Experimental Vehicles Program Aides in Innovative Hands-On Learning Experiences

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Foroudastan ◽  
Brigette Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Student Development ◽  
Real World ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Green Energy ◽  
Solar Panels ◽  
Skill Sets ◽  
Formula Sae ◽  
Hands On ◽  
International Industry ◽  
Hands On Learning

The Experimental Vehicles Program (EVP) was created in 2004 as an umbrella program for five different undergraduate experimental vehicle design teams. These projects consist of the Solar Vehicle, Moonbuggy, Baja SAE, Formula SAE, and Solar Boat. The goal of the EVP is to foster undergraduate student development through hands-on construction of experimental vehicles with the guidance of faculty mentors and partnerships with both national and international industry leaders. Each EVP project performs a vital function in the professional development of students. The projects provide a forgiving environment in which students can test their classroom knowledge in a real-world setting and learn important skills such as leadership, effective communication, and working as a team member. Furthermore, the students in the EVP develop highly versatile and qualified skill sets that will allow them to fill various positions within the workplace. In the past 90% of EVP graduates have been able to obtain highly regarded national and international positions upon graduation due to their real-world hands-on experience gained throughout their involvement in the EVP. Each year the EVP sponsors up to sixty interdisciplinary students that come together in peer-led teams to combine and expand upon their classroom knowledge in building innovative vehicles. The successes of the MTSU EVP have been recognized by becoming the national model for hands-on engineering education; helping engineering students take classroom knowledge and apply it to real-world situations. Students work in teams to annually design, construct, and test novel vehicle designs for participation in national and international competitions. Due to the competitive nature of each of the events, students must use cutting edge technology and design methods in order to create the best entries possible. Often times this means creating partnerships with industry leaders who help mentor the students from the design conception, the fabrication, through the manufacturing of each vehicle. These partnerships benefit both the students and the companies; students are able to create real-world contacts and gain a working knowledge of the industry that they cannot learn in the classroom. Furthermore, the students are able to use the contacts to garner equipment like solar panels and wheels. Likewise, the companies are able to receive recognition at national and international competition as program sponsors are advertised on the competition vehicles. Moreover the industries are able to build relationships with future employees who have real-world experience and who have become intimately involved with specialized technology such as “green energy”.

Enhancing Engineering Learning Experience at UTB by Freshmen iHOP

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazmul Islam
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Real World ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Senior Design ◽  
Team Selection ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Lower Division

Most of the engineering courses focus more on theory and very little on hands-on, project-based learning in the classroom. Integration of real-world engineering problems and applications in lower division engineering courses will produce engineering students, who will be technically sound and be able to execute and manage real-world projects, when they will do senior design projects in their final year of engineering study. To overcome the engineering design challenges we have developed iHOP (Ingenieŕia Hands on Project) and integrate it with our lower division engineering courses. iHOP has been developed to emphasis the design component at the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) Engineering Physics curriculum and the project is now an integral part of Introduction to Engineering class. The iHOP project is one that is challenging, fun, requires teamwork, associated with the engineering material being studied, low cost, and doable in a limited amount of time. The experience from iHOP project motivates our freshman students to choose a better senior design project in senior year of their college career. The objectives of the iHOP projects are — to have students develop teamwork skills, and to teach students basic engineering design concepts in a complementary format to the traditional lecture. Various techniques related to team selection, encouraging teamwork, incorporation of engineering topics, keeping costs down, project results presentations, and gathering feedback from students will also be presented in this paper. Integrating iHOP Project with Introduction to Engineering class helped us to improve our retention effort in the engineering department.

Cooperation and Consumerism: Lessons Learned at a Kindergarten Mini Mall

2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-183
Author(s):  
Robin R. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Team Member ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Real World Application ◽  
Boa Constrictor ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
Exciting Project

Sophie drapes a six-foot-long boa constrictor over her shoulders and smiles widely, pleased with her new purchase from Jimmy, the shopkeeper at the toy store. Zoë helps Joseph count out a nickel and three pennies to buy a coveted Santa Bear, and Morgan is excited about the slightly worn plaid tie he bought for his dad. These images of children engaged in hands-on learning come to mind when I think about the kindergarten mini-mall: an interactive, real-world application of many skills and concepts. Students work cooperatively to create storefronts, collect and classify items to sell at their stores, and use money as both customers and shopkeepers to make purchases. My team member, Lou Toscano, and I look forward to the start of this exciting project each spring.

