Engineering Commons^™

Second Year Of Using The Sidekick Basic Kit For Ti Launchpad With Elementary School Students, Tara N. Kimmey, Cameron H. G. Wright, Thad B. Welch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes a second year, follow-on study in which 4^th and 5^th grade students were exposed to engineering-related topics using a microcontroller, input/output circuitry, sensors, and the associated software coding needed to achieve a desired functionality of the hardware. The first year study was described in a paper presented at the 2017 ASEE Annual Conference. This second year study took students to the “next level,” and showed very promising results.

Growing Entrepreneurial Mindset In Interdisciplinary Student Engineers: Experiences Of A Project-Based Engineering Program, Elizabeth Pluskwik, Eleanor Leung, Andrew Lillesve

Integrated Engineering Department Publications

Engineering education models have recently embraced the entrepreneurial mindset as a desired outcome of undergraduate engineering education. Interdisciplinary active learning strategies have been suggested as an effective pedagogy for engaging student engineers in undergraduate engineering education. Recent research suggests that active, social learning in context can lead to improvements in learner innovation, problem-solving, curiosity, retention and accessibility of knowledge, value-creation, and other desired learning outcomes. Much of the recent adoption of active and collaborative learning, self-directed learning, problem-based and project-based learning (PBL), peer to peer learning, and other similar learning strategies are aimed at developing innovative and entrepreneurial mindset skills, …

Work In Progress: Institutional Context And The Implementation Of The Redshirt In Engineering Model At Six Universities, Ann Delaney, Donna C. Llewellyn, Janet Callahan

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Low-income students are underrepresented in engineering and are more likely to struggle in engineering programs. Such students may be academically talented and perform well in high school, but may have relatively weak academic preparation for college compared to students who attended better-resourced schools. Four-year engineering and computer science curricula are designed for students who are calculus-ready, but many students who are eager to become engineers or computer scientists need additional time and support to succeed. The NSF-funded Redshirt in Engineering Consortium was formed in 2016 as a collaborative effort to build on the success of three existing “academic Redshirt” programs …

Developing And Testing An Electronic Homework System To Improve Student Engagement And Learning In Engineering Thermodynamics, Stephen Crown, Constantine Tarawneh, Jazmin Ley

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

An electronic homework delivery system was developed for an advanced undergraduate engineering thermodynamics course due to limitations in available electronic homework systems. A commercially available system was effectively used in the introductory course for simple problems. The complexity of problems in the advanced course made adoption of the same system problematic as students needed feedback in the problem solving process. A system was devised that delivers individual problems to each student, provides feedback throughout the process, and records results for assessment. The system has helped students become more active in homework assignments in both completing assignments and in doing original …

Webinar: Firsthand Data Collection: Students Get Behind The Wheel Of Vehicle Dynamics, Roger Lindgren, Jordan Preston

TREC Webinar Series

Vehicle operating dynamics data have a fundamental impact on the design of roadways, but collecting this type of data is not part of your typical college curriculum. Instead, engineering students are handed a textbook, leaving them without a firsthand experience of how accelerations and decelerations “feel” to the driver, the ultimate consumer of their designs. Seeking to change this norm, Roger Lindgren and C.J. Riley, civil engineering professors at the Oregon Institute of Technology, undertook a NITC education project to incorporate more real-world data collection and analysis into transportation courses. This webinar will offer a detailed look at the recently …

Incorporating Diegetic Elements To Increase Engagement In Games For Engineering Education, Katherine Smith, Yuzhong Shen, Anthony W. Dean

VMASC Publications

One of the difficulties in developing educational games is maintaining player engagement. This engagement is critical for games to provide effective learning experiences. One way to increase engagement in games is to limit interruptions during game play. In educational games, this can be accomplished by incorporating learning or problem-solving elements diegetically. Diegetic elements are those that are part of the game scene. With this in mind, a series of games for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has been developed focusing on content in courses that are prerequisites to the engineering curriculum. These games cover topics in pre-calculus, calculus, …

