Search

Much work has been done to assist engineering faculty in higher education as they work to enhance their classroom teaching. While some of this work might be applicable to faculty leading undergraduate research teams, it is unclear which "enhanced teaching methods" might apply in this research setting. Kolb's cycle is a method that has been used widely in pedagogical work. This current effort is intended to provide a method to facilitate its use with undergraduate research teams. The Kolb cycle represents a set of four learning activity categories where, if the full slate of these activities is engaged, learning is enhanced. In addition, previous researchers have created a Kolb Learning Style (KLS) instrument that can identify which of the four Kolb categories a student prefers. The process for this current research entails listing the research tasks, identifying the extent to which each task falls into a Kolb category and then attempting to align the Kolb categories of the research tasks with the students' KLS. This is done by altering the process used to accomplish some of the research tasks, not by altering the task itself. The impact of this alignment of research tasks with KLS was assessed qualitatively through discussions with the student researchers. The result, while only qualitative in this initial research study, is positive. The students definitively indicated that the alignment enhanced their research experience in terms of efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of the research work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Westmont college is a small Christian liberal arts college in Santa Barbara California. In 2019 Westmont started an engineering program. Westmont Engineering grants a General Engineering degree with an emphasis on Mechanical Engineering. The engineering program incorporates the Westmont liberal arts core set of classes such that each engineering student is required to take the full liberal arts general education curriculum in addition to the engineering curriculum. The program has had a successful start, with great interest from students and also from prospective employers. Westmont engineering is built on three "pillars:" a Christian liberal arts foundation, excellence in technical competence, and integration of a Design Innovation thread throughout the curriculum. This paper will provide details of the three pillars and then proceed to show the impact of these pillars in three areas: impact on student recruitment, student satisfaction during the program and employment potential (from the perspective of prospective employers). Some additional aspects of the Westmont engineering experience are also evaluated including small class size, access to faculty, and geographic location. Assessment of the variables is ongoing, but initial results indicate that students choose Westmont engineering for a wide variety of reasons. This includes significant value placed in Westmont's overall academic quality and Westmont's liberal arts foundation. Student value in the Design Innovation aspect of the program has grown as the program has matured. Current students indicate that their experience in the engineering program is positive. Their positive experience is based significantly on small class size, engaged faculty, and aspects of Design Innovation such as group design projects, hands-on learning experiences and focus on innovation. Employers tell us that their likelihood for hiring Westmont engineering graduates is very high. This is based on their belief in the program's technical rigor and their perception that the students will have good "soft skills". They also indicated that the student's exposure to the Design Innovation process and methods was a seen in a very positive light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This evidence-based practice paper describes the use of creativity practice exercises intended to enhance student creativity in a capstone design program. Engineering programs, in general, and capstone design programs, in particular, that seek innovative conceptual solutions to complex problems would benefit from techniques to develop and assess student creativity. Therefore, a study was performed to evaluate two such techniques. Over the first two years of the study, capstone design students in the United States Air Force Academy's Department of Engineering Mechanics were each assigned to one of 14 teams which received various learning experiences (treatments) intended to enhance individual creativity and design project innovation. Twelve of the 14 teams (n = 70) received an innovative engineering design curriculum while the control teams (n = 23) did not. Six teams (n = 37) experienced seven weekly creativity exercises across the fall semester, provided by Destination Imagination, while four teams (n = 56) did not. It was expected that the exercises would improve Creativity Index scores in students across the study as measured by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) Figural Test. The Creativity Index scores of the students were analyzed using an independent sample t-test to determine if any differences could be detected. Results after the first two years are positive, indicating that students that participated in the creativity enhancing treatments showed higher improvements in Creativity Index scores compared to the controls. However, the statistical significance of these findings are not strong, presumably due to the small sample size. Therefore, the research will continue in subsequent years. In addition, evaluation of the design teams' concepts by experienced engineering design faculty indicated that the teams that participated in the creativity exercises exhibited greater innovation in their design process versus the control. Finally, students reported that the exercises are fun and help them expand their way of thinking to consider unexpected solutions to a diverse array of challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs and small businesses would like to benefit from the lean production models they see in larger businesses, but often have non-standardized processes. Unlike larger organizations with specialized tasks, employees of entrepreneurial small businesses perform many different functions, which makes the adoption of Lean Six Sigma methods daunting. Using an auto collision company as a case in point, this paper gives prescriptive processes for Lean production in small, non-standardized workplaces. The case clearly follows the Six Sigma Implementation Framework, but also shows how Phillips and Stone's training