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Teaching the First-Year, Hands-On Engineering Design Experience Online

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Impact of COVID-19 on Design Education 1

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education

Page Count

17

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37826

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/37826

Download Count

381

Paper Authors

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Amanda Simson The Cooper Union Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-2255-7574

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Amanda Simson was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at The Cooper Union in August 2017. Her research focuses on using heterogeneous catalysis in applications like emissions control and alternative energy technologies. Amanda received her Ph.D. from Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering. After her PhD she worked on developing hydrogen production technologies for Watt Fuel Cell in Port Washington, NY. Dr. Simson is dedicated to improving educational opportunities for students in STEM. Prior to her PhD studies she taught middle school for three years. She has developed several programs for students including a series of math competitions for NYC middle school students and a chemistry card game called Valence.

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Martin S. Lawless The Cooper Union Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-5914-4469

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Martin Lawless earned his Ph.D. in Acoustics in 2018 from the Pennsylvania State University where he investigated the brain’s auditory and reward responses to room acoustics. At the Cooper Union, he continues studying sound perception, including 1) the generation of head-related transfer functions with machine-learning techniques, 2) musical therapeutic inventions for motor recovery after stroke, and 3) active noise control using an external microphone array.

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Cynthia Lee The Cooper Union

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Dr. Lee received her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2020. She is an Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at The Cooper Union in New York City.

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Lisa Shay P.E. The Cooper Union

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LISA A. SHAY is the Associate Dean for Educational Innovation at the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. She received the M.Sc. in Engineering from Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar in 1996, the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2002 and is a Member of ASEE and a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

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Toby John Cumberbatch The Cooper Union

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Taught electrical engineering at the Cooper Union from 1994 - 2018. Founded Africa summer program that empowered students from schools of Art, Architecture and Engineering to seek solutions to real-world engineering problems in resource-constrained environments using what’s at hand, in the least invasive and most efficient manner, to build accessible, functional, naturally driven human support systems—ultimately reducing the chasm between the rich and the poor.

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Austin Wade Smith The Cooper Union

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Neveen Shlayan The Cooper Union

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Neveen Shlayan joined the Electrical Engineering department at the Cooper Union in September 2016. Dr. Shlayan was an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York, Maritime until August 2016 where she taught power electronics and electric drives. During her tenure at SUNY, she succeeded in securing funding for multiple research projects in Intelligent Transportation Systems and Structural Health Monitoring for Offshore Structures from UTRC and American Bureau of Shipping, respectively. Previously, she worked at Philips Research North-America where she focused on developing mathematical models and applying parameter estimation techniques for large-scale lighting control of transportation systems and smart buildings. Prior to that, she was a research fellow at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology working on mesoscopic traffic simulations. In 2011, she obtained her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas conducting research in Cyber Physical Systems. She also holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics with a thesis in reconstruction of neutron density distributions.

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Abstract

During the summer of 2020, a team of faculty re-imagined the School of Engineering’s first-year design course to create consistency between individual sections, to create space for first-year students attending online classes to form friendships, to explicitly teach design thinking and problem solving in a virtual environment, and to integrate ethics into the project-based course. This fall-term course enrolled the entire first-year class of approximately 140 chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical, and general engineering students. Interdisciplinary teams worked on projects in the general theme of “Engineering for Social Good.” Project topics included: designing smarter and more resilient cities, developing therapeutic devices, designing shelter for refugees in flight, and making fuel from food waste. The faculty designed and led their own section’s projects while having a set of common activities and deliverables with similar timelines and baseline rubrics. To build community among the students, every project team had a maximum of eight students mentored by an undergraduate teaching assistant. Each class dealt with the limits of the pandemic in different ways; for instance, some courses developed “@Home” kits, some courses provided limited access to campus spaces, and some courses had all virtual projects. The faculty met weekly to assess course progress. Additionally, a survey was developed to assess how well students communicated, formed bonds, and enjoyed the course across different sections and approaches to handling a project-based course in the era of COVID.

Simson, A., & Lawless, M. S., & Lee, C., & Shay, L., & Cumberbatch, T. J., & Smith, A. W., & Shlayan, N. (2021, July), Teaching the First-Year, Hands-On Engineering Design Experience Online Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37826

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