Supporting aerospace engineering students during and after the covid-19 pandemic to develop a diverse and well-rounded future workforce

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Chierichetti
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Turner ◽  
Michael P.J. Benfield ◽  
Dawn R. Utley ◽  
Cynthia A. McPherson

The capstone senior design class in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) is taught as a distributed Integrated Product Team (IPT) experience. Engineering students are teamed with students of different disciplines within UAH and with students at universities in other states and Europe. Because of the distributed nature of these teams, the IPT students must use a variety of technologies to communicate. The authors of this chapter found that the students prefer familiar, informal, contemporary forms of communication, including Google Groups/Sites, Skype, instant messaging, e-mail, phone calls, and text messaging for team communication and project management, and reject more formalized forms of communication, even if advanced features are offered. Most importantly, the authors found that the effectiveness of all forms of technology based communication tools is greatly enhanced when the students have the opportunity to personally meet prior to the design semester.


Author(s):  
Grzegorz Kopecki

The ability to carry out in-flight tests and to analyse the flight data registered is, in the case of aerospace engineering  students, a vital aspect of education. Since aircraft flight tests are very expensive, frequently the funds allocated to them in the process of education are insufficient. The aim of this article is to present a relatively low-cost method of training students to carry out flight tests and to analyse flight data. The method relies on three consecutive steps. At first, simulation tests relying on the mathematical model of an aircraft are carried out.  During these simulations, students analyse aircraft behaviour. Next, flight data registered during previously held in-flight tests are analysed.  Finally, flight tests are performed by students.  As a result, having mastered the ability to analyse real flight data, the students trained will become high-class specialists being able to conduct flight tests and analyse flight data.


2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naim Dahnoun

Teaching electronics is not only for electrical and electronics students but also for mechanical, aerospace, engineering design, civil and engineering mathematics programmes, which are likely to have electronics units as part of their curriculum. To teach electronics for these non-electronic programmes is very challenging in many aspects. First, the electronics unit has to satisfy the learning outcomes for each programme. Second, the student’s motivation is normally very low since electronics is not the career the students would like to pursue. Third, the timetabling can be an issue when a large number of students are enrolled; for instance, at the University of Bristol, over 340 students are registered for the electronics unit. Due to this large number and the capacity of the electrical laboratory, students will have laboratory experiments timetabled in different weeks and some may have laboratory experiments before the lectures are covered. Finally, a method of assessing this large number of students has to be put into place. In this paper, the content of the unit including the laboratory experiments, the methods of course delivery and the assessment methods are justified. Also, since students learn differently and have a variety of motivations, a combination of teaching methods has to be found to satisfy more students and improve the learning outcomes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 94-99
Author(s):  
Sofia Di Sarno-García

This paper presents a six-week telecollaborative project carried out between B2 (Common European Framework of Reference for languages – CEFR) level learners of English from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain, and B1 (CEFR) level students of Spanish as a foreign language from the University of Bath (UK). The aim of the project was to help Spanish-speaking students develop their Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). Students carried out asynchronous discussions focusing on two cultural topics in groups of four through the social network MeWe and participated in synchronous Zoom sessions in pairs. To conclude the project, students completed a collaborative task with their overseas partners. Qualitative data was gathered through the analysis of the transcripts of the Zoom sessions, the students’ posts on MeWe, as well as a final project questionnaire. Results revealed that the students who engaged the most in the synchronous sessions and felt curiosity about their partners’ culture were also the same ones who contributed the most to the cultural discussions on MeWe. At the end of the course all participants felt they had learnt something about their partners’ culture.


Author(s):  
Frank K. Lu ◽  
Philip K. Panicker ◽  
M. Byron Webb

Amongst some of the more challenging aspects of engineering education is in imparting hands-on experience for the students. Despite the fact that engineering requires practical know-how, this challenge is in itself being compromised as the engineering curriculum over the past few decades increasingly moves away from workshops and laboratories toward classroom lectures and dependence on computer-based training. This paper describes a laboratory experience early in a mechanical and aerospace engineering student’s career which provides an adequate preparation for understanding all aspects of modern digital data acquisition systems. This laboratory experience is coupled with classroom lectures and projects. The laboratories comprise of modules that cover a variety of topics which expose the students to digital data acquisition techniques, data processing and analysis, uncertainty analysis and comparison with theory. Moreover, instead of generic experiments, most of the experiments were built around ordinary items and processes. The laboratory experience is based around National Instruments hardware, controlled via LabVIEW™. Data processing is via MS EXCEL. These platforms are ubiquitous and provide good exposure to similar hardware and software.


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