Live Energy: An Initiative for Teaching Energy and Sustainability Topics with the most Up-to-date and Relevant Content

Christine Ehlig-Economides; Bugrahan Yalvac; Emily Binks-Cantrell; Don R Gilman; Mehmet Ayar; Timothy Allen Robinson; Anthony R Kovscek; Reza Toossi; Sarma V. Pisupati; Sukesh K Aghara

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Conference: 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
Publication Date: June 23, 2013
Start Date: June 23, 2013
End Date: June 26, 2013
ISSN: 2153-5965
Conference Session: NSF Grantees' Poster Session
Tagged Topic: NSF Grantees Poster Session
Page Count: 18
Page Numbers: 23.871.1 - 23.871.18
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--19885
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/19885
Download Count: 476

Paper Authors

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Christine Ehlig-Economides Texas A&M University

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Dr. Ehlig-Economides has been full professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University in the Albert B. Stevens endowed chair since 2004. Before that she worked for Schlumberger for 20 years in well test design and interpretation, integrated reservoir characterization, modern well construction design, and well stimulation. She has worked in more than 30 countries and authored more than 60 papers. Dr. Ehlig-Economides has received a number of technical awards and was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2003. She is currently working on an e-book titled Live Energy.

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Bugrahan Yalvac Texas A&M University

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Bugrahan Yalvac is an associate professor of science education in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M University, College Station. He received his Ph.D. in science education at the Pennsylvania State University in 2005. Prior to his current position, he worked as a learning scientist for the VaNTH Engineering Research Center at Northwestern University for three years. Yalvac’s research is in STEM education, 21st century skills, and design and evaluation of learning environments informed by the How People Learn framework.

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Emily Binks-Cantrell Texas A&M University

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Emily Binks-Cantrell, Ph.D., is a faculty member in the Department of Teaching, Learning & Culture at Texas A&M University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in the field of reading education. Additionally, she serves as a statistical consultant for the NSF-funded Live Energy project, a collaborative e-textbook project for freshmen engineering courses between Texas A&M University, Pennsylvania State University, Stanford University, California State University Long Beach, and Prairie View A&M University. She has published several articles and book chapters on the importance of quality teacher education in the field of reading and also regularly leads professional development opportunities for in-service teachers throughout the state of Texas.

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Don R Gilman PE, PMP Texas A&M University

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Don Gilman has been an IT professional and entrepreneur since 1983. His IT interests are team building, software engineering, and cost effective audit compliance. With three being computer game companies, his business start-ups have been IT-related. He has named credit in over a dozen PC/Mac video games since 1985 including many versions of the computer Harpoon products. Gilman holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certificate and an ITIL Foundations Certification. He is also a Licensed Professional Engineer (Software). Gilman has been active in various local, state, and national organizations including Rotary, Computer Cleanup Day, Leadership Brazos, B/CS Library Board, multiple IT groups, and the Software Engineering Task Force for the Texas Board of Professional Engineers.

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Mehmet Ayar TUBITAK

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Dr. Mehmet Ayar is a scientific programs expert in the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK). He received his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with specialization in STEM education at Texas A&M University in 2012. His research is in ethnographic studies of science and engineering practice, curriculum development, design of learning environments, and robotics activities. Dr. Ayar worked for the Live Energy Project during his Ph.D. studies at Texas A&M University. Prior to his Ph.D. studies, he worked for three years as a science teacher at a private school in Turkey.

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Timothy Allen Robinson Penn State University

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Anthony R Kovscek Stanford University

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Tony Kovscek is a professor of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University where he joined the faculty in 1996. His academic interests center around coupled heat and reactive flows in porous media as well as the efficient use of energy. Kovscek has been honored with the Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), the SPE Western North America Region Technical Achievement Award, and he was the inaugural Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) Distinguished Lecturer in Carbon Sequestration. Kovscek is the director of SUPRI-A, Unconventional and Enhanced Oil Recovery Consortium as well as a co-director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage (SCCS). He holds B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from the University of Washington and University of California at Berkeley, respectively.

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Reza Toossi California State University, Long Beach

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Dr. Reza Toossi is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at CSULB. He received his B.S. degree from the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He continued his post-doctoral research studies in the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and joined the CSULB faculty in 1981. Dr. Toossi has worked both as a research scientist and a consultant on various projects related to aqueous aerosols and droplets in the atmosphere, nuclear safety, sensor design, air pollution modeling, flame propagation, fluid mechanics, and fiber optics.
Dr. Toossi has successfully managed over $6M in research contracts from various private and government agencies, holds two patents, and has published a book on energy in various peered and refereed journals. His current research interests are in hydrogen storage systems, combustion-generated soot emission, sorption refrigeration, hybrid-electric vehicle design, and renewable energy systems.
Dr. Toossi is a member of ASME, ASEE, SAE, SPIE, AAPT, and Tau Beta Pi, and the recipient of the 2001 CSULB Distinguished Faculty Teaching, the 1995 CSULB Distinguished Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievement, and the 1994/1995 TRW Excellence in Teaching awards.

