How to Win Friends and Influence Industry Collaborators

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.vi0.13867 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Alan Perks ◽

Rozalina Dimitrova

Keyword(s):

Engineering Students ◽

Civil Engineering ◽

Social Economic ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Recent Experience ◽

Environmental Pressures ◽

Faculty Advisors ◽

Student Teams ◽

Project Portfolios ◽

Capstone Projects

The Capstone process helps prepare Civil Engineering students for a rapidly evolving practice now facing many urgent social, economic and environmental pressures. Recent experience in identifying suitable capstone projects and working effectively with industry collaborators and student teams will be discussed. The project portfolios will be reviewed, and the approach to recruiting and retaining collaborators, working with faculty advisors, and supporting student teams will be summarized. Lessons learned from all these perspectives provided important adjustments to the uOttawa approach, which in past semesters has succeeded in providing all students in as many as to 25 teams in a semester with an industry collaborator and a valuable opportunity to enhance their skills in communications, planning, creative engineering solutions, and interdisciplinary teamwork.

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An Engineering Learning Community To Promote Retention And Graduation Of At-Risk Engineering Students

American Journal of Engineering Education (AJEE) ◽

10.19030/ajee.v5i2.8953 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 73-90 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Kenneth G. Ricks ◽

James A. Richardson ◽

Harold P. Stern ◽

Robert P. Taylor ◽

Ryan A. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Academic Success ◽

Learning Community ◽

Graduation Rates ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Study Groups ◽

Research Literature ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Faculty Advisors ◽

Financial Difficulties ◽

Retention And Graduation Rates

Retention and graduation rates for engineering disciplines are significantly lower than desired, and research literature offers many possible causes. Engineering learning communities provide the opportunity to study relationships among specific causes and to develop and evaluate activities designed to lessen their impact. This paper details an engineering learning community created to combat three common threats to academic success of engineering students: financial difficulties, math deficiencies, and the lack of a supportive engineering culture. The project tracks participants in the learning community from first year through graduation to assess the effectiveness of its activities in improving retention and graduation rates. Scholarships were made available to address the financial difficulties; tutors, mentors, study groups, and a “freshman-to-sophomore bridge” summer program were provided to address math deficiencies; cohort engineering courses, active learning techniques, required group meetings, required group study sessions, dedicated study space, and dedicated faculty advisors were used to promote a sense of community. Quantitative retention and graduation rates for the cohort are compared to other engineering groups at the same institution. Qualitative results collected via student surveys and interviews, and lessons learned by project administrators are also presented. Retention and graduation rates of the cohort are better than those of comparable groups at the same institution. Graduation rates based upon freshman math placement are also higher than comparable groups.

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A Preliminary Study of the Design Approaches to Project Work Taken by Undergraduate Engineering Students

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.4922 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Jeremy J. Laliberté ◽

C. Schramm ◽

A. L. Steele

Keyword(s):

Engineering Students ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Problem Definition ◽

Project Work ◽

Design Work ◽

Design Processes ◽

Undergraduate Engineering ◽

Design Cycle ◽

Preliminary Study ◽

Capstone Projects

We report on a preliminary study of discrete design processes and their timing, when undergraduate engineering students undertake project work. The method of the study followed the approach undertaken by others1,2 where the project design cycle is broken into discrete stages, for example problem definition, modeling, feasibility analysis and communication. In these previous studies the design was over approximately 3 hours1 using a single session design problem and required talking aloud by the designer, so that an observer could assess the stages being undertaken at given time intervals. Our study is over one or two terms and uses self-reporting by students to the criteria. Weekly emails prompted students with individualized links to a webform to report the type of design work done in the previous week. Because a week is a relatively long interval, the web form asks the students to report in terms of their primary (most effort and time) and secondary tasks. Similar to previous studies, this study compares the time spent and the points in the design cycle when certain process are undertaken or revisited. Our results, however, describe the design process over various durations (one term projects or full-year capstone projects), for different years of study (primarily, third and fourth year), different fields of engineering (from Aerospace, Civil, Mechanical, Electrical as well as Systems) and finally for different sized teams (from pairs of students in course projects to teams of twenty in Mechanical and Aerospace capstone projects). Comparisons will also be made between the design processes of different students, based on their final grade for their project. This first year of study is seen as a preliminary year to a longer and broader study, and the paper present our preliminary results as well as lessons learned in the areas of self-reporting and sizeable, longer-term data collection.

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Lessons Learned from Teaching a Pilot Multidisciplinary Entrepreneurial 4th Year Capstone Design Course

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.6514 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sean Maw

Keyword(s):

Group Dynamics ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Peer Assessment ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Multidisciplinary Teams ◽

