scholarly journals REDESIGNING THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE: ONE PROFESSOR’S EFFO2 RTS TO DEVELOP AN ACTIVE AND ENGAGING FIRST YEAR THERMODYNAMICS COURSE

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian Seniuk Cicek ◽  
Douglas Ruth ◽  
Sandra Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Active Learning ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
First Year ◽  
Course Performance ◽  
Pedagogical Tools ◽  
Grade Point ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
Exit Survey ◽  
The University

Active learning is a pedagogicalmethodology that research has shown both engages andmotivates students. This paper reports on one professor’swork to infuse active learning into his first yearthermodynamics course. Based on the results of a pilotstudy aimed at exploring the use of active learning in afirst-year thermodynamics course to engage students andimprove their learning, a problem-solving learningapproach was designed for a subsequent offering of thecourse. Mini-lectures were interspersed with tutorials,and active learning and pedagogical tools and strategieswere employed with the intent to increase studentengagement and enhance learning. At the conclusion ofthis course, a student exit survey and a student focusgroup were conducted, and students’ course marks werecompared to their cumulative grade point averages toexamine their course performance. Findings showed thatstudents were engaged by the active learning design andevidence of learning was found. This is the second phaseof a practical action research study to turn a traditional,lecture-based course into an active learning arena forfirst year engineering students at the University ofManitoba.

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

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.

scholarly journals EXAMINING FOURTH YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF GRADUATE ATTRIBUTE COMPETENCIES: YEAR TWO

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian Seniuk Cicek ◽  
Paul Labossiere ◽  
Sandra Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
First Year ◽  
Fall Semester ◽  
Engineering Faculty ◽  
The Past ◽  
Exit Survey ◽  
Application Analysis ◽  
The University ◽  
Graduating Students

As the Engineering Faculty at the Universityof Manitoba shifts its curriculum from an input-based toan outcomes-based pedagogy, data from diverse sourcesare being collected. Among them, indirect data are beinggathered from students using a student exit survey. Thesurvey has been developed over the past three years toexplore graduating students’ perceptions of theiraptitudes and their engineering program’s strengths andweaknesses in regards to the 12 CEAB graduateattributes. It is comprised of the 12 attributes, with eachattribute further defined by six indicators. Theseindicators reflect the levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy ofEducational Objectives in the Cognitive Domain:knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis,synthesis and evaluation. The student exit survey was firstadministered to graduating mechanical engineeringstudents at the end of Fall semester 2012 and then at theend of Fall semester 2013. This paper describes thesecond year of the study, and discusses the datacomparatively with the findings from the first year. Thisstudy offers the Engineering Faculty an understanding oftheir Mechanical Engineering students’ experiences withand perceptions of the CEAB graduate attributes. It willbe used to provide feedback at instructor, program andfaculty levels as the University of Manitoba’s Faculty ofEngineering continues to implement its cycle of programdevelopment and improvement.

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.

Engineering for good: A case of community driven engineering innovation

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinweike Eseonu ◽  
Martin A Cortes
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technology Innovation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
First Year ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The University ◽  
Social Consideration

There is a culture of disengagement from social consideration in engineering disciplines. This means that first year engineering students, who arrive planning to change the world through engineering, lose this passion as they progress through the engineering curriculum. The community driven technology innovation and investment program described in this paper is an attempt to reverse this trend by fusing community engagement with the normal engineering design process. This approach differs from existing project or trip based approaches – outreach – because the focus is on local communities with which the university team forms a long-term partnership through weekly in-person meetings and community driven problem statements – engagement.

Leveraging Active Learning Pedagogy in a Scaffolded Approach: Reconceptualizing Instructional Leadership Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason D. Salisbury ◽  
Decoteau J. Irby
Keyword(s):  
Active Learning ◽  
Instructional Leadership ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Leadership Practice ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
The University

This article investigates how the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) redesigned its three-course instructional leadership strand to operate as a continuous three-semester learning experience that sequenced and emphasized an active learning pedagogy. This accounting elaborates the design and use of this pedagogy to support aspirant leaders in progressing through a continuum of knowers, assessors, and demonstrators of instructional leadership practice. Finally, we discuss the tensions that emerged from this approach to instructional leadership learning.

CAD Platform Independent Software for Automatic Grading of Technical Drawings

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanchit Ingale ◽  
Anirudh Srinivasan ◽  
Diana Bairaktarova
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Spatial Reasoning ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Spatial Visualization ◽  
First Year ◽  
Spatial Skills ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
Students Success ◽  
Mechanical Objects

Spatial visualization is the ability of an individual to imagine an object mentally and understand its spatial orientation. There have been multiple works proving that spatial visualization skills can be improved with an appropriate training. Such training warrant a critical place in the undergraduate engineering curricula in many engineering schools as spatial skills are considered vital for students’ success in the technical and design fields [1–4]. Enhanced spatial skills help not only professionals in the engineering field but also everyone in the 21st century environment. Drawing sectional views requires mental manipulation and visual thinking. To enhance students spatial reasoning, one of the authors of this study, conducted a class in spatial visualization. The course-learning goal aimed at improving first-year engineering students’ spatial reasoning through instruction on freehand drawings of sectional view. During the semester, two teaching assistants had to grade more than 500 assignments that consisted of sectional views of mechanical objects. This was a tedious and a time consuming task. Motivated by this experience, this paper proposes a software aiming at automating grading of students’ sectional view drawings. The proposed software will also give live feedback to students while they are working on the drawings. This interactive tool aims to 1) improve the learning experience of first year students, with limited CAD knowledge, and 2) introduce a pedagogical tool that can enhance spatial visualization training.

STUDENT CONCERNS FOR ENGAGEMENT IN ONLINE ACTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS DURING COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Memarian ◽  
S. Zuluaga ◽  
M. Stickel
Keyword(s):  
Active Learning ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Student Response ◽  
First Year ◽  
Positive Feeling ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Neutral Tone

This paper shares a summary of the self-reported concerns of 134 first-year engineering students around engagement in online active learning environments during COVID-19. The students had volunteered to participate in remote weekly problem-solving workshops for four weeks that utilized Active Learning techniques. In this paper, we specifically analyze samples from the students who participated in only one workshop and responded to the following question: What concerns do you have that might limit your ability to engage in online active learning environments? Twenty of the participants reported no concerns. The tone of each student's response and personal feelings reported were also analyzed. Then, a thematic analysis of each student response was made, with the transcription and coding agreement being performed by two coders. As expected, most of the students expressed their concerns in a negative or neutral tone, and only a few expressed an affinity for current educational settings. Word mining of feeling terms shows that more students had verbalized being disengaged, followed by distracted and uncomfortable and none communicated a positive feeling. Our thematic analysis showed that learning socially (72/114, or 63%) is the most pressing concern for the students, followed by more personal regulating factors such as attitude and motivation (44%), quality of physical and virtual study environment (40%), as well as the guidance received from the course administrators (24%). Findings suggest the need for developing a global understanding of what active learning in an online environment entails in the context of engineering education, and to develop and adjust tools and practices to help students learn in this new context.

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