing reasons: • The learning objectives focus more on soft-skills than on “hard”, or technology-specific, skills. It is a difficult task to measure how students have progressed in these areas, though the community clearly recognizes the need to emphasize them more in computing curricula (e.g. Lethbridge[11]) • Though the curricular structures of the three participating programs, as presented in Section2, are similar, they are not the same. Students are participating in the outsourcing experience after having enrolled in non-outsourced versions of prerequisite project courses taught with different syllabi. • Similarly, student academic and skill levels most

Conference Session

Trends in Construction Engineering I

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Virendra Varma

daunting task. While thefundamental building blocks of construction engineering are essential for developing thetechnical skills, the soft skills of communications and developing understanding ofopposing and different viewpoints are just as important. The challenges for constructioneducators lie not only in imparting technical skills in students but developing them asprofessionals who would be ethical in practice, and sound in human relations. In theexecution of multi-national projects where multi-cultural teams are involved,understanding of issues such as global economy, global barriers in communication,different languages, cultures, and customs will play a key role in the overall success ofthe engineering projects. Working in teams over the

Conference Session

Innovation for ChE Student Learning

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

David Silverstein

assigning extra homework, reading, or short termprojects to keep them engaged during the week. Of course, this usually results in thelibrary noting an increase in traffic on the night before those additional assignments aredue.At the same time, some programs are facing the issue of how to document successfulachievement of “soft skill” outcomes in their curriculum, including the ability to functionon multidisciplinary teams, communicate effectively, and to engage in lifelong learning.1Of these three, perhaps the most obvious to address is the communication outcome. Theother two require a little more effort, not only to achieve the outcome but to define whatit means. The lifelong learning criterion seems most often interpreted to mean “givestudents

Conference Session

Teaching Software Engineering Process

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Larry Young; John Fernandez

would be saved by accomplishing one set of documentation that is used by the integratedteam, instead of two separate efforts covering the same area by separate groups of experts.Incorporating a Human-Centered FocusUsability and software experts were interviewed in a study by Seffah and he found that they allagreed that generic “soft skills” were very important in the field16. These skills are listed asessential in many professional positions that go unfilled because of a lack of availablecandidates. A large international firm that regularly hires Texas A&M University – CorpusChristi computer science graduates has stated that the corporation is only interested in hiringstudents who have the requisite people skills to be good team players and

Conference Session

Collaborations: International Case Studies & Exchanges

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Suzanne Scott

Engineering education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright©2005, American Society for Engineering Education” The STEPS program is designed to introduce second-year engineering students at the PetroleumInstitute to the theoretical and intellectual concepts as well as the practical methods used inengineering design in an integrated two semester sequence at a very early stage in their education.STEPS I presents students with a well defined problem, and then leads them through the processusing the concepts of guided design. During STEPS I the students are also given extensiveinstruction in the application of soft skills that are important to successful design, namelyteamwork, project planning, and professional oral and written communications

Conference Session

Early College Retention Programs

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Yvonne Ng

students practice them in a “semi- professional” setting. Written communication, project planning, ethical decision-making and collaborative problem-solving are the essential “soft skills” required for success in any professional engineer. The freshman program at Bucknell University, for example, has students create an ADA-compliant project proposal for the university. This experience impresses upon the Page 10.1194.2 students the importance of making sound technical suggestions and being able to present the required information to persuade (often non-technical) decision makers about ethically

Conference Session

First-Year Design Experiences

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

S. Scott Moor

. Page 10.540.1These projects are desirable for many reasons. They are more realistic to engineering practice Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright @2005, American Society for Engineering Educationthan simply assigning textbook analysis problems because they include many “soft skills” aswell as analytic skills. They are often more interesting to first-year students and can be helpfulwith retention issues. The active (hands-on) nature makes them better learning experiences thantraditional lecture content.However it is difficult to find projects which encompass the breadth of engineering skillsincluding engineering science, project management

