Engineering Education Commons^™

Using An Embedded Researcher Approach To Explore Student Outcomes And Relationship Development During An Intensive Engineering Apprenticeship Program, Lori M. Caldwell, Angela Minichiello

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the emotions, outcomes, and interpersonal relationship development of high school aged students who participated in a three-week intensive engineering apprenticeship program (EAP) during the summer of 2019. This EAP introduces students to engineering by placing them in teams and asking them to build an underwater vehicle that can complete a timed obstacle course. Program mentors provide minimal lecture based instruction and focus on encouraging each team to create their own unique design. The primary purpose of the EAP is to increase student interest in engineering by improving student understanding of …

Revolutionizing The Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum, Shelby Ann Mcneilly, Krishna Pakala, Donald Plumlee

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the age of technological advancement and occupational opportunity continues to progress, companies must be constantly adjusting and transforming in order to accommodate industry demands. With these quickly developing requirements comes an expectation of employee experience and skill sets. For individuals seeking a career in mechanical engineering, moving forward with the tools necessary for success in this continuously evolving world begins with higher education. This paper is the first of a three-part series to report on the progress of Boise State University’s Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Department’s mission to implement a revolutionized curriculum in their academic program. This paper will …

Student Perception Of Mathematical Modeling Before And After Completing A Two Joint Robot Computer Simulation Task (Rtp), Laurel Johnston, Noah Salzman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Engineers frequently utilize computer simulation as part of their design processes to model and understand the behavior of complex systems. Simulation is also an important tool for developing students’ understanding of modeling and strengthening their intuition for problem solving in complex domains. This project uses a two-joint robot arm problem and accompanying computer simulation to demonstrate to AP BC Calculus students how and why we would use calculus concepts simultaneously in Cartesian and polar coordinate systems. We developed the simulation in a way that allows students to experience mathematical modeling in an applications-based engineering context. A small cohort of students …

Lasting Impacts Of A Summer Bridge And Outdoor Experience Program On Student Relationships: A Social Network Analysis, Noah Salzman, Ann E. Delaney, Catherine Rose Bates, Donna C. Llewellyn

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this Complete Research paper, we present a social network analysis of an academic summer bridge and outdoor experience program designed to support the social and academic integration of incoming STEM majors at Boise State University. Summer bridge programs can support students through both the development of academic skills and the creation of intentional community and peer support networks which can facilitate students’ sense of belonging in both their chosen major and at the university. Alumni from the past five years of the program received a survey asking them to indicate their connections to other participants, faculty, and staff associated …

What Is The Derivative Of Music?, Thad B. Welch, Cameron H. G. Wright, Michael G. Morrow

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In our continuing effort to prove to students that Signals & Systems is not just another mathematics course taught by the ECE Department, we ask the question, “What is the Derivative of Music?”

The first-order difference (or first-difference) is an incredibly simple algorithm that very accurately approximates the numeric derivative operator, especially for oversampled signals. Its inverse also accurately approximates the numeric integration operator, but not without numeric difficulty.

Given a real-time demonstration using winDSK8, we can now show students that these mathematical operators provide powerful signal processing filtering tools for real-world signals.

During this ASEE session, we will include …

Work In Progress: Students' Perception Of Collaborative Online International Learning, Philip Appiah-Kubi, Jennifer Nichwitz

Engineering Management and Systems Faculty Publications

Teaching and learning in the digital age harness the opportunities created by internet technologies to distribute and learn various information all over the world. This is commonly referred to as connectivism, and it values the impact of stakeholder information appraisal skills, virtual and personal communication skills [1], and the sense of cultural awareness. Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a type of connectivism, typically involves instructors and students from at least two geographically and culturally distinct areas who collaborate virtually on a common project for four or more weeks.

