ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Reformulating General Engineering and Biological Systems Engineering Programs at Virginia Tech
Author: Lohani, Vinod K.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Engineering Education,Educational Change,Spiral Curriculum,Curriculum Development,College Freshmen,Biological Sciences,Prior Learning,Misconceptions,Holistic Approach,Learning Modules,Interdisciplinary Approach,Curriculum Design,Student Educational Objectives,Concept Mapping,Outcomes of Education,Knowledge Level,Ethics,Hands on Science,Learning Activities,Programming

In 2004, a group of engineering and education faculty at Virginia Tech received a major curriculum reform and engineering education research grant under the department-level reform (DLR) program of the NSF. This DLR project laid the foundation of sponsored research in engineering education in the Department of Engineering Education. The DLR investigators adopted a spiral curriculum approach to reformulate curricula in general engineering (also called freshman engineering) and bioprocess engineering programs. The spiral curriculum concept recognizes the inherently recursive nature of learning. During this recursive process, students elaborate and strengthen earlier learning, correct misconceptions, develop a more holistic picture of their discipline, and become increasingly self-sufficient as learners. This paper documents the step-wise process that we developed and implemented to rewrite the bioprocess engineering curriculum using spiral theory. Specific examples of learning modules from bioprocess and general engineering are discussed. Assessment approaches and results are presented to highlight the usefulness of such efforts. Adaptation of our spiral curriculum efforts by faculty in other engineering programs to develop a nanotechnology option and ethics spirals is described. We describe lessons learned in three key words: (i) &quot;Patience&quot;--Reformulation results may take time to show up, (ii) &quot;Diligence&quot;--Assessment results are powerful, take these seriously, and (iii) &quot;Awareness&quot;--Students' perceptions may be difficult to interpret. Finally, we discuss the challenges encountered in our unique curriculum reform and engineering education research project and also include a few funding related recommendations for the NSF.
Enhancing the Quality of Engineering Graduate Teaching Assistants through Multidimensional Feedback
Author: Cox, Monica F.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Engineering Education,Graduate Students,Teaching Assistants,Feedback (Response),Educational Quality,Teaching Methods,Student Evaluation,Educational Practices,Classroom Observation Techniques,Learning Laboratories,Focus Groups,Student Surveys,Undergraduate Students

This paper describes the Global Real-time Assessment Teaching Tool for Teaching Enhancement (G-RATE). It is a tool framed around the elements of Bransford, Brown, and Cocking's (1999) &quot;How People Learn&quot; framework and informed from data collected via laboratory observations; focus group interviews with engineering supervisors and graduate teaching assistants; and undergraduate student surveys. The G-RATE allows various stakeholders (i.e., classroom observers, administrators, graduate teaching assistants, undergraduates, and students) to provide feedback about the pedagogical practices of graduate teaching assistants within a laboratory session. Future applications of the tool include the creation of pedagogical profiles for instructors and the dissemination of the tool across multiple educational environments.
An Innovative Project and Design Oriented Electrical Engineering Curriculum at the University of North Texas
Author: Garcia, Oscar N.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Engineering Education,Electrical Occupations,Engineering,Departments,Universities,Educational Innovation,Design,Curriculum Development,Global Approach,Entrepreneurship,Program Descriptions,Ethics,Creativity,Lifelong Learning,Program Effectiveness,Student Educational Objectives,Cognitive Mapping,Cognitive Style,Active Learning,Hands on Science,Problem Solving,Awards,Technology Uses in Education,Partnerships in Education,Pretests Posttests,Transfer of Training,Sustainability,Student Projects

We analyze and study the beginning of a new Electrical Engineering Department, supported by an NSF Departmental Level Reform award, within a new College of Engineering in the 21st Century and also describe the academic approach and influences of an innovative cognitive-based approach to curriculum development. In addition, the approach taken utilized open-ended projects distributed over the four years as pedagogical and motivational tools. Furthermore, the curriculum encourages a global-minded entrepreneurship approach as well as reports and presentations associated with learning activities. The Electrical Engineering program begins by emphasizing the importance of recognizing how one learns and what one's preferred styles are, as well as the convergence and reinforcement of the classical domains of learning in active learning. In teaching this program we draw from affective, psychomotor, and cognitive self awareness to emphasize ethics, professionalism and engineering practices, creativity, acceptance of globalization, and consideration of social and environmental issues as part of a life-long learning career. Students graduating from this program are all well-received by industry and graduate programs.
Development and Application of a Systems Engineering Framework to Support Online Course Design and Delivery
Author: Bozkurt, Ipek
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Engineering Education,Online Courses,Curriculum Design,Program Implementation,Technology Uses in Education,Educational Technology,Holistic Approach,Program Effectiveness,Integrated Learning Systems,Student Surveys,Systems Approach,Stakeholders,Needs Assessment,Graduate Students

