ABSTRACT
Since the emergence of industry 4.0, digital tools have been employed in digital transformation (DT) processes in companies and organizations both public and private. Universities have been working on the incorporation of these new paradigms into their study curriculum, seeking to train engineers in a comprehensive manner for the current job market. The School of Engineering from a private university in Chile, enjoying the highest enrollment numbers in engineering careers nationwide, has made innovations in its curriculum in order to incorporate DT across all of its subjects. Professionals by and large acknowledge the importance of DT, while those associated to professional training recognize as necessary its inclusion in the curriculum. However, in recent years with the appearance of Covid19, online teaching through LMS became necessary, and it was subsequently noted that not all professors were able to adequately adapt to the use of available technologies for their online classes. There was thus a need to to identify this gap that could indicate weaknesses in the curricular innovation process to include DT and would thus allow the creation of improvement guidelines in relation to the preparation of the teachers involved. This present study aims to look into perceptions held by School of Engineering professors regarding the importance DT and any barriers had on the use of digital tools in relation to their reaching. Surveys were applied to ascertain professors' perception regarding DT usefulness and to determine how much they actually use digital tools, using quantitative data analysis methods. Preliminary research results show a gap in taking-up basic technology that professors employ in their class, even though they acknowledge the importance of incorporating DT in the curriculum. Implications are discussed in relation to possible strategies that the School of Engineering may have in improving DT uptake, not only at the level of the curriculum, but also from each teacher in their classroom. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
ABSTRACT
There has been increased attention on producing engineers that are technically proficient while having many professional skills such as organization, time management, communication, and leadership. Across organization types, especially academia, veterans are admired by their peers for their professionalism and communication skills. Student veterans have trained and taken online classes in diverse and remote environments. They are accustomed to learning under ideal and less than ideal circumstances. The combined traits of increased professionalization, prior experience with online learning, and persistence position student veterans to perform as well or better than their traditional college-aged peers during the COVID-19 crisis. In a study of the effectiveness of Hyflex (Hybrid Flexible) learning conducted in the School of Engineering at The Citadel, forced-choice and free text survey responses showed that student veterans match with and differ from traditional college-aged students in important ways. Results from this study can be used to guide best practices in the Hyflex educational model, in order to better serve the student veteran demographic and all students. In particular, student veteran responses coalesce around a focus on effectiveness and time management concerns, as many have families and other external obligations. As a result, student veterans simultaneously want more Hyflex educational options going forward, however they want Hyflex implementation strategies to be refined and executed better in the future with more long-term planning. Active duty and student veterans can serve vital roles in the engineering classroom, modeling appropriate communication strategies for traditional students as well as connecting their global knowledge with the course content, enriching all students' understanding. Faculty and traditional students can benefit from this unique demographic if they are aware of their skills and experiences. This paper presents some of the issues and concerns of active duty and veterans pursuing an engineering degree compared to their traditional student counterparts when institutions pivot to alternative instructional delivery, specifically Hyflex. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
ABSTRACT
All first-year students at the J. B. Speed School of Engineering (SSoE) at the University of Louisville (UofL) are required to complete a two-course sequence. The purpose of the two-course sequence is to introduce incoming students to the fundamentals and profession of engineering. The first course in the sequence is titled Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice I (ENGR 110) and primarily focuses on introduction to and practice with fundamental engineering skills. The second course Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice II (ENGR 111) is a makerspace-based course primarily focused on application and integration of the fundamentals learned in ENGR 110. ENGR 111 includes a variety of fundamental skills in its instruction, one of which is programming. Therefore, all disciplines of SSoE engineering students are exposed to the basics and applications of programming through this course sequence. Programming instruction in ENGR 111 is designed to include relevant software development skills that students might encounter in the engineering profession. The students have learned initial programming skills in their ENGR 110 course through the Python programming language. In ENGR 111, students practice programming skills learned in ENGR 110 on two different platforms: Arduino Microcontrollers (Arduino) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). In normal face-to-face semesters, students are put into teams of 3 to 4 and given modules to develop and practice these skills (two for Arduino, two for PLCs). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ENGR 111 was augmented into a synchronous remote course to avoid close proximity and shared tools in the makerspace. Arduino programming instruction was performed using Tinkercad (tinkercad.com), a website that allows for Arduino programming and circuitry simulations. PLC instruction was performed utilizing a free online PLC simulator website, “PLCfiddle” [1]. At the end of each semester, students take a survey on their perceptions of the course. Included in this survey are questions pertaining to programming instruction. These questions assess student confidence in programming and platform preference. Results of these questions from Spring 2019 (a makerspace iteration) and Spring 2021 (a remote iteration) are compared in this paper. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