Creating The Fleet Maker - Lessons Learned From The First Series Of Workshops On Maker Concepts For Active Duty Personnel, Karina Arcaute, Michel Albert Audette, Vukica Jovanovic, Anthony Dean, Dipankar Ghosh

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The US Navy has supported research related to the 3D printing or Additive Manufacturing area for more than 20 years. More recently, efforts like the Print the Fleet initiative and Marine Makers are exploring ways to design and create solutions to future problems with the possibility of reducing maintenance costs, increasing equipment readiness, and improving combat effectiveness. The Creating the Fleet Maker project is an effort supported by the Navy and Marine Corps Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education, Outreach and Workforce Program of the Office of Naval Research. It examines the concept of making in order to develop skills …

Forumsphere.Com, Nicholas Scott Gatehouse, Sam Robert Rastovich

Computer Science and Software Engineering

We live in the Age of Information & Technology where social media has become an integral part of our society. Social media platforms such as Facebook help bring people and ideas together in one place. However, currently there is no centralized hub on the internet that is geared towards individual college campuses. Our goal is to create an environment that promotes structured and productive discussion between students, alumni, and staff. A platform like ours is needed to bring a campus closer if the community is willing and able to help one another.

There are other platforms that focus on social …

Developing, Evaluating, And Demonstrating An Open Source Gateway And Mobile Application For The Smartfarm Decision Support System, Caleb D. Fink

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research is to design, develop, evaluate, and demonstrate an open source gateway and mobile application for the SmartFarm open source decision support system to improve agricultural stewardship, environmental conservation, and provide farmers with a system that they own. There are very limited options for an open source gateway for collecting data on the farm. The options available are: expensive, require professional maintenance, are not portable between systems, improvements are made only by the manufacturer, limited in customization options, difficult to operate, and data is owned by the company rather than the farmer. The gateway is designed …

Value Analysis Of Cm Professional Certifications For Newly Graduated Cm Students, Christopher J. Coglianese

Construction Management

The construction industry has a staggering amount of professional certifications available to those who want to prove experience and expertise. There is usually a financial reason behind this. The more certifications a person has, the more likely he will be promoted and be paid more. As Cal Poly seniors entering the job market, they share these same incentives, and luckily there are plenty of certifications available to them. However, there are too many to choose from and some are too expensive. The question then lies, which certifications should graduating seniors spend their resources on? To answer this simple question, an …

Identifying Prevalent Mathematical Pathways To Engineering In South Carolina, Eliza Gallagher, Christy Brown, D. Andrew Brown, Kristin Kelly Frady, Patrick Bass, Michael A. Matthews, Thomas T. Peters, Robert J. Rabb, Ikhalfani Solan, Ronald W. Welch, Anand K. Gramopadhye

Faculty Publications

National data indicate that initial mathematics course placement in college is a strong predictor of persistence to degree in engineering, with students placed in calculus persisting at nearly twice the rate of those placed below calculus. Within the state of South Carolina, approximately 95% of engineering-intending students who initially place below calculus are from in-state. In order to make systemic change, we are first analyzing system-wide data to identify prevalent educational pathways within the state, and the mathematical milestones along those pathways taken by students in engineering and engineering-related fields. This paper reports preliminary analysis of that data to understand …

Advancing The Engineering Field: Opportunities To Support Transfer Students, Vukica M. Jovanovic, Narketta Sparkman-Key, Konstantin P. Cigularov, Daniela Cigularova, Bonita G. Anthony, Otilia Popescu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Advancements in technology have made it vital that technicians advance their skills to stay current and competitive in the job market. Many technicians choose to transfer to baccalaureate programs in engineering and other STEM fields in order to advance their skills. As a result, engineering programs usually have a large population of transfer students. Many of transfer students are studying while employed in the field and some juggle a career and family while advancing their education. Accordingly, transfer students face various issues when transferring to different university settings. Some of these issues are related to embeddedness into the university community …

