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Full-Text Articles in Engineering Education

An Active Learning Module For An Introduction To Software Engineering Course, A. Frank Ackerman, Ph.D. Jan 2014

An Active Learning Module For An Introduction To Software Engineering Course, A. Frank Ackerman, Ph.D.

Computer Science & Software Engineering

Many schools do not begin to introduce college students to software engineering until they have had at least one semester of programming. Since software engineering is a large, complex, and abstract subject it is difficult to construct active learning exercises that build on the students’ elementary knowledge of programming and still teach basic software engineering principles. It is also the case that beginning students typically know how to construct small programs, but they have little experience with the techniques necessary to produce reliable and long-term maintainable modules. I have addressed these two concerns by defining a local standard (Montana Tech …


Improving Enrollment In The Construction Management Graduate Program Through Students’ Perspectives, Mouloud Messaoudi Jan 2014

Improving Enrollment In The Construction Management Graduate Program Through Students’ Perspectives, Mouloud Messaoudi

Master of Technology Management Plan II Graduate Projects

Low enrollment and the decrease in graduation and retention rates are challenges facing the growth of the Master’s in Technology Management – Construction Management (MTM-CM) program at BGSU. In addition, the competition between the universities to enroll and retain more in-state, out-of-state, and international students is aggressive. There is a need for a revaluation for the MTM-CM program in order to attract more students in the future. This study is a necessary step to know what the MTM-CM students think about the product delivered to them at BGSU. There was no prior study investigating the satisfaction level of the construction …


Pre-College Engineering Participation Among First-Year Engineering Students, Noah Salzman, George Dante Ricco, Matthew Ohland Jan 2014

Pre-College Engineering Participation Among First-Year Engineering Students, Noah Salzman, George Dante Ricco, Matthew Ohland

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

In recent years, engineering content is increasingly appearing in the K-12 classroom. This growth can be attributed to increased acceptance of engineering as an area of study at the K-12 level, the growing inclusion of engineering content in state and national educational standards,and the growth of outreach activities intended to increase students’ interest in pursuing degrees and careers in engineering. As pre-college engineering programs grow, first-year engineering students are arriving in university engineering programs with significant prior exposure to engineering content and practices. Despite this growth, little research exists that explores the prevalence of participation in these programs or the …


Design For The Other 90% And Appropriate Technology: The Legacies Of Paul Polak And E.F. Schumacher, Lindsey Anne Nelson Jan 2014

Design For The Other 90% And Appropriate Technology: The Legacies Of Paul Polak And E.F. Schumacher, Lindsey Anne Nelson

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Recent movements showcase engineering design activities on behalf of poor people, inspiring engineering educators to create global service-learning programs. People who encourage engineers to “design for the other 90%” envision globally engaged businesses paving a new way forward for poverty eradication while other engineers pursue forms of “appropriate technology”to create socially-just technological systems. The engineering practices related to these phrases raise questions of which people benefit from engineering design for poverty alleviation, how engineers define “poor” people, what indicates “success” when engineers design for poverty alleviation, and how engineering educators create meaningful global service-learning programs for students.This paper uses mediated …


Building Effective Partnership Networks When Working Internationally, Lindsey Anne Nelson Jan 2014

Building Effective Partnership Networks When Working Internationally, Lindsey Anne Nelson

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Building Effective Partnership Networks In order to engage communities around the world, engineering educators must build networks with relevant community organizations. Many factors can compound building effective networks. Organizations have different philosophies about how engineers should undertake community engagement. These philosophies include convictions that engineers should develop low-cost products suitable for markets in marginalized communities, engineers should devise clever solutions to help people living in poverty meet basic needs, engineers must effectively respond to socio-cultural considerations when proposing solutions, and engineers should work to empower local artisans who have already begun seeking solutions to pressing problems.Additionally, university programs have to …


Engineering And Engineering Education As Spiritual Vocations, Julia D Thompson, Mel Chua, Cole H. Joslyn Jan 2014