Sustainable and Renewable Energy Undergraduate Research

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Radian Belu ◽  
Richard Chiou ◽  
Tzu-Liang (Bill) Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Green Energy ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Experimental Result ◽  
Original Research ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Hands On

Energy is a continuous driving force for the social and technological prospective developments and a vital and essential ingredient for all human transactions. The world is facing an energy “crisis”, due to limited fossil fuel resources, growing energy demand and population. All these facts led to and increased interests in renewable energy sources and green manufacturing. Equipping engineering students with the skills and knowledge required to be successful global engineers in the 21st century is one of the primary objectives of academic educators. Enabling students to practice self-directed learning, find design solutions that are sustainable, and helping them recognize that they are part of a global community are just of few of our educational goals. Project-based learning provides the contextual environment making learning exciting and relevant, providing opportunities to explore technical problems from systems-level perspectives, with an appreciation for the inter-connectedness of science principles. The quest for knowledge is the driving force behind education no matter what field is being studied. This means a lot of reading from textbooks, completion of assignments, exams, lectures but quite little of this work involves original research. Active research experience is one of the most effective ways to attract and retain talented undergraduates in science and engineering. At our institutions, we are regularly modifying curriculum content to embrace sustainability and green energy concepts in learning outcomes. However this crosses over between a numbers of multi-disciplinary, multidimensional study areas that include philosophy and ethics. Consequently a major challenge for us is to encourage engineering students whose primary focus is purely technical to include sustainability and renewable energy topics in their designs. To join into this effort of equipping the future engineers and technologists with renewable energy background, we developed a set of project-based courses related to these topics and include them also in our senior project design course sequence. The main objectives of these curricula changes are to provide students with theoretical and practical knowledge reinforced by hands-on experience. These projects are also good examples of multi-disciplinary cooperation of different engineering disciplines as well as providing valuable hands-on and research experience. This paper presents the changes in the course structure, sample of projects, student survey of the course, as well as plans and expectations for future success. We are also discussing here the project team structure, plan and management, component selection, system simulation, and experimental result.

scholarly journals Enhancing Privacy Education with a Technical Emphasis in IT Curriculum

10.28945/2330 ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 001-017
Author(s):  
Svetlana Peltsverger ◽  
Guangzhi Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Real World ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Technical Approach ◽  
Learning Modules ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Privacy Breach ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
Technical Details ◽  
Technical Solutions

The paper describes the development of four learning modules that focus on technical details of how a person’s privacy might be compromised in real-world scenarios. The paper shows how students benefited from the addition of hands-on learning experiences of privacy and data protection to the existing information technology courses. These learning modules raised students’ awareness of potential breaches of privacy as a user as well as a developer. The demonstration of a privacy breach in action helped students to design, configure, and implement technical solutions to prevent privacy violations. The assessment results demonstrate the strength of the technical approach.

scholarly journals AN OPEN-ENDED DESIGN-BASED LAB EXERCISE FOR A FIRST THERMOFLUIDS COURSE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Hastie ◽  
Jan Haelssig
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Work Skills ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
The Many

The Thermo-Fluid Engineering I course provides all first-semester second-year engineering students at Dalhousie University with a basic introduction to thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. In the past three years, we have used a combination of six traditional laboratory exercises and a short four-week design project to provide students with hands-on learning experiences in this course. In general, these projects have been well-received by students as a welcome break from the many abstract theoretical concepts that are normally associated with introductory thermodynamics. However, two of the continuing challenges with these projects have been the students’ limited engineering design experience and the availability of time to perform a design project. To address these challenges, in the fall 2015 offering of Thermo-Fluid Engineering I, the four-week design project was replaced by an open-ended design-based lab exercise.The open-ended lab exercise required groups of students to develop specific laboratory experiments related to thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, given a limited quantity of resources. While the focus shifted away from a traditional short design project, the open-ended lab exercise continues to allow students to develop their creative thinking, critical analysis, hands-on, communication, and team work skills, which was the primary purpose of the short design projects in the first place.