ABSTRACT
This complete Evidence-based Practice paper will describe efforts and outcomes in redesigning and implementing a makerspace-based course during a time of COVID-necessitated fully online synchronous learning. This course is an introductory engineering course that all first-year engineering students at the J. B. Speed School of Engineering (SSoE) at the University of Louisville (UofL) are required to take. The course, titled Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice II (ENGR 111), is primarily focused on application and integration of fundamental engineering skills introduced in a prerequisite course ENGR 110. ENGR 111 houses SSoE's Cornerstone Project, and is extensively based in active learning pedagogy taking place in a large university makerspace, with the vast majority of class activities typically taught pre-COVID through extensive hands-on pedagogical approaches. Although the ENGR 111 structure is the antithesis of an online pedagogical setting, course administrators were forced to redesign the ENGR 111 experience during the Spring and Summer 2021 semesters to online delivery due to the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of the university makerspace was not feasible due to the close-proximity nature of numerous aforementioned hands-on activities for as many as 96 students per class, and the provision of multiple shared tools amongst six different classes. Therefore, the online format challenged instructors to retain a heavy focus on teamwork (an institutionally identified key element of the ENGR 111 experience), in addition to the active learning environment of the conventional course. Prior to the pandemic, ENGR 111 was an innovative course in its formal utilization of the makerspace setting and extensive integration of active learning, while the ENGR 111 redesign is innovative in maintaining course learning objectives despite the online format. The details provided in this paper for how to implement an active, hands-on, makerspace engineering course in an online format are conducive to adaptation for course instructors throughout the United States, as all software, platforms, and/or websites discussed are typically free for faculty and students alike. Details within this paper will be particularly focused on a handful of course curriculum features that were the most challenging to accommodate in the online format, including teamwork, experimentation, the ENGR 111 design challenge, programming and circuitry, and the Cornerstone Project. Qualitative and quantitative measures of student perceptions during the online ENGR 111 experience were collected at the culmination of both semesters. Over 400 students shared their perceptions and reasoning of course features and topics that they found to be effective despite the online setting. They also shared perceptions and reasoning of course features and topics that they thought would have been more effective under normal face-to-face instruction. Additionally, at the end of the course for the past several years, students have completed validated, quantitative surveys grounded in value-expectancy theory, including the Perceived Belonging Uncertainty (PBU) and Interest in Engineering (IIE) scales. The qualitative responses were analyzed using grounded theory methodologies to extract emergent themes. Finally, a comparative analysis between the quantitative, belonging and interest, responses from students of the 2019 cohort that took ENGR 111 prior to the pandemic versus the 2021 cohort that experienced the online iteration of the ENGR 111 course was analyzed with independent samples t-test to explore if there were significant differences in these key constructs that could be ascribed to the online makerspace format vs. normal face-to-face. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022.
ABSTRACT
With the outbreak of the pandemic, our School of Engineering spent summer 2020 reworking our classes so that our students could have comparable class experiences whether attending class in person or on-line. This presented a challenge on how to deliver a team centered hands-on design project in our sophomore level material and energy balance course. As part of this project, teams are required not only to research, design, construct, evaluate, test and report on their product, but also to develop a mathematical model to predict their product's performance. It is important that the students have a fun yet inexpensive project to design and build, but they must also develop a mathematical understanding of the fundamental engineering principles that make their design work. Through this mathematical modeling the student cultivates the connection between mathematics and science, as well as understanding the fundamental engineering principles that make their products work. This paper will describe the details of the design project, which includes the design criteria and constraints, how the students are introduced to the project through a professionally produced introductory video, and an introduction to the engineering design and decision-making process, while also teaching basic engineering concepts. Activities will be provided which helped to scaffold the underlying math and science concepts to support the design decisions. CATME was utilized in forming design teams - while balancing the teams by schedule, gender, race/ethnicity, GPA, and in-person/online. This allowed team members to participate equitably by developing the mathematical model (which was not restricted to the online students) and building and testing the product (in-person students with input from the online students) (while remaining socially distanced and testing outdoors) and all team members worked on the final design project report. Design testing videos and pictures will be included to illustrate the variety of successful design solutions - in addition, the list of design materials which were provided for the teams to select from for the construction of their design. The results of this project (fall 2020) will be compared to (fall 2021 - under a less restrictive COVID protocol) and pre-COVID (2002, 2008 and 2011) semesters - when this project was used in a first-year introduction to engineering design course. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2022
ABSTRACT