Engineering And Engineering Education As Spiritual Vocations, Julia D Thompson, Mel Chua, Cole H. Joslyn

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Spirituality and engineering (education) are often kept in separate compartments in our lives. They may slip out occasionally for conversations during ethics classes or service learning projects, but speaking -- and living -- our spiritual/religious values as engineers and engineering educators/researchers is still uneasy territory for many. The spirit of free inquiry and reflection that permeates the liberal arts urges us to integrate our spirituality into the human and natural worlds we inhabit. How do we bring such thinking into the technical realms?In this session, we will describe our personal journeys toward engineering education and how we actively and reflectively …


Motivation Of Community Partners And Advisors To Participate In Community Engagement Engineering Programs, Julia D Thompson, Brent Jesiek Jan 2014

Motivation Of Community Partners And Advisors To Participate In Community Engagement Engineering Programs, Julia D Thompson, Brent Jesiek

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Since 2000, research in service-learning has started to investigate partnerships and community voice, but this research trend has received little attention among engineering education scholars. This study aims to fill this gap by developing a richer understanding of community-university partnerships in engineering community engagement from the perspectives of academic programs and served communities. In part inspired by the existing service-learning literature, this study addresses the question: Why are individuals and local community organizations involved in engineering service-learning partnerships? This study utilizes a single case study design, with data collection including in-depth interviews with community partners, faculty and program administrators (n=11) …


Parents As Critical Influence: Insights From Five Different Studies, Brianna L. Dorie, Tamecia R. Jones, Meagan C Pollock, Monica Cardella Jan 2014

Parents As Critical Influence: Insights From Five Different Studies, Brianna L. Dorie, Tamecia R. Jones, Meagan C Pollock, Monica Cardella

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Parents play a number of roles in engineering education: they can motivate children’s interest in engineering in early childhood, as well as later when their child is in the process of selecting a major at college, they can provide support in learning engineering concepts and thinking skills, and can serve as role models if they themselves are engineers. Several empirical studies have shown that parents play a significant role in the occupational aspiration and career goal development of their children. In addition,parents’ own beliefs and aspirations have been found to be important factors in children’s career and academic aspirations. In …


Capturing The Design Thinking Of Young Children Interacting With A Parent, Brianna L. Dorie, Monica Cardella, Gina Navoa Svarovsky Jan 2014

Capturing The Design Thinking Of Young Children Interacting With A Parent, Brianna L. Dorie, Monica Cardella, Gina Navoa Svarovsky

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Children have often been labeled as “natural engineers” whose curiosity about the world around them evokes comparisons to skills used by professional engineers and taught to undergraduate engineering students. Building towers out of blocks, taking things apart and figuring how things work are a part of childhood and have been considered to be precursors to engineering thinking.However there has been considerable debate around what engineering looks like for young children. Can young children engage in design and if so, what does that look like? How can we differentiate “design” (especially “modeling” or “create”) activity from normal everyday play?Several design models …


Structured Pairing In A First-Year Electrical And Computer Engineering Laboratory: The Effects On Student Retention, Attitudes, And Teamwork, Nicholas D. Fila, Michael C. Loui Jan 2014

Structured Pairing In A First-Year Electrical And Computer Engineering Laboratory: The Effects On Student Retention, Attitudes, And Teamwork, Nicholas D. Fila, Michael C. Loui

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

This paper describes a simple technique, structured pairing, for organizing student teams in engineering instructional laboratories. This technique was adapted from pair programming, which was previously found to improve student confidence, satisfaction, and retention in computer science. A study of structured pairing was implemented in a large required course for first-year students in electrical and computer engineering. Six laboratory sections implemented structured pairing, and the other seven laboratory sections operated in a traditional way (i.e., unstructured team interactions). Data were collected from a student survey, two focus groups, and course enrollment records. Structured pairing students reported significantly higher confidence in …


Describing Creativity In Design Across Disciplines, Llew Mann, Yasemin Tekmen Araci Jan 2014