model is incorporated as management and workers are trained in Lean Six Sigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The engineering design process can be a complex and lengthy process, and be considered a daunting experience for engineering students embarking on their first full-length project. "Designettes" are a pedagogical approach to introducing parts of engineering design in such a way that students can experience it in a manageable, introductory fashion. In many design courses, students may experience design activities such as "Customer Needs Analysis," "Functional Decomposition," "Concept Generation," "Concept Selection" and "Prototype Planning" for the first time. One approach to increasing design experience to aid understanding of these activities is to use the designette exercise to provide the students with a framework of the design process. They can then rely this framework for their longer capstone projects. The designette is highly tailorable and an understanding of the appropriate factors related to its successful implementation is desired. We have used several versions of the designette approach over the past five years in our two-semester capstone design course. Each year we've implemented the designette across numerous projects, where teams of 3-8 students are also assigned year-long, externally sponsored projects. Previous research reported on the effects of varying the length of the designette and with the use of related and unrelated designettes to the students' year-long projects. In each use of the designette, the suite of five design activities mentioned above was presented in varying levels of depth of coverage. For the past two years, data has been gathered on the effect of varying the amount of design content provided on the effectiveness of the designette approach. Design content detail in the current year of designettes was increased by approximately 50% over previous years. Faculty and student feedback was primarily used to characterize and compare the designette's effectiveness. Initial results suggest a continued benefit of the inclusion of the designette approach to capstone design courses, with varying results from the depth of design process coverage [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prototyping is often a very important phase in a capstone design project. However, in many cases, prototyping decisions are made arbitrarily by students, adversely affecting the quality of the final product delivered. At The University of Texas at Austin we are developing a structured prototyping strategy tool based on a synthesis of prototyping techniques that have been shown to be effective. Our strategy tool leads designers through the process of making decisions about aspects of a prototype program, such as how many concepts to prototype, the number of prototype iterations to complete for a given concept, and whether to use scaled prototypes. In this study we evaluate whether explicit discussion of these prototyping decisions affects the results of the capstone design projects. The goal was to determine if exposure to the prototyping strategy tool leads to an increase in the number of prototypes constructed, as research suggests that early and frequent prototyping leads to increases in the quality and the novelty of designs. At the beginning of the semester, students in the capstone course received instruction on the benefits of prototyping and on the use of prototyping strategy tool. We then conducted interviews at the end of the semester to evaluate the students' prototyping efforts. These results were compared to previous capstone projects where the students did not receive formal guidance on making prototyping decisions. The results of the comparison show statistically significant increases in the proportion of teams opting to create prototypes and the average number of prototypes per team. This paper describes the study in detail, analyzes the results, and presents conclusions and future directions of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capstone design courses are intended to provide a culminating experience for senior undergraduate engineering majors. Universities vary in how they implement the instruction and implementation of the design process in their capstone courses. For example, many have a separate class in design methods, followed by a one-semester capstone course where teams work on a "design, build, test" project. Other institutions teach design methodology incorporated into the capstone design project in what is often a two-semester capstone sequence. In the cases where design methodology is incorporated into a two-semester capstone course, it is possible that this is the students' first extensive exposure to design methods and process. In that case, students may be experiencing methods such as "Customer Needs Analysis", "Functional Decomposition", "Concept Generation", "Concept Selection" and "Prototype Planning" for the first time. From a constructivist educational standpoint, it can be problematic for students to apply these design techniques for the first time on what is often a complex, real world capstone design problem. One solution to this problem is to incorporate a short design experience at the beginning of the two-semester capstone course. This can allow the students an initial experience with the design methods that can provide a "learning scaffold" for their implementation of the full suite of design methods over the course of a two-semester project. For the last three years, we have implemented three versions of a short, introductory design project (i.e. designette) in our two-semester capstone design sequence. In our uses of the designette project, the suite of five core design methods mentioned above were taught in an abbreviated form. However, in one year the designette lasted ten class hours, the next year's designette lasted 14 class hours, and this past year's project lasted seven class hours. The longest designette allowed for greater depth in the initial coverage of the methods and also provided greater time for prototyping and testing. Of course this was at the cost of consuming a greater percentage of the overall time allocated for the actual capstone design project. This paper reports on the implementation details of the designette projects, focusing in particular on advantages and disadvantages of the different implementations in the most recent years. Faculty and student feedback indicated that the use of the designette does increase student familiarity with the design methods. However, more subtle questions such as the number