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Source code plagiarism presents a continual threat to the integrity and effectiveness of engineering education, as habitual cheating often has devastating impacts on students' academic and professional careers. As programming becomes an increasingly central component of first-year engineering curricula, it is essential that instructors are able to uphold academic integrity by identifying students who engage in misconduct, either through direct plagiarism or excessive peer collaboration. Instructors have an arsenal of plagiarism detection tools at their disposal, and students are keenly aware of this. Consequently, in an attempt to evade detection, students routinely make superficial modifications to plagiarized work prior to submission. Effective plagiarism detection tools attempt to mitigate the effect of these alterations, however, the extent to which precision can be maintained for heavily modified code is limited. One aim of this paper is to quantify the effect of code modification strategies on a plagiarism detection tool's ability to preserve both sensitivity to plagiarism and precision of results. This paper will introduce a novel dimensionless metric apt for the evaluation and comparison of a plagiarism detection tool's robustness to code modification. The specific context of engineering education presents additional challenges, as research in plagiarism detection methods and performance is often not applicable to short programs in dynamically typed languages which constitute typical submissions in first-year engineering coursework. This paper will analyze the performance of relevant plagiarism detection tools on short Python programs, specifically those of fifty lines or fewer, that have been transformed by common code modification tactics, and evaluate which tools are most appropriate for use in this environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Cincinnati has a campus in the US and an international campus in China. Students in both campus take the same courses given by the same team of instructors. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the perception and feedback of these two students' populations taking a sophomore electrical engineering course in a flipped classroom setting. Data was collected in this study using both quantitative and qualitative surveys; a comparative analysis of the students' perception is performed. The result indicated that students in both campuses have positive perceptions toward the use of flipped. However, the data showed that, the international students had a different approach as compare to US students. Recommendations are made to improve their experiences with flipped classroom pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to a drop in the number of students enrolling and persisting in engineering programs, there is currently a lack of qualified engineering graduates, which jeopardizes both the health of the U.S. economy and the security of the nation. This issue has led to the development and implementation of a variety of pre-engineering and first-year engineering experiences designed to recruit more students to engineering and to retain them once they have chosen to pursue a degree in engineering. At the University of Cincinnati, three common first year engineering courses were introduced during the 2012-2013 school year to provide students with hands-on experiences in engineering and a link between engineering and the required mathematics and science courses. This paper builds on previously presented work, focusing on the impact of these courses on student performance and retention within engineering. A description of the first-year courses is provided as well as the lessons learned and changes made over the first 3 years of offerings. Data from course surveys will be discussed showing student perceptions of the courses and of the curricular modifications. The main focus of this paper is on retention data and on student performance data while on cooperative education (coop). Retention data from the first offering of these courses was presented previously. Retention data from the second offering of these courses will be added to the previous data to better show the effect of these courses on student persistence within engineering after the first year as well as retention from the second to third years. Student performance data was gathered from student and employer evaluations completed at the end of coop rotations. All students are required to participate in the coop program beginning their sophomore year. Results from the first cohort of students to participate in both these courses and completed their first coop rotation is analyzed to understand the effects of the first-year courses on student preparation and performance, particularly related to professional skills and problem solving abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to a drop in the percentage of students enrolling and persisting in engineering programs, there is currently a lack of qualified engineering graduates, which jeopardizes both the health of the U.S. economy and the security of the nation. This issue has led to the development and implementation of a variety of first-year engineering experiences designed to recruit more students to engineering and to retain them once they have chosen to pursue a degree in engineering. At the University of Cincinnati, three common courses were introduced during the 2012-2013 school year to provide first-year students with hands-on experiences in engineering and a link between engineering and the required mathematics and science courses. This paper includes a description of the first-year courses and provides detailed information about the hands-on experiments and the computing assignments that link engineering applications to topics in math and science courses. Lessons learned during the first offerings of the courses and changes made to the courses in response to student and faculty feedback are also discussed. Retention data of the engineering students from freshmen to sophomore year is provided and shows a significant increase since the common courses were introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]