Engineering Commons^™

Chronological And Pedagogical Analysis Of Global Real-Time Assessment Tool For Teaching Enhancement (G-Rate), Syafiah Mahfuzah Johari, Monica Cox, Nikitha Sambamurthy

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Global Real-Time Assessment Tool for Teaching Enhancement (G-RATE) serves as a pedagogical feedback tool to assess teaching performance in learning environments. This tool is developed based on How People Learn (HPL) framework, which specifically identifies four dimensions which are essential elements of an effective learning environment which are community-centeredness, learner-centeredness, assessment-centeredness and knowledge-centeredness. However, there are no succinct and meaningful representations for frequency and chronological observational data and no interpretation has been made from the collected observation data so far. This study addresses two different methods to observe the patterns from the observation data. First, observation data is compared …

Investigating Attitudes Toward Diversity Among Engineering And Management Students, Xiuli Wang, Brent K. Jesiek, Qin Zhu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

As the world becomes increasingly globalized, students and professionals face growing challenges related to working across national and cultural boundaries. A related concern for today’s educators and researchers is a lack of effective assessment tools to measure global competency among students in engineering, management, and other professional fields. To begin addressing this gap, two previously validated measures of personal attitudes and perceptions toward diversity were administered to students in multiple professional fields, as it was hypothesized that a positive attitude toward diversity is likely one of the major qualities that makes engineers and other professionals perform more sensitively and effectively …

Understanding And Assessing Engineering Practices In Indian Context, Rudie Desravines, Brent Jesiek, Kavitha Ramane, Qin Zhu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

For engineers and other technical professionals, working with individuals in a global context is often challenging and requires understanding and openness to other cultures. However, the core of engineering education has historically been focused on mathematical and technical foundations, with a lack of emphasis on broader capabilities such as global competency. Further research is needed to better understand differences in engineering education and practice across national and cultural boundaries, as well as to develop new instructional content and assessment techniques to improve and evaluate the global competency of engineering students and other technical professionals. This project addressed these needs through …

Engineering Leadership Assessment Tool Profile, Karan Sharma, Monique Ross, Monica F. Cox

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Numerous studies have been conducted stressing the importance of developing the professional skillset of engineers. This need has been further highlighted by the Engineering Criteria 2000 and by the National Academy of Engineers (Kumar and Hsiao, 2007, p. 19). Having realised the need to develop the professional skillset of engineers such as leadership, interpersonal skills, teamwork and communication, universities have started incorporating methods to hone these skills in their courses. However in today’s competitive world, every practice needs to be assessed and measured for accountability and effectiveness. Engineering education is no exception to this rule. There needs to be a …

Visualizing Mechanics: Educational Videos Demonstrating Core Mechanics Concepts, Camilo Schrader, Jeffrey Rhoads, Charles M. Krousgrill, Stephen Alex Stamm, Elizabeth Bushman

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

There has been an increased interest in using technology to relay information over the past 20 years. This interest has been reflected in the way the internet has expanded to incorporate nearly-uncountable numbers of blogs, streaming videos, and discussion forums. Recent research has shown that younger generations of students prefer internet-based platforms such as these to communicate and learn, as they are congruent with a visual style of learning. The present study seeks to fuse the predominantly reflective and intuitive methods found in a traditional lecture with the more visual and active modes of learning to provide a larger range …

Medibox, Bronson Kim, Chris Halverson, Devon Straub, Rose Adrian, Theo Nyguen

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Thoughts on design Concepts:

• Product must fill a need and appeal to its target consumer.
• A product must be wanted

The Industry's design concept for the elderly:

• Slightly alter products aimed toward other people.
• Promise to improve their lives by adding something new to their routine.

Our Findings and Ideas:

• The elderly have developed their methods and routines.
• They don't need something new to worry about.
• A product for the elderly should enhance their lives without burdening or inconveniencing them.
• Utilizing a familiar form and with an inventive look at exiating functionality.
• It is important to allow the elderly to …

The Status Device, John Worcester, Jon Pace, Gabe Guodace, Santos Perez

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

We have come across an issue, that has saddened us deeply. The problem being that there are numerous stories across the nation about elderly patients with dementia and Alzheimer are getting lost and dying. These are not just stories about people losing track of where they live, but elderly patients under the care of senior home staff. Obviously not everyone can be everywhere at once, and we don't expect that. What we want to do is make it easier for the staff, assurance for the families, and almost importantly, for the patient.

