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BACKGROUND Problem solving practice involving paper-and-pencil solutions is a common activity in undergraduate engineering training. This paper addresses three questions: What indicators of problem-solving skill are available in paper-and-pencil solutions, beyond a simple accuracy measure? Can these indicators distinguish between problem solvers in terms of their skill level? How can these indicators be used to improve the effectiveness of instructor feedback to problem-solving exercises? PURPOSE (HYPOTHESIS) Based on the published literature on cognition and problem solving, several indicators were hypothesized to signal knowledge and skill: an accurate free-body diagram, specification of assumptions, accurate expansion of key principles, strategic (forward) inferences, and checking equations and solutions. DESIGN/METHOD A mixed experimental methodology was applied that combined qualitative and quantitative analyses. The qualitative data was comprised of paper-and-pencil solutions and video recordings of participants while they solved problems. Frequency counts of skill indicators and grader-assigned scores comprised the quantitative data. RESULTS Statistical tests confirmed that the hypothesized indicators were associated with individuals' level of skill. However, reliable evidence for these indicators was only partially found in the paper-and-pencil solutions and could only be firmly established by including data from the video recordings. CONCLUSIONS The results show that paper-and-pencil solutions can be diagnostic of the strengths and weaknesses of problem-solvers. However, to provide useful and reliable feedback to students, these solutions must be supplemented with additional input, possibly through regular structured sampling throughout a course, or through more extensive use of computer resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I present an activity introducing statistical concepts to engineering students to help them develop inductive reasoning and problem-solving skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Journal of Engineering Education emerged in the engineering education community in 1993 as a continuation of the American Society of Engineering Education's journal, Engineering Education. The Journal of Engineering Education was to play a role in the broadening of engineering education culture by helping to bring the scholarship of engineering education to the same level of respect and recognition in the faculty reward system as traditional scholarship in engineering sciences. In doing so, the journal hoped to keep pace with and encourage the significant changes in engineering education needed to prepare for the challenges of 21st century practice. This paper discusses the engineering education environment as reflected in six years of papers published in the Journal of Engineering Education from 1996 to 2001. Topics of papers are identified, along with changes and trends in these topics during the six-year period. In addition, characteristics of particularly convincing papers are enumerated and discussed. This paper is offered as a summary and review of this six-year body of work on engineering education and should aid the engineering education community in reflecting on the success of the Journal in promoting and encouraging the scholarship of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being a WISE intern has kept Ms. Rice involved with AIChE post-graduation. Jami Summey-Rice was a 2015 AIChE sponsored WISE intern. [Extracted from the article]

Data logging is the process of collecting and storing data from an experiment. Traditionally, data from science experiments was collected manually by hand and graphs were produced using pen and paper. By the introduction of cheap and powerful microcontrollers, all data logging operations are currently carried out using microcontroller-based data logging devices. This article describes the design of an educational microcontroller-based data logger device, which can be used to collect and save data for both offline and online analysis. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 18: 397–405, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com); DOI 10.1002/cae.20281 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical physics doctoral programs have large variations in organization, administration and financing. Blending a medical physics stream into an engineering graduate program has advantages of pre‐existing financial and educational infrastructures. A case study of the accredited program at Dartmouth was carried out, analyzing operational, financial, educational and outcome features. The support structures provided by each institutional partner were outlined, including engineering school, graduate school, and radiation oncology. The initiatives undertaken by founding faculty were reviewed, along with allocated resources, financial model, and peripheral entrepreneurship activities, each with quantitative outcome metrics. Currently 14 PhD students are enrolled, supported by 22 faculty across both engineering and clinical departments. The total peer‐reviewed publications are ≈75/year, while the conventional medical physics fraction of this is about 14/year. Following program formation, a significant rise was seen in jointly published papers between engineering and medical physics faculty, up from 5.6 to 13.3 papers/year, with students publishing an average of 11.3/person with 5.7/person as first author. Student support was predominantly via federal grants, with a stable $5.5million/year, using about $610K/year supporting student stipends and tuition. First year funding, recruiting and staff support were via engineering school. Faculty teaching effort was supported by agreement with each home department, and student services were provided by engineering and graduate schools. Student outcomes were exceptional, with high numbers of presentations, awards, and residency placements at research universities. The lack of financial and student support in medical physics can be mitigated by this hybrid design of blending medical physics doctoral students into an engineering graduate program, providing complementary strengths. Future growth in medical physics programs might consider following this pathway, strengthening research collaborations for clinical physics and engineering faculty, as long as there is vested commitment to teach by the faculty and department leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The structural analysis module is a challenge for both teachers and students. The module content is usually presented to students in the form of a set of equations when solved, the structure of internal forces is obtained. Usually, the assignments adopted in such modules are paper‐based exams. Such a strategy may assess the capacity of the students to employ different sets of equations to solve a problem. However, this is not enough for a vivid educational atmosphere. Transforming these equations into a digital simulation is the best solution for the education process. Digitalization is more appealing to nowadays students and it gives the teacher a wide spectrum of discussions without the hindrance of calculations time. It is also a mitigation for the online teaching process during the Covid‐19 pandemic. This paper presents a digital simulation of different structures using a simple tool that enables students to visualize the simultaneous interaction between geometry, loading, boundary conditions, and internal forces. Furthermore, transforming this tool into an offline mobile app helps both the teacher and the student to gamify the investigation of any structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes utilizing open‐source numerical simulation software, typically used in solar photovoltaics research, as an attractive supplementary educational tool for teaching the underlying