Conference Session

EM Skills and Real World Concepts

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Sam Geonetta

Management for Students of Technology: A Case Study in Information Technology Education Dr. Sam C. Geonetta University of Cincinnati, College of Applied Science 2220 Victory Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45245Introduction In her article on graduates of engineering and technology programs Kerry Hannonobserves that “. . .corporations want the whole ball of wax—soft skills, science skills, anddiversity.”1 Loria Yeadon, a patent attorney who holds a master’s degree in electricalengineering, emphasizes the need for technology professionals to be “business-minded”.2 InInternetWeek, Nick Evans states that “Most will agree that

Conference Session

Teaching Team Skills Through Design

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Mary Cook; Jim Lyons; Kenneth Gentili

experience.Multiple instructors have effectively used the process to assign valid grades to team members inintroductory engineering design and physical science classes. All of these courses featurecooperative learning activities and open-ended projects throughout the term.IntroductionThere are numerous methods that have been used to determine team scores. The methoddescribed in this paper engages the entire team with the instructor or graduate studentcollaboratively to determine a team midterm or final grade. It takes about thirty minutes per teamto complete.The team interview session is a formal process that is designed to measure soft skills such asparticipation, communication and team process. Individual elements include sharing theworkload; participation

Conference Session

Writing and Communication II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Luke Niiler; David Beams

/computersFig. 1: Self-reported factors involved in freshmen students' choice of engineering as a major.Figure 1 clearly demonstrates that the majority of students planning careers in engineering wereattracted by the challenges of problem-solving and the exercise of creativity.Figure 2 shows the distribution of the 69 freshman responses to the question of the knowledgeand skills that they expected to develop in their undergraduate studies. The categories wereagain developed from the responses. These students listed a broad range of skills and knowledgethey expected to develop; the "soft" skills of teamwork and communication receivedsurprisingly-high responses. Since this was a mixed group consisting of both EE and MEstudents, the split responses

Conference Session

ME Education Poster Session

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Matthew Panhans; Joseph Musto; William Howard

management become the core activities of the “professional” engineerThe implications of these recommendations point to a dramatic restructuring of the mechanicalengineering curriculum. ABET, with the adoption of new, more flexible accreditation criteria,has been praised for providing latitude for programs to redefine their curricula. The inclusion ofnew sciences, more elective choices, and increased focus on the “soft” skills, all consistent withthese new recommendations, are certainly facilitated by the accreditation criteria. However,there is some opposition to these radical concepts. For example, in their Report of theEngineering Licensure Task Force (2003), the National Council of Examiners for Engineeringand Surveying (NCEES) states8

Conference Session

BME Potpourri

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Roberta Berry; Jonathan Olinger; Paul Benkeser

Regulations 46, Subpart A, Protection of Human Subjects.21. Bledsoe, J.G., “Ethical Discussions in an Undergraduate Tissue Engineering Course,” Proceedings, 2nd Joint Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society and the Biomedical Engineering Society, IEEE, 2002.22. Collins, J., and C. Mathieson, “Case Studies in Economics and Ethics in an Early Biomedical Engineering Class,” Proceedings, 2002 ASEE Conference, ASEE, 2002.23. Benkeser, P.J., and W.C. Newstetter, “Integrating Soft Skills in a BME Curriculum,” Proceedings, 2004 ASEE Conference, ASEE, 2004.BiographiesROBERTA M. BERRY is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Director of the Law, Science &Technology Program at Georgia Institute of

Conference Session

Multidisciplinary Engineering Courses II

Collection

2005 Annual Conference

Authors

Katie Sullivan

potential and need to improve engineering training andeducation regarding team soft skills such as team dynamics and communication are widelyrecognized.4 Teamwork is an essential, but not widely emphasized concept in the engineeringdiscipline.4 Wu and Chang found that teamwork in the classroom resulted in increasedproblem-solving abilities and the development of teamwork strategies necessary forsuccess in the engineering profession.5 Students in this class will each be a member of oneof six teams. Each team consists of one chemical engineering student, one college studentfrom a different discipline and two high school students. The teams are each meant to takeone portion of the project and work together to solve a specific problem. Each