Engineering Commons^™

Steam Explores Project Based Assessments, Erica Luvone, Loretta Radulic, Joe Mondanaro, Nicole Acevedo, Erika Dent, Ann Rhodes

STEM Month

This year, our approach to STEAM explores project based assessments in the disciplines of science and social studies. Students work in groups to produce projects that showcase work and proficiency. These projects are presented, displayed, discussed, and revisited or revised at student discretion.

Students Interest And Thoughts On Stem, Chrisitine Girtain

STEM Month

I am Juan Sebastian Bohorquez Mora, I am a sophomore student at Toms River High School North. I am interested in biofuels because I believe they are a good option to replace fossil fuels. I am also interested in duckweed because biofuels are made out of crops, and people need to eat those crops. That’s when duckweed comes in and it can be used as a feedstock for ethanol production which is a biofuel. Bioethanol is a type of biofuel and it is derived from the corn’s starch. Instead of making ethanol from the corn’s starch, we can use duckweed …

Building A Functional Cardiograph Over Four Semesters, Part 3: Estimating Heart Rate And Respiration Rate In The Time And Frequency Domains Using Matlab, Gail Baura, Francisca Fils-Aime, Vincent Chiun-Fan Chen, Leanne Kallemeyn

Engineering Science Faculty Publications

At Loyola University Chicago (LUC), all engineering courses are taught using a mandatory minimal lecture style, where the majority of course meeting time is devoted to group activities. Each activity may take place during that course meeting only, over the entire semester, or over multiple semesters. Curricular contextual threads take place over multiple semesters. One such contextual thread is the cardiograph project, whereby students build a functional cardiograph that estimates heart rate (HR) and respiration rate (RR) over four semesters (first, third, fifth, and sixth semesters). In Part III, students acquire their own electrocardiogram (ECG) using a custom motherboard, with …

Engineering Students’ Perceptions Of Belongingness In Civil Engineering, Lisa Benson, Candice Bolding, Jennifer Harper Ogle, Catherine Mcgough Spence, Joseph Murphy, Rachel Lanning

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

Prior research shows that engineering students with low feelings of belongingness tend to switch to non-technical majors. With the understanding that aspects of student motivation, identity, and personality, as well as their academic performance, affect their sense of community in engineering, this study seeks to assess these student attributes over time. The context for this study is a single civil engineering program that is undergoing both curricular and cultural changes as part of an NSF-funded project. The data and findings presented here are part of a larger study of how student attitudes and beliefs change during their experiences in a …

Coupling K-12 Music Education With Science, Technology, Engineering And Math (Stem) Curricula: Implementation Of A Stemusic Outreach Program, Mallory Maestri

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Many studies have investigated the effects of music on evoking human emotions and diverse types of brain responses. One study by Juslin and Vastfjall indicates that hearing music can stimulate brain stem reflexes, create emotional contagion, recall episodic memories and provoke visual imagery. Due to the influence music has on human brain waves, researchers have been studying the effect of music on enhancing the spatial abilities of young students. Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) professions rely heavily on spatial skills. Research on the connection of music with spatial skills proposes that when the brain processes rhythm a “mental rotation” …

Testing Our Assumptions: The Role Of First Course Grade And Course Level In Mathematics And English, Janet Callahan, Marcia Belcheir

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Methods that provide an early indicator of factors that affect student persistence are important to colleges and universities. This quantitative research focused on the role of level of entry mathematics and English and also on grades earned in those classes as they relate to persistence after one year. The research showed that by far, the variable most predictive of first-time, full-time students enrolling one year later was earning a grade of “A” in English. Compared to those who did not pass their first English course, students who earned an “A” were three times more likely to persist. The variables which …

Determining Graduation Rates In Engineering For Community College Transfer Students Using Data Mining, Marcia Laugerman, Diane T. Rover, Mack C. Shelley, Steven K. Mickelson

