Building Inclusive Undergraduate Teams

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Barr ◽  
Claire Pfeiffer ◽  
Heather Dillon ◽  
Timothy Doughty
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
Project Teams ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Student ◽  
Student Teams ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Second Year

This paper describes a research project to encourage and enhance formation of undergraduate project teams with a focus on inclusivity. The project was developed by a team of undergraduate students working with a pair of engineering faculty. A survey including questions about team study groups was prepared and used to gather data about how engineering student teams are formed and how students perceive teams at different points as they progress through the curriculum. Interviews with junior/senior level students were filmed and the footage was used to build a composite video to serve as motivation to first and second year students. The video was presented in a second year dynamics class and the students were surveyed to understand the effectiveness of the intervention. The survey results indicate that nearly half of all junior/senior engineering students feel ethically charged to include other students in a study group, while only 32% of second year students feel ethically charged. This research is part of a larger effort to develop methods for merging engineering ethics and professionalism in the mechanical engineering curriculum.

scholarly journals SELF PERCEPTIONS OF STUDENTS’ HUMANITIES-BASED SKILLS IN AN ENGINEERING PROGRAM: OVERVIEW OF A LONGITUDINAL STUDY’S FIRST TWO YEARS (2017-2019)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Research University ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
Self Perceptions ◽  
Perceptions Of Students ◽  
Second Year

This paper is a continuation of research from a previous paper presented to CEEA on a three-year longitudinal study aimed at assessing engineering accreditation non-technical skills at a medium sized engineering school at a large research university.  The goal of this longitudinal study is to improve the assessment of these non-technical graduate attributes and test a metric to do so.  The Likert-style survey focuses on engineering students self-perceptions of teamwork, communication skills, engineering ethics, professionalism, and lifelong learning in order to gather quantitative data that can be analyzed for trends. Self-perceptions are the focus of this study because student self-efficacy has been found to be correlated with student success over the long term. The study has been conducted through pre-and post-surveys testing whether engineering students’ self-assessment of their abilities in those areas increased or decreased from year to year.  Currently, the longitudinal study has only just completed data collection for its final year of the three-year study, so the focus of this paper will be adding the results of the second year to the first, which were presented to CEEA last year. This paper analyzes the data gathered in the second year of the longitudinal study and continue the analysis of those results to explore what they can offer to our understanding of non-technical engineering graduate attributes. These findings are not meant to replace other initiatives, but to offer another metric to examine the effectiveness of engineering programs and meeting non-technical accreditation requirements. 

The Impact of Direct Competency Testing (DCT)

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey G. Marchetta ◽  
John I. Hochstein ◽  
Teong E. Tan
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Valuable Component ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Program Accreditation ◽  
Competency Testing ◽  
Faculty Survey ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The Impact

Direct Competency Testing (DCT) was developed and implemented to measure the ability of mechanical engineering students to correctly solve problems in the fundamental areas for each course in the mechanical engineering curriculum. Almost 10 years since the inception of DCT, an effort is made to assess the efficacy of DCT as a measure of student ability. Qualitative and quantitative assessments are conducted to evaluate the impact of administration, documentation, and evaluation of DCT on students and faculty. Student surveys focus on the perception of competency testing as a component of coursework and whether DCT is a reasonable measure of learning. Faculty survey results yield historical data of student DCT and provide perceptions of the effectiveness of DCT in mechanical engineering coursework. The impact of DCT on program accreditation and the connection to EC2000 criteria are examined. Evidence is provided that competency testing helps instructors assess a minimum threshold above which to evaluate the success of their students and that the majority of students believed DCT was a valuable component of an engineering curriculum. Results are presented to support the merit of continuing and further refining the methods for DCT.

Design in the Thermal Fluids Engineering

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sadegh M. Sadeghipour ◽  
Mehdi Asheghi
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Thermal Engineering ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Job Market ◽  
Design Engineers ◽  
Thermal Fluids ◽  
Design Competition

Design is seen as the magic word and being a design engineer is considered to be the key to success in the job market by many of the mechanical engineering students. However, it is always assumed that the mechanical systems not the thermal engineers are indeed design engineers by education and practice. This notion probably stems from the fact that most of the thermal fluid courses in mechanical engineering curriculum seem to have been defined and developed to prepare undergraduate students for going to graduate school rather than the job market. The undergraduate courses usually emphasize on the theories with less attention to the design and application aspects. Perhaps, the responsibility of thermal engineering educators is to correct this notion by emphasizing more on the application and design in the existing courses or alternatively to develop and offer new courses on more applied topics. In this paper, we will report an integrated approach in teaching topics in fins and fin assemblies, which includes class lectures, laboratory experiments, ANSYS simulations and design competition. In this manuscript, we will report on the details of this approach including the procedures, methods, our observations, and the students’ feedbacks.