Industry Based “Hands-On” Undergraduate Vibration Course for Engineering and Engineering Technology Students

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey J. Peter
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Instructional Approach ◽  
Engineering Technology ◽  
Technology Students ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Institute Of Technology ◽  
Real World Problems

Modern technology and manufacturing methods often require engineers who understand the fundamental principles of vibration theory and who are also skilled in vibration applications. Simply processing, remembering and applying the material learned from lectures and laboratory experiments with artificial criteria are inadequate. Hands-on teaching techniques with real-world problems are needed to complete the engineering students’ education. This paper demonstrates how hands-on experiments performed in industry support and increase the students’ understanding of fundamental principles and skill in their applications. Graduates with both knowledge and skill are more competitive in today’s job market. A one-quarter industry-based vibration course was developed and taught with a hands-on segment at the Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering and Technology (MMET) program at Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) - Portland Campus. This novel instructional approach provided students with the opportunity to immediately apply material, learned in class and laboratory, in real-world industry situations with real-world problems. This instructional approach is applicable in many engineering fields and the author found the mechanical vibrations class particularly well suited for this instructional design style. The hands-on approach, grounded in the vibration course curriculum, provided a direct link to the fundamentals of vibration in industry. Student comments are included to demonstrate the value perceived by the students. Although this curriculum experiment involved mechanical engineering technology students, it would benefit mechanical engineering students equally well. In addition, the paper provides a brief description of the industries that participated in this project. Industries were selected because they use vibration based manufacturing, perform extreme testing or design their products to avoid failure due to vibrations.

scholarly journals Integrative Activities for First Year Engineering Students-Fuel Cell Cars as a Linking Project Between Chemistry, Mechatronics Concepts and Programing

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Hulls ◽  
Chris Rennick ◽  
Mary Robinson ◽  
William Melek ◽  
Sanjeev Bedi
Keyword(s):  
Fuel Cell ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Low Voltage ◽  
First Year ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Team Environment ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
The University

In Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, a joint project involving small, inexpensive fuel cells cars was introduced to show how courses in the first term relate to one another. Additionally, the project was designed to provide the students with hands on learning, to give the students a taste of what to expect in later years, and to start incorporating many of the CEAB's graduate attributes at an introductory level. The fuel cell car consists of two low-voltage cells, a low power microcontroller and several sensors mounted on a motorised platform. Students employed concepts from chemistry, programming and mechatronics systems throughout the project, submitting reports at key milestones. during the projet, students needed to make decision in a team environment on which strageties to implement to meet the goals of the project. The project culminated in a final competition and report. Students were surveyed at the start, and end, and the term to measure any changes in attitude with regards to the courses as well as their satisfaction with the project. The project was well recieved by students but significant challenges remain to be solved.

Designing and 3D Printing Lab Equipment for Mechanical Vibrations Course and Laboratory: Work in Progress

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Lewis ◽  
Benjamin Estrada ◽  
Paul Pena ◽  
Martin Garcia ◽  
Ayse Tekes
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Control Laboratory ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Mechanical Vibrations ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
3D Printed ◽  
Support Mechanisms ◽  
Salient Factor ◽  
And Control

Abstract Undergraduate mechanical engineering students struggle in comprehending the fundamentals presented in an introductory level mechanical vibrations course which eventually affects their performance in the posterior courses such as control theory. One salient factor to this is missing the visualization of the concept with hands-on learning since the vibrations and control laboratory course is offered in the following semester. This study presents the design, development of three portable and 3D-printed compliant vibratory mechanisms actuated by a linear motor and their implementation in vibrations course and vibrations and control laboratory. The proposed setups consist of flexible and compliant springs, sliders, and base support. Mechanisms are utilized to demonstrate free and forced vibrations, resonation, and design of a passive isolator. In addition to the 3D-printed, portable lab equipment, we created the Matlab Simscape GUI program of each setup so instructors can demonstrate the fundamentals in the classroom, assign homework, project, in-class activity or design laboratory.

CORD Applied Mathematics: Hands-On Learning in Context

1995 ◽  
Vol 88 (8) ◽  
pp. 690a-707
Author(s):  
Leon S. Pedrotti ◽  
John D. Chamberlain
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Learning In Context ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
Real World Problems ◽  
Analyze Data

My and José are hurrying to their morning mathematic class. They are excited! Today they are scheduled to do a mathematics-laboratory assignment. Twice a week, their classroom turns into a laboratory where they use real measuting equipment—such as a vernier caliper, a carpenter's square, or a stopwatch. They collect and analyze data. They ee just how the mathematics they learn in the classroom helps them solve real-world problems. They really like these assignments.

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