Engineering Education Commons^™

Use Of The Triple-Bottom Line Framework To Examine The Design Tendencies Of First Year Engineering Students, Kimia Moozeh, Josh Zacks, Michael Chabot, Paul Hungler

Practice Papers

Engineering design often requires the examination of multiple different factors and a design selection based on compromise between these factors. An engineer's preexisting values and experiences can influence design decisions. Therefore, knowing and understanding these design tendencies can prove valuable in guiding engineering students with their future design selections. The purpose of the project is to examine the design tendencies of first year engineering students using an interactive web-based virtual reality (VR) module focused on the triple-bottom line framework. The triple bottom line sustainability framework measures design in three key areas: people, profit and planet. The course for which the …

Realising A Centre For Educational Development: Experiences, Challenges, Lessons Learnt, And Future Ambitions, Reidar Lyng, Guri Sivertsen Korpås, Gabrielle Hansen, Geir Egil Dahle Øien

Practice Papers

In order to develop high-quality engineering education with a focus on students’ learning, academic staff must themselves develop new skills, with a lifelong learning perspective to their own teaching. This requires coordination and support. For this purpose, three faculties at our university decided to jointly fund a Centre for Science and Engineering Education Development. Among the aims were to boost educational quality, strengthen educational competence among academic staff, and build educational quality culture on the institutional level. The faculties also recognized a need to establish a stronger and more focused didactic perspective for the university’s programme STEM portfolio, beyond and …

On A Computer Science Master Program For Sustainable Development, Daniel Einarson

Practice Papers

Sustainable development and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals have been pointed out as crucial for our common future, addressing several aspects of a world to be considered as sustainable. From a university perspective it is certainly interesting, and important, to see how research and education contribute to that context, which may be seen from both disciplinary, and multi-disciplinary perspectives.

A one-year Master Program in Computer Science for Sustainable Development, at Kristianstad University (HKR), Sweden, has a background in the UN’s Agenda 2030, and in statements, claiming that ‘at the edge’-techniques, from areas such as Artificial Intelligence, and Datamining are crucial …

Supporting Teaching Staff: A Phenomenological Study Of The Innovation Readiness Of Teacher Support Staff, Leonie Chapel, Adina Imanbayeva, Nikola Petrova, Sonja Borst

Practice Papers

Educational institutions that want to successfully innovate regarding the education they provide must synchronise organisational growth with educational growth. To support such innovation, a maturity model can help identify successful teaching and learning practices by encouraging experimentation, collaboration and alignment with strategic goals. Although maturity models that support staff in the process of innovating education are valuable, they are scarce. This phenomenological study explored the views of staff from the Centre for Expertise in Learning and Teaching (CELT) on readiness for innovation at the University of Twente (UT). We surveyed staff members who were actively involved in projects or teacher …

Communicating Complexity To Prepare For Complexity, Magnus Lilledahl

Practice Papers

A trend in higher education is a stronger focus on the content of a study program as a whole rather than the individual courses that make up the program. The Norwegian university of science and technology (NTNU) has recently completed a large project, The future of technology studies (FTS), that attempt to describe how study programs should prepare students for a technological career in a rapidly evolving society. A central recommendation from the project is the necessity of an integrated, programdriven curriculum. Hence, there is a need for a useful description of the content at the program level. However, a …

Towards Perceiving Teaching As A Joint Task In An Individualized Teaching Qualification Program For Mid-Level Academics At A German University Of Technology, Ulrike Bulmann, Nicole Podleschny

Practice Papers

Empowering teachers for facilitating modern engineering education is essential. Thus, universities put much effort in qualifying teachers in didactic training programs. Especially individualized programs have been positively evaluated in the Covid-19- year 2020 by participated teachers. However, participants missed (informal) networking opportunities. Two questions arise: How do participants perceive their qualification program in the coming years? And second, how can we design a program that balances the participants’ thirst for an individual program compilation while establishing university-wide networking opportunities among teachers? This paper presents participants’ perceptions on a qualification program at a German University of Technology for the years 2021 …

Returning To On-Campus Activities For First-Year Engineering Skills Development - A Comparative Study, Gavin Buskes, Huey Yee Chan