physics and operation of P‐N junction diodes. Details of educational P‐N device models and simulation‐based learning scenarios developed for this purpose are provided here. The presented approach allows students to learn the essential concepts related to P‐N diodes experientially. These include some frequently observed nonidealities, closely mimicking experimental I‐V measurements. Unlike most educational tools in this field, all simulations demonstrated here are performed locally on the student's computer using free and portable software, which eliminates the need for a live internet connection or time‐consuming installations, making it easier to implement in a classroom and much more accessible to students. The paper also discusses the implementation of this supplementary tool and reports the results of a survey conducted to measure student satisfaction with it and its implementation approach. The presented method can be adapted to suit the needs of undergraduate and graduate students studying engineering courses that require an introduction to semiconductor devices. The details of P‐N diode device models are introduced and discussed so that users can modify them in accordance with their practical or educational purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The experiences of students and professionals with disabilities are routinely excluded from scholarly and policy debates about equity in engineering. Emergent research suggests that engineering is particularly ableist, yet systematic accounts of the possible exclusion and devaluation faced by engineers with disabilities are largely missing. Purpose/Hypothesis: This paper asks, do engineers with disabilities have more negative interpersonal experiences in engineering classrooms and workplaces than those without disabilities? Utilizing a social relational model of disability, I hypothesize that engineers with physical disabilities and chronic and mental illness are more likely to experience exclusion and professional devaluation than their peers and, partly as a result, have lower persistence intentions. Data/Methods: The paper uses survey data from 1729 students enrolled in eight US engineering programs (American Society for Engineering Education Diversity and Inclusion Survey) and 8321 US‐employed engineers (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Inclusion Study Survey). Analyses use regression, mediation, and intersectional approaches. Results: Consistent with expectations, engineering students and professionals with disabilities are less likely than their peers to experience social inclusion and professional respect at school and work. Students with disabilities are more likely to intend to leave their engineering programs and professionals with disabilities are more likely to have thought about leaving their engineering jobs compared to peers, and their greater risks of encountering interpersonal bias help account for these differences. Analyses also reveal intersectional variation by gender and race/ethnicity. Conclusion: These results suggest that engineering harbors widespread ableism across education and work. The findings demand more scholarly attention to the social, cultural, and physical barriers that block people with disabilities from full and equal participation in engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to content in the current issue including two papers on the characteristics of current and future engineering students, four papers that examine what engineering students need to learn and challenges facing them, and three papers that explore from different angles the process of studying to become an engineer.

Ferroresonance is a complex phenomenon and can compromise power system sustainability in transformer cores during the electromagnetic saturation process. Over‐voltage can be induced in the inductive core of transformers in an oscillation imbalance circuit; thus causing short circuits or permanent damage to a transformer. Hence, this paper developed a teaching application that combined a graphical user interface (GUI) in MATLAB with a SIMULINK function to model a ferroresonance circuit, to undergraduate engineering students at a Chinese University, as a part of a high‐ voltage engineering course. Students can adjust the parameters in the model to test different types of resonance voltage waveforms to obtain the corresponding power frequencies directly in the GUI. Through the interactive GUI environment, the difficulties that undergraduate students experience in distance education can be eliminated. A questionnaire of the 63 students who took the course was administered to measure student perceptions of this project‐based learning experience, and the responses are included in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While attrition from the PhD has been attributed to many high‐level causal factors, such as funding, advisor relationship, and "fit" into a department, few studies have closely examined the mechanisms of attrition or why and how graduate engineering students begin to consider attrition from their doctoral programs. Design/Method: This study analyzed interviews with current and former doctoral engineering students at research universities across the United States, collected through two closely‐related studies on graduate engineering experiences and attrition consideration. We used critical event analysis as a methodological approach to understand the experiences of a subset of 13 participants, who, at some point in their graduate career, experienced a singular event that caused them to question whether to persist in their PhD program. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of the present paper is to investigate how graduate engineering students begin to question whether they should remain in their PhD programs of study. Results: We categorized the environments in which critical events occurred into four quadrants along the lines of University and Nonuniversity Settings and Routine versus Unexpected Contexts, mapping critical events and supporting events to themes from prior literature. The findings demonstrate how seemingly mundane experiences for faculty can be cataclysmic in the eyes of the student; how critical events serve to magnify other issues that had been accumulating over time; and how students may not self‐reflect on their rationale for pursuing a PhD until a critical juncture occurs. Conclusions: Critical events are one mechanism by which students may begin considering departure from their engineering PhD programs. Some critical events masquerade within mundane contexts, like conversations or conferences (although, in retrospect, students can identify other relevant features contributing to dissatisfaction). From this work, we provide implications geared toward administrators, advisors, and graduate students on how to address and potentially mitigate critical events or their effects, including engaging in conversations about leaving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creativity is a crucial skill for future engineers. Hence, it is becoming increasingly important for higher education (HE) engineering educators to foster and enhance engineering students' creative abilities. Simultaneously, online learning has found a place in engineering education. Nevertheless, we find that HE engineering educators in all domains continue to express a sense of inadequacy when it comes to fostering creativity in hybrid and online learning environments. This sentiment persists despite the existence of scholarly work that suggests strategies for addressing these challenges. In this paper, we assume that the rationale behind this is that the proposed pedagogical approaches are primarily established through conceptual reflections, whereas the perspective of the HE engineering educators on the perceived barriers has thus far been largely neglected. Therefore, we present a study that uses data from