Interdisciplinarity in Practice: Reflections on Drones as a Classroom Boundary Object

The gap between industry needs and engineering graduates’ competences is being tackled by project-based courses, which also help to develop key innovation competences to address current societal challenges. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding about what innovation competences are developed through the different types of project-based courses. This study discusses innovation competences development in these courses with the aim of understanding how to better design educational strategies to improve them. Through content analysis, we compare the outcomes of two groups of Telecom Engineering students undergoing a capstone course following a classical product development project approach and a challenge-based course using Design Thinking. Results show that both course types contribute to developing innovation competences. Nevertheless, depending on the chosen pedagogy some competences are developed further. The traditional project-based course demonstrates better results in Planning and Managing Projects. Creativity, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship are more developed through a challenge-based approach combined with Design Thinking.

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Laboratory- and Project-Based Course in Lean Six Sigma Nanomanufacturing Abstract This paper describes the implementation of the Introduction to Nanotechnology course developed for undergraduate Applied Engineering Technology (AET) students at the Goodwin College of Drexel University and its expansion into a hands-on laboratory- and project-based course organized on Lean Six Sigma principles. The development of this course represents an innovative new approach for integrating Lean Six Sigma methods and principles and hands-on laboratory- and project-based learning in nanotechnology. This unique combination of learning, training, and assessment will contribute to the knowledge base of undergraduate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education, research, and practice. AET students will be exposed to exciting discoveries and applications in the emerging field of nanotechnology by working with leading faculty members through classroom instruction, guest lectures, laboratory procedures, and field trips. The developed material will become available to community colleges collaborating with Drexel University as well as middle and high schools through activities organized by the AET faculty. Introduction The development of a hands-on, project-based nanotechnology manufacturing laboratory course based on Six Sigma quality methods and Lean manufacturing principles is described in this paper. The course will consist of two parts. The first part will emphasize the foundations of nanotechnology. In the second part, nanotechnology applications and techniques will be studied through experiments that closely simulate industry-relevant processes or scenarios in a pilot- scale manufacturing processes laboratory. The laboratory work will be supported and supplemented with lectures and seminars on Lean Six Sigma. Experiments and projects will focus on two key areas: nanobiotechnology, such as nanoparticles for diagnostic imaging and therapeutics, and nanostructured energy conversion devices such as solar cells. The objectives of the project are to: 1. Attract students with an interest in nanotechnology to applied engineering technology and engineering programs by developing a laboratory- and project-based course, which simulates commercial nanotechnology processes in biomedical and energy applications using an in-depth case study approach. 2. Prepare students for employment in the emerging nanotechnology field in areas such as process development; scale up and control; product specification development; and raw material and capital costing including ethical, environmental, and sustainability concerns. Special attention will be placed on a breadth of manufacturing activities with emphasis toward developing an engineering and engineering technology employee with a valuable range of skills and expertise to the employer. 3. Train the students in the methodology of Applied Lean Six Sigma to provide an overarching theory to the students’ approach to problems and solutions in the workplace.

Researchers and practitioners across engineering programs have committed many resources (time, money, etc.) to understand the experiences of multiply marginalized and underrepresented (MMU) students in engineering. The methods used to capture these experiences vary: from deep, qualitative research with low numbers of participants to large-scale quantitative methods like sense-of-belonging or campus climate surveys. Critical and Black Feminist methodologies suggest that research in equity and inclusion that involve MMU students must carefully consider the impact of the research on the participant, taking care not to re-traumatize students through the experience of participation and honoring student experiences through ongoing participation and feedback loops. Equitable practices in the execution of engineering education research projects are essential to drive the positive change we envision making in the engineering culture. This paper presents a methodological innovation our research team used to study equity and inclusion in a way that was both generative for our research purposes and also responsive to the need to prevent harm. Drawing on Starr and Greisemer's theory of "boundary objects," our semistructured interviews and focus groups were anchored in iconographic depictions of the university, asking students to interact with the graphic through a traditional participatory urban planning method. These approaches shift the power relationships traditionally established in interview settings and allowed student participants to shape the direction of their interviews and storytelling.

