Engineering Education Commons^™

The Effects Of Engineering Summer Camps On Middle And High School Students’ Engineering Interest And Identity Formation: A Multi-Methods Study, Timothy Robinson, Adam Kirn, Jenny Amos, Indira Chatterjee

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

This multi-methods study explores changes in engineering interest and identity of middle and high school students (n = 79) attending introductory-level engineering summer camps at a large western land grant university. Middle school is a critical time when student interest, identity, and subsequently career choice begin to emerge and hence it is important that at this age students are given accurate information about engineering majors in college and future career opportunities in engineering. Data were collected over a period of two years in six summer camps. Three separate populations of middle and high school students participated in the summer …

(Poster) Pneumatically Assisted Autocutter: Providing A Safe Workplace Environment For People With Disabilities, Ryan Kallenberger, Brian Galliher, Laura Johnson, Melanie Moore, Joseph Herzog, Renny Fernandez, Najmus Saqib

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

We present a pneumatic autocutter to help workers with disabilities for reduced operator fatigue, increased efficiency, thereby giving enhanced capabilities when working on a production line without worrying about their ability to effectively do their jobs. We are students in a sophomore level six sigma based course through the R.B. Annis School of Engineering at the University of Indianapolis. The specific process of production being discussed involves cutting bulky cardboard frames with a metallic wire-mesh covering. The current process requires a considerable amount of physical labor from the operator; prolonged work results in gradial operator debility and injury. For Gateway …

(Poster) Citizens Energy Group: Mobile Water Distribution System For Providing Water And Reducing Plastic Waste, Alex Pruitt, Alysa Epperson, Jonathen Key, Victor Antoñon Rodriguez, Paul Talega, George Ricco, Suranga Dharmarathne, David Olawale, Najmus Saqib, James Emery

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

During the 2017-2018 year, Citizens Energy Group partnered with the R.B. Annis school of engineering to develop a portable system to distribute water to people at outdoor events. During that academic year, initial designs and a small scale, functional prototype were completed. This year we built the full scale version. Throughout this project, we have implemented the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology to guide the design process. Within the R.B. Annis School of Engineering, this methodology has been adapted into the DesignSpine process. It’s a gate based process that uses gateways at key points in the design process to …

Application Of Computational Tools To Spaghetti-Based Truss Bridge Design, Jin Xu, Jiliang Li, Nuri Zeytinoglu, Jinyuan Zhai

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Application of Computational Tools to Spaghetti-Based Truss Design

Statics and Strength of Materials are two foundational courses for Mechanical/Civil Engineering. In order to assist students in better understanding and applying concepts to a meaningful design task, SolidWorks and theoretical calculation were used for a spaghetti-bridge design contest with the constraints of given maximum weight and allowable support-material weight. As the first step of this iterative designing process, both extrude feature and structural member were introduced to model planar bridge trusses. Then SolidWorks’ Statics module was used to run FEA analysis of the structural performance in efforts to optimize the …

Answering Food Insecurity: Serving The Community With Food And Knowledge Using Technology, Courtney Simpson

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The courses of Tech120, CGT110, and ENGT 180/181 and Red Gold at Purdue collaborated to design a robot that would plant and water a garden for a local community charter school. The students centered the project on the users’ needs for fresh food, nutrition education, and early exposure to STEM for children. The school, Anderson Preparatory Academy (APA), is comprised of many children who come from low-income families and are in the free or reduced lunch program. Inspired from “Farm Bot,” a similar system that allows for almost hands-free gardening, the “Boiler Bot” is designed to be scalable so children …

Reasoning Strategies In The Context Of Engineering Design With Everyday Materials, Marcelo Worsley, Paulo Blikstein

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

‘‘Making’’ represents an increasingly popular label for describing a form of engineering design. While making is growing in popularity, there are still open questions about the strategies that students are using in these activities. Assessing and improving learning in making/ engineering design contexts require that we have a better understanding of where students’ ideas are coming from and a better way to characterize student progress in open-ended learning environments. In this article, we use a qualitative analysis of students’ responses (N = 13) in order to identify the origins of their ideas. Four strategies emerged from this analysis: unexplained …

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 …

Visualizing Mechanics: Improving Student Learning Through Video Demonstrations, Blake A. Wetherton, Olumide A. Awofeso, Carolyn E. Creighton, Adam F. Potrzebowski, Charles M. Krousgrill, Jeffrey F. Rhoads

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The Purdue Mechanics Freeform Classroom (PMFC) is a project that seeks to reform engineering mechanics education by integrating content and technology; enhancing communication between students, their peers, and instructors; accommodating a broader range of learning styles; and facilitating greater depths of understanding. In an attempt to increase the PMFC’s efficacy, a series of demonstration videos has been produced. As demonstrated by the popularity and pervasiveness of websites such as YouTube, short videos have the potential to captivate audiences. As such, these videos have incredible promise in educational contexts. In the PMFC series of videos, entitled Visualizing Mechanics, each imitates the …