experience interviews and focus group techniques involving 71 HE engineering educators from Ireland, Germany, Denmark and Turkey to identify the common challenges that HE engineering educators perceive when facilitating creativity in online and hybrid classroom environments. These are used to extend theory by developing a four‐field conceptual model organizing the eight overarching challenges encountered. This model can be used as a basis for defining measures to support HE engineering educators in facilitating creativity online and serves as a guide for future research studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This descriptive study focuses on using voice activity detection (VAD) algorithms to extract student speech data in order to better understand the collaboration of small group work and the impact of teaching assistant (TA) interventions in undergraduate engineering discussion sections. Audio data were recorded from individual students wearing head‐mounted noise‐cancelling microphones. Video data of each student group were manually coded for collaborative behaviours (eg, group task relatedness, group verbal interaction and group talk content) of students and TA–student interactions. The analysis includes information about the turn taking, overall speech duration patterns and amounts of overlapping speech observed both when TAs were intervening with groups and when they were not. We found that TAs very rarely provided explicit support regarding collaboration. Key speech metrics, such as amount of turn overlap and maximum turn duration, revealed important information about the nature of student small group discussions and TA interventions. TA interactions during small group collaboration are complex and require nuanced treatments when considering the design of supportive tools. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Student turn taking can provide information about the nature of student discussions and collaboration.Real classroom audio data of small groups typically have lots of background noise and present challenges for audio analysis.TAs have little training in how to productively intervene with students about collaborative skills.What this paper adds TA interaction with groups primarily focused on task progress and understanding of concepts with negligible explicit support on building collaborative skills.TAs intervened with the groups often which gave the students little time for uptake of their suggestions or deeper discussion.Student turn overlap was higher without the presence of TAs.Maximum turn duration can be an important real‐time turn metric to identify the least verbally active student participant in a group.Implications for practice and/or policy TA training should include information about how to monitor groups for collaborative behaviours and when and how they should intervene to provide feedback and support.TA feedback systems should keep track of previous interventions by TAs (especially in contexts where there are multiple TAs facilitating) and the duration since previous intervention to ensure that TAs do not intervene with a group too frequently with little time for student uptake.Maximum turn duration could be used as a real‐time metric to identify the least verbally active student in a group so that support could be provided to them by the TAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An understanding of how sensemaking unfolds when elementary students engage in engineering design tasks is crucial to advancing engineering teaching and learning at K‐12 levels. Sensemaking has been widely studied in the context of science as a discipline. In this paper, we seek to contribute to the more nascent efforts to build theory about the characteristics of sensemaking in elementary school engineering. We report on an interpretive case study of a 3rd grade student team who worked with minimal adult intervention to design a solution to an engineering challenge. Considering the entire trajectory of their design process, from the given problem to the solution, we observed that they navigated through multiple epistemic conflicts while making decisions that informed their final solution. We found that these conflicts served as opportunities for sensemaking and that exploring how the students resolved conflicts shed light on their sensemaking processes. Analysis of the team's navigation through epistemic conflicts to come to a design decision helped identify two distinct kinds of engineering sensemaking: student engagement in functional reasoning as they suggested design ideas, and student engagement in mechanistic reasoning as they interpreted test results. Both processes facilitated knowledge building, which in turn supported students' engineering design decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the design and evaluation of an instructional approach aimed at improving the writing skills of a group of undergraduate engineering students. We sought to determine whether student performance in difficult writing skills such as argumentation and synthesis could be improved by integrating a single writing exercise into an upper level engineering course. In designing the exercise, we relied heavily on recommendations for best practices from the learning science community, specifically those codified in the National Academy text How People Learn [1]. We found reliable improvement in student performance in many of the areas targeted, demonstrating that the approach taken was effective. Since we modified the exercise a few times before meeting our objectives for student learning, we could compare the effectiveness of different implementations of our approach. Our success and failures provide guidance for others seeking to improve the competence of engineering undergraduates in writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

However, there are software development domains, e.g., web and mobile apps, where UI testing is still not adopted on a systematic basis. The first paper, 'Functional Test Generation from UI Test Scenarios using Reinforcement Learning for Android Applications' by Yavuz Koroglu and Alper Sen, presents a methodology to generate GUI test scenarios for Android applications, named FARLEAD-Android (Fully Automated Reinforcement LEArning-Driven Specification-BAsed Test Generator). Market demands for faster delivery and higher software quality are progressively becoming more stringent. [Extracted from the article]

In this paper, the philosophical underpinnings of a systems approach to engineering are described. These "habits of thought" capture fundamental ways of thinking that—when used together—distinguish systems engineers from traditional, discipline‐based engineers, with particular attention to a 'pre‐awareness' level of the Systems Thinking competency within the INCOSE competency framework. By discussing the philosophy for a systems‐level approach to engineering, the foundational aspects from systems engineering and the broader systems sciences important in an undergraduate program can be discussed. Through this paper, systems principles—or habits—are proposed, essential for creating modern engineers who can shape the engineering profession into the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a project‐based learning pedagogy for undergraduate mechanical engineering students which integrates traditional hardware‐based laboratory with LabVIEW to control the angular position, velocity, and acceleration of AC servo motors of a six‐degree of freedom manipulator. The proposed experimental modules have been proved to be very effective in assisting teams of undergraduate students within the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, who have used the modules in designing a new mechanical structure of a robot during their capstone design project. The proposed pedagogy inspired undergraduate students to publish their first paper based on the outcomes of their