This paper develops a systems engineering-based framework to assist in the design of an online engineering course. Specifically, the purpose of the framework is to provide a structured methodology for the design, development and delivery of a fully online course, either brand new or modified from an existing face-to-face course. The main strength Systems Engineering provides to online course design and delivery is the holistic worldview and the life-cycle approach. Adopting the life-cycle approach ensures a smooth transition for faculty members who are in the process of modifying their curriculum to meet student and industry demands. The effectiveness and function of the framework is discussed with respect to results from a brand new fully online course that was designed and developed for the Engineering Management Program at University of Houston Clear Lake, including a survey of students on Blackboard efficiency. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications of the framework for online education and future research.
A Project-Based Engineering and Leadership Workshop for High School Students
Author: Ryder, Linda Sue
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Summer Programs,Outreach Programs,Workshops,High School Students,Student Projects,Engineering Education,Leadership Training,Student Leadership,Student Interests,Design,Robotics,STEM Education,Energy,Teamwork,Questionnaires,Student Attitudes,Program Effectiveness,Barriers,Communication Skills,Majors (Students),Decision Making,Attitude Change,Postsecondary Education,Higher Education

Summer outreach programs provide pre-college participants an introduction to college life and exposure to engineering in an effort to raise the level of interest and bring more students into engineering fields. The Junior Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (JEMS) program is a project-based summer workshop in which teams of high school students complete a design project on a topic such as robotics, rockets, or alternative fuel vehicles. The summer workshop includes courses that integrate learning about science, mathematics, engineering, technology, leadership, and teamwork within the context of the design project. Students also participate in engineering laboratory tours in order to expose them to a variety of engineering disciplines and possible careers. In this article we describe the program structure and fi ndings from ten years of student questionnaires.
Adoption of Technological Innovations: A Case Study of the ASSESS Website
Author: Brooks, Sarah
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Technological Advancement,Adoption (Ideas),Engineering Education,Computer Software Evaluation,Usability,Program Evaluation,Alternative Assessment,Innovation,Computer System Design,Case Studies,Web Sites,Semi Structured Interviews,Expectation,Access to Information,Technology Integration,Research Tools,Scoring Rubrics,Online Catalogs,Database Design,Higher Education

In engineering education, assessment instruments are often developed to evaluate programs and projects. Unfortunately, these innovations are not always adopted by intended audiences. Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations (DI) Theory provides a framework to analyze characteristics of an innovation that will affect adoption. The Appraisal System for Superior Engineering Education Evaluation-instrument Sharing and Scholarship (ASSESS) is a user-driven, web-based catalogue of assessment instrument information. The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of ASSESS' adoptability as well as to characterize lessons learned and how to apply them to other technical innovations. Interviews with potential users were used to explore user perspectives of ASSESS. It was found that the innovation's &quot;Use as an Alternative&quot; and its &quot;Functionality of Design&quot; were the primary categories important for adoption. These categories relate to the &quot;Relative Advantage&quot;, &quot;Complexity&quot;, and &quot;Compatibility&quot; DI characteristics. Focusing on these categories and DI characteristics is recommended for developers of engineering education technological innovations.
An Interactive Virtual Environment for Learning Differential Leveling: Development and Initial Findings
Author: Dib, Hazar
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Simulated Environment,Educational Technology,Technology Uses in Education,Undergraduate Students,College Faculty,Teaching Methods,Instructional Effectiveness,Formative Evaluation,Interactive Video,Foreign Countries,Measurement Techniques,Qualitative Research,Statistical Analysis,Student Attitudes,Summative Evaluation