of lessons allocated for the designette and the depth of coverage of the design methods have much more complicated assessment results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has investigated methods based on design-by-analogy meant to enhance concept generation. While these methods are promising, they can be cumbersome and difficult to apply in engineering classrooms. This paper presents Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps, a new method to prompt generation of analogous solution principles drawn from multiple analogical domains. The method begins with identifying a primary functional design requirement such as "eject part." We then use this functional requirement "seed" to generate a WordTree, which is a graph of grammatically analogical synonyms. We randomly select a set of 10-15 words from each WordTree list and use the resulting word list to populate the first-level nodes of a mind-map, with the functional requirement seed as the central hub. The word list and resulting mind-map then serve as visual tools that are utilized during the concept generation process. The effectiveness of the tool in generating concepts has been evaluated in separate studies utilizing student design teams working on a wide variety of projects in both the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), a small academic community, and at The University of Texas at Austin, a large public research university setting. In our evaluation of the method, designers first used the word list (10-15 words from WordTree) to individually generate solutions and then performed team concept generation using the analogically seeded mind-map. The total quantity of concepts was measured. Additionally, the effect of word familiarity and the number of definitions of word were investigated for their effect on the quantity of concepts generated. It was found that the Analogy Seeded Mind-Map method allowed students to generate a large number of concepts in a relatively short amount of time with only brief introduction and explanation of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape of contemporary engineering education is ever changing, adapting and evolving. As an example, finite element theory and application has often been included in graduate-level courses in engineering programs; however, current industry needs bachelor's-level engineering graduates with skills in applying this essential analysis and design technique. Engineering education is also changing to include more active learning. In response to the need to introduce undergrads to the finite element method as well as the need for engineering curricula to include more active learning, we have developed, implemented and assessed a suite of Active Learning Module (ALMs).The ALMs are designed to improve student learning of difficult engineering concepts while students gain essential knowledge of finite element analysis. We have used the Kolb Learning Cycle as a conceptual framework to guide our design of the ALMs. Originally developed using MSC Nastran, followed by development efforts in SolidWorks Simulation, ANSOFT, ANSYS, and other commercial FEA software packages, a team of researchers, with National Science Foundation support, have created over twenty-eight active learning modules. We will discuss the implementation of these learning modules which have been incorporated into undergraduate courses that cover topics such as machine design, mechanical vibrations, heat transfer, bioelectrical engineering, electromagnetic field analysis, structural fatigue analysis, computational fluid dynamics, rocket design, and chip formation during manufacturing, and large scale deformation in machining. The findings in this paper includes statistical results for each module which compare performance on pre- and post-learning module quizzes to gauge change in student knowledge related to the difficult engineering concepts that each module addresses. Statistically significant student performance gains provide evidence of module effectiveness. In addition, we present statistical comparisons between different personality types (based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, subgroups), different learning styles (based on Felder-Solomon ILS subgroups), and gender and ethnicity in regards to the average gains each group of students have made on quiz performance. Although exploratory, and generally based on small sample sizes at this point in our multi-year effort, the modules for which subgroup differences are found are being carefully reviewed in an attempt to determine whether modifications should be made to better ensure equitable impact of the modules across students from specific personality and/or learning styles subgroups (e.g., MBTI Intuitive versus Sensing; ILS Sequential versus Global). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new prototyping planning tool guides designers in choosing between virtual vs. physical prototyping strategies based on answers to Likert-scale questions. We developed this tool to augment prior work in design methods seeking to facilitate prototyping strategy development. This new tool was tested with a pilot experiment in which engineering students were tasked with optimizing the design of a four-bar linkage to be used to draw a specific shape. The students were then instructed to use the new prototyping planning tool to decide whether to create a virtual or physical prototype of a four-bar linkage, with the goal of maximizing the performance metric detailed in the design problem statement. This paper describes the new prototype strategy planning tool, the pilot experiment, and results and conclusions. The very encouraging pilot results provide a template and strong motivation for conducting a larger scale experiment for generic prototyping applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instructors and students of upper-level engineering courses often use software inside and outside of the classroom to solve problems. However, software is less frequently used in lower-level courses. One likely reason for this lack of use in lower-level courses is the concern that students may avoid manual solution of problems and thereby fail to develop foundational knowledge and proper problem solving approaches. This research attempts to answer whether in-classroom use of certain analysis software deepens student conceptual understanding and critical thinking in a foundational engineering course. The authors chose the web-based software, ForceEffect by Autodesk, based on its ability to analyze trusses, frames, and machines, as well as its