Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

‘‘Can I Drop It This Time?’’ Gender And Collaborative Group Dynamics In An Engineering Design-Based Afterschool Program, Jessica Schnittka, Christine Schnittka

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

The 21st century has brought an increasing demand for expertise in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Although strides have been made towards increasing gender diversity in several of these disciplines, engineering remains primarily male dominated. In response, the U.S. educational system has attempted to make engineering curriculum more engaging, informative, and welcoming to girls. Specifically, project-based and design-based learning pedagogies promise to make engineering interesting and accessible for girls while enculturating them into the world of engineering and scientific inquiry. Outcomes for girls learning in these contexts have been mixed. The purpose of this study was to explore how …

Race, Class And Gender In Engineering Education: A Quantitative Investigation Of First Year Enrollment, Canek Moises Luna Phillips

Open Access Dissertations

Research explanations for the disparity across both race and gender in engineering education has typically relied on a deficit model, whereby women and people of color lack the requisite knowledge or psychological characteristics that Whites and men have to become engineers in sufficient numbers. Instead of using a deficit model approach to explain gender and race disparity, in the three studies conducted for this dissertation, I approach gender and race disparity as the result of processes of segregation linked to the historic and on-going perpetuation of systemic sources of oppression in the United States. In the first study, I investigate …

Identifying And Prioritizing Critical Success Factors For Fixed Base Operators In The United States: A Mixed Method Approach, Yu Wang

Open Access Dissertations

Fixed Base Operators (FBOs) are major service providers for the general aviation (GA) sector, which closely connect the public with the aviation industry. However, over the past decade, the U.S. GA industry has experienced a decline in the numbers of registered aircraft, pilots, and airports. Due to the fact that FBOs significantly contribute to the aviation industry, further research studies regarding the FBO-sector at a national level are needed. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify and prioritize the critical success factors (CSFs) that promote the success of FBO operations in the United States.

The methodology consisted of a …

Detangling The Interrelationships Between Self-Regulation And Ill-Structured Problem Solving In Problem-Based Learning, Xun Ge, Victor Law, Kun Huang

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning

One of the goals for problem-based learning (PBL) is to promote self-regulation. Although self-regulation has been studied extensively, its interrelationships with ill-structured problem solving have been unclear. In order to clarify the interrelationships, this article proposes a conceptual framework illustrating the iterative processes among problem-solving stages (i.e., problem representation and solution generation) and self-regulation phases (i.e., planning, execution, and reflection). The dynamics of the interrelationships are further illustrated with three ill-structured problem-solving examples in different domains (i.e., information problem solving, historical inquiry, and science inquiry). The proposed framework contributes to research and practice by providing a new lens to examine …

Using Everyday Objects To Engage Students In Standards Education, Margaret Phillips, Paul Mcpherson

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This paper describes an innovative approach to standards education in an undergraduate mechanical engineering technology design course. The work is focused on making standards appeal to students by using “everyday objects” (e.g. toaster, ladder, grill, etc.) as catalysts to introduce the topic of standards in a way that connects to students’ daily lives. The project involves instructor-librarian collaboration to incorporate information literacy and campus library resources into the standards curricula, so that students not only become familiar with standards resources, but also proficient at searching for and locating the documents. Preliminary results and observations indicate this is an effective approach …

Exploring Regional And Telecoupled Land Use Change Impacts From Environmental Shocks, Kevin Hill, Liz Wachs, Brady Hardiman, David Yu, Shweta Singh

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Natural disasters or environmental shocks have the potential to disrupt local agricultural systems as well as distant agricultural systems through cascading effects. In this work we selected two distinct environmental shocks and traced their cascading effects on land use change. Quantifying cascading effects is a salient issue because climate change forecasts indicate an increase in frequency and intensity of global environmental shocks. This study incorporated the concept of telecoupled systems involving interrelating ecological, economic and political/social components. A telecoupled framework involving cascading effects was implemented using three approaches. The first approach involved using bilateral agricultural trade matrix data to analyze …

Organizing Historical Agricultural Data And Identifying Data Integrity Zones To Assess Agricultural Data Quality, Elizabeth Marie Hawkins