As part of the Summer High School Intensive in Next Generation Engineering (SHINE) with the University of Southern California's (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, this work examines the transmission of the COVID-19 virus through respiratory droplets expelled from an infected individual. Social distancing and face masking protocols have been implemented to reduce the spread of droplets. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of the recommendations using computational fluid dynamics simulations based upon the ANSYS Fluent Student Edition with two-dimensional axisymmetric simulations. The four most common ways of spreading respiratory droplets, including breathing, talking, coughing, and sneezing, were examined. Before completing the droplet spray simulations, several canonical jet flows were simulated to verify the validity of Fluent's application. Specifically, laminar and turbulent free jets were modeled and compared against experimental data. In addition, standard features of jets such as self-similarity, spreading ratios, and centerline velocity decay were verified from the solutions. Once the computations were validated, simulations were completed for each of the four cases at the six-foot recommended social distancing to determine the droplet concentration reduction. The simulations were run at increasing grid resolution to verify grid and time-step independence. Finally, the simulations were repeated for the case with face masks to assess the additional reduction of droplets reaching the receiver at the recommended distance. At the recommended social distancing with masking, the number of droplets coming into contact with others was reduced to negligible amounts. The simulations showed the recommended protocols are highly effective at reducing the transmission of COVID-19. © 2022, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic transferred engineering education at Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS), Oulu, Finland, in the School of Engineering and Natural Resources to digital remote learning in the middle of spring semester 2020. This study describes engineering students' experiences and perceptions of the digital remote learning during COVID-19 pandemic in OUAS. Findings show that rapid transformation to remote education mode happened successfully, however, it highlights the development needs for some of the courses as not all subjects were ready to digital remote learning from pedagogical point of view. The importance of continuous support, well-structured classes, and engagement via digital learning environments with the students during remote teaching is essential for a successful learning experience. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
This study presents a research experience with engineering students at undergraduate and graduate levels, during the summer of 2020 at the School of Engineering, University of Minho, Portugal. Following the first pandemic event in Portugal, from March to May 2020, the Foundation for promoting Science and Technology (FCT) has opened a call for research projects among students and researchers at different Universities. The main aim of these projects was to motivate students to return physically to the campus during a summer course, and to promote a research environment among them. i9Masks was one of the projects approved by the University of Minho and its main objective was the development of innovative masks in a silicone elastomer for the protection of COVID-19 with the use of state-of-the-art technologies. The development of masks was at the time a very hot topic as well as a fashionable subject for research. Considering the results obtained, from the final works presented by students, a very positive balance of the experience was achieved. The i9Masks project was a useful learning experience for engineering education, particularly in Portugal, where the opportunity to participate in this type of "learning by doing" experience is very small. Copyright © 2021 by ASME
ABSTRACT
Universities face the challenges of an integrated, globalized world and new competencies required in the job market. In recent years, our institution, a large private multi-campus Mexican university, has been preparing for these new challenges by migrating its educational model from a traditional lecture modality to challenge-based learning, emphasizing competencies instead of educational objectives. Students take the Exploration Elective course during the third semester, a course outside their discipline, to explore another field. The School of Engineering and Sciences offers various Exploration Elective courses based on four avenues: Bioengineering and Chemical Process, Innovation and Transformation, Computer Science and Information Technologies, and Applied Sciences. In this contribution, we present the design of the Exploration Elective course and its implementation with large classes during the Covid-19 pandemic through synchronous distance education. We surveyed 649 students after they completed the class. They were enrolled in eight different courses at all 25 campuses. We report an overview of students' satisfaction with their achievement of the course's objectives, the implementation, the coordination among the professors, and the students' perceptions of the time and difficulty demands. The survey results showed a high level of student satisfaction with the exploration elective courses offered by the School of Engineering and Sciences. The course provided students from vastly different academic backgrounds the opportunity to learn about Science and Engineering through challenge-solving. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Senior Design or "Capstone" projects are an important aspect of undergraduate activity in engineering disciplines as they consist of a culminating major design experience incorporating appropriate engineering standards and multiple constraints, based upon skills acquired in earlier course work. Capstone activities include gathering requirements, technical design, presentations, and written documentation. