Assessment of Individual and Teamwork Attributes in Undergraduate Engineering Students

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas O'Neill
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Team Work ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Personal Support ◽  
Program Accreditation ◽  
Team Projects ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
Teamwork Skills ◽  
The University

Engineers Canada Accreditation Board lists12 Canadian Engineering Graduate Attributes necessaryfor program accreditation. One of these is the Individualand Team Work attribute. At the University of Calgary anannual survey has been developed to assess studentperceptions of teamwork. The survey examines students’overall satisfaction with teamwork activities, attitudestowards teamwork, perceived emphasis and supportreceived from the department, teamwork skills(competence and importance), and personal support forteamwork initiatives. Based on the responses from pastyears two trends can be identified: students perceive agap between their competence in teamwork skills and theimportance of those skills, and students show high levelsof support for more teamwork initiatives. Following thesetrends three recommendations can be made: teamworkskills development activities for the students, moreopportunities for peer feedback in team projects, andsupport for first year students. By annually administeringassessments engineering departments can evaluate theirsuccess in developing the necessary Individual and TeamWork attribute required by Engineers CanadaAccreditation Board for program accreditation.

scholarly journals DEVELOPMENT OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND TEAM WORK ATTRIBUTE AMONG UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING STUDENTS: TRENDS ACROSS 4 YEARS OF ASSESSMENT

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Grocutt ◽  
A. Barron ◽  
M. Khakhar ◽  
T.A. O'Neill ◽  
W.D. Rosehart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Program Accreditation ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
Teamwork Skills ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The University

The Engineers Canada Accreditation Board outlines 12 Canadian Engineering Graduate Attributes required for program accreditation. One of these attributes is Individual and Team Work. Since 2016, at the University of Calgary, there has been a voluntary, undergraduate-wide survey administered to the Schulich School of Engineering students every spring via an online platform. The purpose of the survey is to assess students’ perceived development of teamwork skills during their program, and identify avenues to improve program offerings. After four consecutive years of this survey, with sample sizes ranging from 683-973 students, there are three main trends that can be identified: students perceive teamwork skills as highly important for their future careers, there are noticeable differences between male and female students regarding teamwork experiences, and students value teamwork skills training and opportunities for peer feedback. Implications of these findings are that there are gendered teamwork experiences among undergraduate engineering students and more research is needed to understand interventions that can mitigate this.

scholarly journals Promoting learning with understanding: Introducing languaging exercises in calculus course for engineering students at the university level

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Alfaro Viquez ◽  
Jorma Joutsenlahti
Keyword(s):  
Mathematics Teaching ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Mathematical Thinking ◽  
First Year ◽  
Logical Thinking ◽  
Mathematical Skills ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Basic Calculus ◽  
University Level ◽  
The University

The study of mathematics at the university level requires logical thinking and strong mathematical skills. Contemporary first-year students are not prepared for these demands and end up failing their courses. This study aims to present an instrument for enhancing mathematics teaching and promoting learning with understanding in higher education by a combination of symbolic, natural, and pictorial languages in different tasks. We analyze the 17 solutions of four languaging exercises administered in a basic calculus course for engineering students at the University of Costa Rica. The results suggest that these exercises promote the acquisition of skills necessary to be mathematically proficient and are a useful tool for revealing students’ mathematical thinking and misconceptions.

scholarly journals TEACHING ENGINEERING COMMUNICATION TO FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Labun
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Written Communication ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Engineering Communication ◽  
University Of British Columbia ◽  
The University ◽  
Written Assignments

At the University of British Columbia Okanagan School of Engineering (SOE), first year engineering students take a 3-credit course in Engineering Communication. Designed to replace the traditional 3-credits of English taken by other first year students, APSC 176 introduces students to the fundamentals of engineering communication, with a strong emphasis on written communication. The paper is describes the types of assignments given to first year students, the techniques used to encourage meaningful revision of written assignments, and the methods used to evaluate written assignments. Particular attention will be paid to a two-week first term design project (such as the assignment, supplemental materials including exercises, and marking guidelines). It should be noted that the design is entirely conceptual - students are not required to develop a prototype, but rather to work with a team to develop (and subsequently, explain and market) a concept in response to an RFP.