project. The focus on this paper is to present how the students' learning experience has been significantly enforced and their role in developing the modules introduced in this paper. Three modules are presented; the first configures a timer to generate a signal that drives the servo motors. The second drives the servo motor to a specific angular position with a constant angular velocity. Finally, the third is used to control the servo motor to follow any desired angular position, velocity, and acceleration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Using the random assignment of university engineering students to peer groups during introductory freshmen weeks, this paper studies how a student's parental income and facial attractiveness affect the grade outcomes of peers. The results show that exposure to highly desirable peers with respect to socioeconomic background and beauty improves grades. The results operate chiefly through a direct spillover channel and also through an indirect marriage market channel, through which exposure to high‐desirability peers improves well‐being. A field experiment suggests that the marriage market mechanism is likely to be limited to students not currently in a romantic relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Real‐world engineering problems are ill‐defined and complex, and solving them may arouse negative epistemic affect (feelings experienced within problem‐solving). These feelings fall into sequenced patterns (affective pathways). Over time, these patterns can alter students' attitudes toward engineering. Meta‐affect (affect or cognition about affect) can shape or reframe affective pathways, changing a student's problem‐solving experience. Purpose/Hypothesis(es): This paper examines epistemic affect and meta‐affect in undergraduate students solving ill‐defined problems called open‐ended modeling problems (OEMPs), addressing two research questions: What epistemic affect and transitions between different affective states do students report? And, how does meta‐affect shape students' affective experiences? Design/Method: We examined 11 retrospective interviews with nine students performed across two semesters in which students completed OEMPs. Using inductive and deductive coding with discourse analysis, we systematically searched for expressions conveying epistemic affect and for transitions in affect; we performed additional deductive coding of the transcripts for meta‐affect and synthesized these results to formulate narratives related to affect and meta‐affect. Results: Together, the expressions, transitions, and meta‐affect suggest different types of student experiences. Depending on their meta‐affect, students either recounted experiences dominated by positive or negative affect, or else they experienced negative emotions as productive. Conclusions: Ill‐defined complex problems elicit a wide range of positive and negative emotions and provide opportunities to practice affective regulation and productive meta‐affect. Viewing the OEMPs as authentic disciplinary experiences and/or the ability to view negative emotions as productive can enable overall positive experiences. Our results provide insight into how instructors can foster positive affective pathways through problem‐scaffolding or their interactions with students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Black engineering graduate students represent a critical and understudied population in engineering education. Gaining an understanding of the lived experiences of Black engineering graduate students while they are simultaneously weathering two pandemics, COVID‐19 and systemic racism, is of paramount importance. Purpose/Hypothesis: Black engineering graduate students hold a unique duality, as both Black people in the United States and Black graduate students in US engineering programs that espouse white supremacist ideals. Their real‐world experiences necessitate understanding, and this paper highlights the related impact on the students themselves, their adaptations to the pandemics, and how those adaptations relate to and affect their support needs and navigation of their engineering academic environments. Design/Method: An interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was combined with community‐based participatory action research and was situated in Boykin's Triple Quandary. A family check‐in was conducted with 10 Black engineering graduate students enrolled in doctoral programs across the country to delve deep into their lived experience as a cultural community. Results: Findings include an emergent framework of Black engineering graduate student values in response to the pandemics. These values aligned with the Black Cultural Ethos, demonstrating an adoption of collectivistic cultural values in times of crises. Further, COVID‐19 and systemic racism differentially impacted Black engineering graduate students and, thus, the manifestations of their values. Conclusion: For institutions to be able to effectively support their Black engineering graduate students, they must gain awareness of the students' experiences, values, and needs, in general, and amid crises specifically. The findings presented here provide a critical window into this information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Programming is one of the most fundamental initial skills for engineering students. Institutions that offer engineering courses have the challenge of deciding how to deliver this subject since it requires unique thinking from students. This paper addresses the impact of adopting C and Python programming languages in introductory programming courses for engineering students. A case study was conducted in the university's introductory programming course, analyzing student data. This approach divides the students into two groups according to the programming language: C and Python. Data were gathered and analyzed about their learning experiences through questionnaires, assignment scores, and students' questions posted in the class online forums. The experiment was repeated in two consecutive semesters. The main results favor Python regarding learning confidence, motivation, and general programming design decisions while favoring C for the easiness of learning data structures. This study may be helpful for institutions considering designing a new introductory programming course or redesigning existing ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is little debate regarding the importance of student feedback for improving the learning process. However, there remain significant workload barriers for instructors that impede their capacity to provide timely and meaningful feedback. The increasing role technology is playing in the education space may provide novel solutions to this impediment. As students interact with the various learning technologies in their course of study, they create digital traces that can be captured and analysed. These digital traces form the new kind of data that are frequently used in learning analytics to develop actionable recommendations that can support student learning. This paper explores the use of such analytics to address the challenges impeding the capacity of instructors to provide personalised feedback at scale. The case study reported in the paper showed how the approach was associated with a positive impact on student perception of feedback quality and on academic achievement. The study was conducted with first year undergraduate engineering students enrolled in a computer systems course with a blended learning design across three consecutive years (N2013 = 290, N2014 = 316 and N2015 = 415). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will describe the promise Hispanic‐serving Community Colleges (HSCCs) have for creating a culture of servingness, including curricular and co‐curricular supports, transfer infrastructure, engineering identity development, and other mechanisms that can positively impact Latinx engineering learners. We will outline current research and trends regarding Latinx engineering collegians at HSCCs. In addition, we will provide recommendations for how community college practitioners at HSCCs can promote a culture of servingness and encourage the development of Latinx engineering students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses the development of a basic electronics knowledge (BEK) assessment as a pretest activity for undergraduate students in engineering and related fields. The 28 BEK items represent 12 key concepts, including properties of serial circuits, knowledge of electrical laws (e.g., Kirchhoff's and Ohm's laws), and properties of digital multimeters. This paper first discusses a psychometric evaluation of the BEK assessment to understand its basic measurement properties and to examine various group‐level differences based on demographic, institutional, and instructor characteristics. Subsequently, the relationship between BEK scores on the 23 retained items and performance on an existing complex collaborative simulation‐based electronics task is discussed. Results demonstrated that basic content knowledge alone may not be sufficient for students to demonstrate knowledge of electronics skills on more complex tasks. The research also carries great importance given ongoing concerns about improving the overall state and diversity of the engineering workforce and its associated pipeline to meet the demands of the national economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a new approach to help students select areas of interest in electrical and computer engineering at Hiroshima Institute of Technology. Students are usually expected to select areas of interest after completing 2.5 years of courses covering engineering fundamentals and liberal arts. Many students desire to have opportunities to investigate research topics and potential areas of specialization earlier than this. To support these students, 2 years ago we created two programs: Tech‐ners Jr. and Techno‐club. In this paper, we report on the outline and significance of the first generation of students in Techno‐club by analyzing their final data and questionnaire results. © 2018 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper aims to present entropy and fuzzy degrees of the truth‐based framework to handle the group conflict under moderate evaluative, partial mediation. For group conflict handling, the present work considers Thomas and Kilmann's five conflict‐handling modes: competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating, and compromising. A methodology proposed in the current work systemically formalizes decision‐making on deploying a conflict‐handling method with mediators' opinions. The formalization of decision‐making elucidated in the present work involves measurements based on entropy and fuzzy degrees of truth. The current work applies the developed formal quantitative framework to a well‐known case of group conflict that involves conflict among a group of engineering students. The case supports the proposed formal framework. Behavioral, psychological, and cognitive facts about engineers come in handy for validation of the proposed framework. The case shows that the proposed approach can be highly generalized, interpretable, and replicable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mental health issues reported among college‐aged individuals have increased. Prevalence of these issues has an established impact on students' personal, professional, and academic outcomes. Graduate students experience unique stressors that impact their mental health. In particular, engineering graduate students have lower help‐seeking tendencies, which can impact the severity and length of their mental health problems. Purpose: We investigate the literature concerning engineering graduate students' mental health, focusing on academic outcomes, mental health measures, and mental health findings, to highlight gaps in current literature and the need for further research. Scope/Method: Five research databases, EBSCO: CINAHL, EBSCO: PsycINFO, ProQuest: ERIC, PubMed, and Scopus, were searched in a scoping literature review. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied during the screening process. Peer‐reviewed publications (i.e., articles and conference papers) were identified and coded for study focus, keywords, participants and institution(s), journal discipline, study type, methods used, and work referenced, in addition to academic outcomes, mental health measures, and mental health findings. Results: Nineteen of the 4,826 unique studies identified were included in the review. Ten academic outcomes and 13 mental health measures were discussed. Mental health findings were grouped into five themes: social support and sense of belonging; student–advisor relationship; cultural barriers faced by international students; gender and racial stereotypes; and generalized findings. Conclusions: Research on engineering graduate students' mental health is limited. Given that mental health has direct ties to students' well‐being and ultimately their success, engineering education researchers should focus on studying students' experiences, sharing these findings, and communicating best practices for all stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, microcontrollers are of paramount importance in various aspects of life. They are used for design in many industrial fields from simple to highly complex devices. With a COVID‐19 crisis going on, blending learning is the ideal solution for a post‐pandemic society. This paper proposes a blended learning system as a solution to address today's problem in teaching microcontroller courses through collaboration between distance learning with the proposed training toolkit for real work. Implementation of the proposed solution began by constructing an inexpensive training kit (100$), to empower all students, even those in remote rural areas. The distance learning model allows the simulation of the proposed IoT projects electronically anywhere and at any time using the Proteus design suite, which helps students to conduct them before the actual laboratory appointment. Two learning models are programmed in assembly language which is directly related to the internal architecture of the microcontroller and provides access to all the real capabilities of its central processing unit. To get acquainted with all the features offered by the microcontroller integrated circuit, various IoT projects were constructed, each one dedicated to learning its architecture features, important to engineering students. The proposed IoT systems operate with a minimum consuming power that is very important for portable devices. Questionnaire questions for students were formulated to measure the proposed system benefit over three academic years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: During the onset of the COVID‐19 crisis, universities rapidly pivoted to online formats and were often unable to adhere to the best practices of online learning highlighted in prior literature. It is well documented that a variety of barriers impeded "normal" educational practices. Purpose/Hypothesis: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions of first‐year engineering students enrolled in an introductory engineering design course during the rapid transition to online working environments. We view students' perceptions through the theoretical lens of workplace thriving theory, a framework that allowed us to capture aspects of education required for students to thrive in non‐optimum learning settings. Design/Method: This research employed semi‐structured interview methods with 13 students enrolled in an introductory engineering design course that relies on project‐based team learning. We analyzed interview transcripts using thematic analysis through an abductive