Development of concept-based physiology lessons for biomedical engineering undergraduate students

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regina K. Nelson ◽  
Naomi C. Chesler ◽  
Kevin T. Strang
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Biomedical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Organ System ◽  
Instructional Model ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Knowledge ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Preparation For Future Learning ◽  
Future Learning

Physiology is a core requirement in the undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum. In one or two introductory physiology courses, engineering students must learn physiology sufficiently to support learning in their subsequent engineering courses and careers. As preparation for future learning, physiology instruction centered on concepts may help engineering students to further develop their physiology and biomedical engineering knowledge. Following the Backward Design instructional model, a series of seven concept-based lessons was developed for undergraduate engineering students. These online lessons were created as prerequisite physiology training to prepare students to engage in a collaborative engineering challenge activity. This work is presented as an example of how to convert standard, organ system-based physiology content into concept-based content lessons.

scholarly journals Self Evaluation for Compliance with the 12 CDIO Standards

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Platanitis ◽  
Remon Pop-Iliev
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Engineering Ethics ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Practical Applications ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
Engineering Program

Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, collaboration began between universities, industry, and government to improve the quality and state of engineering education. Their paramount goal was to provide better ways to help students become successful engineers, possessing the necessary technical skills and expertise, exhibiting creativity, and having awareness of social, lawful, ethical, and environmental impacts as related to their profession. Traditionally, engineering programs emphasized the theoretical aspects required, while placing little emphasis on practical applications. An approach that has been introduced to provide a better learning experience for engineering students and to educate them as well-rounded engineers to be able to develop complex, value-added engineering products and processes is the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) approach. This approach has been adopted by several universities within their engineering departments. At UOIT, the Mechanical Engineering curriculum has been developed around and continually evolves to line up with the goals of CDIO in terms of course and curriculum offerings for core and complementary engineering design courses, science, math, communications, engineering ethics, and humanities courses. Herein, we present an evaluation of the Mechanical Engineering program at UOIT against the twelve CDIO standards.

scholarly journals One Week, Many Ripples: Measuring the Impacts of the Fall Reading Week on Student Stress

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 163-172
Author(s):  
Heather Poole ◽  
Ayesha Khan ◽  
Michael Agnew
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Negative Experience ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Student Stress ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
Lower Ratio

More and more Canadian post-secondary institutions are introducing a fall break into their term calendars. In 2015, a full week fall break was introduced at our university in order to enhance academic performance and improve mental health amongst students. Our interdisciplinary team surveyed undergraduate students at our university about their experience of the fall break, collected standardized measures of experienced stressors and perceptions of stress before and after the break, and hosted several focus groups to develop a detailed narrative of students’ experience. Stress can also be assessed through non-invasive hormone measures. We collected saliva samples to profile metabolic hormones, cortisol, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), from first-year male engineering students in order to document possible changes in their stress levels before and after the week-long break. This group was compared to male engineering students at a similar university that does not hold a fall break. Students exhibited a lower ratio of cortisol to DHEA after a fall break than those that did not experience a break. Our survey results indicate that the majority of students thought the fall break was a positive experience. However, self-reports of stress show a more complex picture, with many students reporting increased perceived stress after the break. Additionally, a portion of students reported that the fall break was a negative experience. To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first of its kind to use a mixed-methods approach to examine the impacts of a fall break.

scholarly journals Will that be on the exam? - Student perceptions of memorization and success in engineering

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Clemmer ◽  
Karen Gordon ◽  
Julie Vale
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Skill Development ◽  
Problem Analysis ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Student ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Factor Study ◽  
Study Process ◽  
Similar Sample

In engineering, it is important for students to develop strong problem analysis skills; however, this skill development may be hindered by a reliance on memorization. In this study, a survey was used to investigate undergraduate engineering student perspectives towards their curriculum and memorization and their styles using Bigg’s revised two-factor Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F).The majority of the participants are characterized as students having good study habits, a deep motivation, and deep strategies when approaching their education. They generally recognize the decreasing importance of memorization as they progress in the engineering curriculum. There is also a fairly large subset of students that are classified as deep motivation but surface strategy. Most students believe that at least 50% of an exam should contain questions similar sample problems or assignment questions and surface learners tend to perceive exams to be unfair if too many questions are dissimilar. There was no observed correlation between grades and the R-SPQ-2F results in the courses examined. These results tend to support the hypothesis that surface strategies, including memorization, are being employed by undergraduate students as a means of obtaining adequate performance in lieu of problem analysis skill development.