scholarly journals Leveraging Escape Room Popularity to Provide First-Year Students with an Introduction to Engineering Information

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Walsh ◽  
Michelle Spence
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Library Services ◽  
Science And Engineering ◽  
Research Skills ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Engineering Information ◽  
The University

Incoming first-year engineering students at the University of Toronto often have difficulty navigating the library and its resources. Orientation activities at the Engineering & Computer Science Library are designed to introduce students to the library in an informal and entertaining way. In 2017, as a result of dropping interest in previous years' orientation activities, librarians at the Engineering & Computer Science Library collaborated with instructors and staff in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering to develop an orientation activity grounded in curriculum and based on the popular escape room game. Core library services and engineering resources were used to build a challenging program that introduced students to basic, but essential, research skills. Voluntary student participation in the game exceeded previous years' participation and all expectations of the game designers.

IMPACT OF INTEGRATING MENTAL WELLNESS AND PERSONAL LEARNING REFLECTIONS INTO FIRST-YEAR UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING COURSES

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Paul ◽  
Oluwasemilore Adeyinka ◽  
Melissa Boyce ◽  
Ghada Eldib ◽  
Katie Gaulin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Program Implementation ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Research Results ◽  
Personal Learning ◽  
Student Stress ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
Mental Wellness ◽  
High Level ◽  
The University

Student stress and anxiety in engineering continues to be overwhelming, and students are asking for more support for their mental wellness. At the University of Calgary, we developed and implemented a program to provide first-year students with regular modules and reflection on their mental wellness and personal learning. This work is important to foster resiliency in engineeringstudents. At CEEA 2020, we summarized the pilot year of\ the program [17], and we now have an update on the program implementation as well as preliminary research results. We provide an overview of the importance of this kind of programming, specifically in breaking down theemotional-rational dualism that exists within engineering to support the de-stigmatization of mental health topics. We then provide an overview of the modules presented in this academic year, as well as a high level of summary of the research results from last year’s data.

scholarly journals Academic librarian collaborations in inquiry based learning: A case study, reflections and strategies

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
James E Murphy ◽  
Laura Koltutsky ◽  
Bartlomiej Lenart ◽  
Caitlin McClurg ◽  
Marc Stoeckle
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Academic Librarians ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Inquiry Based Learning ◽  
Academic Librarian ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
The University ◽  
Skill Building

Five academic librarians at the University of Calgary were invited to collaborate on an inquiry-based learning course. Each librarian represented different liaison responsibilities and expertise and was paired with a course section of primarily first-year students, an instructor, and a teaching assistant. The range of experiences among the librarians provided insights into issues of library partnerships, embedded librarianship, and information literacy instruction. Benefits of the collaboration included opportunities for instruction, positive student perceptions, skill building, and teaching innovations, while areas for further development included sustainability and role definition. Proposed areas of future growth include quantitative exploration of librarian involvement in inquiry- based learning.

scholarly journals Innovative methodology at the university. Its effects on learning processes of university students.

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernardo Gargallo ◽  
Isabel Morera ◽  
Eloïna García
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Evaluation System ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Team Work ◽  
First Year ◽  
Learning Approaches ◽  
Self Assessment ◽  
Learning Platform ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

We wanted to assess the impact of learning-centered methodology on learning strategies and learning approaches of a students’ group of Chemistry. They were first year engineering students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. We used a pre-experimental design with pretest and posttest measures by means of the CEVEAPEU and CPE questionnaires. The sample consisted of 20 students. The teaching methods included expositive methodology, questions, problem solving, development of a monograph, presentations, laboratory practices, team work, tutoring in the classroom and an evaluation system that made use of training procedures that returned feedback to students (two diagnostic tests, assessment of solved problems, self-assessment using the e-learning platform of the university, oral assessment in class, written tests, etc..). Significant improvements in learning strategies scores in the posttest and increasing in deep approach were found.