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Sarma V. Pisupati Pennsylvania State University, University Park orcid.org/0000-0002-2098-3302

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Dr. Sarma V. Pisupati is an associate professor and Energy Engineering program officer in the Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering.

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Sukesh K Aghara University of Massachusetts Lowell

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Dr. Sukesh Aghara is an associate professor with the Nuclear Engineering Program at University of Massachusetts Lowell, a member of the University of Massachusetts System. He teaches nuclear engineering classes and participates in nuclear reactor experiments and research. His research interests are radiation shielding analysis for space radiation and nuclear fuel cycle analysis.

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Abstract

Live Energy: An Initiative for Teaching Energy and Sustainability Topics with the most Up-to-date and Relevant Content.In this NSF funded collaborative research project, five engineering faculty from campusesacross the US co-author an electronic textbook with the most up-to-date and relevantcontent material to teach energy and its sustainability topics to college students. Existingtextbook materials on energy and its sustainability are very limited in number and theyoften fail to provide the most recent information to the reader. Because of the evolvingnature of the technical, political, economic, and societal settings that impact the massmedia’s and public’s comprehension of energy and its sustainability, the traditional printedtextbook materials are not sufficiently providing global, trans-disciplinary, and up-to-datecontent. Our engineering professors and the NSF have recognized the need to develop atextbook material involving dynamic content in nature that can be updated frequentlyonline by multiple authors to better serve the needs of the college students learning aboutenergy and its sustainability topic and their role in society.In this poster presentation, we will describe the nature of our collaboration outlining thecourses offered in the participating institutions, our purpose of co-authoring the electronictextbook material, and our research design to evaluate the impact of the developedtextbook material on student learning experiences. In our measures, we attempt to capturethe students’ content understanding, their life-long learning skills, their attitudes towardsengineering, and their learning skills pertaining to energy and its sustainability. Thecontent questionnaire instrument includes 20 multiple-choice items written by one of ourfaculty members. The life-long learning scale and the engineering attitude scale were citedin the literature with valid and reliable measures. Our research team designed theremaining energy and its sustainability learning skills items.We have collected control data from the five institutions during the beginning and end ofthe Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, and Fall 2012 semesters. Students in the facultyauthors’ classes were the study participants. The pre and post semester responses of thestudents on the research instruments revealed that the traditional textbook materials (or theinstruction without our electronic textbook material) did not significantly impact thestudents’ content understanding and their skills and attitudes pertaining to energy andengineering. Findings also show no institutional differences. From the pilot semester(Spring 2011), we used the collected control data to evaluate the effectiveness of thecontent questionnaire items. Item analysis revealed six items to be re-designed. Wemodified these six items that had marginal difficulty powers or that very insufficientlydiscriminated the upper and lower student groups. The revised scales were used in the Fall2011, Spring 2012, and Fall 2012 semesters. We will highlight our analysis of the newlycollected data and revision of the design.Our faculty members have been drafting the chapters since Summer 2011. The table belowrepresents the chapter titles and table of contents. In our presentation, we will also providea preview of the electronic textbook.Table. The table of contents for the electronic textbook.Section 1. Past, Present, and Future of EnergyChapter 1.1 Energy SustainabilityChapter 1.2 Energy Uses and SourcesChapter 1.3 Energy ConversionsSection 2. Valuing Energy, the Environment, and SustainabilityChapter 2.1 Economics of EnergyChapter 2.2 Economics of the EnvironmentChapter 2.3 Sustainability MetricsSection 3. Fossil Fuel and BioenergyChapter 3.1 CoalChapter 3.2 OilChapter 3.3 Natural GasChapter 3.4 Unconventional Fossil ResourcesChapter 3.5 BioenergyChapter 3.6 Environmental Consequences of CombustionSection 4. Nuclear EnergyChapter 4.1 Nuclear Energy TechnologyChapter 4.2 Nuclear Energy Policy and Global IssuesSection 5. Renewable Energy Sources for Heating and ElectricityChapter 5.1 Hydro EnergyChapter 5.2 Geothermal EnergyChapter 5.3 Solar Thermal EnergyChapter 5.4 Solar Photovoltaic EnergyChapter 5.5 Wind EnergyChapter 5.6 Transmission, Distribution, and Storage for Renewable Energy SourcesSection 6. Future Energy ChoicesChapter 6.1 Natural Gas as a BridgeChapter 6.2 HydrogenAppendicesAppendix A: Mathematical NotationAppendix B: Abbreviations and Acronyms

