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This paper describes the development of a departmental civil engineering writing guide and assessment of student writing prior to implementing the guide. The pre-writing guide assessment will be compared to assessments of similar assignments after using the writing guide in instruction as part of an effort to quantify impact. The writing guide was a collaborative effort between the civil engineering and writing studies faculty. The collaboration reinforced work done in the required writing classes and allowed both parties to leverage their expertise. The writing guide currently contains sections detailing reports, figures, tables, equations, references, memos, homework, professional e-mails, and a general grading rubric. The rubric is general enough so that individual instructors can adapt it for a given assignment, while maintaining a consistent framework as students move from course to course. Civil engineering faculty used the proposed rubric to evaluate Fall 2014 assignments from a freshman-level introduction to civil engineering course, two required junior-level laboratory courses, and the department's capstone design course; all four courses were taught prior to use of the writing guide. Results demonstrate the need for a writing guide and suggest that the writing guide will help improve student work, particularly in the areas of format, summary, and conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes enhancement of green energy and manufacturing subjects using a project based learning and leadership workshops as an educational strategy in a new manufacturing engineering program. There are a number of challenges facing green energy manufacturing from industrial perspective. For example, green energy manufacturing is a complex and technology-concentrated set of processes; therefore, it requires a very specialized and experienced workforce. In this paper, a LEGO® based project and various "Green Energy Manufacturing (GEM)" leadership workshops, which are used to enhance student's professional success, are introduced. Basically, a semester long GEM project using LEGO® and a few general and technical leadership workshops were arranged and delivered during the Industrial, Manufacturing and Systems Engineering (IMSE) Day. The paper is aimed at integrating green energy into the manufacturing engineering curriculum and to cultivate leaders in the field among minority and female engineering students. Successful completion of the course will lead to excellence in green energy and advanced engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several years we have explored ways to incorporate concepts of pharmaceutical engineering within the chemical engineering curriculum. Our initial efforts in this area have been directed towards the integration of these concepts in freshman and sophomore level courses. This provides an experience that reinforces core educational objectives and increases student interest in the pharmaceutical field. This paper is a continuation of our educational methods development, and will describe several pharmaceutical and consumer product educational modules. These modules include both laboratory and course-related activities for both lower and upper-level chemical engineering courses. These are based on API manufacturing and finished drug production processes. We are exposing students to the important area of continuous manufacturing of pharmaceutical products. This is a growing area of interest for the drug industry. This work is part of the educational outreach efforts of the NSF ERC for Structured Organic Particulate Systems (NSF grant # ECC0540855). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research describes the development of an adaptive virtual assistant in an immersive virtual reality (VR) serious game aimed at teaching engineering students manufacturing concepts. For undergraduate manufacturing education, students need to learn product design and manufacturing systems that require well-coordinated analysis of requirements and hands-on practices in complex manufacturing assembly lines. While it is often not feasible and practical for students to participate in real factory environments, simulations are created to offer a flexible alternative of digital learning. With the advancements in immersive technologies, VR opens new opportunities for teaching and learning manufacturing, and enables remote learning from any physical location. In this research, we describe the elements of a serious game built using the Unity game engine with VR technology that allows students to practice the concept of craft production. Prior research has shown that adapting learning material to suit individual student needs increases motivation and student successes. While learning remotely using an immersive virtual environment, a student is often working in an independent manner. Seeking help often requires the student to leave the virtual environment and break immersion. In this research, we propose an adaptive virtual assistant in the game environment to support the student learning process. By tracking student actions in the game environment and building a model of the student using reinforcement learning, the virtual assistant can learn and adapt to the student's preference in the types of assistance to provide. We show the adaptation of the virtual assistant through simulated experiments of typical student preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]