bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Developing and Assessing Students' Entrepreneurial Skills and Mind‐Set*
Authors: Bilén Sven G. , Kisenwether Elizabeth C. , Rzasa Sarah E. , Wise John C. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA primary goal of The Pennsylvania State University's new Engineering Entrepreneurship (E‐SHIP) Minor is to build students' life skills so they can succeed within innovative, product‐focused, cross‐disciplinary teams. The E‐SHIP Minor is designed for undergraduate students majoring in engineering, business, or IST (Information Sciences and Technology) who aspire to be innovation leaders for new technology‐based products and companies. This paper outlines five E‐SHIP program components to meet this mission: the core courses for the minor, E‐SHIP competitions in which students exhibit their products and ideas, the E‐SHIP Event Series, student organizations to support out‐of‐classroom entrepreneurial interest, and team projects for local industry and Penn State researchers. Penn State's engineering entrepreneurship program is reviewed, summarizing both quantitative and qualitative assessment data to date, previewing future assessment plans, and providing a summary of lessons learned during the development and implementation of this program.
A Learning Community of University Freshman Design, Freshman Graphics, and High School Technology Students: Description, Projects, and Assessment
Authors: Rutar Teodora , Mason Greg 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA learning community was developed to enhance the teamwork and communication components of a freshman design course. The learning community was comprised of students from a freshman design course, a freshman graphics course, and a high school technology course. Design teams were formed by combining three to four students from each of these courses. These teams were required to research, design, build, and test a specified product. The high school and university students communicated only using e‐mails and Internet conferencing. This paper outlines how the learning community is implemented, describes three design projects, and presents the assessment methods. Assessment reveals that university students who participate in the learning community have a better understanding and confidence in the technical aspects of the design project than the students who do not participate in the learning community. It also reveals that high school participants display notable interest in the engineering design process.
Integrating Undergraduate Research into Engineering: A Communications Approach to Holistic Education
Authors: Thompson Nancy S. , Alford Elisabeth M. , Liao Changyong , Johnson Robert , Matthews Michael A. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis paper describes the Research Communications Studio (RCS), a structured approach for teaching undergraduate researchers to do authentic written, oral, and graphical communications tasks while they are learning to do research. In the RCS, small groups of undergraduate researchers meet weekly with a communications faculty member, an engineering graduate student mentor, and a communications graduate research assistant. The project is built upon social constructivist theory that recognizes the interdependence between communication, cognitive development, and metacognition. It investigates knowledge construction within a small‐group context of distributed cognition, the concept that each group member's expertise is available to other group members. Data from surveys indicate that engineering faculty members, graduate student mentors, and undergraduate participants were very positive about the progress participants made in cognitive development and communications abilities. Analysis of participants' reflective writings shows the development of metacognitive abilities necessary for self‐directed, life‐long learning.
The Use of Discriminant Analysis to Investigate the Influence of Non‐Cognitive Factors on Engineering School Persistence
Authors: Burtner Joan 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis study identified post‐enrollment attitudes and perceptions that influence students' decisions to remain in an engineering curriculum. Non‐cognitive factors including expectations and perception of the engineering profession, assessment of personal attributes, and subject‐matter confidence were investigated. Discriminant analysis functions were developed to distinguish among three mutually exclusive groups: those who remained in the engineering school, those who remained at the university in a different school, and those who left the university altogether. Self‐reported confidence in college‐level math/science ability and the belief that an engineering degree enhances career security at a respectable salary were found to be significant predictors of both short‐term and long‐term persistence in engineering.
Developing On‐Line Homework for Introductory Thermodynamics
Authors: Taraban Roman , Anderson Edward E. , Hayes Matthew W. , Sharma M.P. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractHomework in engineering courses is used to develop problem‐solving skills and to provide students with the practice they need in order to achieve mastery of essential concepts and procedures in their disciplines. We describe homework exercises that were developed for introductory thermodynamics and delivered to students via the Internet. Records of student use were created automatically by the computer server. The data revealed students' patterns of software usage in the context of the course; additional data from course instructors revealed the extent to which completing the on‐line homework improved students' in‐class test performance.