scholarly journals Working with “Others”: Developing Sustainability Skills in the First Year Engineering Classroom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Nesbit ◽  
Naoko Ellis ◽  
Pete Ostafichuk
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Preliminary Test ◽  
First Year ◽  
Test Results ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
University Of British Columbia ◽  
Structured Problems ◽  
The University ◽  
Current Engineering

Abstract While engineering education excels at training students to solve well-defined and highly structured problems, it struggles to support the development of students’ abilities to address highly complex, ill-structured, and contested engineering problems that lack in definite solutions, where engineers are called on to work with non-engineers in a transdisciplinary environment.  The challenge for engineering educators is to develop and teach constructively aligned curricula aimed at developing transdisciplinary skills so that, as practitioners, graduating engineering students contribute to addressing these types of problems within transdisciplinary environments. Efforts are underway in many institutions to close the gap between the transdisciplinary needs in practice and current engineering curricula. At the University of British Columbia (UBC), a team of faculty members and engineering practitioners have recently developed and are teaching a design-focused engineering course to all first year students. In this paper we, a subset of UBC’s teaching team, present the argument for teaching skills to engineering students that support transdisciplinary. Wesummarize the definitions of these skills found in the literature, and we speculate that the development of one aspect of transdisciplinary is related to personal development. Specifically, we hypothesize that systems thinking is correlated to metacognition. We describe an experimental strategy for testing the hypothesis within a first year engineering program, then we present and discuss preliminary test results.  

Senior Students’ Perceptions of Entering a Research Community

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doug Brent
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Research Paper ◽  
Research Community ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
University Of Calgary ◽  
The University ◽  
Senior Students ◽  
The Universe

Most of the literature on the assignment traditionally called the research paper focusses on first-year students, and often centers on what they don’t know or can’t do. This article seeks to expand the conversation to one about the skills and knowledge displayed by senior students, and about their perceptions of the universe of academic research and their place in it. It does so by means of a qualitative study of 13 senior students at the University of Calgary. Through interviews, I probe their understanding of their own research processes, how they think they learned to do what they do, and, most important, their understanding of what it means to conduct academic research.

scholarly journals GET A HEAD START! EXPERIENCES OF RUNNING A SUMMER ONLINE CALCULUS COURSE FOR INCOMING FIRST YEAR STUDENTS

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shai Cohen ◽  
Micah Stickel
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Early Introduction ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Online Format ◽  
The University

One of the great advantages of developing online courses is that it enables the institution to reimagine how they can deliver that content to their students. In recent years, the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto has worked to develop a set of first year calculus courses in an online format. These courses were designed specifically for engineering students to: (a) situate the material in an engineering context through multiple real-world examples and “on-site” videos, (b) place an increased emphasis on the form of the solution, and (c) incorporate a significant experience in mathematical modeling through a self-defined project.In July and August of 2014, the Calculus for Engineers I online course was offered to incoming first-year students that were to start in September 2014. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the experiences related to this unique offering from the perspectives of the students as well as the Faculty administration and course instructor.Of the 900 students that were invited to take the course, 170 initially registered for the course in early July, and of those 48 students completed the course at the end of August. Of the 44 students that passed the course, 20 (48%) decided to continue on with the online offering of Calculus for Engineers II in the fall 2014 term.Overall, students were quite positive about their online learning experience and were glad to have the opportunity to complete a credit before their official start. This allowed them to either take an elective in their first year or have a lighter workload in one of the terms.In their course survey comments, they noted that they appreciated the opportunity to learn and review the material at their own pace, the way in which the instructor connected the mathematics to an engineering context, and having an early introduction to the university learning environment.Delivering an online university-level calculus course to incoming first-year students is an exciting and novel way to enhance the engineering student experience in first year. This paper provides an introductory summary of this approach from the students’, instructor’s, and administrators’ perspectives.

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