LEARNING ELECTRONICS THROUGH STORYTELLING

This work reviews best practices in first-year engineering design courses at 40 universities across Canada and the United States. The authors reviewed the subject matter and instructional methods of these engineering design courses. University selection was based on prominence, level of engineering design content, and availability of data. The authors narrowed the scope of the study to seven Canadian programs and eight American programs for further investigation: University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Manitoba, Queen’s University, University of Sherbrooke, University of Toronto, University of Western Ontario, University of Colorado, Franklin W. Olin Engineering College, Harvey Mudd College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Stanford University, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute. The authors then identified six reoccurring themes in the methods of engineering design instruction: full-scale project, small-scale project, case study analysis, reverse engineering project, design tools and methods instruction, and integration. These themes are then discussed from the point of view of educators looking to develop first-year engineering design courses.

Texas Instruments (TI) currently offers a comprehensive curriculum to supplement their Robotics System Learning Kit MAX (TI-RSLK MAX). While designed for all college students, TI would like to provide a modification of the curriculum specifically for first-year engineering design courses. The goal of this project was to modify the current TI-RSLX MAX curriculum, making it easier to digest for first-year engineering students and more applicable to shorter duration projects (∼8 weeks), while still being information dense. To better understand the user experience of the current TI-RSLK MAX curriculum and determine what users would want from a modified curriculum, user interviews were conducted and analyzed using inductive qualitative analysis techniques. Results showed that while the current TI robotics project has many positives, first-year students primarily struggled with the coding aspect of the project. These results directed and informed the prototype development of a modified curriculum module focused on teaching students code. Low- and medium-fidelity prototypes were developed and tested with users. Data from the usability study were analyzed using descriptive analysis techniques and results indicate that the medium-fidelity prototype helped students learn robotics coding. This research has implications for a high-fidelity modified TI-RSLX MAX curriculum and robotics education for first-year engineering design students.

Students in first-year engineering design courses recognize that the purpose of their design is to solve a problem or meet a need for a new product or process. Therefore, their end user is a major stakeholder for their design. In our design courses, we emphasize that the end user is not the only stakeholder, but that the views of everyone who could be impacted by the new product or process should be addressed by the design and its implementation or manufacture. Stakeholder interests often extend beyond the technical domain and involve broader societal impacts. Conflicts in interests and motives among stakeholders make ill-structured and incompletely defined societal problems perplexing at best. Where are the solutions that used to be conveniently found in the back of a textbook? Instead, our students need to develop a problem solving process, based on the design model consisting of defining the problem, investigating its causes, conditions and constraints, brainstorming alternative solutions, and testing these solutions in view of problem specifications arising from causes, conditions and constraints in order to determine the optimal solution. Stakeholder interests often become part of product or process specifications, therefore, a similar problem solving process can be applied to the resolution of an ethical dilemma in engineering. We had designed an ethics-based exercise to help our students to identify stakeholder interests and apply them to the resolution of an ill-structured problem taken from the engineering workplace, involving a hypothetical software design firmed called Occidental Engineering. Stakeholders from both inside and outside the company were used to define the problem in greater detail provide additional specifications for its resolution. Students worked in teams, in class, to represent certain stakeholders and recommend a solution based on that stakeholder's position, as they perceived it. Our latest version of this exercise combined stakeholder roles and interests with the application of four ethical frameworks for decision making: Deontology, Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism and Utilitarianism. How would each stakeholder recommend a solution under each of these four frameworks? Deontology is based on rules, such as the Code of Ethics for Engineers by the National Society for Professional Engineers or the codes of ethics published by engineering professional organizations. Under Virtue Ethics, individuals act in ways that reflect on their character, by using commonly accepted historical or societal norms of moral virtue. By contrast, Consequentialism is often described as a case where "the ends justify the means", sometimes without regard for either rules or virtue. Finally, Utilitarianism is a framework for "greatest good for the greatest number", or a form of cost-benefit analysis. This GIFT includes a matrix in which students can describe solutions to an ethical dilemma, as expressed by stakeholders under each of these four frameworks. Other frameworks can be used instead. This exercise can be given either in class or as a homework assignment. If used as a homework assignment, students can also share their results with the rest of the class after submitting their responses. Would a stakeholder's response change under any of these frameworks?