Engineering Students' Perceptions of and Attitudes Towards Cheating
Authors: Carpenter Donald D. , Harding Trevor S. , Finelli Cynthia J. , Montgomery Susan M. , Passow Honor J. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractAcademic dishonesty has become a serious problem at institutions of higher learning. This is particularly true in engineering where, according to previous research, engineering undergraduates are among the most likely to cheat in college. To investigate this concern, the authors embarked on a research project whose goal was to develop a better understanding of what students and faculty perceive as cheating and to use this knowledge to help instructors and institutions increase the level of academic integrity among students. The primary instrument for this project was a seven‐page survey that was administered to 643 engineering and pre‐engineering undergraduates at eleven institutions, ranging from community colleges to large research universities. This manuscript provides an overview of the descriptive data from the PACES‐1 Survey organized around the following questions: what is student cheating and how often does it occur; why do students cheat; and what methods can be used to reduce or stop cheating?
Task Relevant Information in Engineering Problem Solving
Authors: Kumsaikaew Piyamart , Jackman John , Dark Veronica J. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIdentifying task relevant information in an engineering problem solving environment is a critical step in the problem solving process. An experiment was conducted in which engineering students identified task relevant information in a set of engineering problems that differed in terms of information density and relevant information distribution. Signal Detection Theory and cluster analysis were used to analyze the results. As expected, students with more expertise were more successful in identifying task relevant information. Other results suggest that the structure of problem descriptions can affect student performance.
A Topical Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Curricula
Authors: Jarosz Jeffrey P. , Busch‐Vishniac Ilene J. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis study has dissected the current curriculum in mechanical engineering into a list of required topics. The list indicates what material is currently considered to be the essential body of knowledge for graduating mechanical engineering students. It also provides a measure of the extent to which curricula differ from institution to institution. There is similarity in core material required among the institutions which we considered, but each one adds distinct requirements which give it an individual flavor or emphasis. The list reveals some of the differences among degree programs. While institutions have adjusted curricula to conform to the ABET engineering criteria, how they fulfill the “technical skill” outcomes is clearer than how they fulfill the “professional skill” outcomes. This survey shows that dissecting a degree program into required topics is useful for curriculum reform, as it provides a baseline to study the curriculum at a level more finely grained than a course.
Development of Engineering Education as a Rigorous Discipline: A Study of the Publication Patterns of Four Coalitions
Authors: Borrego Maura 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA combination of publication analysis and faculty interviews was employed to study four NSF‐sponsored engineering education coalitions as a case study of the recent history of engineering education. Current calls within the engineering education community for increased rigor can be understood in terms of the ways similar disciplines have emerged. In science education, for example, time was needed to develop consensus on important research questions, accepted methods, and standards of rigor. The abstracts of 700 publications listed on active engineering education coalition Web sites were analyzed over time by type of intervention, population of focus, and product. A picture consistent with other reports of coalition contributions emerged. Early focus was on freshman courses and integrating across disciplines, with teamwork, design and other active learning activities. Students and course improvement remained the dominant focus, but efforts increased over time in assessment, faculty development, and research. Interviews with coalition leaders and leading authors supplement the publication analysis and describe how coalition work helped lay the foundation for more rigorous engineering education research.
Diversifying the U.S. Engineering Workforce: A New Model
Authors: Watson Karan , Froyd Jeffrey 
Published: January 2013

AbstractExisting approaches to increasing diversity conceptually pose the problem as a leaky pipeline. Although the pipeline model has supported several types of interventions, the mental model oversimplifies complexities of the underlying processes, focuses interventions at points of unwanted leakage, and suggests that leaks need to be plugged instead of systems renewed. Analysis suggests that even if leak‐stopping interventions could be multiplied through significant increases in funding, they would remain insufficient to attain the goal of having student enrollments in engineering substantially reflect the demographics of the general population. Therefore, a new analogical model, which emphasizes flows of personal and interpersonal energy within the educational system, is offered to guide future interventions. Finally, suggestions for applying the model to increase diversity in engineering are proposed.
Student Perceptions of High Course Workloads are Not Associated with Poor Student Evaluations of Instructor Performance
Authors: Dee Kay C. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMany engineering faculty believe that when students perceive a course to have a high workload, students will rate the course and the performance of the course instructor poorly. This belief can be particularly worrying to engineering faculty since engineering courses are often perceived as uniquely demanding. The present investigation demonstrated that student ratings of workload and of overall instructor performance in engineering courses were not correlated (e.g., Spearman's rho = 0.068) in data sets from either of two institutions. In contrast, a number of evaluation items were strongly correlated (Spearman's rho = 0.7 to 0.899) with ratings of overall instructor performance across engineering, mathematics and science, and humanities courses. The results of the present study provide motivation for faculty seeking to improve their teaching and course evaluations to focus on teaching methods, organization/preparation, and interactions with students, rather than course workload.
