TEACHING ENGINEERING COMMUNICATION TO FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

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.

AN ENGINEERING DESIGN PROJECT TO PROVIDE MULTI-DISCIPLINARY EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.vi0.13717 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Seach Chyr (Ernest) Goh ◽

Sumi Siddiqua

Keyword(s):

Engineering Design ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Project Teams ◽

First Year ◽

Final Exam ◽

Sustainable Engineering ◽

Design Project ◽

Negative Comments ◽

First year engineering students at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, take the Fundamentals of Sustainable Engineering Design course as part of the suite of common courses for all engineering students regardless of discipline. The largest assessment components of the course are the final exam (40%) and the design project (40%). For the design project, teams of 4 – 6 students build a scaled-down prototype of a Well Ventilated yet Energy Efficient Room (WeVeyEER) that must be able to maintain its interior temperature at 10°C above ambient and at the same time continuously exchange stale air from within with fresh air from outside. It also has to meet load-bearing, size and power supply constraints. The energy consumption, rate of air exchange and weight are parameters for comparing performance of the prototypes. The majority of teams (55 out of 64) could achieve the requirements. Feedback about the project was mixed, with 57 positive and 56 negative comments.

Comprehension of Textbook Vocabulary by First Year Students

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1976.38.2.388 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 38 (2) ◽

pp. 388-390 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Robert E. Knox

Keyword(s):

British Columbia ◽

Introductory Psychology ◽

First Year ◽

First Year Students ◽

First-year students in an English course at the University of British Columbia were asked to define 53 non-technical words from Munn's introductory psychology text. In spite of generous scoring standards performance, over-all, was alarmingly poor. Half of the students could correctly identify no more than 29 of the 53 words, and such common words as “incidental” and “spontaneously” were missed by over 50% of our 57 subjects. Results are comparable to Hoffman's findings which were reported in this Journal 18 years ago.

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

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.10191 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Susan Nesbit ◽

Naoko Ellis ◽

Pete Ostafichuk

Keyword(s):

Personal Development ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Preliminary Test ◽

First Year ◽

Test Results ◽

First Year Students ◽

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.

Repeated Negative Teaching Evaluations: A Form of Habitual Behaviour?

Canadian Journal of Higher Education ◽

10.47678/cjhe.v45i4.184404 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 45 (4) ◽

pp. 298-321

Author(s):

J Paul Grayson

Keyword(s):

British Columbia ◽

Generational Status ◽

First Year ◽

Not Given ◽

Campus Engagement ◽

Teaching Evaluations ◽

Mcgill University ◽

The University ◽

Do So

Teaching evaluations have become part of life on Canadian campuses; however, there is no agreement among researchers as to their validity. In this article, comparisons were made between first- and third-year collective evaluations of professors’ performance at the University of British Columbia, York University, and McGill University. Overall, it was found that students who provided low evaluations in their first year were also likely to do so in their third year. This effect held independent of degree of campus engagement, sex, student status (domestic or international), and generational status (students who were the first in their families to attend university, compared to those who were not). Given that over the course of their studies, students likely would have been exposed to a range of different behaviours on the part of their professors, it is argued that the propensity of a large number of students to give consistently low evaluations was a form of “habitual behaviour.”

A MODEL TO DEVELOP PEER FEEDBACK SKILLS IN FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.10194 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Stephen Mattucci ◽

Jim Sibley ◽

Jonathan Nakane ◽

Peter Ostafichuk

Keyword(s):

Engineering Students ◽

Course Design ◽

Professional Communication ◽

First Year ◽

Face To Face ◽

Feedback Model ◽

Poster Presentations ◽

The University ◽

Proper Interpretation

Abstract – Giving and receiving feedback is a necessary, but often difficult skill for young engineers to acquire. We developed and piloted the delivery of a feedback model as part of the first-year engineering experience at the University of British Columbia. The approach is based on recognizing feedback as a form of professional communication, and that it requires practice to improve. We wove different aspects of communication skill development through two large newly-designed first-year introduction to engineering courses, building towards face-to-face feedback through a staged series of communication experiences. The full feedback model highlighted the nuances of face-to-face communication, and was called the "3×3", since it includes the three components involved in face-to-face feedback (sender, message, and receiver), each with three associated aspects. The sender uses appropriate words and body language, ensures proper interpretation, and is empathetic; the message is objective and non-judgmental, sufficiently detailed, and contains suggestions for improvement; and the receiver remains open and listening, acknowledges to the sender that they are listening, and clarifies to ensure understanding. Students applied what they had learned through an activity reviewing poster presentations from a major course design project. In the activity, they each had an opportunity to craft a feedback message before delivering the message face-to-face to a peer. Students then reflected on the feedback they received by summarizing the message, recognizing how the sender delivered the feedback, and identifying why the feedback was helpful. Student reflections were analyzed for themes from the 3×3 model. Students found feedback from peers particularly helpful when it was delivered in an appropriate and courteous manner, checked for proper interpretation, provided clear suggestions for improvement, and was coupled with praise of something that was done well. Providing students with a structured model allows them to follow a process in both providing effective face-to-face feedback, but also better appreciate why receiving feedback is beneficial in helping them improve.