What our plan is to do, is to …

Building A Better Computer For The Aging Generation, Gretchen Baird, Boryeon Kwon, Dylan Lasner, Parker Swensen, Zane Ross, Adrik Gurganus

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

The problem which we have ventured out to solve is that the aging community does not have easily accessible computers and technologies.

Rotostorage Shelf Storage System, Alden Akeman, Garrett Cheadle, Jared Chin, Louis Duvoisin, Flynn Hutchinson, Paige Hval, Louie Liu, Yiling Liu

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

A problem faced by the elderly is the accessibility and ergonomics of storage space. The elderly often are unable to store items in higher places due to physical limitations. The current options for reaching items in high places are bulky, hard to use, and impractical.

After interviewing the elderly at , it was found that many seniors were not comfortable with storing items in higher places as they did not want to climb chairs to access the items. They also did not want to stoop to reach items in lower places due to the physical strain.

Our storage solution increases …

Making Way For Clearer Sound, Barbara Little, Jacob Stearn, Jake Elsewhere

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Problem: Hearing aids are posing difficulties for the elderly using them because of several factors. One of these factors is the filtering of background noise. Many affordable hearing aids on the market today do not produce quality sound because of inferior filtering of background noises.

Opportunity: Our team didn’t understand why this is still a problem since we have the technology currently that is capable of solving this. For instance, we have microphones and speakers that filter out background noise by removing or lessening it. After some research we found that Google Glass is working on a prototype of something …

Lifebrace: The Advanced Health Tracking Wristband, Jeremy Ferrando, Dylan O'Brien, Daniel Ortiz, Jonah Paivarinta

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Over 28 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Every 33 seconds someone dies of heart disease, claiming more lives than AIDS and all forms of cancer combined. Falls are the leading cause of fatal and non fatal injuries to elderly people.

These problems require constant supervision and frequent treatments to keep a patient stable, and they all become more serious with age. People with diabetes, heart conditions, or other debilitating conditions need frequent check-ups, and are always in danger of accidents. They also often need frequent doses of medicine.

The only way that these conditions can be monitored properly is …

The Smart Clock, Cory Koehler, Addison Loda, Hannah Posey-Scholl, Isak Rask

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

Modern technology continues to change and improve constantly as people find ways to make things faster, smaller, and better - but these changes often leave the elderly behind. This year’s Innovation Challenge asked groups to focus on how to create and improve technology geared towards the aging generations. For our initial research, the Grant High School team and mentors visited an elderly care center and interviewed a few of the residents, asking what types of technology currently improve their lives, and what types of technology could potentially improve their lives.

The Problem: After the interviews, we were able to identify …

Tech For Arthritis, Alex Gaiovych, Anna Velikoretskikh, Ephraim Lee, Karl Stephenson, Kevin Wu, Miguel Campos, Veyda Campos

PSU High School Innovation Challenge

In an era where technological advances are made on almost a daily basis, there are still many people who aren’t able or are scared to use modern technology. While computers and phones get smarter and more powerful, they are also getting smaller and more precise. Trying to push a tiny button, either real or virtual, can be a real problem for those who suffer from arthritis.

According to www.arthritis.org, over 50 million people are diagnosed with arthritis, most of which are senior citizens. Many of these seniors don’t use technology to its full potential because they simply can’t. For some, …

Epics: Broadening The Pathway Into Stem, Mindy Hart, Patrice M. Buzzanell, William Charles Oakes, Carla B Zoltowski

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

The Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program was co-founded at Purdue University in 1995 and has since spread throughout the United States and globally with inroads into K-12 education through EPICS High. This presentation offers a synthesis of research findings and interventions gleaned from several datasets about students’ and alumni’s reported experiences with EPICS and the consequences of their participation. In particular, this presentation discusses the ways in which EPICS provides a different vantage point on the underrepresentation of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Specifically, researchers have been tackling this issue of underrepresentation for decades with …

Appreciating Episodic Mentoring: Reconsiderations Of And Interventions For A Comprehensive Mentoring Process For Engineering Faculty, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Ziyu Long, Klod Kokini, Lindsey B. Anderson, Jennifer C. Batra

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

The benefits of formal and informal mentoring systems in academe and other organizational settings are well documented. However, a third form of mentoring—known as episodic or spontaneous mentoring as well as mentoring moments—offers a different entrée point into the everyday construction of mentoring. Whereas most mentoring either focuses on one-on-one long-term relationships or group/cluster mentoring arrangements, episodic mentoring emphasizes processes, relational aspects of the mentoring experiences, multiple inputs, and individual empowerment. Based on inductive-deductive analyses of in-depth interviews and other empirical data about engineering faculty members' mentoring experiences in a mid-western university, we discuss how episodic mentoring is a way …

