Engineering Commons^™

Do We Need M&S Science?, Jose J. Padilla, Saikou Y. Diallo, Andreas Tolk

VMASC Publications

No abstract provided.

Engineering Success: The Role Of Faculty Relationships With African American Undergraduates, Christopher B. Newman

Christopher B. Newman

Previous research has found that faculty–student relationships are a contributing factor to the retention of students at four-year institutions. In this study, the experiences of twelve African American engineers are explored through the lens of Fiske’s (Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations, Free Press, New York, 1991) social-relational models theory. The overall findings of this study suggest that faculty play an important role in encouraging or dissuading the African American engineers in this study to persist in their respective majors. Additionally, the involvement in faculty research laboratories and the referral by faculty to other opportunities …

Nanotechnology Education—First Step In Implementing A Spiral Curriculum, Ganesh Balasubramanian, Vinod K. Lohani, Ishwar K. Puri, Scott W. Case, Roop L. Mahajan

Ganesh Balasubramanian

A nanotechnology learning module was implemented into a freshman engineering course at Virginia Tech. The novelty of our approach is that an established spiral curriculum model has been employed, for the first time to the best of authors’ knowledge, to design the nanotechnology option. The module was piloted in a freshman class (180 students) during spring ‘08. The key components included (1) a prior knowledge survey, (2) a 40-minute in-class presentation on basic nanotechnology concepts, (3) an activity that involves nanoscale image analysis and the plotting of molecular forces usingLabVIEWsoftware,and(4)apost-modulesurvey.Lessonslearnedfromthepilotimplementationwereincorporated appropriately to expose roughly 1450 freshmen to nanotechnology basics in …

Creating A Graphical Front-End For A Book Or Dvd Using Photoshop, Jerome Casey

Instructional Guides

No abstract provided.

Building A Framework For Engineering Design Experiences In Stem: A Synthesis, Cameron D. Denson

Publications

Since the inception of the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education in 2004, educators and researchers have struggled to identify the necessary components of a “good” engineering design challenge for high school students. In reading and analyzing the position papers on engineering design many themes emerged that may begin to form a narrative for engineering design in a high school setting. Before educators can provide a framework for engineering design in STEM courses, four questions need to be answered: (a) To what degree should engineering design challenges be open-ended or well-structured? (b) What are the relationships between engineering design …

Infusing Engineering Design Into High School Stem Courses, Morgan Hynes, Merredith Portsmore, Emily Dare, Elissa Milto, Chris Rogers, David Hammer, Adam Carberry

Publications

Society is recognizing the need to improve STEM education and introduce engineering design concepts before college. In the recent National Academy of Engineers report, Engineering in K-12 Education: Understanding the Status and Improving the Prospects, the authors suggest that the STEM disciplines not be treated as ―silos‖ and that engineering might serve as a motivating context to integrate the four STEM disciplines (Katehi, Pearson, & Feder, 2009). Recent research has suggested that integrated technology and engineering design curriculum can serve as a positive model for mathematics and science learning and retention (Ortiz, 2010; Wendell, 2011). The Tufts University Center for …

Engineering Design Thinking And Information Gathering Final Report, Nathan Mentzer

Publications

The objective of this research was to explore the relationship between information access and design solution quality of high school students presented with an engineering design problem. This objective is encompassed in the research question driving this inquiry: How does information access impact the design process? This question has emerged in the context of an exploratory DR-K12 grant project titled, Exploring Engineering Design Knowing and Thinking as an Innovation in STEM Learning. The research work presented here has expanded the data set developed in the DR-K12 and examined the larger data set with a focus on how information access impacts …

A Possible Pathway For High School Science In A Stem World, Cary Sneider

Publications

Today‘s high school science teachers find themselves in a period of transition. For the past decade there have been calls for replacing a narrow focus on science education—the traditional courses in physics, chemistry, biology, and Earth and space science—with a broader curriculum on STEM (that is, the four allied fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). However, at present there are no guidelines on what that broader curriculum should include or how it should be designed, and the gulf that has separated science and mathematics seems as wide as ever, despite decades of efforts to bridge the two disciplines. Next …