We describe the design, development and initial evaluation of an interactive virtual environment whose objective is to help undergraduate students learn and review the concepts and practices of differential leveling. The virtual environment, which includes realistic terrains and leveling instruments that look, operate, and produce results comparable to the physical ones, is not meant to replace field practice completely. It will be integrated in surveying courses as a preparation, revision and assessment tool. Initial findings from a formative study with sixty (60) undergraduate students and three (3) faculty show that the virtual environment is usable, engaging and useful for teaching/learning differential leveling. Results of a summative study with forty-eight (48) undergraduate students show that using the virtual environment led to an increase in subjects' declarative knowledge by 28% and procedural knowledge by 30%. Compared to traditional practice in the field, interacting with the virtual environment led to significantly higher declarative knowledge gains; differences in procedural knowledge gains (e.g. the ability to perform the leveling exercise in the field) between students who used the virtual environment versus students who had practiced in the field were not significant.
Building an Evaluation Strategy for an Integrated Curriculum in Chemical Engineering
Author: McCarthy, Joseph J.
Date: 2011-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Chemical Engineering,Engineering Education,Undergraduate Students,Integrated Curriculum,Curriculum Evaluation,Instructional Effectiveness,Systems Approach,Concept Mapping,Concept Formation,Block Scheduling,Delphi Technique,Misconceptions,Student Attitudes

Increasing knowledge integration has gained wide-spread support as an important goal in engineering education. The Chemical Engineering Pillars curriculum at the University of Pittsburgh, unique for its use of block scheduling, is one of the first four-year, integrated curricula in engineering, and is specifically designed to facilitate knowledge integration. As this curriculum is one of the first of its kind, conventional assessment strategies are not necessarily well suited for evaluation. In fact, our assessment strategy--by necessity--includes two separate measurement goals. First, we focus on measuring the effectiveness of the new curricular structure for enhancing the ability of students to engage in systems thinking (knowledge integration). At the same time, we specifically assess the impact of this type of curriculum on students' performance in conceptualizing (chemical) engineering principles. The goal of this paper is to outline an overall assessment structure suitable for measuring the efficacy of multi-year integrated curricula. Specifically, we describe the currently available assessment vehicles under use as well as discuss the methods -- and results -- for building the additional assessment materials required for a thorough vetting of this type of (chemical engineering) curriculum. While our specific assessment is still ongoing, we include a portion of the results to date and discuss their implications for the portability of integrated curricula in chemical engineering.
Informal Engineering Education after School: Employing the Studio Model for Motivation and Identification in STEM Domains
Author: Schnittka, Christine G.
Date: 2012-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Informal Education,Engineering Education,STEM Education,Design,Middle School Students,Student Attitudes,Student Motivation,Student Empowerment,Caring,Identification (Psychology),Beliefs,Learning Activities,Peer Groups,College Students,Program Descriptions,Cooperative Learning,Questionnaires,Mixed Methods Research,Likert Scales,Grounded Theory

Studio STEM adopts a design studio model to provide middle school youth with the opportunity to work with peers and college student facilitators after school in a relaxed, non-threatening, collaborative environment. Two informal learning educators guided overall instruction and pacing, but youth directed their own step-by-step activities by appropriating available resources based on their understanding of presented science and engineering concepts and design problems. We investigated how Studio STEM impacted youth's motivation, beliefs, and identification with engineering, science, and computer science. We documented that the Studio STEM environment supported students' empowerment, highlighted the usefulness of the content, allowed students to feel successful, interested students, and provided the caring needed by students to increase their identification with engineering, science, and computer science. The increases in these beliefs also led to the high &quot;effort&quot; that youth dedicated to Studio STEM, and the claims that youth would &quot;choose&quot; to take a course in these subject areas even if they were not required to do so.
A Tutorial Design Process Applied to an Introductory Materials Engineering Course
Author: Rosenblatt, Rebecca
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Engineering Education,Science Education,College Students,Introductory Courses,Tutorial Programs,Outcomes of Education,Design,Graphs,Visual Aids,Teaching Methods,Program Implementation,Student Educational Objectives,Teaching Assistants,Data Collection,Difficulty Level,Scientific Concepts,Science Process Skills,Statistical Analysis,Interviews,Multiple Choice Tests,Homework,Observation