Diane Rover

This study presents a unique synthesized set of data for community college students entering the university with the intention of earning a degree in engineering. Several cohorts of longitudinal data were combined with transcript-level data from both the community college and the university to measure graduation rates in engineering. The emphasis of the study is to determine academic variables that had significant correlations with graduation in engineering, and levels of these academic variables. The article also examines the utility of data mining methods for understanding the academic variables related to achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The practical purpose …

Work Integrated Learning In Stem In Australian Universities: Final Report: Submitted To The Office Of The Chief Scientist, Daniel Edwards, Kate Perkins, Jacob Pearce, Jennifer Hong

Kate Perkins

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) undertook this study for the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). It explores the practice and application of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) in STEM, with a particular focus on natural and physical sciences, information technology, and agriculture departments in Australian universities. The project involved a detailed ‘stocktake’ of WIL in practice in these disciplines, with collection of information by interview, survey instruments, consultation with stakeholders and literature reviews. Every university in Australia was visited as part of this project, with interviews and consultation sessions gathering insight from more than 120 academics and support …

The Development Of Project Grade-Up, Dalin Glenn Williams

MS in Computer Science Theses

The university classroom has greatly evolved from a simple syllabus and in class discussion to the modern online documentation and virtual classrooms. These developments have changed the way students review their grades and balance their workloads. With the plethora of new technologies, students are often burdened with a full school schedule, work, and social events, with few tools to help them effectively understand their grades or manage their time. Current solutions addressing this issue do not present data in an organized way that allows the student to easily comprehend their past performance or up coming work load. Our solution builds …

You Kind Of Have To Prove It: Gender Microaggressions Within The Lived Experiences Of Women In Engineering, Crystal Rose Diaz-Espinoza

Doctoral Dissertations

This intrinsic case study explored the lived experiences of women within three engineering majors at a mid-sized institution in the Mid-Atlantic using gender microaggressions (Nadal, 2010; Sue, 2007) as a theoretical lens. Data included individual interviews with 28 participants as well as document review from Web pages and observations from physical spaces within the campus engineering building. Data analysis resulted in seven themes in congruence with Sue’s (2007) taxonomy of gender microaggressions and further established the three levels of gender microaggressions distinguished by Nadal (2010). Findings also revealed that barriers within engineering were less visible or outwardly sexist, and that …

Work Integrated Learning In Stem In Australian Universities: Final Report: Submitted To The Office Of The Chief Scientist, Daniel Edwards, Kate Perkins, Jacob Pearce, Jennifer Hong

Dr Daniel Edwards

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) undertook this study for the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). It explores the practice and application of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) in STEM, with a particular focus on natural and physical sciences, information technology, and agriculture departments in Australian universities. The project involved a detailed ‘stocktake’ of WIL in practice in these disciplines, with collection of information by interview, survey instruments, consultation with stakeholders and literature reviews. Every university in Australia was visited as part of this project, with interviews and consultation sessions gathering insight from more than 120 academics and support …

Work Integrated Learning In Stem In Australian Universities: Final Report: Submitted To The Office Of The Chief Scientist, Daniel Edwards, Kate Perkins, Jacob Pearce, Jennifer Hong

Dr Jacob Pearce

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) undertook this study for the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). It explores the practice and application of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) in STEM, with a particular focus on natural and physical sciences, information technology, and agriculture departments in Australian universities. The project involved a detailed ‘stocktake’ of WIL in practice in these disciplines, with collection of information by interview, survey instruments, consultation with stakeholders and literature reviews. Every university in Australia was visited as part of this project, with interviews and consultation sessions gathering insight from more than 120 academics and support …

Engineering Assessment Development Report: Ahelo Feasibility Study, Jacob Pearce, Julian Fraillon, Hamish Coates, Sarah Richardson

Julian Fraillon

No abstract provided.