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 …


Piecemeal Versus Integrated Design: Framing Meets Design Thinking, Stephen Secules, Ayush Gupta, Andrew Elby Jan 2014

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 …


Higher Order Thinking In Design Reviews, Craig D. Howard, Colin M. Gray Jan 2014

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 …


Dimensions Of Creative Evaluation: Distinct Design And Reasoning Strategies For Aesthetic, Functional And Originality Judgments, Bo T. Christensen, Linden J. Ball Jan 2014

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 …


Polysemy In Design Review Conversations, Georgi V. Georgiev, Toshiharu Taura Jan 2014

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 …


A Cross-Case Analysis Of Disciplinary Identities Communicated Through Design Reviews, Senay Purzer, Nicholas D. Fila, Emily C. Dick Jan 2014

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 …


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 Jan 2014

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 …


Making Design Pedagogical Content Knowledge Visible Within Design Reviews, Robin Adams, David Radcliffe, Tiago Forin, Mel Chua Jan 2014

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 4th wall to create a teaching moment, and “suggest don’t tell”. Theoretical implications …


Exploring The Role Of Empathy In A Service-Learning Design Project, Nicholas D. Fila, Justin L. Hess Jan 2014

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 …


Influences Of Feedback Interventions On Student Concept Generation And Development Practices, Seda Yilmaz, Shanna Daly Jan 2014

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 …


Viewing An Interdisciplinary Human-Centered Design Course As A Multiteam System: Perspectives On Cooperation And Information Sharing, Elizabeth S. Fleming, Alexandra E. Coso Jan 2014

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., …


Measuring Undergraduate Students’ Engineering Self-Efficacy: A Scale Validation Study, Natasha Johanna A. Mamaril Jan 2014

Measuring Undergraduate Students’ Engineering Self-Efficacy: A Scale Validation Study, Natasha Johanna A. Mamaril

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate engineering self-efficacy measures for undergraduate students (N = 321) and to examine whether students' engineering self-efficacy differed by gender, year level, and major. The relationships between engineering self-efficacy and academic achievement and intent to persist in engineering were also investigated. Data from engineering students from two southeastern universities were collected in spring 2013. Exploratory factor analyses resulted in a unidimensional general engineering self-efficacy scale and a three-factor (i.e., research skills, tinkering skills, and engineering design) engineering skills self-efficacy scale. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed that self-efficacy did not differ by …


Evaluating The Implementation Of Curriculum Development For Sustainable Design In Electrical Services Engineering, Michael Mcdonald, Stephen Donohoe Jan 2014

Evaluating The Implementation Of Curriculum Development For Sustainable Design In Electrical Services Engineering, Michael Mcdonald, Stephen Donohoe

Conference papers

The professional role of electrical services engineers is evolving and changing to meet the needs of industry, both national and internationally. The current demands throughout the built environment are primarily driven by European Directives and Government policies pertaining to sustainable design, energy reduction and energy efficiency. Thus, it is essential that Ireland’s Higher Education Institutions meet these challenges head on by developing diverse programmes which have sustainability at the core of curriculum design. Moreover, programmes of this nature will ensure that young engineers of the future command key transferable skills and enhance their lifelong learning which is required for today’s …


The Distribution Of Family-Friendly Benefits Policies Across Higher Education Institutions: A Cluster Analysis, Corey T. Schimpf, Joyce B. Main Jan 2014

The Distribution Of Family-Friendly Benefits Policies Across Higher Education Institutions: A Cluster Analysis, Corey T. Schimpf, Joyce B. Main

School of Engineering Education Graduate Student Series

Cluster Analysis of Family-Related Benefits Policies across U.S. Academic Institutions Although the under-representation of women in science and engineering tenure-track faculty positions is often linked to the conflict between childcare responsibilities and the normative academic tenure-track pathway, previous studies have tended to focus on individual life choices,rather than the effects of institutional-level policies and structure. More recent research on work/life policies in higher education have pushed our understanding of how organizational structure and political climates at the department and institution levels influence the ability of faculty members to integrate career and life responsibilities. Many post-secondary institutions offer more generous work/life …


