ABSTRACT
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Teaching Workshop (ETW) started in 1999 and has produced 1035 graduates from 266 colleges and universities throughout the world. ASCE has conducted 44 week-long, in-person workshops without interruption for over two decades. The ExCEEd graduates returned to their home universities and applied the lessons of this workshop to the classes they teach. The details and long-term benefits of the ETW have been reported in many venues. In Spring 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic swept the nation and remained a persistent threat throughout 2021. As a result, the in-person workshops scheduled for Summer 2020 and Summer 2021 were canceled. This paper is the third in a three-part series that describe and assess how ASCE modified and continued the ExCEEd program during this difficult period. This third paper focuses on the behind-the-curtain activities conducted before and during the two-week virtual remote ETW (R-ETW) held from July 5-16, 2021. The findings are shared through the perspectives of the R-ETW Site Coordinator, Content Providers, Mentors, Assistant Mentors, and to a lesser degree, the participants. This paper covers the implementation of the planning and logistics of the R-ETW rehearsals, execution, challenges overcome, assessment of the effort, and recommendations for the future. Effects of the changes are described in the context of the ExCEEd Teaching Model. The challenges and opportunities discussed in this paper are of interest to higher education and professional communities interested in forming or developing virtual workshops or learning communities with missions similar to that of the ASCE ETW. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
ABSTRACT
Home field advantage has been a commonly discussed and researched topic in sports. How much of this advantage is due to the home team's supporters' physical attendance at the game where they might encourage their team, intimidate the opponent, and influence game officials? We utilize the unique natural experiment of the COVID-19 pandemic and consider the case of American professional (NFL) and collegiate (NCAA) football to examine this question. We measure how typical spreads, relative to home teams, changed in the 2020 season compared to their historical levels, and we determine that roughly half of what football fans and analysts consider to be home field advantage emanates from spectators. Generally, the betting market was rather accurate in its predictions of how football game results would change in 2020, during the pandemic, so that wagering strategies failed when based on the betting market possibly underappreciating or overcorrecting for home field advantage without fans.
ABSTRACT
Police brutality has a long history of causing havoc in the Black community. The impact of police brutality on Black men has been intensified during the coronavirus pandemic when the world witnessed George Floyd's murder on video by a white male police officer. This state of affairs caused international outrage and protest that has highlighted how Black men have been disproportionately impacted by police brutality and placed at risk for contracting COVID-19. As university professors and administrators, the authors are constantly concerned about how police brutality impacts Black men under their tutelage on a college campus. The authors argue what must be addressed is the never-ending racial pandemic continues to plague the Black community, especially men. Higher education environments are critical components of the Black community, especially in producing an educated Black male population. This chapter offers solutions to support Black males against the racial pandemic. © 2021, IGI Global.
ABSTRACT
During the past year, faculty managing concerns with COVID-19 have turned to online exams to assist with summative assessment in their courses. As usual, there are benefits to using online exams in Learning Management Systems (LMS) and, of course, there are other aspects of testing in an LMS that could be done much better to suit our individual needs. In this paper, we discuss some of the types of questions that we use in Blackboard Exams and some of the computer tools that we use to create them. We discuss some of the successes as well as some tricks of the trade that we use to address our objectives. Finally, we discuss some additional tools that we use to mitigate cheating. This paper covers subjects such as: 1) Different types of Blackboard questions a. Calculated Formula b. Multiple Choice c. Fill in the Blank d. Fill in Multiple Blanks 2) Software tools to help write questions (e.g.) a. Mathematica b. Excel c. Visio 3) Handling multi-part questions 4) Mitigating cheating using software. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021