This paper presents preliminary results of a currently funded NSF project that is developing and validating an instrument to assess the relationship between project appropriateness in domain relatedness, ambiguity, and genderedness and student efficacy in first-year engineering design courses. Because design is a defining activity for engineers, it is widely adopted as a means to introduce students to engineering. Many engineering schools now have first-year engineering courses, which feature engineering design learning in team-based settings. From a student’s perspective, motivation and self-efficacy may decrease when (1) the project domain (e.g., electrical engineering) is not directly related to their chosen major (e.g., chemical engineering), (2) the projects are perceived to be overly complex and ambiguous vis-a-vis student preparation, and (3) skewed toward a particular gender (e.g., masculine or feminine oriented). With this work, we aim to assist engineering design instructors in refining content to achieve higher retention rates.

– An ongoing debate around classroom organization decisions, particularly with regard to team formation, involves the value associated with team-member diversity. Diversity can be defined, for example, in terms of discipline, marks, race, gender, language, age, experience, or goals. For the researchers in this case, this debate around the impact of diversity motivated further analysis of just what, if any, impact linguistic diversity had on teams in first-year engineering design courses. This is of particular concern given the dramatic increase in the percentage of multilingual students that make up current student bodies across Canada. Our analysis indicates that the effect of having non-native speakers of English (NNSE) on a team is not a de facto detriment to idea generation and discussions within the team. Thus, this paper reports on the effects of multilingualism on team dynamics and idea generation. The authors present here a subset of the data from of a much larger study on effective teamwork behaviours, that highlights two multilingual dominant teams from the larger study. The analysis examines how multilingualism and values associated with it contributed to and developed an integrated understanding of both the problem being addressed and potential solutions to that problem.

Hands-on first-year design courses are used at a growing number of universities as the initial opportunity for students to learn about engineering design. The effects of different hands-on approaches on the development of design process knowledge in students, however, are unclear. In this study, we investigate the effects of three hands-on course models - analysis-driven textbook design projects, dissection projects, and service learning projects with actual clients. The design process knowledge of students in eleven sections of a first-year engineering course was evaluated before and after the course and course evaluations were collected at the end of the course. Results indicate that there are no significant differences in impact on design process knowledge between the three course models. From the course evaluations, the course models show modest effects on student perceptions of their creative, critical thinking, and teamwork skills and their feel for current developments in engineering.

<abstract> <bold>Abstract.</bold> For four years (eight academic semesters), the Ohio AgrAbility Program and the University of Dayton Engineering Innovation course (EGR 103) have partnered to provide students with an open-ended engineering design project related to the mission of AgrAbility. This partnership allowed students to identify and solve a variety of problems within agricultural systems, and yielded creative, practical design solutions and prototypes. The partnership and prototypes were shown and demonstrated for farmers at key agricultural workshops/events and highlighted in a ThinkTV® video on agricultural engineering sponsored by the Dayton, Ohio STEM Center. This poster highlights the partnership and the quality, novel, and affordable ($50 or less) design solutions generated by first-year students in the course. Examples include an adaptive crutch tool, ergonomic shovel, watering device for persons with cognitive limitations, compression garments and gloves for arthritis sufferers, safety harness for grain silos, and various assistive devices for farmers in wheelchairs. These design solutions address a host of prevention, safety, and assistive needs. In addition to design solutions, the partnership provides an enhanced experiential learning design experience for students. EGR 103 is a project-based first-year engineering design course, which requires students to work in teams on service-learning design projects, and collaborate on design activities and technical reports to solve open-ended problems using engineering design. Multidisciplinary engineering design teams are given guidance and key deadlines, but the teams primarily work independently on projects and must diligently exercise project management. Realistic, relevant engineering problems and productive client interactions are essential components of the Engineering Innovation course that enhance the design and learning experience. Ohio AgrAbility staff and clients help fulfill these objectives by working with course instructors to craft pertinent problem statements, serving as clients that provide meaningful interaction and feedback, arranging site visits/tours for design teams, and donating materials so students can design and test realistic prototypes.