Education On Conceptual Modeling For Simulation- Beyond The Craft: A Summary Of A Recent Expert Panel Discussion, Durk-Jouke Van Der Zee, Andreas Tolk, Mike Pidd, Kathy Kotiadis, Antuela A. Tako

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Person-Thing Orientation As A Predictor Of Engineering Persistence And Success, Ida Ngambeki, Demetra Evangelou Dr, William Graziano, Diana N Bairaktarova, Sara E Branch, Anna Woodcock

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Interest, especially in the United States, is an important motivation for students in choosing a major and the strength of their commitment to remaining in that major. In the examination of engineering students’ reasons for persistence and success, interest has not received an in-depth treatment. Interest as a motivational factor can be characterized and operationalized in several ways. Engineering is often typified as a discipline that primarily deals with the creation and manipulation of man-made artefacts as opposed to a discipline centered on interpersonal interaction. For this study interest has been characterized along the Person-Thing dimension.This has been operationalized as …

Returning Students In Engineering Education: Making A Case For “Experience Capital”, Michele L. Strutz, James E. Cawthorne Jr, Daniel M. Ferguson, Mark T. Carnes, Matthew Ohland

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Students returning to college are not generally studied, where most of the research on non-traditional students is focused on individuals returning to earn their undergraduate degree. There are, however, many students returning to receive graduate degrees as they pursue new directions in life by interest or economic necessity. Undergraduate students with experience have clear educational related goals, practical approaches to problem-solving, and high learning motivation.Returning graduate students are expected to model similar behaviors. These individuals bring a lifetime of personal and professional expertise, which we identify as “experience capital.”A review of the literature reveals that capital has been pondered since …

Three Deadly Venoms: Phenomenology, Existentialism, And Philosophical Constructs To Expand Engineering Education Research Methodologies And Philosophy, George Dante Ricco

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

The Engineer through a Multidisciplinary Lens Our work invokes multiple theoretical approaches to the question of the engineer’s perception of his/her place in the field of engineering through lenses within social psychology and modern philosophy. We aim to help augment current conversations on and further dialogue as to what engineering is from ethnomethodological (or existential phenomenological) and symbolic interactionism points of view. The foundation of our work is the current state of engineering and how to address the engineer’s negotiation of his/her state of affairs. We believe this work has strong implications amidst recent publications invoking epistemologies based upon modern …

Engineering Children's Literature: Development Of An Engineering Storybook For Young Children, Brianna L. Dorie, Monica Cardella

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

While the notions of doctor, teacher and firefighter are ubiquitous in young literature,there is a lack of engagement about engineering (Holbrook et al., 2008). Picture books are a compelling medium for introducing concepts to children at a young age. Story books have the ability to present new information, increase stimulation of the imagination, and deliver messages both moral and social. In a school setting, story books have been shown to impact kindergartener’s mathematical achievement when produced in tandem with a mathematics unit (Keat & Wilburne, 2009). However, there have been little to no studies regarding the impact of engineering literature …

Integrating Children’S Literature Into Occupational Learning About Engineers, Brianna L. Dorie, Monica Cardella

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

At a very young age, a child has the ability to formulate ideas regarding the occupation of a lawyer, a nurse or even a doctor. However, studies have shown that most children have limited information regarding engineers, and the lack of knowledge can often perpetuate into adulthood(Cunningham et al., 2005; NAE, 2002). Augur et al. (2005) found that “occupational aspirations and expectations of children undergo dramatic development changes during the elementary years, as well as resisting change in other respects.” This means prior to school education,children have already formed their perception of occupations and that stereotypical attributes have already been …

Techniques From Workshops On Teaching: Implementing The Concepts And Evaluating Our Approaches, Michael R. Foster, Justin R. Vander Werff

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

The challenges for new engineering educators abound and there are never enough hours in a day or days in a week. Young educators may lack confidence in course subject material given that they have never taught (the topic and/or in a classroom) before. In addition, their knowledge of teaching pedagogy and classroom management strategies often lacks refinement since their education is almost exclusively in a field of engineering rather than education. Teaching workshops have been developed to expose instructors in higher education to practical teaching pedagogy and effective classroom management. These workshops often emphasize research-based methods including use of clearly …

Lifelong Learning And Information Literacy Skills And The First Year Engineering Undergraduate: Report Of A Self-Assessment, Meagan Ross, Michael Fosmire, Ruth Eh Wertz, Monica Cardella, Senay Purzer