While the healthcare design community has increasingly focused on using research evidence in design decision-making and on using collaborative practices, there has been very little research into how interdisciplinary design teams operate in the real world and especially how they communicate and attempt to integrate evidence from different sources into architectural practice. This paper reports on one focus within along term ethnographic study of the design of a community hospital. It explores how physical mock-ups allowed multidisciplinary teams to collectively experiment and to gain shared understanding of affordances and constraints within the design of the patient room, and particularly how the teams explored the impact ofdesign on visibility within the patient room within the context of new models of distributed nursing. In our systematic observations, mock-ups emerged as key media to represent actual spaces to facilitate andsupport interdisciplinary decision-making. The ‘interactional expertise’ of project architects combined with interactive properties of mock-up rooms, which acted as ‘boundary objects’ among participants with different disciplinary backgrounds, helped this particular community to conduct a local research activity in order to generate first-hand evidence with regards to the design of patient rooms.

Assessing information literacy instruction in interdisciplinary first year project-based courses with STEM students

The analysis of experimental performance is an essential task to any experiment. With the increasing demand on experimental data mining and utilization. methods of experimental data analysis abound, including visualization, multi-dimensional performance evaluation, experimental process modeling, performance prediction, to name but a few. We design and develop an experimental performance analysis and visualization system, consisting of data source configuration component, algorithm management component, and data visualization component. It provides us feasibilities such as experimental data extraction and transformation, algorithm flexible configuration and validation, and multi-views presentation of experimental performance. It will bring great convenience and improvement for the analysis and verification of experimental performance.

“I didn't think I'd like group work, but I ended up in a good team and it was a great experience. But I feel if you end up in a bad team it can really get you down and will affect your mark.” This student response (University of Exeter, U.K.) is typical and telling. At least some of the time teams work, and the progression from “didn't think I'd like” to “great experience” happens often enough that those of us who use team work have come to expect it, at least part of the time. The ability to work well in teams is essential for our graduates. It cuts across all the questions — what, where, why and how we teach. However, not all of our students find working as a member of a team a natural and easy thing to do. Not only that, even though the student quoted in the preceding paragraph uses the phrase “good team” and the phrase “bad team” these and many other terms are not well defined. The Computer Science (CS) academic community regards group project work as an essential component of any degree; the discipline's professional societies world-wide emphasize project and group work as preparation for professional practice. Project work is recognized as having many educational and social benefits, in particular providing students with opportunities for active learning. Nevertheless, managing project work is problematic, because CS projects are: expensive , demanding considerable supervision as well as technical resources; complex , marrying design, human communication, human-computer interaction, and technology to satisfy objectives ranging from consolidation of technical skills through provoking insight into organizational practice, teamwork and professional issues, to inculcating academic discipline and presentation skills; continually demanding , set in the context of a rapidly changing technology which affects technical objectives and demands ever-evolving skills in both students and supervisors. In a young and changing discipline, some aspect of project work is questioned in almost every institution. The three panelists bring experience from four educational institutions in two countries. Louise Moses is Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Mount Union College. She has supervised team projects in extra-departmental service courses, classes provided for departmental majors, and inter-disciplinary courses. During the summer term of the previous three academic years she has been Honorary Visiting Researcher in the Department of Computer Science in the School of Engineering at The University of Exeter, Exeter, U.K. In that position she has worked as part of the management team for first year students in the first year project. James Caristi is a professor of mathematics and computer science at Valparaiso University. He was the 1990 recipient of the Sears Roebuck Award for Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership, and is the 1999 recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award from the Indiana Section of the Mathematical Association of America. He has been using teams in different ways in computer science classes at all levels for over 15 years. Sally Fincher is a Lecturer in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Kent at Canterbury in England. She has been project manager for the Effective Projectwork in Computer Science (EPCoS) project. EPCoS was a 10-partner, three-year funded project which worked to identify best practices in CS projectwork, transfer those practices between institutions and examine and analyze the process of transfer. We have wrestled with project design and how to make team assignments. And, even though providing good teamwork experiences is more of an art than a science — with no hard and fast rules — there are guidelines; it will be profitable to share our knowledge and our experiences. We shall consider six major areas concerning team and group work, and the kind of issues that are associated with them. Allocation How do we allocate students to groups? And then groups to supervisors? Supervision What sort of role should a supervisor take with respect to their group? Friend, mentor, project manager or technical guru? Does it make a difference? Assessment How do we assess the contribution of an individual when the deliverables are a team effort ? Should we even try to? Motivation What happens when students get into a “bad” team? How do we keep them motivated? Reflection Especially when introducing teamwork into the curriculum, reflection is an essential part of the learning cycle. How do we plan to make sure we include time and opportunity for this? Teamwork How do we encourage working together, when in some other academic circumstances this might be called “cheating”?