The objective is to create a culturally diverse virtual environment where students …

Integrating Professional Skills And Leadership Into An Undergraduate Engineering Program, Harold Ackler, Heidi Reeder, Abbey Louie

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research and practical experience indicate that leadership and “people skills” play an important role in the success of organizations and in the careers of employees across many industries, including engineering. The Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering at Boise State University identified a need to expand available opportunities for its students to develop these critical “soft” skills. The approach taken sought to imitate how such training is conducted in the workplace, integrating it within a context of extended team-based projects. In partnership with the College of Innovation + Design’s Leadership Certificate Program, a series of sequential modules were developed …

Comparison Of Pre-Intervention Idi Results From Stem And Non-Stem Undergraduate Students, Anne M. Lucietto, Lisa Russell

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The emphasis on intercultural competence is more prevalent in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) majors as the world shifts towards a more globalized economy. When entering higher education, students have differing levels of cultural interaction due to varying peer interaction, family experiences, international travel, and social media experiences. The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) has been used to develop an understanding of how students view others and the level of skills they have to interact and adapt to other cultures. Using published data focused on pre-intervention assessment, researchers compared it to data obtained from STEM students preparing for an international …

Faculty Perspectives On The Impact Of Virtual Office Hours In Engineering Courses, Brooke-Lynn Caprice Andrade, Krishna Pakala, Diana Bairaktarova, Douglas Hagemeier, Harish Subbaraman

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Instructor-student interaction is an important element of a course design, but office hours can be challenging to attend based on students’ commitments. They have time and space limitations that prevent students from getting the help they need and often garner poor attendance. Virtual office hours can address issues related to low attendance and provide a low stakes environment where unhindered learning can happen. Virtual office hours are flexible, yield productive interactions, and all enrolled students can participate. This study reports on three engineering instructors’ perspectives on the efficacy of virtual office hours compared to the traditional face-to-face interactions with the …

How Students View The Role Of Faculty Advisors In The Swe Organization, Diane Peters, Maryam Darbeheshti, Gloria Guohua Ma, Karinna M. Vernaza, Alexa N. Rihana Abdallah, Christina Remucal, Stephanie G. Wettstein

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) collegiate sections attract many men and women to the society, and they can be among the largest and most active student organizations on the university campuses. A key factor to boost membership is the active involvement of faculty advisors, who serve as the liaison between SWE collegiate sections, the university, the National SWE organization, and professional SWE members. A group of SWE faculty advisors previously conducted a survey of faculty advisors and counselors, with advisors and counselors aggregated in the results, to determine what aspects of their role they consider most significant, and how …

Investigating The Experiences Of Military Professionals Who Return To Engineering Graduate School, Diane Peters, Elizabeth Gross

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

Those graduate students known as returners, who have a gap of at least five years between their undergraduate degree conferral and their return to school for a graduate degree, have a wide variety of different experiences. While many of them spend those gap years in employment at an industrial employer, some of them serve in the military in various capacities. As military experience is different from working at an industrial employer, one might expect that these returners will be different in their outlook, skills, or approach to learning. In this study, the differences between military returners and returners from industry …

Professional Women Identify Their Professional And Personal Needs, Diane Peters, Anne M. Lucietto, Liza Ann Russell, Meher Rusi Taleyarkhan

Mechanical Engineering Presentations And Conference Materials

Professional women in various fields often express issues they encounter in being able to access quality materials to support professional and personal needs, as well as work-life balance. By studying a variety of modes through which these materials are generally obtained, including conference participation, informal communication via social media, and utilization of networking opportunities, several gaps were identified in available support for professionals. Professionals from various backgrounds were also surveyed in order to better identify their needs in terms of career development. Distributed through a variety of social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as the Indiana Secretary …

Design, Validation, And Verification Of The Cal Poly Educational Cubesat Kit Structure, Nicholas B. Snyder

Master's Theses

In this thesis, the development of a structure for use in an educational CubeSat kit is explored. The potential uses of this kit include augmenting existing curricula with aspects of hands on learning, developing new ways of training students on proper space systems engineering practices, and overall contributing to academic capacity building at Cal Poly and its collaborators. The design improves on existing CubeSat kit structures by increasing accessibility to internal components by implementing a modular backplane system, as well as adding the ability to be environmentally tested. Manufacturing of the structure is completed with both additive (Fused Deposition Modeling …

What Do Undergraduate Engineering Students And Preservice Teachers Learn By Collaborating And Teaching Engineering And Coding Through Robotics?, Jennifer Jill Kidd, Krishnanand Kaipa, Samuel J. Jacks, Stacie I. Ringleb, Pilar Pazos, Kristie Gutierrez, Orlando M. Ayala, Lillian Maria De Souza Almeida