numerical and graphical output. Two instructors participated in the research, each with control and experimental groups. The instructors collected results on exam and quiz conceptual questions as well as total scores on these assessment tools. Additionally, the instructors collected formal and informal feedback on the use of the software. The results showed that there was not a statistically significant difference between those groups using the software and those that did not. However, the results did show that the software could have a positive impact on student conceptual understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape of contemporary engineering education is ever changing, adapting and evolving. As an example, finite element theory and application has often been included in graduate-level courses in engineering programs; however, current industry needs bachelor's-level engineering graduates with skills in applying this essential analysis and design technique. Engineering education is also changing to include more active learning. In response to the need to introduce undergrads to the finite element method as well as the need for engineering curricula to include more active learning, we have developed, implemented and assessed a suite of Active Learning Module (ALMs).The ALMs are designed to improve student learning of difficult engineering concepts while students gain essential knowledge of finite element analysis. We have used the Kolb Learning Cycle as a conceptual framework to guide our design of the ALMs. Originally developed using MSC Nastran, followed by development efforts in SolidWorks Simulation, ANSOFT, ANSYS, and other commercial FEA software packages, a team of researchers, with National Science Foundation support, have created over twenty-eight active learning modules. We will discuss the implementation of these learning modules which have been incorporated into undergraduate courses that cover topics such as machine design, mechanical vibrations, heat transfer, bioelectrical engineering, electromagnetic field analysis, structural fatigue analysis, computational fluid dynamics, rocket design, and chip formation during manufacturing, and large scale deformation in machining. This update on research findings includes statistical results for each module which compare performance on pre- and post-learning module quizzes to gauge change in student knowledge related to the difficult engineering concepts that each module addresses. Statistically significant student performance gains provide evidence of module effectiveness. In addition, we present statistical comparisons between different personality types (based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, subgroups) and different learning styles (based on Felder-Solomon ILS subgroups) in regards to the average gains each group of students have made on quiz performance. Although exploratory, and generally based on small sample sizes at this point in our multi-year effort, the modules for which subgroup differences are found are being carefully reviewed in an attempt to determine whether modifications should be made to better ensure equitable impact of the modules across students from specific personality and / or learning styles subgroups (e.g., MBTI Intuitive versus Sensing; ILS Sequential versus Global). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The landscape of contemporary engineering education is ever changing, adapting and evolving. As an example, finite element theory and application has often been included in graduate-level courses in engineering programs; however, current industry needs bachelor's-level engineering graduates with skills in applying this essential analysis and design technique. Engineering education is also changing to include more active learning. In response to the need to introduce undergrads to the finite element method as well as the need for engineering curricula to include more active learning, we have developed, implemented and assessed a suite of Active Learning Module (ALMs).The ALMs are designed to improve student learning of difficult engineering concepts while students gain essential knowledge of finite element analysis. As such, the ALMs guide the students through a process using commercial finite element software to solve a problem (or set of problems) in a particular area of engineering. Some overview of finite element theory is included. The active learning occurs when the students interact with the physics of the problem by developing and perturbing the model of the problem. Additional active learning is sometimes included through collaborative exercises using the ALM. We have used the Kolb Learning Cycle as a conceptual framework to guide our design of the ALMs. Originally developed using MSC Nastran, followed by development efforts in SolidWorks Simulation, ANSOFT, ANSYS, and other commercial FEA software packages, a team of researchers, with National Science Foundation support, have created over twenty-eight active learning modules. We will discuss the implementation of these learning modules which have been incorporated into undergraduate courses that cover topics such as machine design, mechanical vibrations, heat transfer, bioelectrical engineering, electromagnetic field analysis, structural fatigue analysis, computational fluid dynamics, rocket design, chip formation during manufacturing, and large scale deformation in machining. This update on research findings includes statistical results for each module which compare performance on pre- and post-learning module quizzes to gauge change in student knowledge related to the difficult engineering concepts that each module addresses. Statistically significant student performance gains provide evidence of module effectiveness. In addition, we present statistical comparisons between different personality types (based on Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI, subgroups), different learning styles (based on Felder-Solomon ILS subgroups), and gender and ethnicity in regards to the average gains each group of students have made on quiz performance. Although exploratory, and generally based on small sample sizes at this point in our multi-year effort, the modules for which subgroup differences are found are being carefully reviewed in an attempt to determine whether modifications should be made to better ensure equitable impact of the modules across students from specific personality and/or learning styles subgroups (e.g., MBTI Intuitive versus Sensing; ILS Sequential versus Global). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]