Computer Engineering ◽

Student Work ◽

Capstone Course ◽

Capstone Projects ◽

Capstone Design

During the 2015/16 academic year, a pilot course at the University of Saskatchewan was offered to senior engineering students. The pilot course was meant to offer an entrepreneurial version of the standard 4th year capstone design course. It also created an opportunity for students to work with students from engineering disciplines other than their own. Two design groups, each consisting of four students, were formed. This paper describes the structure of the course, how the entrepreneurial content and multidisciplinary aspects were handled, and a variety of lessons that were learned that may be of value to other institutions considering similar ventures.The College’s capstone design courses had the weightings of two regular 3-credit courses, running from the start of the Fall term to the end of the Winter term. The most fundamental differences between this course and the standard 4th year capstone course were i) the students identified their own design problem, and ii) they formed multidisciplinary teams to solve their problem. Both of these differences created significant challenges in terms of organizing and running the course. Students from Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, and Engineering Physics were full participants in the course. Students from Mechanical Engineering were given the opportunity to participate on a one course credit basis i.e. they still had to take the standard 4th year design course in addition to the entrepreneurial version.Many lessons have been learned from the experience of developing and teaching this course. Issues that will be discussed in the paper include, but will not be limited to: integrating the different learning outcome needs of the different departments involved, managing the uncertainty of the design problems undertaken, integrating entrepreneurship into the design course, talking about design to students from different disciplines, managing “sub-contractor” students in capstone projects, evaluation, scheduling of classes, multidisciplinary supervision, client interaction and evaluation of student work, peer assessment, and student group dynamics.

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THIRD YEAR INTEGRATED DESIGN PROJECT FOR THIRD YEAR CIVIL ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.v0i0.3831 ◽

2011 ◽

Author(s):

Janaka Ruwanpura

Keyword(s):

Design Education ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Civil Engineering ◽

Construction Material ◽

Integrated Design ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Design Project ◽

Design Concepts ◽

The Third ◽

Design Competition

There is a lack of courses for design education in civil engineering curriculum except in fourth year at many Canadian Universities. An innovative approach introduced and implemented by the author to promote design education at the third year using a design competition at the University of Calgary was very successful. Student learned design concepts, applied them in the third year using a real project, integrated several civil engineering deliverables in one project without doing them in a separate course, and gained experience to get ready for their final year design course through this design competition. The eight courses included in the competition comprise all civil engineering aspects including structural, geotechnical, transportation, environmental, construction, material, and project management. The lessons learned by implementing the competition for 2 years, the author suggests a new idea to introduce a third year design project for civil engineering students. The paper discusses the purpose, structure, student participation, deliverables of the new idea.

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Comparing the Perspectives of Engineering Students, Business Students, and Faculty Advisors Toward Successful Planning of Capstone Projects

Volume 7: 9th International Conference on Design Education; 24th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology ◽

10.1115/detc2012-70610 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Steven Harper ◽

Robert L. Nagel

Keyword(s):

Design Education ◽

Engineering Students ◽

Business Students ◽

James Madison ◽

Engineering Project ◽

Planning And Scheduling ◽

Faculty Advisors ◽

Common Goals ◽

Capstone Projects ◽

College Of Business

One of the common goals in engineering design education is to provide real-world experiences that mimic the design experiences a student might encounter once graduated. An approach we use in the School of Engineering (SOE) at James Madison University (JMU) is a multidisciplinary pairing of business students from the College of Business and engineering students from the School of Engineering. Engineering and business students are positioned to learn from each other, and to collaborate together as they develop a feasible project plan for a two-year engineering project. In this paper, we present a study investigating the differing perceptions between faculty advisors, engineering students, and business students related to the successful capstone plan development. We hypothesized that each of the different functional groups (business students, engineering students, and faculty advisors) would have different view points on the planning and status of the infant capstone projects. The results indicate that, in the areas of planning and scheduling, the advisors are grouped with the engineering students, and in the areas of directing and controlling, the advisors are grouped with the business students. The time horizon of the students guides how they view unresolved problems with the planning and status of the project. This led to the business students, who were on the project for only one semester, to stand apart in their pessimistic assessment of the planning and scheduling of the project. The engineering students, who are on the project for the full two years, tended to be more optimistic about the directing and controlling aspects of the project.

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DEVELOPMENT AND INTEGRATION OF TECHNICAL WRITING SKILLS ORIENTED TOWARD ENGINEERS’ NEEDS

Proceedings of the Canadian Engineering Education Association (CEEA) ◽

10.24908/pceea.vi0.13782 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Anouk Desjardins ◽

Evelyne Doré ◽

Raymond Desjardins

Keyword(s):

Engineering Students ◽

Civil Engineering ◽

Technical Writing ◽

Oral Communication ◽

Small Degree ◽

Bachelor's Degree ◽

Student Response ◽

Written Communication ◽

Writing Practices ◽

Capstone Projects

Written communication is among the skills future engineers must develop and master in order to excel in their profession. Employers and the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board also require this skill. Students in all Polytechnique Montréal programs have one course credit in their program devoted to written and oral communication. The training is provided by Polytechnique’s Centre d’études complémentaires (centre for complementary studies) for all programs. Despite the implementation of this process, we noted that civil engineering students had difficulty employing good technical writing practices in their work, such as capstone projects, lab reports and hands-on assignments. The students saw written communication workshops as satellite training and employed their learning only to a small degree in their other courses. The students were essentially stagnating instead of making progress throughout the bachelor’s degree. In response to these issues, a common approach was put into place for the entire civil engineering program as a complement to the trainings provided by the Centre d’études complémentaires. This approach has been a success; student response has been positive and improvement has been observed in the courses where writing is required. The students especially appreciate this when they perform their mandatory internship, because they feel this training makes a difference and helps them distinguish themselves.

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