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This research paper presents preliminary results of an NSF-supported interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduate engineering students and preservice teachers. The fields of engineering and elementary education share similar challenges when it comes to preparing undergraduate students for the new demands they will encounter in their profession. Engineering students need interprofessional skills that will help them value and negotiate the contributions of various disciplines while working on problems that require a multidisciplinary approach. Increasingly, the solutions to today's complex problems must integrate knowledge and practices from multiple disciplines and engineers must be able to recognize when expertise from outside their field can …

Math Anxiety: Engineering Technology Students Problem Solving Through Rational Or Experiential Context, Anne M. Lucietto, Meher Rusi Taleyarkhan, Natalie Hobson, Therese M. Azevedo

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Math anxiety is a pernicious problem. The issue manifests in a variety of ways, some avoid math completely, while others enact coping skills to avoid the use of math. This study surveys students who are pursuing Engineering Technology degrees and delves into the tendencies of the students and how they utilize certain types of problem-solving techniques. The survey utilized the instrument Cognitive-Experiential Self Theory (CEST) [1]. The survey will help to learn the extent to which the students rely on the rational and experiential context of their lives to answer technical questions. The study is intended to enlighten educators and …

Professional Women Identify Their Professional And Personal Needs, Anne M. Lucietto, Diane L. Peters, Meher Rusi Taleyarkhan, Shelly Tan

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Professional women in various fields often express issues they encounter in being able to access quality materials to support professional and personal needs, as well as work-life balance. By studying a variety of modes through which these materials are generally obtained, including conference participation, informal communication via social media, and utilization of networking opportunities, several gaps were identified in available support for professionals. Professionals from various backgrounds were also surveyed in order to better identify their needs in terms of career development. Distributed through a variety of social networks including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, as well as the Indiana Secretary …

Math Anxiety In Female And Underrepresented Minority Students A Literature Review, Anne M. Lucietto, Meher Rusi Taleyarkhan, Therese M. Azevedo, Natalie Hobson

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Educators have noticed that some students respond to exercises requiring mathematical calculations with numerical answers that are not correct and far from realistic. These student solutions are often given without further comment or calculation by the students and seem to such avoidance by the students to engage with the numerical calculations. Anecdotal evidence, by these educators, suggest that such responses are more prevalent from female and underrepresented minority groups — raising the question of whether demographics play a role in a students’ approach to numerical problems. Researchers have searched for existing work in this area and find that there are …

Public Perception Of Engineering Technology: A Literature Review, Anne M. Lucietto, Shelly Tan, Liza Ann Russell, Mary E. Johnson

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Engineering technology describes a field closely related to engineering in which practical application of learned concepts is emphasized over theoretical knowledge. Although an increasing amount of emphasis is being placed on the importance of this experiential learning in all engineering curricula, and the specifics of engineering technology’s place among engineering and technical fields is becoming clearer, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of several key aspects of this field. One of these aspects is its perception by the general public, which is important in, among other things, determining the employability of engineering technology program graduates and encouraging the …

Advancing High School Stem Education: Implications For Engineering Technology, Anne M. Lucietto, Mesut Akdere

School of Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

A novel STEM education approach focused on competency-based education was implemented in a college preparatory high school. This high school is intended to provide students access to a nearby higher education institution, with the intent of aiding the students in obtaining STEM based education. This program prepares the students to move into the university environment by encouraging faculty collaboration with the high school, coursework promoting creativity and problem-solving skills, and the use of case studies in classroom instruction. These case studies are grounded in real-life scenarios students can expect to encounter in a professional setting. This study focuses on the …

Curriculum Development For Robotics Technology Program, Sanjeevi Chitikeshi, Shirshak K. Dhali, Betsey Odell, Vukica Jovanovic, Cheng Y. Lin

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

With a growing need for a more skilled workforce, providing industry-driven and employment centric training services is an important national priority. Over 3.4 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled across the United Sates over the next decade. The skills gap is becoming greater based on the statistics provided by the Global Robotics Technology Market: Forecast, 2014-2020 published by Research and Markets, reporting that the worldwide robotics market is forecast to grow from the 2015 level of $26.98B to $82.78B in 2020. This 11 % compounded average growth in the next five years is unprecedented. Given the anticipated growth …