Promoting Advanced Writing Skills in an Upper‐Level Engineering Class
Authors: Yalvac B. , Smith H.D. , Troy J.B. , Hirsch P. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis paper summarizes the design and evaluation of an instructional approach aimed at improving the writing skills of a group of undergraduate engineering students. We sought to determine whether student performance in difficult writing skills such as argumentation and synthesis could be improved by integrating a single writing exercise into an upper level engineering course. In designing the exercise, we relied heavily on recommendations for best practices from the learning science community, specifically those codified in the National Academy text How People Learn [1]. We found reliable improvement in student performance in many of the areas targeted, demonstrating that the approach taken was effective. Since we modified the exercise a few times before meeting our objectives for student learning, we could compare the effectiveness of different implementations of our approach. Our success and failures provide guidance for others seeking to improve the competence of engineering undergraduates in writing.
An Intervention to Address Gender Issues in a Course on Design, Engineering, and Technology for Science Educators
Authors: Baker Dale , Krause Stephen , Yaşar şenay , Roberts Chell , Robinson‐Kurpius Sharon 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA course on design, engineering, and technology based on Bandura's theory of self‐efficacy was taught to nine science education graduate students who were also practicing teachers. The interpretive analysis method was used to code and analyze qualitative data from focus groups, weekly reflections on classes and readings, and pre‐, post‐, and delayed‐post course questions. The improvement in tinkering and technical self‐efficacies for five males was limited because of initially higher self‐efficacies while that for four females was moderate to high, especially when working in same‐sex teams in a non‐competitive environment. All students also increased their understanding of the societal relevance of engineering and their ability to transfer engineering concepts to pre‐college classrooms. Implementing the principles employed in this intervention in pre‐college science and university engineering classrooms could help recruit students into engineering as well as help retain both male and female undergraduate engineering students.
Achieving Parity of the Sexes at the Undergraduate Level: A Study of Success
Authors: Murphy Teri J. , Shehab Randa L. , Reed‐Rhoads Teri , Foor Cindy E. , Harris Betty J. , Trytten Deborah A. , Walden Susan E. , Besterfield‐Sacre Mary , Hallbeck M. Susan , Moor William C. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMost research about women in engineering focuses on reasons for their under‐representation. In contrast, we capitalized on an opportunity to study success: the School of Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma had organically achieved parity of the sexes at the undergraduate level. To investigate this success, we adopted an ethnographic perspective, interviewing 185 students who represented four fields and four institutions as well as 12 faculty in Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. These data pointed to a combination of aspects of the discipline and the department culture as explanatory variables. Emerging from the data was a third explanatory variable: a high number of students, disproportionately many women, who relocated into Industrial Engineering from another major, underscoring the impact of broad recruiting activities. This paper emphasizes ideas that other departments can consider adapting to their own efforts to increase diversity.
Excellence in Engineering Education: Views of Undergraduate Engineering Students
Authors: Pomales‐García Cristina , Liu Yili 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to understand the views and perceptions of engineering undergraduate students on engineering education. The method of content analysis was used to analyze the language used by engineering undergraduate students, and to extract the underlying common factors or perceived characteristics of “Excellence in Engineering Education.” These common factors were then used to identify and compare the similarities and differences in views between engineering students and perspectives from three types of stakeholders in the field. Forty‐seven undergraduate engineering students (17 females and 30 males) participated voluntarily in this study to answer four individual questions and ten group questions. The results showed that students strongly emphasized the importance of their own roles in the educational system and the value of instructional technology and real work examples in enhancing the quality of engineering education. The implications of the research results on excellence in engineering education are discussed.