approach and made interpretations through workplace thriving theory. Results: Results indicated that students' abilities to thrive are related to four intersecting themes that demonstrate how workplace thriving theory manifests in this unanticipated online setting. These themes demonstrate elements that must be optimized for students to thrive in settings such as this: relationships with others, building and sharing knowledge through interactions, perceptions of experiential learning, and individual behaviors. Conclusion: Our research, viewed through workplace thriving theory, highlights the mechanisms by which students tried to succeed in suboptimal environments. While not all our participants showed evidence of thriving, the factors required for thriving point to opportunities to harness these same factors in in‐person instruction environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teamwork is an integral part of leadership, and many teamwork skills are also leadership skills. This chapter explains how instructors can help engineering students build their capacity for leadership while working in teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Supporting undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has been a persistent need. However, assessing the impact of support efforts can prove challenging as it is difficult to operationalize student support and subsequently monitor the combined impacts of the various supports to which students have access simultaneously. Purpose/Hypothesis: This paper describes the development of the STEM student perspectives of support instrument (STEM‐SPSI) and explores how perceptions of student support constructs vary across engineering students. Design/Method: Following best practices for instrument development, forming the STEM‐SPSI consisted of an iterative cycle of feedback from various STEM stakeholders and two rounds of pilot testing with students at multiple institutions. We employed factor analysis to identify student‐support constructs and conduct validation procedures on the instrument. Results: Results suggest that student support can be conceptualized as a combination of 12 constructs. The STEM‐SPSI can help engineering educators evaluate their student‐support mechanisms at an academic‐unit level. Conclusions: The practical contribution of the STEM‐SPSI is to assist colleges in monitoring the extent to which their portfolio of support mechanisms is perceived as helpful by undergraduate students. This work makes a theoretical contribution to the model of cocurricular support that undergirds the instrument by producing empirical evidence for its constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary electromagnetic computer‐aided design tools augmented with parametric and optimization capabilities are extensively used in industry for design, validation, and prototyping to reduce time‐to‐market, resources, cost, and risks associated with the development of new radio frequency (RF) circuits and systems. Unfortunately, this technology still remains largely underutilized in undergraduate systems engineering education. This paper describes an approach for stimulating the analysis and design learning experience of undergraduate systems engineering students by engaging them in the cooperative, experiential, simulation‐assisted teaching, and research activities utilizing project‐based pedagogy. A case study is chosen in the realm of microwave‐assisted material processing, which is not typically covered in undergraduate engineering curricula. The objective is to further increase students' interest in electromagnetic and RF systems by providing a well‐rounded learning experience to break the monotony often encountered in the heavily theoretical and abstract topics involved with a minimum of complex analytical formulations, reinforce fundamental principles and mathematical analyses offered in the class, foster students' motivation and enthusiasm, reflect on today's technological advancement in industry, and stimulate early participation of undergraduate students in open‐ended research problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Women and men of color and White women participate in American engineering education in lower proportions than they represent in the general U.S. population. Much existing engineering education research uses individual‐level (such as psychological) theories to explain this difference. The study reported here instead takes a structural perspective, asking how social relations are coordinated in engineering education. Purpose: This study explores how the intersection of ruling relations, critical race, and feminist theories can investigate how gender and race are built into engineering education's institutional structure. Design/Method: This study used interviews collected from 17 women and men of color and White women who were engineering undergraduate students at U.S. universities. The interviews were drawn from a project that takes as its premise that learning from such small numbers of students facilitates analyzing data intersectionally. The primary analysis used narrative methods through repeated readings. Results: I offer empirically based illustrations of ruling relations in U.S. universities and schools of engineering that unduly impact minoritized populations. These illustrations include discussions of financial aid knowledge, meeting the needs of transfer and Native students, and how schools crafting "the ideal student" as a young, single White male problematically impact minoritized students. The results illustrate how ruling relations structure engineering education in White‐ and male‐dominated ways. Conclusions: This paper offers questions to help readers consider how ruling relations race and gender their own institutions. In addition, it offers an interpretive, emergent method for interrogating institutional structure and ideas for future work using ruling relations in engineering education research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, we present the solution of four problems drawn from the chemical and biochemical engineering field of study. These problems illustrate various important aspects of nonlinear dynamics such as limit cycles, quasi‐periodic and chaotic behaviors, time series and phase portraits, power spectra, the time‐delay reconstruction diagrams, Hopf bifurcation, bifurcation diagrams, steady state multiplicity... Among a large number of examples, we have selected the following case studies because they illustrate the basic nonlinear dynamics concepts listed previously: (i) The glycolytic oscillator model, first suggested by Sel'kov in 1968 in order to elucidate the mechanism that living cells use to obtain energy from sugar breakdown; (ii) The Oregonator model derived by Field, Körös, and Noyes in the early 1970s, which elucidates the famous oscillatory behavior observed in the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction; (iii) The steady state multiplicity in a biochemical reactor for both the Monod and substrate inhibition kinetics; and (iv) The three‐variable autocatalator, first proposed by Peng, Scott, and Showalter in 1990. Finally, we conclude this paper by sharing our experience teaching this subject to graduate students at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In software engineering, real world projects are very important for software engineering students. Real world projects help software engineering students to be prepared for real world development. However, directly involving in real world projects is difficult and its benefits are questionable. Therefore, simulation of real world projects can be a solution for this situation. In this paper, the power of cryptography is used to simulate real world projects. Simulation of a project is designed and applied, and its results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: While recent engineering education research has focused on the pathways that students take as they transition into engineering programs in higher education, little has explicitly focused on developing an understanding of students as they select and transfer into engineering from other majors. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of how engineering students enter the engineering field by comparing commonalities across their experiences. Given recent literature that describes student dissatisfaction toward, misinformation about, and attrition in engineering programs, we explore the lived experiences of students entering the engineering field, with a particular focus on students changing their majors to engineering. Methods: This paper synthesizes the stories of 21 undergraduate engineering students from a southeastern research university, 15 of whom began their undergraduate program in other majors and transferred into engineering. We employ a unique narrative structuralizing scheme based on Campbell's hero's journey and use the metaphor of the beginning of the journey to understand student trajectories that locate students in engineering studies. Conclusions: With this information, we can better understand student conceptions of the engineering field when they enter; who enters the engineering field and why; how students' expectations are met or not in engineering programs; and what are the factors that ultimately contribute to first‐year retention in engineering programs. In general, students entering engineering tend to have a limited understanding of what is entailed in an engineering program and benefit from interactions with advisors, teachers, and peers in the field. Such interactions may help students to more clearly decide what aspects of engineering are appropriate for them to pursue and help them to persist as they begin coursework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current paper, a methodology combining a case study with a computational tool for aerospace engineering students is presented and discussed. The aim of this methodology is to improve the understanding of jet engine's operation through their thermodynamic cycle analysis, particularly focused on the effects of the main boundary conditions for an aircraft engine: altitude and flight velocity (or Mach). Additionally, the organization of the methodology as a case study performed in groups helps to facilitate student engagement, as well as the development of soft skills, such as teamwork ability. The experience of this methodology over the last 5 years shows that the activity is generally well perceived by the students, and also that there is a correlation between the engagement in this activity and the overall results achieved in the subject, confirming that the methodology helps to improve students' comprehension of the concepts behind engine performance. However, a few points of improvement for the near future are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an interactive graphics tool for the structural analysis of one‐dimensional element models, such as trusses, frames, and grillages. The focus is on the creation of a graphical user interface for a previously developed analysis solver. This graphical interface is entirely implemented in the MATLAB environment and features intuitive resources so that modeling and verification of results become easy tasks for students and engineers. The management of mouse events and the adopted solutions to basic computer graphics issues that arise from interactive modeling in two‐dimensional and three‐dimensional canvases are discussed, including the strategies to pick objects in spatial coordinates and to identify crossing elements. The result is a new educational software that proved to be a very useful application in structural analysis and introductory computer graphics courses for engineering. The article also presents examples of using the software as an educational tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective writing skills are crucial for engineers, and engineering programs have always struggled with how to prepare their students for the writing they will do as professionals. Now, programs must also show the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) that they have clear educational outcomes for engineering communication and have a process for assessing student performance on those outcomes. At the University of Washington, we have spent the last five years developing an outcomes-based assessment program for engineering writing. In spring 2001, the first round of writing assessment was completed. The assessment indicated that most of our students are competent in the outcomes we have developed. It also uncovered several weak areas, particularly in regard to working with sources and to adequately stating and supporting the purpose of the writing. We will be addressing these areas with additional instruction in the stand-alone technical writing courses taken by engineering students. The process described in this paper could be helpful for other engineering programs preparing for ABET accreditation visits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Systems engineers and project managers have a wide range of tools and approaches they use to assess risk, but these approaches have not helped to reduce failures as much as hoped. Post‐failure analyses may not be enough to prevent a future failure, even at the same organization. In this paper, we present a risk assessment prototype that goes beyond collecting information about the failures or failure causes themselves and aims to consider the human actions that lead to failure. Our method adds "crowd signals" to capture the human actions and behaviors that we know eventually lead to failures. Crowd signals are data derived from a set of questions that members of a project team answer, and are used as input for our prediction models. We collected data from 18 different engineering student projects at Purdue University and built two types of models: one to predict schedule failures and one for technical requirements failure. In both cases, we found that a failure during the previous week increases the likelihood of the same type of failure the following week. Some human behaviors such as students knowing more about their teammates, understanding all implications of their project actions, and not wasting time discussing trivial matters help reduce the likelihood of failures. In contrast, when students are not learning anything new through their involvement with the projects, postponing or cancelling required meetings or tasks, or having problems resurface due to poor solutions, the likelihood of failures increases. In future work, we intend to use the predictive models to provide feedback to the student teams. The work presented in this paper is part of ongoing research efforts to improve risk assessment approaches with the goal to test our methods with industry partners and evaluate the possibilities to integrate with their existing protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper proposes an assessment approach herein called the Add‐on Preferential Groups (APG) model. The proposed model is used to analyze and identify students' perceptions and preferences between add‐on instructional methods and base traditional methods such as classroom lectures. The model groups students based on their responses to the perceived usefulness of a set of instructional approaches, and uses a traditional lecture‐based method as base for comparison. It includes three levels of analysis that focus on different aspects and groupings of student perceptions and relative preferences; each level is visualized using a 2D gray‐scale graph representing the fractions of students falling into different perception and preference groups. In addition, the model uses permutation tests to validate the significance of the differences among the perception and preference groups. The paper