The automotive industry with both vehicle manufactures and suppliers is a highly competitive branch. The rising customers’ demand for new models with lower prices and higher performances reinforces the pressure on the research and development departments. Design processes of highly complex and customer adjusted products is challenging and requires a high quantity of analysis. Designers’ proposals need to be optimised and verified. In general, several loops are necessary to fulfil all customers’ requests. One possibility to reduce the number of loops is the integration of a product or/and system orientated knowledge management system. In this work, an approach of a structured product/system-based knowledge identification and storage is presented. The first uses of the support highlight its interest and it can be shown how it acts as a boundary object. Different actors are enabled to discuss and share their opinion of expected or observed product/system behaviours. The present article is based on our work in the R and D department of an automotive supplier. The company develops and manufactures chains and timing chain drives for combustion engines. In these systems rotational vibrations emerge. In relation with the hydraulic or mechanic tensioning elements they create linear vibrations as well, and lead to highly complex non-linear systems. The knowledge necessary to design and optimise a chain drive is hence comprehensive and cannot be acquired easily.

All the associate degree mechanical engineering technology (2MET) students at The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College are required to take a capstone engineering design course during their fourth semester in the two-year degree program.This project-based three credit-hour course is titled "Product Design with Writing Skills" (MET 210W).In this course students are taught design and selection of spur gears, shafts, helical compression springs, chains and sprockets, keys and fasteners, through teambased assignments and mini projects.These activities prepare students for the major design project to be conducted near the

ResumenEn este trabajo se presenta el análisis de tensiones y deformaciones en el cuerpo de una válvula esférica de diámetro 8" serie 600, durante la prueba hidrostática, utilizando el método de elementos finitos.Se verifica el modelo con datos experimentales de tensiones, utilizando indicadores de deformación SG (Strain Gauges).Para el análisis mediante el método de elementos finitos se utilizó el programa Cosmos/M e información obtenida durante el análisis experimental.Las pruebas experimentales se realizaron en un banco de ensayo tipo prensa, colocando indicadores de deformación en el cuerpo de la válvula en determinados puntos de interés.Los valores de deformación obtenidos permitieron validar la aplicación del método de elementos finitos.

ABSTRACTQuantitative damage detection in composite single lap joints during fatigue is difficult and not practical with many traditional experimental methods. The objective of this study is to combine a new experimental analysis method with existing stochastic models that is capable of taking the scatter inherent in composite fatigue data into account for better representation of damage evolution in single‐lap joints. This study presents a new quantitative approach where thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA), a remote sensing and non‐destructive evaluation technique, is used for in situ continuous monitoring for fatigue damage detection of Fibre Reinfoced Polymeric (FRP) S2‐glass/E733FR single‐lap joints. Image analysis algorithms are developed to capture the debonding fronts, and Markov Chain models (MCMs) are developed to capture the fatigue damage evolution in composite lap‐joints based on the experimental analysis. The TSA damage index at the last fatigue cycle is used to calibrate the MCMs, and damage predictions using the MCMs are then examined at different fatigue cycles. Methods to construct a predictive stochastic S–N curve utilizing the MCMs are discussed. The proposed IR‐TSA with MCMs is shown to be very effective in predicting the damage evolution and allowed constructing S–N curves that take the variability into account for damage in composite single‐lap joints.

This paper presents work in progress and the results obtained from a\ndevelopment project on personal development performed as a part of a curriculum\nreform work. The goal is to give the students a clear view of the challenges\nand possibilities that the future role as engineer offers and prepare for the\nexpectations put on the modern engineer such as being able to integrate\npersonal, professional and interpersonal skills. The result of this study is\nthat we define personal development as having two dimensions: the inner\ndimension which is about self-knowledge and the outer dimension which is about\nsocial ability. Four topics will be dealt with in the curriculum: motivation\nand learning; team work; leadership, and career and business.