Lessons From Two Years Of Eportfolio Implementation In Engineering Technology Courses, Orlando M. Ayala, Otilia Popescu

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

In an undergraduate as well as in a graduate academic setting, an ePortfolio is a collection of student work designed to exhibit student’s achievements, which often includes student’s reflective commentaries. While in academia ePortfolios are used to document the student learning process over time, they have been also well received by employers as work portfolios or showcases. This paper provides detailed explanations of two years of implementation of ePortfolio activities in junior and senior level engineering technology courses. The goal of the paper is to present to the community the best practices learned during the implementation and to provide information …

Assessing Scrum Project Management And Teamwork In Electrical And Computer Engineering Courses, Branimir Pejcinovic, Robert B. Bass, Phillip Wong

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Teamwork and project management are essential skills for engineering students, as recognized in the proposed new ABET topic area 7. Our team of instructors exposes students to project management techniques at multiple levels within our undergraduate ECE program. By learning project management early and practicing it often, students improve their teamwork efficacy in projects, courses, and in their future careers. Scrum is a cyclical project management technique commonly used in high-tech industries. Scrum provides a framework that facilitates teamwork through an adaptable and incremental process. Our variant of scrum is tailored to students working on engineering projects in a higher-education …

Polycommit: Building Better Habits Through Gamification, Elliot Fiske

Master's Theses

Computer-assisted learning is older than Turing machines, and constantly evolves as technology improves. While some teachers are resistant to using technology in the classroom, “e-learning” techniques are becoming more common in almost every school, from K-12 to universities. As technology becomes more widespread, it becomes crucial to examine the various methodologies of computer-assisted learning and find the techniques that are most effective.

This paper explores the effectiveness of one such methodology, spaced repetition. This technique applies to homework assignments available to students online. We include an exploration of several existing apps that use this technique, and introduce our own novel …

Improving Introductory Computer Science Education With Draco, Mike Dongyub Ryu

Master's Theses

Today, many introductory computer science courses rely heavily on a specific programming language to convey fundamental programming concepts. For beginning students, the cognitive capacity required to operate with the syntactic forms of this language may overwhelm their ability to formulate a solution to a program.

We recognize that the introductory computer science courses can be more effective if they convey fundamental concepts without requiring the students to focus on the syntax of a programming language. To achieve this, we propose a new teaching method based on the Design Recipe and Code Outlining (DRaCO) processes. Our new pedagogy capitalizes on the …

The Santa Clara, 2018-05-24, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

The Santa Clara, 2018-05-17, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

Ascertaining The Impact Of P–12 Engineering Education Initiatives: Student Impact Through Teacher Impact, Marissa H. Forbes, Jacquelyn F. Sullivan, Denise W. Carlson

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

The widespread need to address both science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and STEM workforce development is persistent. Underscored by the Next Generation Science Standards, demand is high for P–12 engineering-centered curricula. TeachEngineering is a free, standards-aligned NSF-funded digital library of more than 1,500 hands-on, design-rich K–12 engineering lessons and activities. Beyond anonymous site-user counts, the impact of the TeachEngineering collection and outreach initiatives on the education of children and their teachers was previously unknown. Thus, the project team wrestled with the question of how to meaningfully ascertain classroom impacts of the digital engineering education library and—more broadly—how to …

How To Shape Attitudes Toward Stem Careers: The Search For The Most Impactful Extracurricular Clubs, Fethiye Ozis, Ali Osman Pektas, Mustafa Akca, Daniel’Le April Devoss

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

It is well known that strong extracurricular STEM programs provide multiple arenas for students to expand on classroom curriculum, complementing STEM skills with creative thinking and open-ended problem solving. It has been shown that there is a relationship between the number of STEM clubs students participated in and their choice of STEM major (Sahin, 2013). Considering financial problems, including budget cuts, it gets really challenging for schools to provide a plethora of clubs. For this reason, it would be very beneficial for K–12 schools to know if certain clubs are more effective in changing attitudes toward STEM majors, and therefore …