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

ABET accreditation requires engineering students to attain ‘a recognition of the need for and an ability to engage in lifelong learning.” (Outcome 3.i) However, there are few standard tools that attempt to assess the skills and techniques students need in order to achieve those outcomes. Focusing on the problem articulation and information literacy skills embedded in lifelong learning competencies, the authors constructed a standardized assessment to measure student self-perceptions of how often they employ those skills. The criteria for these competencies were based on the Information Search Process of Carol Kuhlthau, engineering design process characteristics, and the authors’ own analysis …

Do Students Gather Information To Inform Design Decisions? Assessment With An Authentic Design Task In First-Year Engineering, Ruth Eh Wertz, Meagan Ross, Michael Fosmire, Monica Cardella, Senay Purzer

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Information gathering is a very important aspect of the design process, one that is used continuously throughout the project to make informed design decisions. This study reports the development of an authentic instrument used to assess skills related to information gathering in first-year engineering students. Existing assessment tools, such as the scenario-based Self- Knowledge Inventory of Lifelong Learning (SKILLS), developed by Conti & Fellenz, or the Self- Directed Learning Readiness Scale (SDLRS), developed by Guglielmino, were evaluated. While these have the advantage of being very easy to administer and analyze, one significant disadvantage is that they are self-reported and thus …

Doctoral Students As Course Instructors: Three Engineering Teaching Assistants' Socialization Experiences, Irene Mena, Heidi Diefes-Dux, Brenda Capobianco

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

The purpose of this study was to explore and understand the types of socialization experiences that result from engineering graduate teaching assistants‟ (TAs) roles as course instructors. Socialization refers to an individual‟s process of becoming a part of a group. In the context of doctoral education, socialization can be a complex area to study, largely because there are many roles and groups for which graduate students can be socialized.

Using situated learning, more specifically the communities of practice literature, as the theoretical framework, this study looked at how three doctoral engineering TAs, with experience as course instructors, become members of …

Exploring The Motivations For Migration Among Engineering Students, Ida Ngambeki, Demetra Evangelou Dr, Matthew Ohland, George Dante Ricco

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Students often graduate from a major other than that in which they first enrolled. A large proportion of this migration happens within engineering with students moving from one discipline of engineering to another. This movement between disciplines sometimes happens several times. While there has been extensive examination of why students leave engineering,very little research has looked into why students leave one engineering discipline for another.Longitudinal data collected from several engineering colleges has shown that there are definite trends within the movement of engineering students.This study examines the reasons for some of these trends using a unique approach which combines both …

Exploring Curriculum Flexibility And Compliance Through The Use Of A Metric For Curricular Progression, George Dante Ricco, Matthew Ohland

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

No abstract provided.

Motivations And Benefits For College Students Serving As Mentors In A High School Robotics Competition, Noah Salzman, Johannes Strobel

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Many universities provide space for student organizations in which undergraduate students are learning leadership skills, mentor other students and bring their engineering skills to practice.Purdue FIRST Programs (PFP) is a service-learning program where university students mentor predominantly high school student teams participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Whereas most FRC teams are mentored by professional engineers, PFP is unique in both the extent which it relies on student mentors and the overall scope of the organization. Existing models of mentorship do not adequately describe the specific relationship between the college and high schools students: (1) Due to the proximity …

Reactivation Of A Six-Degree-Of-Freedom Repeated Impact Machine Using Programmable Logical Controller (Plc), Cheng Lin

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Reactivation of a six-degree-of-freedom impact machine using Programmable Logical Control (PLC) is presented. The output from the machine is the history of accelerations collected from accelerometers attached at the testing article and a load cell mounted at the rubber pad where the impact occurs. Readings of the acceleration and impact force are sent to a PC for analysis through a data acquisition device (USB 6251) and Labview software provided by National Instrument (NI). Result shows that the machine can repeatedly generate an impact force up to eleven Gs. Demonstration of the project can be used as one of labs in …

Design And Implement A Cost-Effective Wireless Communication Project On A Pic Training System, Steve Hsiung, Walter F. Deal, Lacides Agustin Osorio, Mathew Henderson