Practice Papers

Prior work by the authors on student skills development detailed the implementation of a suite of skills modules in a first-year engineering course. These modules were instrumental components in supporting the course’s project-based framework that offered flexibility of choice and timing in a low-risk setting. It was found that, while receiving overall favourable student feedback, most students only completed the minimum requirements and largely chose technical modules according to the relevance to their project topic. Due to the cessation of on-campus teaching activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, these modules were delivered wholly online. With the lifting of restrictions the …

Integrating Sociotechnical Issues In The Introduction To Circuits Course, Cynthia Finelli, Susan Lord

Practice Papers

Engineers frequently encounter sociotechnical issues in their work, so it is critical that they are prepared to address complex, real-world issues that require both technical and social expertise. Engineering accreditation criteria further underscore the importance of understanding sociotechnical issues by expecting engineering undergraduate programs to address ethical, global, cultural, social, environmental, and economic considerations in student outcomes. However, most engineering instructors were educated with a deep technical focus, have little experience outside of engineering, and feel ill-equipped to integrate non-technical topics. As a result, engineering is often taught in the undergraduate curricula from a purely technical perspective, with an emphasis …

Improving Communication Procedures By Means Of Videorecorded Proposals, Marta Aguilar, Jordi Olivella

Practice Papers

There is an agreement regarding the importance of communication in the promotion processes of all types of technical or entrepreneurial initiatives. Communication skills have to make it possible to obtain the maximum interaction with the agents involved and facilitate the commitment of these agents to a project. In this context, communicators’ erroneous perception of their own abilities and of how they are transmitting the information is a significant drawback that calls for improvement. Video-recording someone when speaking creates an impact on them given that the possibility of seeing themselves implies a significant change in the learning process. This technique has …

A Survey To Evaluate Laboratory Activities Across An Undergraduate Engineering Degree Programme: Data From Five Years Showing Repeatability And Sensitivity, Peter Johnson

Practice Papers

Laboratory activities are an essential part of an undergraduate engineering education. This paper focuses on evaluating the student experience of laboratory activities. We present a laboratory-specific survey used with large cohorts of students (200) about laboratory activities across an undergraduate Mechanical Engineering degree programme. The key question we try to answer is whether the results of the survey can be used to inform teaching decisions such as which activities need improvement; how to improve them; and to validate these interventions.

We present nine common questions that were used to evaluate activities across a programme. We present five years of data …

Engineering Student Belonging To Prevent Early Leavers Through Curriculum Decolonization, Academic Self-Concept, And Psychologically Safe Teamwork, Neil Cooke, Jacqueline Chetty, Claudia Favero, Zena Green, Neil Drury, Pieter Joubert

Practice Papers

The proportion of early leavers from engineering degrees closely follows the higher education sector throughout Europe; around 10% leave before graduation. Students are more likely to drop-out if they do not feel that they belong in the learning community. While research shows that academic achievement is a primary factor contributing to student drop-out, other student-centric social factors, such as belonging are equally important to student drop-out rates within higher education. The aim of this paper is to present a model constructed on student belonging. The model consists of 3 pillars, namely academic self-concept & professional identity, psychologically safe teamwork, and …

Centering Meaning-Filled Design Within Engineering Education: Recommendations On How To Integrate Interdisciplinary Architectural Design Charrettes, Community Engagement, Sustainability Principles, And Adapted Agile Methodologies Into A Student-Centered, Project-Based Engineering Program, David D Gillette, Michael Haungs, Thomas Fowler

Practice Papers

The Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies program (LAES) is a hybrid engineering and humanities degree housed in both the engineering and liberal arts colleges. LAES requires the same required math and science courses of standard engineering degrees, adding upper-level concentrations split equally between advanced engineering and humanities courses.