This study aims to explore the differences in the teaching effectiveness of physical education in Chinese universities across various institutional levels, disciplinary types, and grade levels, as well as the interaction mechanisms among these factors. Based on Bandura’s self-efficacy theory [1], a three-dimensional analytical model of “institutional level–disciplinary type–grade level” is constructed. The core indicators of the model include “teaching cognition,” “teaching emotion,” and “teaching expectation,” supplemented by variables such as “mastery of motor skills” and “development of healthy behaviors.” Empirical tests are conducted using data from 2,160 questionnaires collected from nine universities—including double-first-class universities, regular undergraduate institutions, and private colleges—along with teacher interviews and classroom observation records. The results indicate that double-first-class universities exhibit significant advantages in terms of physical education resource allocation and incentive mechanisms. Engineering students in these institutions tend to develop high teaching effectiveness based on rational cognition, whereas liberal arts students rely more on emotional resonance. In regular undergraduate institutions, a reversal phenomenon is observed in disciplinary effectiveness, which significantly declines with increasing grade level. In private colleges, the effectiveness scores of students in arts disciplines display considerable fluctuations, while non-arts students face a dramatic risk of decline. This paper further discusses the intrinsic mechanisms of resource allocation, cognitive thresholds, and institutional constraints, and offers practical recommendations such as establishing interdisciplinary courses integrating “physical education + major,” developing credit systems, and implementing formative evaluation mechanisms, to provide both theoretical and practical guidance for physical education reform in different types of higher education institutions.

PurposeThis paper aims to disseminate an innovative approach to sustainability education in construction‐related fields in which teaching, research, and service are integrated to provide a unique learning experience for undergraduate students, faculty members, and community partners.Design/methodology/approachThe paper identifies the need for sustainability education in fields related to construction and describes an interdisciplinary course at Penn State that addresses this need. The goals, research, and applications of the course are detailed, as is the sustainable construction technology employed in course projects. Finally, the results from two course assessments are summarized to support the authors' hypothesis that knowledge best occurs and develops in an arena of negotiation, collaboration, and creation.FindingsStudents who participate in the course experience well‐rounded growth that includes, but is not limited to, increased research, design, communication, and collaboration skills, a finding that underscores the effectiveness of the course's holistic approach to engineering and architecture education.Practical implicationsThe paper demonstrates that engaged approaches to architecture and engineering education contribute to a heightened awareness among students of the importance of sustainability. It encourages other educators to adopt similar approaches to sustainability education in their courses.Originality/valueThe paper addresses the need for sustainability education in construction‐related disciplines by detailing an innovative course developed at Penn State to raise environmental and social awareness among architecture and engineering students. The engaged approach utilized in the course is replicable in any discipline and promises to have a significant impact on the commitment of today's students to creating a tomorrow in which sustainability is the norm rather than an anomaly.

To prepare the next generation of civil engineers to tackle 21st century challenges, engineering education must commit to deepening engineer’s social consciousness through exposure to societal problems in addition to teaching technical competencies. The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges for Engineering offers a framework for exposing students to the role of a modern engineer and the complex global challenges that require engineering intervention. In response to these challenges, many U.S. engineering schools have adopted the Grand Challenge Scholars (GCS) program to educate a new generation of engineering professionals equipped to sustainably address society’s most imminent problems. This paper presents the development of a holistic rubric to assess student scholarship and inform competencies related to Grand Challenges. The rubric builds on best practices in assessment and evaluation of the five key NAE GCS program components, including 1) hands-on project/research experience, 2) interdisciplinary curriculum, 3) entrepreneurship, 4) global dimension, and 5) service-learning. The authors discuss potential applications of the rubric to evaluate course-level outcomes, including student projects from an interdisciplinary course entitled “Creatively Applying Science for Sustainability.” In the course, students work to address a societal Grand Challenge in a semester-long project and in interdisciplinary student projects that tackle Grand Challenges on an international scale. This rubric fills a literature gap in assessing 21 century global engineering skills by measuring capabilities based on five key NAE GCS program components and provides a mechanism to understand and influence the quality of student education and experiences within Grand Challenge-focused courses and programs.