At Memorial University, for the last several years, instructors of the first-year engineering design course have worked closely with the local chapter of the Tetra Society of North America to provide meaningful open-ended doable design projects that are needed by actual clients. Founded in 1987, The Tetra Society of North America is an independent non-profit charitable organization that recruits skilled technical volunteers to design and fabricate custom assistive devices for people with disabilities. In this paper, several projects that have been assigned to students in the past will be described and example solutions provided by students will also be shown. From the feedback of students, instructors, and clients, this collaboration with the Tetra Society has been very successful in providing real, needed, doable projects, with real clients for first year engineering students.

Previous research has shown that psychometrically assessed cognitive abilities are predictive of achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) even in highly selected samples. Spatial ability, in particular, has been found to be crucial for success in STEM, though its role relative to other abilities has been shown mostly when assessed years before entering higher STEM education. Furthermore, the role of spatial ability for mathematics in higher STEM education has been markedly understudied, although math is central across STEM domains. We investigated whether ability differences among students who entered higher STEM education were predictive of achievements during the first undergraduate year. We assessed 317 undergraduate students in Switzerland (150 from mechanical engineering and 167 from math-physics) on multiple measures of spatial, verbal and numerical abilities. In a structural equation model, we estimated the effects of latent ability factors on students’ achievements on a range of first year courses. Although ability-test scores were mostly at the upper scale range, differential effects on achievements were found: spatial ability accounted for achievements in an engineering design course beyond numerical, verbal and general reasoning abilities, but not for math and physics achievements. Math and physics achievements were best predicted by numerical, verbal and general reasoning abilities. Broadly, the results provide evidence for the predictive power of individual differences in cognitive abilities even within highly competent groups. More specifically, the results suggest that spatial ability’s role in advanced STEM learning, at least in math-intensive subjects, is less critical than numerical and verbal reasoning abilities.

WIP: Evaluating the impact of an introductory first-year engineering design course in shaping students’ experience and academic preparedness

The Higher Education Quality Council ofOntario (HEQCO) has established a consortium ofinstitutions committed to the development of usefullearning outcomes assessment techniques and to theirwide-scale implementation in their institutions. Queen'sUniversity is one of three universities and three collegesof the consortium, and the Faculty of Engineering andApplied Science (FEAS) is participating due to familiaritywith assessing learning outcomes as part of accreditation.The specific learning outcomes that are of interest toQueen's are Critical Thinking, Problem Solving,Communication and Lifelong learning.The goal of this three-year project is to assess theaforementioned general learning outcomes and cognitiveskills using three assessment methods simultaneously:embedded course assessment, using meta--rubrics toscore student artifacts, and using standardizedtests/surveys. The study will document cost and timerequired to access each of these methods in specificcourses, analyze correlation between scores from thethree methods, and evaluate developments of the genericlearning outcomes over the duration of a program. Weaim to ensure that the work of outcomes assessment issustainable, works within standard course contexts, andcan be integrated into regular course activities. Thepaper identifies the goals of the project, currentapproach, and an example of data collection in one firstyearengineering design course.

BackgroundTeaching online is a different experience from that of teaching in a face-to-face setting. Knowledge and skills developed for teaching face-to-face classes are not adequate preparation for teaching online. It is even more challenging to teach science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses completely online because these courses usually require more hands-on activities and live demonstrations. Although the demand for online STEM courses has never been higher, little has been done to develop effective instructional and online course design strategies for teaching STEM courses online. This paper reports the effectiveness of the instructional strategies adopted and the online course design features in a fully online statistics course from the students’ perspectives. The online statistics course was an introductory, quantitative research course that covered common statistical concepts and focused on the application of educational research concepts for graduate students in educational technology. In terms of the statistics concepts covered, the course was similar to an introductory statistics class for students majoring in science, technology, math and engineering (STEM). The participants were mostly K-20 (meaning from kindergarten to college) instructors who had knowledge of instructional strategies.ResultsData collected from participants’ reflections and course evaluations revealed that a range of instructional strategies and course design features were effective and helped students learn statistics in an online environment. Specifically, case studies, video demonstrations, instructor’s notes, mini projects, and an online discussion forum were most effective. For online course design features, consistent structure, various resources and learning activities, and the application focused course content were found to be effective.ConclusionsThe implications of this study include effective instructional strategies and online course design for application-oriented STEM courses such as physics and engineering. The study results can be used to guide online teaching and learning as well as online course design for instructors, course designers, and students in STEM fields.

STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education benefits both individuals and society. It supports individuals by increasing their critical-thinking skills, encouraging creativity, as well as providing a basis for new inventions. The underrepresentation of women in STEM is a complex issue with various causes and different approaches of addressing it, where most likely gender differences are caused by desires and choice rather than abilities and performance. This paper explores differences in online and traditional STEM learning based on gender. It examines in detail recently identified patterns of women’s success, their access to STEM online courses, and their overall course experience during such courses. We analyzed results from a case study in which students were enrolled for one semester in two STEM online courses and completed questionnaires about their character traits and learning styles and how they relate to academic performance. The objective of our research is to analyze academic success during traditional classes and online classes, with focus on gender and identify how character traits and learning styles correlate with gender in online classes. The main outcome of our research is that female students, which study in the field of STEM in particular computer science, are trustworthy and autonomous students who can outperform their male counterparts during traditional courses, where during online courses male students still exceed slightly female students. The trait of Consciousness is a success predictor regardless of gender and learning environment, while the trait of Neuroticism has negative impact the traditional learning environment, Extraversion shows negative impact in online learning. Learning styles show gender differences, where female students prefer the style of read/write while male students favor kinesthetic.

The purpose of this study is to consider how to use an electronic learning (e-learning) system in engineering design. An e-learning trial in an engineering design course was introduced as an online self-study module in order to support learning outside of the classroom at the Kanazawa Institute of Technology. This paper contains a description of the e-learning system and the related student activities and teamwork.

1 INTRODUCTION Design education usually employs project-based learning, in which students learn to research, plan, design and reflect on the creation of technological projects [1], [2]. Student experience issues may influence students' design process, as well as their perception of professional knowledge development. Studies have pointed out students are ill-informed about design education when entering university [3]. In the field of design, although there have been student surveys to analyze design thinking skills and for assessing design literacy. However, these studies are primarily assessment tools, and do not investigate students’ attitudes or experiences of their design courses. While several studies focus on measuring students’ cognitive knowledge, assessments of affective variables, such as attitude, are far fewer in number. The objective of this study was to investigate student experiences, specifically the issues and challenges faced by students in three foundational design courses – focusing on introductory design, architectural design and engineering design – at the . We investigate issues such as how do students experience various instruction modes such as lectures and studio; and their experience of working individually or as teams in the three foundational design courses. 2 METHOD We conducted a survey in three foundational design courses, in both online and paper format. The survey comprised quantitative and qualitative components. Respondents consisted of 248 students from the introductory design course, 48 students from the introductory architectural design course and 71 students from the engineering design course. Respondents rated their perceptions on 23 items in two types of questions: Likert, semantic differential. Additionally, they provided their input in two open-ended questions. 3 RESULTS A principal component analysis conducted on the data revealed five factors that primarily contributed to students’ perception of foundational design courses: (1) the fun aspects of design, (2) the stressful aspects of design, (3) Course Pressures, (4) Student temperament issues, (5) Teamwork experience. Performance pressures majorly affected student experience in all three courses. The architectural design course was seen to be the most enjoyable for students, as fun scores were higher than the stress scores, and low course pressures. The engineering design course was observed to be very stressful for students, with low scores for fun. 4 SIGNIFICANCE Student perception of foundational design courses is important because it can be used to drive forward changes in curriculum and pedagogy. While this study uses data from one university, the issues reported here are generic and relevant for instructors developing design courses across different parts of the world. Research in student experience and perspectives is crucial to develop design education and propel it into the future. REFERENCES [1] Y. Doppelt, “Assessing creative thinking in design-based learning,” International Journal of Technology and Design Education, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. 55–65, 2009, [2] N. Lee, “Project methods as the vehicle for learning in undergraduate design education: a typology,” Design Studies, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 541–560, Sep. 2009, [3] A. B. Gencosmanoglu, “Learning, teaching and administration in design education: DESIGNtrain Project: Training tools for developing design education,” in Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2010.