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ingram School of Engineering at Texas State University hosted a “Senior Design Day” at the end of the Fall and Spring semesters, in which projects and student presentations were showcased. At its peak, over 450 individuals attended this event, providing large audiences for student presentations. Attendees were also given the opportunity to evaluate student projects and to provide feedback regarding the event. With the social distancing directives from the university and local government, Senior Design Day became a virtual event. This work in progress compares past events held in person vs. two that were conducted virtually, and of those two virtual events, compares an event conducted with pre-recorded presentations vs. one held with synchronous video presentations. Participant and visitor evaluations and feedback are compared, as significantly more feedback was received for the virtual events than for the in-person events. The differences in how project sponsors, faculty, and students participated in each type of Senior Design Day is compared and discussed. Some elements of a virtual event provided improvements to the experience and their application to post-pandemic Senior Design Days is discussed. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Like most other universities in the United States, classes and labs at University of the Pacific went fully virtual in March 2020 as a result of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Prior to this event, all classes were taught in face-to-face synchronous mode. At the end of the semester, we administered a survey to students in the School of Engineering and Computer Science asking for feedback on their remote learning experience. In addition to numerical ratings, specific feedback was sought using the following questions: • What elements of remote delivery were effective/not effective? • Do you have any specific suggestions for improving delivery of course or lab content in remote environments? • What elements of the remote environment made it easy to learn/difficult to learn? • Do you have any specific suggestions that could improve students' ability to learn in remote environments? • What elements of the remote environment made it easy/difficult to complete your work? • Do you have any specific suggestions for things that could make it easier for students to complete their work in remote environments? • Top three factors that affected your learning negatively/positively. We received 48 responses that included over 400 individual comments. Student demographic data indicated that responses were received from students in all years, although most respondents were seniors. Responses were analyzed using the ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Model. Comments were coded manually using a spreadsheet and also categorized using MAXQDA qualitative data analysis software and were checked for consistency between the two methods used. Students' comments predominantly addressed appropriate use of technology, student engagement in the class or lab, and structured organization of the material and activities presented synchronously and asynchronously. Findings of the survey were shared with faculty in the School to inform preparation for, and teaching in, Fall 2020. Survey results, the analysis approach used, and observations are presented in this paper. The ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Model proved to be a valuable framework for cataloging and analyzing over 400 comments provided by students. Analysis of the comments showed that students prefer live classes with recorded lectures for later use together with ample opportunity for office hours and contact and communication with faculty and their peers. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this work-in-progress paper is to describe the development and assessment of a new onboarding program designed for all incoming first-year and transfer engineering students at the A. James Clark School of Engineering (Clark School) at the University of Maryland. TerrapinSTRONG has the following overarching goals: Cultivate a sense of community, sense of belonging, and connectedness amongst students in the Clark School;and Develop an appreciation for and understanding of diversity and inclusion. There are several components and attributes of TerrapinSTRONG in which incoming engineering students participate prior to and during their first semester in the Clark School. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, TerrapinSTRONG for fall 2020 was implemented virtually. The online nature of these programs and their various components will be outlined in the work-in-progress paper to provide the ASEE community with an example of recent and continuing developments in first-year and transfer student onboarding programming in an engineering school. We will also discuss past programmatic efforts that took place on-campus and outline promising practices for future cohorts of students. These initiatives, both in-person and online, were developed to promote an understanding of diversity and inclusivity in the engineering context. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
This paper is focused on a course redesign transitioning from a hardware-based course into a course taught remotely. The J. B. Speed School of Engineering (SSoE) at the University of Louisville (UofL) has a two-course sequence that all first-year SSoE students are required to complete. This two-course sequence is designed to introduce incoming students to the profession and fundamentals of engineering. The first course is titled Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice I (ENGR 110), and primarily focuses on introduction to and practice with fundamental engineering skills. The second course, Engineering Methods, Tools, & Practice II (ENGR 111) is typically a makerspace-based course primarily focused on application and integration of the fundamentals learned in ENGR 110. Included amongst numerous skills institutionally identified as “fundamental” were programming and basic circuitry. Therefore, all disciplines of SSoE engineering students are exposed to the basics of circuitry and programming through ENGR 111 pedagogy. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this makerspace course is to be taught remotely in the spring semester of 2021. The instructional team felt that there were too many shared tools and teams were too close together to safely continue the course in a makerspace environment. This remote teaching has posed the instructional team some unique challenges due to the hands-on nature of the ENGR 111 course. Students are typically in face-to-face teams of 3 or 4 students and each group is given an Arduino, breadboard, and circuit components. The given assignments start out with basic circuity and Arduino programming, followed by utilizing an Arduino to communicate with created circuits. The assignments are designed to help the first-year students gain comfort in circuitry and programming. The instructional team has decided to use Tinkercad, which is a free online collection of software tools provided by Autodesk. Many people are only aware of Tinkercad as a 3D modeling programming, however in 2017 Autodesk merged its “123D Circuits” into Tinkercad [1] [2]. This makes Tinkercad an ideal platform to use for circuitry and Arduino programming. The paper will further describe the design of the assignments, instructional team expectations from the students, the environment in which the students are using Tinkercad, as well as looking at expected course outcomes using the platform. This topic is a work in progress as data for evidence-based analyses will not be fully procured until after publication. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Western Carolina University (WCU) is a regional comprehensive university in a rural part of western North Carolina. The School of Engineering and Technology at WCU houses four undergraduate, residential programs - Electrical Engineering (EE), Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology (ECET), Engineering with Mechanical and Electrical Power Concentrations (BSE), and Engineering Technology (ET). Two of the programs are primarily electrical in nature - EE and ECET, while the other two are primarily mechanical - BSE and ET. The EE and BSE programs are accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET;the ECET and ET programs are accredited by the Engineering Technology Accreditation Commission (ETAC). The school has built curricula that integrate all four programs into five common courses, designated the project-based learning (PBL) sequence. Thus it is common for a faculty member to teach a PBL course with students from all four programs, integrated into interdisciplinary teams. The balance of theory and application varies amongst the programs: the two engineering programs (EE and BSE) have a stronger emphasis on theory and design, while the two engineering technology programs (ECET and ET) place more weight on application. Given this difference in emphasis, the impact of disruptions such as COVID-19 to engineering and engineering technology programs might be different. In the Spring semester of 2020, academic institutions across the United States significantly adjusted content delivery as a result of COVID-19. Adjustments to course delivery have continued into the Fall semester of 2020 and Spring semester of 2021. These adjustments have affected many people on every campus. This paper presents the impact of changes due to COVID-19 on teaching and learning for students and faculty in the School of Engineering and Technology. Data were collected from students in the form of a survey that explored the impact of COVID-19 in the classroom. Perceptions of learning in three course formats (face-to-face, hybrid, online) and two online delivery methods (asynchronous, synchronous) offered in 2020 were surveyed. Student perception of instructor behavior and student expectations of their instructor during the pandemic were also assessed. This paper evaluates the differences in those impacts for engineering (EAC) and engineering technology (ETAC) programs. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
During the summer of 2020, a team of faculty reimagined the School of Engineering's first-year design course to increase consistency among sections, to create space for first-year students attending online classes to form friendships, to explicitly teach design thinking and problem solving in a virtual environment, and to integrate ethics into the project-based course. This fall-term course enrolled the first-year class of approximately 140 chemical, civil, electrical, mechanical, and general engineering students. Interdisciplinary teams worked on projects in the general theme of “Engineering for Social Good.” Project topics included: designing smarter and more resilient cities, developing therapeutic devices, designing shelter for refugees in flight, and making fuel from food waste. The faculty designed and led their own section's projects while having a set of common activities and deliverables with similar timelines and baseline rubrics. To build community among the students, every project team had a maximum of eight students with an assigned undergraduate teaching assistant. Each class dealt with the limits of the pandemic in different ways. For instance, some courses developed “@Home” kits, some courses provided limited access to campus spaces, and some courses had all virtual projects. The faculty met weekly to assess course progress. Additionally, a survey was developed to assess students' learning gains, their experiences in the course, and approaches to handling a project-based course in the era of COVID. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021
ABSTRACT
Our institution, a private multi-campus Mexican university, is changing its educational model from traditional lecture instruction to challenge-based learning that emphasizes the development of specific competencies. Entering the School of Engineering and Sciences, students take the Engineering and Science Modeling course to introduce students to the university and its educational model by exploring four avenues: Bioengineering and Chemical Process, Innovation and Transformation, Computer Science and Information Technologies, and Applied Sciences. In this contribution, we report an overview of student satisfaction toward achieving the course's specific objectives, the students' perception of the importance of each avenue, and their perceptions of difficulty and time demands. We surveyed 1,499 students enrolled in programs in all four avenues of the School of Engineering and Sciences after completing the introductory course. The overall results of the survey showed a high level of student satisfaction. The students perceived that the course effectively conveyed the avenue contents and how the educational model works to develop and assess competencies. They valued having explored the different avenues of the school. The results also highlighted areas to improve to save students time in implemented activities. The latter could be due to the course's implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic, i.e., through synchronous distance education. Finally, the course also helped students reflect on their degree choices by making them solve problems they would not have faced if they did not take the course. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2021