LAES was designed for retaining and recruiting a diversity of students in engineering, and to address recent innovations in industrial practice, technology design, and community-centered education. Through fifteen years of trial and error, the LAES program has developed a set of meaning-filled design guidelines for project work, combining engineering and humanistic problem …

Learn And Work: A Hybrid Educational Model For Engineering Education, Katherine A. Looby, Catherine M. Deegan

Practice Papers

Traditional models of education are undergoing significant change in recent times due to evolving graduate attributes, shaped in no small part by the changing demands of modern industrial practices. Technology is one of the key elements of the factory of the future. Advances in manufacturing and digital technologies facilitate automation and offer significant benefits in a variety of areas. Academic programmes that feature industrial work placement have long been a feature of engineering education in TU Dublin. The BSc in Process Instrumentation and Automation is a three-year programme that goes further in that it evenly balances on-campus instruction with work …

Experience With Remote Laboratories For On-Campus Engineering Degrees, David P. Reid, Timothy D. Drysdale

Practice Papers

Remote laboratories extend the teaching and learning opportunities available for oncampus courses, by increasing the overall capacity for practical work and enabling new types of activities. We present three case studies from different types of usage within the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh over the last three academic years. Each case study provides an overview of the experimental hardware and user interface, the learning context and reflections on their development from our perspective as providers of the system. The case studies include a pendulum lab that provided large cohorts of students access to lab equipment in a …

Teaching Sustainable Logistics As A Project-Based Learning Course, Carsten Deckert, Ahmed Mohya

Practice Papers

Sustainable logistics combines the task of the 6R of logistics (right product, right place, right time, right condition, right cost) with social and environmental sustainability, especially low emissions and low resource consumption. This means that a problem that is already challenging, namely planning, executing, and controlling logistical processes, gets even more complex and requires aspects of systems thinking to incorporate environmental and social impacts. Classical approaches of teaching, e.g. lectures with presentations and short exercises on closed problems, do not do justice to the complexity and intricacies of the topic sustainability. In such a context, projectbased learning (PBL) where students …

Exploring The Impact Of Problem-Based Learning On Student Learning Outcomes: Findings From The Pbl South Asia Project, Andrius Jurelionis, Gintare Stankeviciute, Avinash Dhital, Ellen Van Andel, Julia Sundman, Laura Stasiuliene, Shakuntala Acharya, Riina Subra

Practice Papers

This paper presents the results of surveys conducted among students and teachers / mentors in Nepal, Bhutan, and India, regarding the impact of implementing Problembased learning (PBL) methodology in engineering and multidisciplinary projects. The surveys were carried out under the Erasmus+ funded project, "Strengthening Problembased learning in South Asian Universities" (PBL South Asia). The project aimed to address the issues of education quality, employability, and sustainable development in the region by enhancing students’ practical experience, communication skills, teamwork abilities, as well as academic knowledge through PBL-adapted courses. As a result, South Asian higher education institutions have implemented PBL courses in …

Discovering Sustainability Practices In Research And Innovation Sites, Robin Ann Downey

Practice Papers

This practice paper is a descriptive account of an experience with a sustainable development learning project for engineering students in a Science, Technology and Society (STS) course at Bilkent University. The students participated in the STS Sustainability Awards competition for two semesters in one academic year, an event that was inspired by Bilkent University’s 2021–2022 Sustainability Year. As part of the project, the students found a company or laboratory, consulted them on their innovation practices and asked questions that were grounded in Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approaches. RRI can provide an opening for students to explore how various values, …

Supporting Women In Science, Engineering And Technology Programmes: A Tu Dublin Approach, Leslie Shoemaker, Sharon Feeney

Practice Papers

The under-representation of women studying engineering in higher education is gaining increasing attention in Universities throughout Europe and other jurisdictions. This has led to underrepresentation of women in many of the professions in the Science, Engineering and Technology fields also. Numerous initiatives and programmes are being developed in universities to gain more information about the embedded issues in these disciplines that inhibit female applicants or lead to unsuccessful outcomes in university programmes. One such initiative that has been developed and piloted in Technological University Dublin (Ireland) is a mentoring programme called ‘Equality in Science and Technology by Engaged Educational Mentoring …

Assessment Of Different Platforms For Online Virtual Lab Demonstrations, Owen M Clarkin, Anne Morrissey, Muhannad Ahmed Obeidi, Alma Ryan

