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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Public Works For Public Learning: A Case Study, Thalia Anagnos, Beckey Carroll, Shannon Weiss, David Heil
Public Works For Public Learning: A Case Study, Thalia Anagnos, Beckey Carroll, Shannon Weiss, David Heil
Faculty Publications
Large scale and small scale public works projects are important in the smooth operation of every community, yet a majority of the population has little awareness of how these projects work and what their functions are. Few non-engineers understand the engineering challenges of delivering clean water, disposing of our sewage, or changing a traditional intersection into a round-about, a project that seems quite simple on the surface. A consortium of public works engineers, science museums, faculty, and exhibit evaluators were awarded a grant by the National Science Foundation to build an outdoor museum next to a large suspension bridge. The …
Curriculum Exchange: “Make Your Own Earthquake”, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos, Lelli Van Den Einde
Curriculum Exchange: “Make Your Own Earthquake”, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos, Lelli Van Den Einde
Faculty Publications
A consortium of American universities is involved in earthquake engineering practice and research. Each campus of the consortium participates in outreach and education activities for the local schools and the public. One campus of the consortium, which operates earthquake field sites, designed a K-12 activity called “Make Your Own Earthquake” (MYOE). MYOE involves setting up earthquake field equipment (seismic instruments, data loggers, and computers) in a classroom. Children jump for 10 seconds, see their earthquake trace live on a computer screen and then take home a printed copy of their personal earthquake. Software was developed specifically for this activity. MYOE …
Public Works Projects As Vehicles For Engineering Education And Outreach, Shannon Weiss, David Heil, Thalia Anagnos
Public Works Projects As Vehicles For Engineering Education And Outreach, Shannon Weiss, David Heil, Thalia Anagnos
Faculty Publications
America is built on small and large feats of public works engineering that, although often taken for granted, affect almost every aspect of our daily lives. So how can we celebrate these marvels of utilitarian infrastructure and use them to teach public audiences about the engineering principles, materials, and human innovations that make them possible? This case study will share how one project addressed these questions by leveraging informal learning strategies, multi-agency collaborations, and new media technologies to explain the history and engineering of one of the world’s most recognizable public work sites: the Golden Gate Bridge. This paper will …
Curriculum Exchange: Visualization Tools And Online Courses For Teaching About Earthquakes, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos
Curriculum Exchange: Visualization Tools And Online Courses For Teaching About Earthquakes, Sandra Seale, Thalia Anagnos
Faculty Publications
As part of a national consortium of universities practicing and doing research in earthquake engineering, our site has developed several videos for use in outreach and education. Visualization tools are extremely useful when teaching about how earthquakes shake the ground and the response of buildings to that shaking. Here we present videos that are targeted to specific audiences: (1) Animations of the response of two model buildings to two earthquakes are targeted at grade 6-16 students. The videos were created with data recorded on these test structures from the two earthquakes. The two events were both located directly below the …
Exceed: Excellence In Your Engineering Education Summer Transition Program, Stacy Gleixner, Katherine Casey, Jared Tuberty, S. Latic, Patricia Backer, Emily Allen
Exceed: Excellence In Your Engineering Education Summer Transition Program, Stacy Gleixner, Katherine Casey, Jared Tuberty, S. Latic, Patricia Backer, Emily Allen
Faculty Publications
EXCEED: Excellence in Your Engineering Education is a ten day, residential summer transition program that was designed to improve retention and graduation rates at San José State University (SJSU). SJSU is a large, public institution in the West with a very diverse student population. However, the university has lower graduation and retention rates for certain student populations in engineering including underrepresented groups and first generation college students. This transition program was designed to meet five outcomes: acculturate the students to the College of Engineering and the university, enhance math and writing preparation, build community amongst the cohort of students, enhance …
How Important Is The Wow Factor In First Year Engineering Courses?, Thalia Anagnos, Burford Furman, Ping Hsu, Patricia Backer
How Important Is The Wow Factor In First Year Engineering Courses?, Thalia Anagnos, Burford Furman, Ping Hsu, Patricia Backer
Faculty Publications
This paper discusses the effectiveness of using projects with a “wow factor,” that is, engaging and challenging hands-on projects, in a freshman engineering course to motivate studentretention and persistence in engineering. Our course enrolls approximately 700 students per year in a lecture/laboratory format. Our university, a large comprehensive public university in thewest, has offered a freshman introduction to engineering course since 1992. In its original form, the course was part of a lower division engineering core, required of all engineering majors, and focused on computational skills (spreadsheets and MATLAB).In 1997, based on faculty and student feedback, a task force was …