Open Access Dissertations

As precision agriculture transitions into decision agriculture, data driven decision- making has become the focus of the industry and data quality will be increasingly important. Traditionally, yield data cleaning techniques have removed individual data points based on criteria primarily focused on the yield values. However, when these methods are used, the underlying causes of the errors are often overlooked and as a result, these techniques may fail to remove all of the inaccurate data or remove “good” data. As part of this research, an alternative to data cleaning was developed. Data integrity zones (DIZ) within each field were identified by …

Dawn Or Doom: The Risks And Rewards Of Emerging Technologies, Diana Hancock, Steve Tally, Gerry Mccartney, Michele Arthur

Purdue P-12 Networking Summit & Poster Session

Dawn or Doom is a free and open to the public conference at Purdue where we focus on benefits and risks surrounding some of the technologies that are both the most disruptive to current practices and being adopted the fastest. A collection of Purdue faculty experts and some outside speakers showcase their many perspectives related to this technology explosion, explore conditions that will foster innovation and investment into the next generation, and address the big-picture issues where both optimism and pessimism are warranted.

Figure-Ground Organization Using 3d Symmetry, Aaron Michaux, Vijai Jayadevan, Edward Delp, Zygmunt Pizlo

MODVIS Workshop

We present a novel approach to object localization using mirror symmetry as a general purpose and biologically motivated prior. 3D symmetry leads to good segmentation because (i) almost all objects exhibit symmetry, and (ii) configurations of objects are not likely to be symmetric unless they share some additional relationship. Furthermore, psychophysical evidence suggests that the human vision system makes use symmetry in constructing 3D percepts, indicating that symmetry may be important in object localization. No general purpose approach is known for solving 3D symmetry correspondence in 2D camera images, because few invariants exist. Therefore, to test symmetry as a clustering …

An Image-Based Model For Early Visual Processing, Heiko H. Schütt, Felix A. Wichmann

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Cross-Sectional And Mixed-Method Assessment Of Safety Culture And Safety Climate At A Regional Airline, Micah S. Walala

Open Access Dissertations

The researcher applied a mixed methods approach to conduct a cross-sectional assessment of the safety culture, safety climate, and SMS at a regional airline in the United States. Data collection techniques were comprised of interview, on-line-survey, and a focus group activity. Participants in the current study were maintenance technicians, flight attendants, dispatchers, pilots, and managers. Results indicated significant differences of perception of safety climate, safety culture, and Safety Management System between the maintenance technicians and flight attendants. The length of time a participant had worked at the subject airline and age of the participant appeared to be significant factors of …

Automatic Food Expiration Notification System, Nikolas-Viktor P. Doukas, Ozan Celebi, Lindsey E. Colgrove, Michael D. Werner, Tre Commings, Christopher M. Zatek, Daniel E. Odihi

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Kayapo Media Making: Building On-Site Capacity, Kaitlin Harris

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Community Involvement Within Your Organization, Chris Gale, Mark Jacob

Purdue Road School

Active community involvement programs within your organization allow the engineering community to serve one another while promoting a positive work environment and strengthening the communities that are being served. Various community involvement programs will be presented that provide positive mentoring skills and/or public service to various organizations. Ongoing community involvement programs in two large organizations will be presented. Time will be allowed for questions and further dialogue on individual program successes.

Learning The Language Of Academic Engineering: Sociocognitive Writing In Graduate Students, Catherine G. P. Berdanier

Open Access Dissertations

Although engineering graduate programs rarely require academic writing courses, the indicators of merit in academic engineering, such as journal publications, successful grants, and doctoral milestones (e.g. theses, dissertations) are based in effective written argumentation and disciplinary discourse. Further, graduate student attrition averages 57% across all disciplines, with some studies classifying up to 50% of these students as “ABD” (All But Dissertation.) In engineering disciplines specifically, graduate attrition rates across the U.S. average 36% (both Master’s and PhD students), according to the Council of Graduate Schools. The lack of socialization is generally noted as a main reason for graduate attrition, one …