INTRODUCTING A NEW ENGINEERING COURSE: A LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR STUDENTS AND FACULTY

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.3791 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Dare ◽

Brian Cooke

Keyword(s):

Engineering Students ◽

Task Force ◽

Learning Experience ◽

First Year ◽

Design Element ◽

Design Project ◽

Different Types ◽

Second Year ◽

The University ◽

First Time

A Task Force was created by the Faculty of Engineering at the University of New Brunswick in September 2004 charged with creating a new course for all first year engineering students to be delivered for the first time in September 2005. The course, to be taken by approximately 270 students, was to integrate material from other first year courses, introduce the students to working in teams, contain a substantial design element through a design project, and introduce communication skills. Nine professors from throughout engineering “volunteered” to help develop and deliver the course. In this paper we own up to what we did wrong during the first two years of delivery of this course, and (naturally!) counter this by celebrating our successes. Students are assessed based on a combination of individual and team submissions, with some submissions being oral and others written. This paper will outline the complex assessment scheme we initially used, and how we later simplified it. Rubrics were used to evaluate many of the course assignments. For most of the instructors, this was the first time they had used rubrics and so it was a learning experience to both develop and apply them. We show how we adapted their use in the second year of delivery after the experiences of the first year. We were pleased with the way that the assessments were mostly built around the design project – this helped the students grasp why clear communication is vital and enabled them to obtain continual feedback on the project. We were also delighted that an element of social responsibility was introduced into the course by making the project an international “Engineers Without Borders” project based in Africa. We believe this added an additional dimension to the course and especially the project. The professor-delivered skits were especially popular! Delivered by two wannabe actors, they introduced the students in a humorous manner to the different types of engineering that are taught at UNB. Engineering students at UNB have to commit to their specific engineering field from their first day at UNB, so these skits were included to ensure the students were exposed to all the UNB engineering disciplines. We conclude the paper with our plans for delivery of the course in September 2007 and beyond.

DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTERACTIVE ONLINE ETHICS SCENARIO ACTIVITY FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.vi0.14144 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Peter M. Ostafichuk ◽

Carol P. Jaeger ◽

Jonathan Nakane

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Ethical Decision ◽

Ethical Decision Making ◽

Student Feedback ◽

First Year ◽

Survey Tool ◽

Unethical Behaviour ◽

This paper describes development and deployment of an online interactive ethical decision-making simulation. This tool was piloted in a first-year introduction to engineering course at the University of British Columbia. It used a “choose your own adventure” style of decision-making and narrative to add realism and engagement to what was otherwise viewed by students as dry, uninteresting content. After storyboarding using sticky notes and Visio, the final tool used by students was implemented and deployed using a survey tool (Qualtrics). It featured a scenario with initially incomplete information and the appearance of unethical behaviour by others. It included decision-based branching, but also randomization such that different groups had the story unfold differently, even if they made the same initial decisions. Student feedback on this tool was very positive, suggesting this style of interactive online ethics simulation could be an effective tool for enhancing engagement and learning.

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

LUMAT International Journal on Math Science and Technology Education ◽

10.31129/lumat.8.1.1412 ◽

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 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.

A DESIGN PROJECT THAT HELPS STUDENTS TO CHOOSE BETWEEN DIFFERENT FIELDS OF ENGINEERING

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.3782 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Rudolf Seethaler

Keyword(s):

British Columbia ◽

Electrical Engineering ◽

Design Project ◽

Engineering Program ◽

Second Year ◽

A new Engineering program has been started in the fall of 2005 at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus. There is a common curriculum for all first and second year students in Civil, Mechanical, and Electrical Engineering. A design project hosted by two separate courses and spanning topics of all three fields of Engineering helps students to decide at the end of their second year, which Engineering program suits them best.

Implementation of an Open Science Instruction Program for Undergraduates

Data Intelligence ◽

10.1162/dint_a_00086 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 150-161

Author(s):

Sharon Hanna ◽

Jason Pither ◽

Mathew Vis-Dunbar

Keyword(s):

British Columbia ◽

United Nations ◽

Undergraduate Students ◽

Open Science ◽

First Year ◽

Research Cycle ◽

The World ◽

Attitudinal Survey ◽

The scientific, social, and economic advantages that accrue from Open Science (OS) practices—ways of doing research that emphasize reproducibility, transparency, and accessibility at all stages of the research cycle—are now widely recognized in nations around the world and by international bodies such as the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. However, program wide or coordinated instruction of undergraduate students in OS practices remains uncommon. At the University of British Columbia in Canada, we have started to develop a comprehensive undergraduate OS program that can be adapted to and woven into diverse subject curricula. We report on the context and planning of the pilot module of the program, “Open Science 101”, its implementation in first-year Biology in Fall 2019, and qualitative results of an attitudinal survey of students following their course.