Work Integrated Learning In Stem In Australian Universities: Final Report: Submitted To The Office Of The Chief Scientist, Daniel Edwards, Kate Perkins, Jacob Pearce, Jennifer Hong

Higher education research

The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) undertook this study for the Office of the Chief Scientist (OCS). It explores the practice and application of Work Integrated Learning (WIL) in STEM, with a particular focus on natural and physical sciences, information technology, and agriculture departments in Australian universities. The project involved a detailed ‘stocktake’ of WIL in practice in these disciplines, with collection of information by interview, survey instruments, consultation with stakeholders and literature reviews. Every university in Australia was visited as part of this project, with interviews and consultation sessions gathering insight from more than 120 academics and support …

What Role Does Mathematical Preparedness Play For Engineering Students Who Transfer From And Ordinary Degree Into An Honours Degree?, Michael Carr, Marisa Llorens, Susan O'Shaughnessy, Anne Marie Mccarrick, Domhnall Sheridan

Conference papers

Students who have not achieved a high level of mathematics at secondary school but have a pass in ordinary level mathematics have the option of entering onto a 3-year Ordinary degree (Level 7). Upon successful completion of this award students may apply to progress to the third year of the Honours degree. Up until relatively recently an upper merit (60%) was the minimum required to make this transition. In recent years this requirement has been reduced with many students with lower marks being offered the possibility of transferring.

Relatively little work has been done on the transition from an Ordinary …

Source Text Re-Use In Engineering Thesis And Dissertation Literature Reviews: A Comparison [Powerpoint Presentation], Edward J. Eckel Mr.

Edward J Eckel

Using random samples of 150 engineering master's theses and 150 doctoral dissertations from the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database, the author conducted 30 Google searches of random seven word strings from the literature review sections for each thesis/dissertation, looking for textual matches to scholarly sources. The author then did a statistical comparison for significance between the thesis and dissertation data for the following measures: length of the longest verbatim string found for each thesis/dissertation, and the number of verbatim matches found for each thesis/dissertation. This study is designed to explore the following research question: Do engineering master's theses have more …

Source Text Re-Use In Engineering Thesis And Dissertation Literature Reviews: A Comparison [Transcript], Edward J. Eckel Mr.

Edward J Eckel

Using random samples of 125 engineering master's theses and 125 doctoral dissertations from the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database, the author conducted 30 Google searches of random seven word strings from the literature review sections for each thesis/dissertation, looking for textual matches to scholarly sources. The author then did a statistical comparison for significance between the thesis and dissertation data for the following measures: length of the longest verbatim string found for each thesis/dissertation, and the number of verbatim matches found for each thesis/dissertation. This study is designed to explore the following research question: Do engineering master's theses have more …

A Teaching Practice Review Of The Use Of Multiple-Choice Questions For Formative And Summative Assessment Of Student Work On Advanced Undergraduate And Postgraduate Modules In Engineering, Aidan O'Dwyer

Articles

This paper reflects on, reports on and evaluates the use of multiple-choice questions, in both formative and summative assessment modes, on control engineering modules taken by advanced undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students, over four academic years. The material covered by the modules is analytical in nature. The rationale for examining the assessment strategy was the poor performance by students in a closed book traditional terminal examination on one of the advanced undergraduate modules over some years. The change in assessment strategy has improved student learning, as measured by assessment data; student feedback on the assessment methods is broadly positive. The …

Engineering Assessment Development Report: Ahelo Feasibility Study, Jacob Pearce, Julian Fraillon, Hamish Coates, Sarah Richardson

Dr Jacob Pearce

No abstract provided.

An Investigation Of Middle School Student Interest, Perception, And Attitude Toward Technology And Engineering, Kari Marie Cook

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to investigate middle school student perception and attitude toward technology and engineering and to better understand how the gender of the teacher, gender of the student, and information provided in technology classes affected their perception and attitude. To accomplish this, the Technology Attitude Scale, and the Pupil's Attitudes Toward Technology—United States assessment instruments were used to form the basis of a new survey instrument focused on technology and engineering perception, use, and interest. The new survey instrument is called the Technology and Engineering Attitude Scale (TEAS) survey. Multiple 7th grade technology engineering classes from …