Learning And Becoming In Design Reviews, Lisa D. Mcnair, Marie C. Paretti, Cassandra Groen Jan 2014

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 …


A Comparative Analysis Of Spatial Visualization Ability And Drafting Models For Industrial And Technology Education Students, Petros Katsioloudis, Vukica Jovanović, Mildred Jones Jan 2014

A Comparative Analysis Of Spatial Visualization Ability And Drafting Models For Industrial And Technology Education Students, Petros Katsioloudis, Vukica Jovanović, Mildred Jones

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The article presents the comparative study on the drafting models and spatial visualization ability of industrial and technology education students in the U.S. It discusses how the study was conducted which examined the issue based on technical drawings and with regards to the impacts of model types. The results reportedly revealed three-dimensional models are effective for promoting learning, however more studies have to be conducted.


Hands-On Homework Or Laboratory Development For Distance Learning Students In Programmable Logical Controller (Plc), Cheng Y. Lin, Yuzhong Shen, Mileta Tomovic Jan 2014

Hands-On Homework Or Laboratory Development For Distance Learning Students In Programmable Logical Controller (Plc), Cheng Y. Lin, Yuzhong Shen, Mileta Tomovic

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

When teaching PLC classes in the distance-education (DE) program, one of the main problems is to provide hands-on experience to students. This is because students can only use design software to complete their homework and lab problems without being able to touch PLCs or wire ladder logic diagrams. In this paper, the authors develop a virtual laboratory to help DE students gain hands-on wiring experience in the automation control classes. The development significantly shortens the gap on the issue of hands-on experience between on-campus students and DE students. To increase the performance of safety and effectiveness, on-campus students can also …


Teaching Laboratory Courses Using Distance Learning Technologies, Steve C. Hsiung, John Ritz Jan 2014

Teaching Laboratory Courses Using Distance Learning Technologies, Steve C. Hsiung, John Ritz

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Conducting laboratory activities is essential for teaching and learning in engineering and technology subjects. This article discusses explorations made by a research team to find solutions to enable the distance-learning delivery of laboratory courses on embedded microcontroller technology topics. In addition, this article includes a review of videoconferencing and course management tools, uniquely designed laboratory equipment and supporting curriculum materials, and statistical evidence showing students can learn technical laboratory content in distance-learning environments.


A Collaborated Process With A Wireless Autonomous Vehicle At It's Center, Thomas B. Stout, Steve C. Hsiung Jan 2014

A Collaborated Process With A Wireless Autonomous Vehicle At It's Center, Thomas B. Stout, Steve C. Hsiung

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Developing partnerships between high schools, community colleges and universities is critical for the successful transitions to a lifelong STEM careers. How do you develop these partnerships? The sharing of a technology platform such as autonomous vehicles can bridge the gap by using a common core group of materials. Collaborations between teachers and faculty indifferent schools that share common interests in teaching control systems and robotics technology can be an excellent start. The university as catalyst in the process by designing the curriculum, system hardware and software then through the common interest deploying them in the high schools and community college. …


Initial Investigation Of Analytic Hierarchy Process To Teach Creativity In Design And Engineering, Jennifer G. Michaeli, Gene Hou, Xiaoxiao Hu, May Hou Jan 2014

Initial Investigation Of Analytic Hierarchy Process To Teach Creativity In Design And Engineering, Jennifer G. Michaeli, Gene Hou, Xiaoxiao Hu, May Hou

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the use of Analytic Hierarchy Process to teach design creativity and innovation in undergraduate engineering students. Examples are included to assess its effectiveness in the classroom. The purpose of this research is to investigate the suitability of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to teach design innovation and creativity in undergraduate engineering classrooms. AHP is a very structured, multi-criteria, decision-making process and traditionally has been used to solve complex problem sets. This investigation takes a fresh look at how AHP provides the framework to engage and encourage students to think creatively and innovatively in design and engineering. This …