A Psychometric Study of the Index of Learning Styles©
Authors: Litzinger Thomas A. , Lee Sang Ha , Wise John C. , Felder Richard M. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractA study was conducted on the Felder‐Soloman Index of Learning Styles© (ILS) to assess reliability, factor structure, and construct validity as well to determine whether changing its dichotomous response scale to a five‐option response scale would improve reliability and validity. Data collected in this study had internal consistency reliability ranging from 0.55 to 0.77 across the four learning style scales of the ILS. Factor analysis revealed that multiple factors were present within three of the learning style scales, which correspond to known aspects of the scale definitions. The factor analysis and direct feedback from students on whether they felt their scores accurately represented their learning preferences provide evidence of construct validity for the ILS. Changing the response scale improved reliability, but it did not change the factor structure substantially nor did it affect the strength of the evidence for construct validity based on student feedback.
A Paradigm for Assessing Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge in Engineering Students
Authors: Taraban Roman , DeFinis Alli , Brown Ashlee G. , Anderson Edward E. , Sharma M. P. 
Published: January 2013

AbstractConceptual and procedural knowledge are two mutually‐supportive factors associated with the development of engineering skill. The present study extends previous work on undergraduate learning in engineering to provide further validation for an assessment paradigm capable of quantifying engineering students' conceptual and problem‐solving knowledge. Eight students who were enrolled in an introductory thermodynamics course and four who were enrolled in the course sequel provided verbal protocol data as they used instructional software. They were compared to existing data from a cohort of eleven science and engineering majors who had not taken thermodynamics. The results replicated earlier findings showing more cognitive activity on computer screens requiring overt user interaction compared to text‐based screens. The data also indicated that higher‐ versus lower‐performing students, based on course grades, engaged in more higher‐order cognitive processing. There was no evidence that students gained deeper cognitive processing as they advanced through the engineering curriculum.
Engineering Design Processes: A Comparison of Students and Expert Practitioners
Authors: Atman Cynthia J. , Adams Robin S. , Cardella Monica E. , Turns Jennifer , Mosborg Susan , Saleem Jason 
Published: January 2013

AbstractIn this paper we report on an in‐depth study of engineering design processes. Specifically, we extend our previous research on engineering student design processes to compare the design behavior of students and expert engineers. Nineteen experts from a variety of engineering disciplines and industries each designed a playground in a lab setting, and gave verbal reports of their thoughts during the design task. Measures of their design processes and solution quality were compared to pre‐existing data from 26 freshmen and 24 seniors. The experts spent significantly more time on the task overall and in each stage of engineering design, including significantly more time problem scoping. The experts also gathered significantly more information covering more categories. Results support the argument that problem scoping and information gathering are major differences between advanced engineers and students, and important competencies for engineering students to develop. Timeline representations of the expert designers' processes illustrate characteristic distinctions we found and may help students gain insights into their own design processes.
Getting the Numbers Right: International Engineering Education in the United States, China, and India
Authors: Gereffi Gary , Wadhwa Vivek , Rissing Ben , Ong Ryan 
Published: January 2013

AbstractThis article challenges the commonly cited statistics for engineering graduates in the United States, China, and India. Our research shows that the gap between the number of engineers and related technology specialists produced in the United States versus those in India and China is smaller than previously reported, and the United States remains a leading source of high‐quality global engineering talent. Furthermore, engineering graduates in China and India face the prospect of substantial unemployment, despite high corporate demand for their services; this raises questions about the quality of recent graduates. The United States, however, also confronts problems in its continued ability to attract and retain top engineering talent from abroad because of visa uncertainties and growing economic opportunities in their countries of origin. We argue that the key issue in engineering education should be the quality of graduates, not just the quantity, since quality factors have the biggest impact on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Factors Associated With Persistence in Science and Engineering Majors: An Exploratory Study Using Classification Trees and Random Forests
Authors: Mendez Guillermo , Buskirk Trent D. , Lohr Sharon , Haag Susans 
Published: January 2013

AbstractMany students who start college intending to major in science or engineering do not graduate, or decide to switch to a non‐science major. We used the recently developed statistical method of random forests to obtain a new perspective of variables that are associated with persistence to a science or engineering degree. We describe classification trees and random forests and contrast the results from these methods with results from the more commonly used method of logistic regression. Among the variables available in Arizona State University data, high school and freshman year GPAs have highest importance for predicting persistence; other variables such as number of science and engineering courses taken freshman year are important for subgroups of the student population. The method used in this study could be employed in other settings to identify faculty practices, teaching methods, and other factors that are associated with high persistence to a degree.