‘‘Lend A Hand’’ Project Helps Students: Improved Spatial Visualization Skills Through Engaging In Hands-On 3-D Printed Prosthetics Project During A 9th Grade Engineering Course, Shaunna Smith, Kimberly Talley

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

Research shows that high spatial ability is linked to success and persistence in STEM. Empirical investigations often report a gender gap in favor of male students. The purpose of this research study was to assess changes to 9th grade engineering students’ spatial visualization skills through engagement in a nine-week collaborative 3-D printed prosthetics project embedded within their existing ‘‘Beginning Concepts of Engineering’’ course curriculum. Using concurrent mixed methods, this study examined pre-/post-test scores on the Revised Purdue Spatial Visualization Test: Rotations (Revised PSVT:R) in connection with gender, course grades, and level of involvement in the project. Both male and female …

The Santa Clara, 2018-05-10, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

The Santa Clara, 2018-05-03, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

Creativity As A Graduate Attribute, Caitriona Quinn

Other resources

This position paper examines the value, delivery and assessment of creativity as a graduate attribute in civil engineering. Creativity is an essential skill for modern civil engineering graduates to allow them to respond to the variety of challenges within the industry. In addition, the need for creativity within their work is both directly and indirectly referenced within accreditation requirements from engineering professional bodies. How to deliver on creativity as a learning outcome requires time and space within the timetable, a difficult challenge in the technical content heavy subjects the make up civil engineering programmes. Added to this are the difficulties …

Enginews, May 2018, School Of Computer Science & Engineering

News, Magazines and Reports

Trial and Error: Adjusting to the MakerSpace --Looking Forward: Rube Goldberg Machine.

Accelerated Creative Problem Solving And Product Improvement Applied To Experimental Devices In A Bloodstain Pattern Interpretation Class--Improving The Role Of Insight Development Tools As A Generator Of New Ideas In Novel Situations, Douglas Ridolfi

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project uses an action research centered study protocol to examine the effects of a problem-based learning exercise related to bloodstain pattern interpretation in a crime scene processing and general criminalistics class taught as part of an upper division forensic chemistry major in a four year college. The goal is to apply design principles and creative problem solving methods directly adapted to a project involving interpreting a set of crime scene photographs depicting blood spatter and with the aid of guided exercises in ideation and design, lead students into the development of alternate theories of how the bloodstains were created …

Effective Resource Utilization In Arkansas Public Schools, Ryan Sanders

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Teacher pay in Arkansas public schools varies widely from district to district across the state. This pay discrepancy is driven by both the funds available to a district and by how these funds are allocated. There is a standard per student budget given to districts across the state, but this budget can be supplemented by additional property taxes collected on property within a district. This leaves districts with more highly valued property at an advantage. Districts are free to allocate their budget for teacher pay as they see fit, with constraints on number of students per teacher and minimum teacher …

Sustainability Children's Book, Linden Cheek

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As human driven climate change continues to alter our planet, persuading the general public to adopt sustainable living practices has become increasingly important. Storytelling has long been a part of human culture, and recent studies have emphasized the power of storytelling to influence the audience as a means of changing behavior. This project attempted to teach sustainable principles to primary school children through the creation of a scientific children’s book. The book communicated the maxim of “reduce, reuse, recycle” by tracing a fictitious story of a town where children frequently buy new toys and throw the old toys away. The …

Improving Spatial Visualization Abilities Using 3d Printed Blocks, Vanessa Lebow, Michelle Bernhardt-Barry, Jyotishka Datta

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Spatial visualization abilities have been shown to be a key predictor of success in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. Past research has revealed that women and underrepresented minorities tend to lag behind in spatial visual abilities, however, research has also shown that these skills can be improved with guided practice. This study seeks to examine whether 3D printed aids help spatial visual retention in 6th graders. A modified Purdue spatial visualization test was used as the assessment standard. Students’ mental rotation abilities were assessed before and after the 3D printed aids were administered. Data was collected from five different …