Engineering Commons^™

Fungi In Flux | Designing Regenerative Materials And Products With Mycelium, Arvind Bhallamudi

Masters Theses

As the world grapples with the escalating crisis of climate threats and environmental degradation, this research delves into the synergistic potential of design and biology, developing safe and sustainable materials for applications in prototyping, furniture and interior design. Harnessing the power of a unique organism - fungi, the study proposes an accessible, efficient, and resilient material resource system. It utilizes local waste streams and mycelium (the vegetative part of fungi) to grow functional structures. An experimental and small-scale protocol is modeled by testing bio-fabrication and bio-printing methods. The composites' performance qualities and characteristics are evaluated through mechanical testing and a …

Personalizing Student Graduation Paths Using Expressed Student Interests, Nicolas Charles Dobbins

Masters Theses

"This work proposes an intelligent recommender approach to facilitate personalized education and help students in planning their path to graduation. The original research contribution of this work is to develop a recommender approach that pervasively personalizes and optimizes a student’s path to graduation by accounting for the student’s career interests and academic background. The approach is a multi-objective optimization problem, subject to institutional constraints, with the goal of optimizing the graduation path with respect to one or more criteria, such as time-to-graduation, credit hours taken, and alignment with student’s career interests. The efficacy of the approach is illustrated and verified …

Precise Energy Efficient Scheduling Of Mixed-Criticality Tasks & Sustainable Mixed-Criticality Scheduling, Sai Sruti

Masters Theses

"In this thesis, the imprecise mixed-criticality model (IMC) is extended to precise scheduling of tasks, and integrated with the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) technique to enable energy minimization. The challenge in precise scheduling of MC systems is to simultaneously guarantee the timing correctness for all tasks, hi and lo, under both pessimistic and optimistic (less pessimistic) assumptions. To the best of knowledge this is the first work to address the integration of DVFS energy conserving techniques with precise scheduling of lo-tasks of the MC model.

In this thesis, the utilization based schedulability tests and sufficient conditions for such …

Development Of Learning Objectives For An Undergraduate Computer-Aided Drafting And Design Animation Using The Delphi Technique, Gavin M. Wilk

Masters Theses

This study reflects on learning objectives created for an advanced computer aided drafting (CAD) learning module(s) or course with the emphasis on simulation and engineering animations. These objectives were derived by using the Delphi technique by access the support of a panel of subject matter experts (SME) from academia and industry that are interested in CAD. The results of this study are intended for the use of creating instructional modules for undergraduate studies.

A panel of experts were chosen through an electronic listserv of engineering and technology supporters. Two rounds of two different Delphi survey instruments were utilized to complete …

Utilizing Learning Style Preferences And Quality Function Deployment For Curriculum Development, Julie M. Ezzell

Masters Theses

"Workplace requirements continually evolve to keep pace with the developing global market. To meet ever increasing standards, educational institutions have been investigating methods to prepare students for their future employment. Course modifications should be carefully considered to meet the requirements of all stakeholders, including those of the students. The objective of this research was to provide students with an overall better learning experience that tailors the teaching methods to his/her individual learning preferences. To meet this objective, a comprehensive survey was provided to an undergraduate course in quality. The survey documented the student's individuality when learning and made note of …

Systems Simulation Using Promodel: An Online Teaching Method, Gustavo Sioni Bosoli

Masters Theses

This study was designed with the purpose to create an online method to deploy the concepts and practical knowledge necessary for the course System Simulation {TEC 5523) offered by Eastern Illinois University. The course is currently offered on a hybrid format, with part of it being ministered in the classroom and the remaining on the online environment. This research focused on creating a set of multimedia and step-by-step lessons aimed to substitute the part of the course that demands the students to be present in the classroom. These lessons were developed based on exercises from the textbook currently used for …

Quality Assurance In Engineering Education: A Systems Perspective, Mildred Genevieve Louidor

Masters Theses

Engineering education reform has been a topic of discussion for the last twenty years. The concern has only intensified in recent years as stakeholders strive to improve quality in engineering education. Today, stakeholders are recognizing that one of the keys to successful engineering education reform is in taking a systems view of higher education. Academic departments within the higher education system are organized around academic disciplines for the purpose of creating, transferring, and applying knowledge in three principal areas: teaching, research and service. This study addresses the need for quality improvement in the engineering higher education system by first completing …

Asynchronous Distance Learning Technology: The Instructor's Perspective, Earl Alexander Evans

Masters Theses

"Advances in communications, computer technology and human-computer interfaces have enabled concurrent advances in Web-based education. A number of case studies concerning applications of Web-based education for both distance learning and on-campus programs have been published. Primarily, these studies have focused on individual assessments of the Web-based technologies. In addition, these published studies have generally highlighted the successes while little discussion about failed attempts has been presented in the literature.

In contrast, this thesis provides a broad-based assessment of applied Web technology for higher education. This research was conducted via a survey completed by twenty five university and college faculty from …

An Analysis Of The Payback Potential Of New Lighting Technology, James L. Cox

Masters Theses

Recent, energy saving improvements in lighting technology have been made involving the use of more efficient lamps, silver coated light reflectors, and electronic light ballasts. Research indicates that it is economically feasible to retrofit existing light fixtures to utilize the advantages of these developments. This process consists of the removal of all standard lamps and ballasts in each light fixture, the installation of a highly refined light reflector and the replacement of the existing lamps with brighter, more efficient ones. Standard magnetic ballasts are exchanged for more efficient electronic ballasts. Resulting is a light fixture that produces a comparable amount …

A Recommended Program Of Related Instruction For Electrical Apprentices, Andrew C. Luff

Masters Theses

Chapter I

Introduction

The Role of Apprenticeship

The institution of apprenticeship has been an important educational process since the beginning of history. Centuries ago trade skills were passed on from father to son, and from master to novice through an association whereby the craftsman taught the novice the skills of his trade. Down through history apprenticeship has flourished either in one form or another, and today it is an important part of the industrial system. Apprenticeship has developed in accord with industrial progress.

In order to avoid confusion, it may be well at the outset to designate the meaning of …