Citation
Format

Ehlig-Economides, C., & Yalvac, B., & Binks-Cantrell, E., & Gilman, D. R., & Ayar, M., & Robinson, T. A., & Kovscek, A. R., & Toossi, R., & Pisupati, S. V., & Aghara, S. K. (2013, June), Live Energy: An Initiative for Teaching Energy and Sustainability Topics with the most Up-to-date and Relevant Content Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--19885

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -     Live Energy: An Initiative for Teaching Energy and Sustainability         Topics with the most Up-to-date and Relevant Content.In this NSF funded collaborative research project, five engineering faculty from campusesacross the US co-author an electronic textbook with the most up-to-date and relevantcontent material to teach energy and its sustainability topics to college students. Existingtextbook materials on energy and its sustainability are very limited in number and theyoften fail to provide the most recent information to the reader. Because of the evolvingnature of the technical, political, economic, and societal settings that impact the massmedia’s and public’s comprehension of energy and its sustainability, the traditional printedtextbook materials are not sufficiently providing global, trans-disciplinary, and up-to-datecontent. Our engineering professors and the NSF have recognized the need to develop atextbook material involving dynamic content in nature that can be updated frequentlyonline by multiple authors to better serve the needs of the college students learning aboutenergy and its sustainability topic and their role in society.In this poster presentation, we will describe the nature of our collaboration outlining thecourses offered in the participating institutions, our purpose of co-authoring the electronictextbook material, and our research design to evaluate the impact of the developedtextbook material on student learning experiences. In our measures, we attempt to capturethe students’ content understanding, their life-long learning skills, their attitudes towardsengineering, and their learning skills pertaining to energy and its sustainability. Thecontent questionnaire instrument includes 20 multiple-choice items written by one of ourfaculty members. The life-long learning scale and the engineering attitude scale were citedin the literature with valid and reliable measures. Our research team designed theremaining energy and its sustainability learning skills items.We have collected control data from the five institutions during the beginning and end ofthe Spring 2011, Fall 2011, Spring 2012, and Fall 2012 semesters. Students in the facultyauthors’ classes were the study participants. The pre and post semester responses of thestudents on the research instruments revealed that the traditional textbook materials (or theinstruction without our electronic textbook material) did not significantly impact thestudents’ content understanding and their skills and attitudes pertaining to energy andengineering. Findings also show no institutional differences. From the pilot semester(Spring 2011), we used the collected control data to evaluate the effectiveness of thecontent questionnaire items. Item analysis revealed six items to be re-designed. Wemodified these six items that had marginal difficulty powers or that very insufficientlydiscriminated the upper and lower student groups. The revised scales were used in the Fall2011, Spring 2012, and Fall 2012 semesters. We will highlight our analysis of the newlycollected data and revision of the design.Our faculty members have been drafting the chapters since Summer 2011. The table belowrepresents the chapter titles and table of contents. In our presentation, we will also providea preview of the electronic textbook.Table. The table of contents for the electronic textbook.Section 1. Past, Present, and Future of EnergyChapter 1.1 Energy SustainabilityChapter 1.2 Energy Uses and SourcesChapter 1.3 Energy ConversionsSection 2. Valuing Energy, the Environment, and SustainabilityChapter 2.1 Economics of EnergyChapter 2.2 Economics of the EnvironmentChapter 2.3 Sustainability MetricsSection 3. Fossil Fuel and BioenergyChapter 3.1 CoalChapter 3.2 OilChapter 3.3 Natural GasChapter 3.4 Unconventional Fossil ResourcesChapter 3.5 BioenergyChapter 3.6 Environmental Consequences of CombustionSection 4. Nuclear EnergyChapter 4.1 Nuclear Energy TechnologyChapter 4.2 Nuclear Energy Policy and Global IssuesSection 5. Renewable Energy Sources for Heating and ElectricityChapter 5.1 Hydro EnergyChapter 5.2 Geothermal EnergyChapter 5.3 Solar Thermal EnergyChapter 5.4 Solar Photovoltaic EnergyChapter 5.5 Wind EnergyChapter 5.6 Transmission, Distribution, and Storage for Renewable Energy SourcesSection 6. Future Energy ChoicesChapter 6.1 Natural Gas as a BridgeChapter 6.2 HydrogenAppendicesAppendix A: Mathematical NotationAppendix B: Abbreviations and Acronyms
AU  - Christine Ehlig-Economides
AU  - Bugrahan Yalvac
AU  - Emily Binks-Cantrell
AU  - Don R Gilman PE, PMP
AU  - Mehmet  Ayar
AU  - Timothy Allen Robinson
AU  - Anthony R Kovscek
AU  - Reza Toossi
AU  - Sarma V. Pisupati
AU  - Sukesh K Aghara
CY  - Atlanta, Georgia
DA  - 2013/06/23
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - Live Energy: An Initiative for Teaching Energy and Sustainability Topics with the most Up-to-date and Relevant Content
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/19885
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--19885
ER  -