Navigating Pregnancy And Parenthood: Work-Family Considerations For Men And Women Graduate Students In Stem And Other Disciplines, Ziyu Long, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Abigail Selzer King

ADVANCE-Purdue Gender and STEM Research Symposium

Scholars and non-academicians consider popular key advantages to be flexibility in career trajectories as well as autonomy and control over one’s schedule and the work that one chooses to do (e.g., Buzzanell & Lucas, 2006, 2013). Although academic careers seem to offer these benefits, there are questions about whether and how such flexibility actually occurs, particularly in times of pregnancy/adoption, family leave, and work-life “balance” (e.g., Stone, 2008). Implicit in academic flexibility is that graduate student careers might evidence some of the same flexibility but within institutional structures that can range from lockstep to a build-you-own-plan and timetable model. In …

Learning And Becoming In Design Reviews, Lisa D. Mcnair, Marie C. Paretti, Cassandra Groen

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Drawing from the prior work of McNair and Paretti (2010), this study investigates how language practices and design artifacts mediate the interactions among novice and expert designers to shape the nature of design, and specifically design learning. By analyzing data collected from two design courses in different fields, this study addresses two research questions: 1) how do language practices mediate the interactions between design mentors and design learners; and 2) how do design artifacts mediate these interactions between mentors and learners? Drawing on activity theory and discourse analysis, we use these questions to explore how students work with experts to …

Piecemeal Versus Integrated Design: Framing Meets Design Thinking, Stephen Secules, Ayush Gupta, Andrew Elby

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Systems thinking is an important component of engineering design thinking but one that is often difficult for beginning designers. In this paper, we present an empirically grounded case that sometimes the novice-like design behaviors emerge, not due to a lack of skills/knowledge on part of the student designers, but by the nature of the way the activity is structured and the implicit and explicit messages communicated to the students on the nature of the design task. Our analysis draws on video-records of brainstorming and design review and briefing meetings between students, instructors, and stakeholders in the context of a service-learning …

Viewing An Interdisciplinary Human-Centered Design Course As A Multiteam System: Perspectives On Cooperation And Information Sharing, Elizabeth S. Fleming, Alexandra E. Coso

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Many design projects, including human-centered design (HCD) projects, incorporate multiple teams cooperating within what is referred to as a Multiteam System (MTS) environment. These teams mutually rely on resources and processes provided by other teams. As an MTS increases in complexity, knowledge is distributed to more individuals. While effectively distributed knowledge increases creativity and productivity, it is also can hinder team effectiveness. Team members may fail to exchange relevant information or to integrate pertinent information into reasoning for design decisions. Our research addresses information sharing among teams and individuals in HCD by examining interactions between and within the MTS (i.e., …

Exploring The Role Of Empathy In A Service-Learning Design Project, Nicholas D. Fila, Justin L. Hess

Design Thinking Research Symposium

The emergence of empathic design has inspired growing discourse on the role of empathy within design. While research on empathic design acknowledges the presence of empathy in design practice, little attention has been paid to its underlying mechanisms and how these mechanisms operate within the designer’s mind throughout the design process. In this study, we used the service-learning data set to develop an emergent empathic design model. We collected and analyzed any instances in which designers evidenced empathy for the end users. We kept empathy loosely defined due to the exploratory intent of this study and the recognition that empathy …

Describing Creativity In Design Across Disciplines, Llew Mann, Yasemin Tekmen Araci

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Creativity is an essential aspect of design thinking. Being able to describe creativity and creative processes is important for developing future designers. While much research has been undertaken describing creativity in design, there is very little investigating how creativity and creative thinking varies across disciplines. A coding scheme involving six separate codes was developed initially from the literature, refined and then used to describe how creativity and creative thinking was apparent in the DTRS 10 datasets of Junior Industrial Design, Graduate Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering, Choreography and Entrepreneurship. Based on this analysis, conclusions on how creativity and creative thinking varied …