A Set of Preliminary Model Experiments for Studying Engineering Student Biases in the Assessment and Prioritization of Risks

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy M. Gernand
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Risk Estimation ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Engineering Student ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Preliminary Model ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Low Probability

Engineering decisions that have the greatest effect on worker and public safety occur early in the design process. During these decisions, engineers rely on their experience and intuition to estimate the severity and likelihood of undesired future events like failures, equipment damage, injuries, or environmental harm. These initial estimates can then form the basis of investment of limited project resources in mitigating those risks. Behavioral economics suggests that most people make significant and predictable errors when considering high consequence, low probability events. These biases have not previously been studied quantitatively in the context of engineering decisions, however. This paper describes preliminary results from a set of computerized experiments with engineering students estimating, prioritizing, and making design decisions related to risk. The undergraduate students included in this experiment were more likely to underestimate than overestimate the risk of failure. They were also more optimistic of the effects of efforts to mitigate risk than the evidence suggested. These results suggest that considerably more effort is needed to understand the characteristics and qualities of these biases in risk estimation, and understand what kinds of intervention might best ameliorate these biases and enable engineers to more effectively identify and manage the risks of technology.

scholarly journals TRAINING TEACHING ASSISTANTS AS COACHES

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandros Dimopoulos ◽  
Kush Bubbar ◽  
Roslyn Gaetz ◽  
Peter Wild
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Teaching Assistants ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Basic Competencies ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The University ◽  
Coaching Competencies

Abstract – The role of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) is becoming more demanding as engineering education places an increased emphasis on teamwork and design. For undergraduate students to excel, GTAs must help them form well-functioning teams and encourage them to operate as self-directed learners. In other words, GTAs should operate more as coaches rather than teachers. Many GTAs, unfortunately, lack the basic competencies of to perform as a coach. In this work, we present a 3-hour workshop designed to address this skills gap. The role of a coach and basic theoretical concepts, as well as a simple tool to elicit self-reflection in students are presented through a series of experiential exercises and discussions. The exercises also give participants an opportunity to practice these newly acquired skills while developing confidence in identifying scenarios where the tool may be applied. This workshop has been executed once with a group of 10 graduate engineering students at the University of Victoria. Survey results have been encouraging, we believe that the participants successfully acquired basic coaching competencies and applied them to their interactions with undergraduate students.  

scholarly journals Factor that impacts entrepreneurial intention among engineering students: evidence from Indonesia

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4 (31)) ◽  
pp. 71-86
Author(s):  
Hari Kurniawan ◽  
Fulgentius Danardana Murwani ◽  
Aniek Indrawati
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intention ◽  
Need For Achievement ◽  
Engineering Student ◽  
Vocational High School ◽  
School Students ◽  
The Impact

Entrepreneurial Intention was intensively examined within the research on entrepreneurship, but the results were diverse. The research was mostly focused on a non-engineering student. The inspiration for this paper was provided by (Law & Breznik, 2017) and (Karabulut, 2016) and its main goal is to determine the factor that pushes undergraduate students towards success in business and allows them to develop their entrepreneurial intention. This research is intended to ascertain the impact of innovativeness (Innov) and need for achievement (Nach) on entrepreneurial intention based on attitude towards entrepreneurship show among vocational high-school students having an extended curriculum in engineering. The examined sample was composed of 338 students of vocational high school (SMK) in an Indonesian District offering some extended courses in engineering. The adopted research methodology was of descriptive and correlational nature, with a quantitative method and a path analysis utilizing Lisrel 9.30. It was found that the need for achievement (Nach) and innovativeness (Innov) exert some significant indirect influence on entrepreneurial intention based on the attitude towards entrepreneurship, while the need for achievement (Nach) has lower direct influence on entrepreneurial Intention.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document