Practice Papers

As we move to a more sustainable world, expansion of education is key to the eradication of poverty (SDG1) and societal inequalities (SDG10). Global expansion of tertiary education offers opportunities to deliver Sustainable Development Goals by providing wide access to education in flexible learning environments. However, the quality of education (SDG4) must be maintained and enhanced as it is key to a partnership for the goals (SDG17). While increased learning online can facilitate achievement of these SDGs, there is also a move, within the education sector, to a constructivist approach and a more active learning environment. Interactive virtual learning environments …

Using Padlet On Math Collaborative Learning In An Engineering Course, Cristina M. R.Caridade, Deolinda Maria L. Dias Rasteiro

Practice Papers

This paper describes a study, with the objective of evaluating the possibilities of knowledge construction through collaborative learning (CL) in the innovative Padlet environment. During the practical classes of a math curricular unit of an engineering course, activities and assessments were carried out using Padlet. Program themes are organized by columns as a wall. Each students group accesses a problem proposal using a QR-Code. In the first part of the class, the group must solve the problem correctly, using all the materials and technologies they deem necessary. In the second part, each group will correct another group’s problem. The teacher …

Infusing Research Know-How Into The Construction Sector: Pedagogies To Support Digital Construction In Ireland, Shannon Chance, Barry Mcauley

Conference Papers

Building Information Modelling (BIM) and BIM Management (BIMM) support digital construction and have the potential to revolutionize the construction industry. In countries where BIM has been most readily adopted, and national supports and mandates put into place, the use of these digital construction methodologies is yielding results. National governments work in various ways to encourage and support the use of BIM, and research is an important part of moving ahead the knowledge base, usability, and uptake of BIM. This paper focuses on the use of BIM in Ireland, the role of education in the shift toward digital construction, and the …

Identifying Potential Consequences Of Use Of A Measure Through Stakeholder Interviews, Melissa G. Kuhn, Joanna K. Garner, Shanan L. Chappell, Linda Bol

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The advent of Messick’s Contemporary Validity Theory (1994) led researchers in survey and measure design to develop and standardize qualitative and quantitative methods of collecting evidence for the validity of psychological instruments. However, one aspect of this theory, consequential validity, has few agreed-upon evidence-gathering methods (Furr & Bachrach, 2014). This study added a blueprint-driven interview method of collecting forecasted consequences of use of an instrument into the overall process of developing a measure of outreach impact on undergraduate engineering students (Authors, in press). The method, which included a purposeful sampling of end-users, is illustrated with thematically presented results. Potential implications …

Enhancing Student Veterans' Self-Efficacy And Sense Of Belonging In A Targeted Learning Community: Four Years Of Qualitative Results, Anthony W. Dean, Cynthia Tomovic, Vukica Jovanovic, Kim E. Bullington

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Eight semesters of qualitative data, collected over four academic years, are presented from a project that resulted in the development of a student professional learning community of high-achieving, low-income engineering and engineering technology student veterans. In the context of this project, student veterans received academic, professional, and financial support that helped them to be successful in school and to prepare them for a career in the STEM workforce. As adult learners, students in this learning community were a vital part of the curriculum development which resulted in increasing the students’ interest and buy-in. Typically, adult learners have lower levels of …

Board 201: A New Public Dataset For Exploring Engineering Longitudinal Development By Leveraging Curricular Analytics, David Reeping, Matthew Ohland, Kenneth Reid, Hossein Ebrahiminejad, Nahal Rashedi

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Considering the increasing demand for engineering graduates, understanding what is limiting students from completing their degrees has been a consistent question posed in the literature. The nontrivial variance in pathways students take in obtaining an engineering degree, especially in cases where students abandon their studies, suggests that longitudinal datasets can hold a wealth of information to uncover factors contributing to attrition. Accordingly, this project uses existing data to explore curricular factors that create barriers for different students by leveraging a new framework for quantifying the impact of such factors, Curricular Analytics. Curricular Analytics uses network analysis to measure sequencing and …

Board 394: Sustaining And Scaling The Impact Of The Midfield Project At The American Society For Engineering Education (Year 1), Susan M. Lord, Matthew Ohland, Marisa K. Orr, Russell Long, Catherine E. Brawner, Joseph Roy

