Engineering Commons^™

Engineering Technology Vs. Engineering Students: Differences In Perception And Understanding, Anne M. Lucietto, Jennifer D. Moss, Eddy Efendy, R. Mark French

IMPACT Publications

Engineering technology students either are studied under the auspices of research focused on engineering students, or are excluded from engineering research in its entirety. Even when they are included in research, our understanding of engineering technology students is either missing or obscured. The lack of available research focused on engineering technology students in particular has prompted an effort to contribute to the greater body of knowledge of engineering technology education. The lack of research, as compared to other STEM fields, presents a challenge to practitioners in engineering technology programs when making discipline-specific decisions regarding these particular students.

The need to …

Why This Flip Wasn't A Flop: What The Numbers Don't Tell You About Flipped Classes, Heather Noel Fedesco, Troy Cary

IMPACT Publications

This paper details the conversion of a large, required Civil Engineering fluid mechanics course into a more student-centered, active learning-oriented course through the flipping of one lecture per week. In the flipped class, students collaboratively solve homework problems in groups while receiving “expert” feedback from instructors and TAs. To offset the lost lectures, some course material that has been delivered in traditional lectures has been placed online in the form of short videos and textbook readings, with low-stakes quizzes for assessment.

Student learning gains were quantitatively assessed by comparing quiz and final exam scores for three semesters (1 pre-flip and …

Peer Evaluation Of Team Member Effectiveness As A Formative Educational Intervention, Nathan Mentzer, Dawn Laux, Angelika Zissimopoulos, K. Andrew R. Richards

IMPACT Publications

Peer evaluation of team member effectiveness is often used to complement cooperative learning in the classroom, by holding students accountable for their team contributions. Drawing on the tenants of self-determination theory, this study investigated the impacts of formative peer evaluation in university level team-based design projects. The hypothesis was that the introduction of formative peer evaluation cycles would result in a more student-centered learning climate, increased competence, reduced doubt, and improved student learning. Two semesters were compared in this quasi-experimental study where results of peer evaluation became modifiers to students’ grades in the final project. In only one of the …

Adventures In Paragraph Writing: The Development And Refinement Of Scalable And Effective Writing Exercises For Large-Enrollment Engineering Courses, Rebecca R. Essig, Cary David Troy, Brent K. Jesiek, Josh Boyd, Natascha Michele Trellinger

IMPACT Publications

Adventures in paragraph writing: the development and refinement of scalable and effective writing exercises for large enrollment engineering courses. The ability to communicate effectively is a highly desirable attribute for today’s graduating engineers. Additionally, the inclusion of communication components in technical courses has been shown to enhance learning of technical content and can be leveraged to satisfy non-technical learning outcomes. However, the incorporation of such components in undergraduate engineering curricula remains challenging due to resource limitations, credit hour crunches, and other issues. This paper presents the design considerations and preliminary results from our ongoing work to create an effective, transferrable, …

Factors Of Group Design Decision Making, Andrew Jackson, Nathan Mentzer, Angelika N. Zissimopoulos

IMPACT Publications

Design is a decision-making process. Designers make decisions between alternative solutions,decisions about feasibility of individual solutions, decisions about narrowing or broadening the problem scope. They also make logistical decision about when teams will meet, how decisions will be made. Recent analysis of high school student design activities revealed that groups and individuals are not spending much time on decision processes and it can be assumed that the faculties of beginning college students are in a similar vein. In the past year changes were made to a freshman level design thinking course to improve student approaches to decision making.Accompanying these changes, …