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Wireless communication becomes popular and widely used in almost every electronic product in our daily life. The RF communication is one of the major wireless applications in consumer products. Usually, it is integrated with an embedded system (microcontroller) to control various applications such as temperature sensing, data logging, data exchange, actuator activation, and user interaction wirelessly. A project based model can be used as an effective instructional strategy to enhance learning about complex RF concepts and technologies. The project method can lead to improved understanding and create interest by actively engaging the student with hands-on and problem solving and critical …

A Comparison Of Two Engineering Outreach Programs For Adolescents, Louis S. Nadelson, Janet M. Callahan

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is continued growth and development of outreach programs designed to increase pre-college students’ awareness and understanding of engineering as a profession and as a career. These outreach programs vary in format and in the groups targeted for participation but maintain the same fundamental goal of increasing participant knowledge of engineering. Many of these outreach programs also maintain the implicit goal of increasing the participants' knowledge and attitudes toward college. The additional resources and funding that are commonly allocated to support outreach programs frequently involve documenting accountability which motivates evaluation of program impact. Therefore, many outreach events include program evaluation …

A Catholic And Marianist Engineering Education, Kevin P. Hallinan, Margaret Pinnell

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The School of Engineering at the University of Dayton (UD), a Catholic and Marianist University, boasts large enrollments of 1,300 undergraduate and 350 graduate students out of a total of 7,000 undergraduates and 3,000 graduate students. It also boasts a faculty very active in research, which, under the umbrella of the University of Dayton Research Institute, is funded at a level of $100 million per year.

In the past decade, the University of Dayton has sought to better articulate the impact of its Catholic and Marianist traditions, and faculty have been challenged to embody these traditions. University mission statements and …

Mapping Engineering Concepts For Secondary Level Education, J. L. Daugherty

Publications

No abstract provided.

Design Principles For High School Engineering Design Challenges: Experiences From High School Science Classrooms, Christian Schunn

Publications

At the University of Pittsburgh, we have been exploring a range of approaches to design challenges for implementation in high school science classrooms (Apedoe, Reynolds, Ellefson, & Schunn, 2008; Ellefson, Brinker, Vernacchio, & Schunn, 2008; Schunn, Silk, & Apedoe, in press). In general, our approach has always involved students working during class time over the course of many weeks. So, our understanding of what works must be contextualized to that situation (i.e., without significant home support, by students enrolled in traditional classrooms, involving content that is connected to traditional science classrooms). However, our approach has been implemented with thousands of …

Understanding Of Student Task Interpretation, Design Planning, And Cognitive Strategies During Engineering Design Activities In Grades 9-12, Oenardi Lawanto

Publications

The objective of this study was to describe the task interpretation of students engaged in a design activity and determine the extent to which students translate their understanding of their design task to their planning and cognitive strategies. Twenty-nine students at one Colorado high school participated in this study. Students worked individually in the Architectural Design class (n=7), and in teams in the Robotics Design class (n=22). To capture students’ perceptions of their understanding of the task, planning strategies, and cognitive strategies, the Engineering Design Questionnaire (EDQ) was used. The development of the EDQ was guided by Butler and Cartier’s …

Design Problems For Secondary Students, David H. Jonassen

Publications

Are there different kinds of design problems? According to Brown and Chandrasekaran (1989), Class 1 design problems are open-ended, non-routine creative activities where the goals are ill-structured, and there is no effective design plan specifying the sequence of actions to take in producing a design model. Class 2 problems use existing, well-developed design and decomposition plans (e.g. designing a new automobile). Class 3 designs are routine where design and decomposition plans are known as well as customary actions taken to deal with failures (e.g., writing a computer program). Jonassen (2011) argued that problems vary in terms of structuredness, complexity, and …

Engineering Design Challenges In High School Stem Courses A Compilation Of Invited Position Papers, Daniel L. Householder

Publications

Since its initial funding by the National Science Foundation in 2004, the National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) has worked to understand the infusion of engineering design experiences into the high school setting. Over the years, an increasing number of educators and professional groups have participated in the expanding initiative seeking to acquaint all students with engineering design. While there is strong support for providing students with engineering design experiences in their high school STEM courses, the lack of consensus on purposes and strategies has become increasingly apparent as the work continues. Among the unsettled issues are the …