School of Engineering Education Faculty Publications

A substantial investment by the National Science Foundation (NSF), including awards from Engineering Education and Centers in the Engineering Directorate and the Division of Undergraduate Education in the Education and Human Resources Directorate, has led to the creation and study of the Multiple Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD). This large database of student records has yielded groundbreaking research on student pathways by a small interdisciplinary team of researchers. The team has shown that while individual engineering programs may have poor graduation rates, a multi-institutional view reveals that engineering programs as a whole graduate a larger fraction of …

The Impact Of A Multidisciplinary Service-Learning Project On Engineering Knowledge And Professional Skills In Engineering In Engineering And Education Students, Stacie I. Ringleb, Pilar Pazos, Francisco Cima, Isaac Koduah Kumi, Orlando M. Ayala, Krishnanand Kaipa, Jennifer Jill Kidd, Kristie Gutierrez, Min Jung Lee

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

A multidisciplinary service-learning project that involved teaching engineering to fourth and fifth graders was implemented in three sets of engineering and education classes to determine if there was an impact on engineering knowledge and teamwork skills in both the engineering and education students as well as persistence in the engineering students. Collaboration 1 paired a 100-level engineering Information Literacy class in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering with a 300-level Educational Foundation class. Collaboration 2 combined a 300-level Electromechanical Systems class in Mechanical Engineering with a 400-level Educational Technology class. Collaboration 3 paired a 300-level Fluid Mechanics class in Mechanical Engineering Technology …

How Does Working On An Interdisciplinary Service-Learning Project Vs. A Disciplinary Design Project Affect Peer Evaluators' Teamwork Skills, Isaac Koduah Kumi, Stacie I. Ringleb, Orlando M. Ayala, Pilar Pazos, Francisco Cima, Krishnanand Kaipa, Min Jung Lee, Kristie Gutierrez, Jennifer Jill Kidd

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Over the course of several semesters, two different project-based learning approaches were used in two undergraduate engineering courses–a 100-level introductory course that covered a general education requirement on information literacy and a 300-level fluid mechanics course. One project (treatment) was an interdisciplinary service-learning project, implemented with undergraduate engineering and education students who collaborated to develop and deliver engineering lessons to fourth and fifth-grade students in a field trip model. The other projects (comparison) involved a team-based design project contained within each class. In the 100-level course, students selected their project based on personal interests and followed the engineering design process …

Development Of A Data Science Curriculum For An Engineering Technology Program, Salih Sarp, Murat Kuzlu, Otilia Popescu, Vukica M. Jovanovic, Zafer Acar

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Data science has gained the attention of various industries, educators, parents, and students thinking about their future careers. Statistics departments have traditionally offered data science courses for a long time. The main objective of these courses is to examine the fundamental concepts and theories. However, teaching data science courses has also expanded to other disciplines due to the vast amount of data being collected by numerous modern applications. Also, someone needs to learn how to collect and process data, especially from industrial devices, because of the recent development of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. Hence, integrating data science into the …

Preparing Students To Solve Challenges Related To A Changing Climate, Mujde Erten-Unal, Dalya Ismael, Carol L. Considine

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The National Academy of Engineering has identified restoring and improving urban infrastructure as one of the grand challenges for engineering. Urban coastal communities are particularly at risk as their infrastructure is experiencing frequent inundation related to climate change impacts. Rising sea levels in coastal communities create backflow into stormwater systems and deplete capacity. In addition, the increase in rainfall intensity, duration, and frequency related to climate change create additional challenges for aging infrastructure systems. To prepare students to solve these challenges, the Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE) and Civil Engineering Technology (CET) programs at Old Dominion University (ODU) are introducing …

Integration Of Omnet++ Into A Networking Course In An Electrical Engineering Technology Program, Murat Kuzlu, Brian Emmanuel Tamayo, Salih Sarp, Otilia Popescu, Vukica M. Jovanovic

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Networking courses are an integral part of electrical engineering technology programs as the majority of electronics in the modern day are required to communicate with each other. They are also getting more attention in manufacturing engineering technology programs because of the development of emerging technologies in Industry 4.0 arena. From laptops, computers, cellphones, modern day vehicles and smart refrigerators, these devices require a certain level of networking in order to communicate with other devices, whether it be locally, or even across the other side of the world. The objective of networking courses in an electrical engineering program is to demonstrate …