shows how this model was applied to analyze students' responses to an end of the semester survey in a graduate course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Today, many different components in the industry are very expensive and are hardly accessible to individual users who want to examine them and gain knowledge through a real experiment. This paper describes the development of a remote device for measuring linear dimensions and integration into an educational course. The experiment is dedicated to students in technical fields. A new, unique device—automatic manipulator for remote measurement of linear dimensions provides reliable and precise measurement of linear dimensions in laboratory conditions. It is possible to operate the device directly or remotely via the Internet, using CEyeClon Viewer software, in several different modes. Also, an example of a test for knowledge verification is presented. Students provided feedback on the quality of the course through the evaluation questionnaire. The results show that learning with remote laboratories can be very successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Background: Quantitative researchers have noted the impact of mentoring and support programming for students from underrepresented groups in engineering. Qualitative researchers have also noted the importance of student agency in persistence through marginalization. Nevertheless, challenges and questions remain in identifying practices which are effective in supporting underrepresented students. Purpose: The study applies scholarship from critical theory and narrative as a new resource for approaching and understanding the process of supporting marginalized student agency. Method: A longitudinal interview study with a female undergraduate engineering student, Emilia, developed into a way for her to process marginalizing educational experiences and to develop new narratives that expanded her agency. After an in‐depth member check, Emilia became a co‐author contributing a post hoc account of the impact of these discussions. Results: Our analysis indicates that naming one's own oppression and creating narratives that repurpose and resituate stereotypical stories of oppression was a liberatory act for Emilia. We trace three marginalizing themes of the participant's experience that are subverted and resisted through the student co‐constructed narrative. Conclusions: The paper builds theory for diversity support, suggesting critical theorizing may present a new form of agency not yet represented in the literature. It also points to possible value for student participants from qualitative methodologies exploring student experiences. Finally, it suggests supporting critical theorizing as a potential new orientation for diversity practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Design Project is a major piece of work for any undergraduate in chemical engineering, and it enables students to demonstrate skills and knowledge gained elsewhere in the degree programme alongside their own abilities to create and innovate. As such, the main learning process is activity based and associated with the undertaking of an open‐ended, but time‐limited, project that poses significant challenges to most students. Particularly in the UK context, the importance of the Design Project is recognized via its inclusion as a separate and very significant element in the accreditation of all engineering degrees. During the past decade, developments in the Chemical Engineering Design Project at the University of Manchester have led to international recognition and prestigious awards. This perspective article aims to identify the best education practices associated with the Manchester experience and to share these for the potential benefit of programmes elsewhere. The paper includes specific details regarding the module specifications, learning outcomes, organization of the Design Project activities, individual and team‐based work, reporting requirements, assessment procedures, and other aspects. The feedback received annually from students and fellow Design Project programme directors from other universities is also considered and the different perspectives are evaluated. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Exploratory testing and fully automated testing tools represent two viable and cheap alternatives to traditional test‐case‐based approaches for graphical user interface (GUI) testing of Android apps. The former can be executed by capture and replay tools that directly translate execution scenarios registered by testers in test cases, without requiring preliminary test‐case design and advanced programming/testing skills. The latter tools are able to test Android GUIs without tester intervention. Even if these two strategies are widely employed, to the best of our knowledge, no empirical investigation has been performed to compare their performance and obtain useful insights for a project manager to establish an effective testing strategy. In this paper, we present two experiments we carried out to compare the effectiveness of exploratory testing approaches using a capture and replay tool (Robotium Recorder) against three freely available automatic testing tools (AndroidRipper, Sapienz, and Google Robo). The first experiment involved 20 computer engineering students who were asked to record testing executions, under strict temporal limits and no access to the source code. Results were slightly better than those of fully automated tools, but not in a conclusive way. In the second experiment, the same students were asked to improve the achieved testing coverage by exploiting the source code and the coverage obtained in the previous tests, without strict temporal constraints. The results of this second experiment showed that students outperformed the automated tools especially for long/complex execution scenarios. The obtained findings provide useful indications for deciding testing strategies that combine manual exploratory testing and automated testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Degree completion rates for doctoral engineering students remain stagnant at levels lower than necessary to meet national and global workforce needs. Increasing degree completion can improve opportunities for individuals and provide the human resources needed to address engineering challenges. Purpose/Hypothesis: In this work, we measure the association of engineering identity variables with degree completion intentions for students who have persisted in doctoral study. We add to existing literature that suggests the importance of advisor and peer relationships, and the number of years in the doctoral program. Design/Method: We use data collected via a national cross‐sectional survey of doctoral engineering students, which included measures of social and professional identities, graduate school experiences, and demographics. Surveys were collected from 1754 participants at 98 US universities between late 2017 and early 2018. The analyses reported here use multiple regression to measure associations with engineering doctoral degree completion intentions. Results: Research interest and scientist performance/competence are individually associated with degree completion intentions in students who are persisting in doctoral study. Overall, graduate engineering identity explains significant portions of variation in degree completion intentions (9.5%) beyond advisor and peer relationship variables and the number of years in graduate programs. Conclusions: Researcher interest and scientist performance/competence may be key opportunities to engage doctoral student engineering identity to improve degree completion rates. Accordingly, institutions can foster students' interest in research and build their confidence in their scientific competence to support students as they complete the doctoral degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]