We apply a &quot;tutorial design process&quot;, which has proven to be successful for a number of physics topics, to design curricular materials or &quot;tutorials&quot; aimed at improving student understanding of important concepts in a university-level introductory materials science and engineering course. The process involves the identification of instructional goals, the identification of specific student difficulties, the iterative design of interactive tutorials, the implementation of interactive group-work recitations, and assessment. The project, which involved over 1000 students, included extensive interviewing, testing, and iterative classroom implementation over a period of three years. Here we report on some of the identified student difficulties, several of the tutorials designed to address the difficulties, and the results of the implementation. The project has yielded 9 field-tested 48 minute tutorials in which students work together in small groups on the tutorials in the presence of teaching assistants who assess and facilitate student progress. To determine the learning outcome, we analyzed final exam scores and found that, even accounting for the fact that slightly &quot;better&quot; students tended to attend recitations more often, there was a significant valued-added effect of the recitations on final exam performance. These results suggest that these recitation methods and materials are effective in teaching students the difficult and important conceptual materials which they were designed to address. Furthermore, since this process was initially designed for physics courses yet is also successful for an engineering course, this implies that this process may be successful for a wide range of STEM courses.
A Case Study of a Co-Instructed Multidisciplinary Senior Capstone Project in Sustainability
Author: Rhee, Jinny
Date: 2014-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Case Studies,Interdisciplinary Approach,Sustainability,Engineering Education,Teaching Methods,College Seniors,Control Groups,Pretests Posttests,Online Surveys,Focus Groups,Correlation,Student Projects,Curriculum,Creativity,College Faculty,Cognitive Style,Preferences,Student Attitudes,Instructional Effectiveness,Industrial Arts,Political Science,Business Administration Education,Mixed Methods Research

As societal challenges involving sustainable development increase, the need to effectively integrate this inherently multidisciplinary topic into existing curricula becomes more pressing. Multidisciplinary, team-taught, project-based instruction has shown effectiveness in teaching teamwork, communication, and life-long learning skills, and appreciation for other disciplines. Unfortunately, this instruction mode has not been widely adopted, largely due to its resource-intensiveness. Our proposed co-instruction model of multidisciplinary senior project administration was tested to see if it could effectively teach sustainability topics and duplicate the known benefits of team-taught instruction, while overcoming its resource-intensiveness. A case study of a co-instructed senior project was undertaken with students and faculty from electrical and mechanical engineering, business, political science, and industrial design. The participating students were compared to the control group, i.e. students who chose to complete a traditional disciplinary senior project instead. Extensive assessment was performed with pre/post quizzes, online surveys, focus groups, and course deliverables. The multidisciplinary projects outperformed traditional senior projects in 4 out of the 5 participating courses. However, the students in the multidisciplinary project rated their satisfaction with the experience lower on average than the control group. A strong, positive correlation between students' project satisfaction and rating of other instruction aspects (0.50 &lt; r &lt; 0.7, p &lt; 0.01) was discovered, which has implications for all project-based instruction. Participating faculty generally found the process illuminating and engaged in scholarship and creative endeavors as a result.
A Survey to Capture Needs Assessment for Graduate Teaching Assistant Training
Author: Sohoni, Sohum
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Needs Assessment,Graduate Students,Teaching Assistants,Professional Development,Training,Surveys,Likert Scales,Attitude Measures,Student Attitudes,Teacher Attitudes,Competence,Factor Analysis,Reliability,Construct Validity,Teacher Motivation,Multivariate Analysis

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) often teach the majority of contact hours within engineering with little pedagogical knowledge. To plan efficient professional development for GTAs to address this, we created and administered a survey to measure the perceived importance of GTAs' roles and responsibilities. GTAs, faculty, and students rated the importance of each of 24 GTA roles and responsibilities on a 5-point Likert scale and the perceived competence of GTAs on these 24 items. We used exploratory factor analysis and reliability tests to ascertain construct validity and reliability. We conceptualized the resulting four factors (which accounted for 54% of the total variance) as the following: 1) clear communication, 2) student management, 3) preparation for feedback and assessment, and 4) course management/policy knowledge. Correlations with an empirically-validated teacher motivation measure indicated the four factors were positively related to GTAs' intrinsic motivation. Comparisons among scores for GTAs, faculty, and students revealed many similarities and several significant differences among these groups, especially in ratings of competence between GTAs and others.
A Product Analysis Method and Its Staging to Develop Redesign Competences
Author: Hansen, Claus Thorp
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Industry,Design,Engineering Education,Evaluation Methods,Production Techniques,Formative Evaluation,Curriculum Design,Postsecondary Education,Teaching Methods,Student Attitudes,Observation,Interviews,Foreign Countries,College Students

Most product development work in industrial practice is incremental, i.e., the company has had a product in production and on the market for some time, and now time has come to design an upgraded variant. This type of redesign project requires that the engineering designers have competences to carry through an analysis of the existing product encompassing both a user-oriented and a technical perspective, as well as to synthesize solution proposals for the upgraded variant. In the Product Analysis and Redesign course module we have developed a product analysis method and a staging of it, which have proven productive. In this paper we present the product analysis method and its staging, and we reflect on the students' application of it. We conclude that the method is a valid contribution to develop students' redesign competences.