Polysemy In Design Review Conversations, Georgi V. Georgiev, Toshiharu Taura

Design Thinking Research Symposium

This paper examines the role of polysemy, defined as the quality of having multiple meanings, in design review conversations. It examines the polysemy, particularly of nouns, involved in a dataset of design review conversations with reference to design ideas. The purpose is to determine whether polysemy is related to successful development of design ideas and more creative design outcomes. The results show that the polysemy of nouns involved in the conversations of the finally developed, successful, design ideas exceeds in the most cases the average polysemy involved in the conversations pertaining to the unsuccessful design ideas. Furthermore, the polysemy of …

Making Design Pedagogical Content Knowledge Visible Within Design Reviews, Robin Adams, David Radcliffe, Tiago Forin, Mel Chua

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Design pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is the content-specific specialized teacher knowledge that connects the how (pedagogical knowledge) and what (content knowledge) of teaching design. In this study, we make visible the design PCK in three student design reviews: choreography, undergraduate industrial design, and mechanical engineering. We use cognitive apprenticeship and teaching-as-improvisation frameworks to characterize PK, and design judgment, design task strategies, and process management strategies to characterize CK. We identify and describe four patterns of design PCK: scaffolded articulation, driving for meaning and guidance, breaking the 4^th wall to create a teaching moment, and “suggest don’t tell”. Theoretical implications …

A Cross-Case Analysis Of Disciplinary Identities Communicated Through Design Reviews, Senay Purzer, Nicholas D. Fila, Emily C. Dick

Design Thinking Research Symposium

In post-secondary educational settings, discourse is a mechanism by which students develop occupational identities as they engage in a particular community that communicates attributes of their prospective profession. This study focuses on revealing disciplinary identities and how they are conveyed and negotiated during interactions between design students and project reviewers. We draw upon Gee’s identity framework and focus on the enactments of disciplinary identity in three different disciplinary settings: choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering. A cross-case analysis indicated differences that were epistemological (e.g., subjectivity of reviews) and similarities in ways instructors modeled institutional identities. The results have implications for …

Higher Order Thinking In Design Reviews, Craig D. Howard, Colin M. Gray

Design Thinking Research Symposium

In this study we have grappled with how higher order thinking emerges in early stage design reviews, using an undergraduate dyadic review and a graduate review in a small group setting. Narratives, gambits and justifications emerged through a content analysis as forms of higher order thinking common in the reviews. We then mapped these reviews onto common frames of reference employed by teachers and students. Results depicted stark differences in the linguistic routines of the two teachers and two different sets of students. Each focused their higher order thinking from a primarily different frame of reference. Conclusions relate to opportunistic …

Influences Of Feedback Interventions On Student Concept Generation And Development Practices, Seda Yilmaz, Shanna Daly

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Design teaching in many disciplines relies on feedback as a primary way for students and instructors to communicate. Our work focused on identifying feedback types in three different design disciplines (dance choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering) and analyzing how those feedback types encouraged students to take convergent or divergent paths with their design ideas. We then compared feedback types and encouragement of convergence or divergence across the three disciplines. Our findings showed many common types of feedback used across the three disciplines, regardless of variance in context and expectations. However, the findings also revealed a high frequency of feedback …

A Tale Of Two Design Contexts: Quantitative And Qualitative Explorations Of Student-Instructor Interactions Amidst Ambiguity, Monica E. Cardella, Patrice Buzzanell, Antonette Cummings, Delean Tolbert, Carla B. Zoltowski

Design Thinking Research Symposium

Designers develop design skills and knowledge through experience and feedback – feedback from colleagues, clients, supervisors, users, stakeholders, the success or failure of a solution, and design educators. In this project, we focus on the feedback provided to mechanical engineering students completing their undergraduate studies and industrial design graduate students during design reviews. The design coaches (educators and industry clients) and design students must negotiate ambiguity in the process. The students must reduce ambiguity in the sense of providing clear details as they communicate their design work, reduce ambiguity in the coaches’ perceptions of the design work quality by providing …

Dimensions Of Creative Evaluation: Distinct Design And Reasoning Strategies For Aesthetic, Functional And Originality Judgments, Bo T. Christensen, Linden J. Ball

Design Thinking Research Symposium

The datasets provided as part of DTRS-10 all relate to what may broadly be labeled as ‘design critiques’ in an educational context. As such, we chose to center our theoretical analysis on the evaluative reasoning taking place during expert appraisals of the design concepts that were being produced by industrial design students throughout the design process. This overall framing for our research allowed us to pursue a series of research questions concerning the dimensions of creative evaluation in design and their consequences for reasoning strategies and suggestions for moving further in the creative progress. Our transcript coding and analysis focused …