Search

The ASEE Computing & Information Technology Division (CITD) has been around for several decades, and continues to be a strong sponsor of many papers and sessions at the annual international ASEE conference as well as regional annual ASEE conferences. This paper will study the impact of the papers presented at the annual international ASEE conferences by looking at the number of times each paper has been cited, as well as the number of times each paper has been downloaded. The results of this study will be set in the context of a similar set of statistics for a similar organization, the Special Interest Group for Information Technology Education, a SIG of the ACM. This self-study will help ASEE-CITD members better understand their position within the larger IT community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering problems are ill-defined, require assumptions, and have multiple unique solutions. Although most industry engineers solve ill-defined problems in groups, students typically only practice this in engineering design courses. Our research aims to expand these experiences to engineering science courses. Currently, most engineering science courses assign 'classic' textbook problems, where they are given certain physical parameters of a system, and are told to calculate an unknown value. Ill-defined modeling problems provide students with more opportunities to utilize engineering judgment when compared to traditional textbook problems, and when these problems are solved in a group setting, it is both a better representation of how engineering is performed in the industry, and can help students better understand the class concepts. This paper examines groups of students solving an ill-defined modeling task that asks students to design a portable pool lift. When working in a group, students have the opportunity to help each other understand what was taught in class, along with the ability to push back on other students' ideas. This will prepare students for their future career, lead to knowledge creation and help solidify concepts taught in class. This full paper analyzes data (approximately 15.5 hours) that was collected in the form of recordings of zoom meetings of two groups that were tasked with solving an ill-defined modeling problem in a second year statics course. Using comparative coding, we categorized how students spent time when working in their group. Results show students alternate between negotiating tasks, comparing assumptions, and aiding each other in understanding course concepts. Implications of this work include forming a better understanding of how students make decisions, judgments and build knowledge when working together on an ill-defined modeling problem. Similarly, the results may assist professors in iterating on assignment design to further engage students in knowledge creating and engineering judgment practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing field of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) presents a unique and unexplored case within persistence research, meaning it is unclear how past findings from engineering will apply to this developing field. We conduct an exploratory study to gain an initial understanding of persistence in this field and identify fruitful directions for future work. One factor that has been shown to predict persistence in engineering is belonging; we study belonging through the lens of confidence, and discuss how attention to social belonging confidence may help to increase diversity in the profession. In this research paper, we conduct a small set of interviews with students in ML/AI courses. Thematic analysis of these interviews revealed initial differences in how students see a career in ML/AI, which diverge based on interest and programming confidence. We identified how exposure and initiation, the interpretation of ML and AI field boundaries, and beliefs of the skills required to succeed may influence students' intentions to persist. We discuss differences in how students describe being motivated by social belonging and the importance of close mentorship. We motivate further persistence research in ML/AI with particular focus on social belonging and close mentorship, the role of intersectional identity, and introductory ML/AI courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work-in-progress research paper, we discuss our approaches to undergraduate mentoring strategies towards neurodivergent student's conducting undergraduate STEM research. Despite the increase in STEM students who report disabilities, few resources are available to train mentors to work with this population. The neurodivergent community is often inappropriately perceived to have disadvantages with STEM-based research and face exacerbated challenges when pursuing undergraduate research with STEM faculty. We investigate different mentoring strategies that support neurodivergent STEM undergraduate researchers to thrive. First, we created a survey (see Appendix A) for the undergraduate research community, and we will recruit local participants to understand our research questions. The goal of the survey is to provide a first look at (1) what mentoring processes/approaches promote thriving for neurodivergent students? and (2) which strategies create a cohesive mentoring strategy to promote thriving for the entire neurodiverse community? Next, we will use the survey to identify interview candidates including professors, neurodivergent students, and neurotypical students to explore and understand various factors that empower thriving neurodivergent STEM undergraduate researchers. Increasing the success of neurodivergent STEM undergraduate students through mentorship not only broadens participation in STEM but also provides more role models for current and future students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cost-effective, secure, and portable electronic instrumentation equipment is used in Experiment Centric Pedagogy (ECP), formerly known as Mobile Hands-On Studio Technology and Pedagogy, as a teaching method for STEM subjects both inside and outside of the classroom. Since the Spring of 2020, ECP has been integrated into two Industrial Engineering (IE) courses: Thermodynamics and Materials Engineering. This has been done in various ways, including through student use at home and in-class demonstrations and teaching labs. During the most recent academic session (Fall 2021-Spring 2022), the effects of practical home-based experimentation and lab activities on students' attitudes, interests, and performance were examined for the Engineering Thermodynamics course. The outcomes of a survey known as the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaires (MLSQ), which was given to 51 students, demonstrated better improvements in the student's motivation, epistemic, and perceptual curiosity, three crucial characteristics linked to their success. Along with the MLSQ, the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate Students (COPUS) assesses active learning in Industrial Engineering courses, and quantitative and qualitative data on the significant components of student achievement were gathered. Results obtained show that using ECP has improved students' awareness of material properties and increased their interest in learning about the thermodynamics concept of heat transfer in connection to various solid materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Materials Processing course at Northeastern University enrolls both Master's level students with a concentration in Materials and undergraduates who select the course as an elective for their combined BS/MS degree. For the term project, students work in teams to research and write a journal-quality review article detailing the state of the art for a particular process. This study aimed to assess students' information literacy (IL) skills as demonstrated in this term project to identify IL skills with which graduate and upper-level undergraduate students may need more support. A secondary goal was to examine any differences in information between the undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom speak English as a second language. A customized version of the VALUE rubric for Information Literacy was used to assess a sample of 25 term projects from two semesters spanning 2021-2022. A Mechanical Engineering faculty member rated half the criteria that required more subject matter expertise. An Engineering Librarian rated the other half of the criteria which are more research oriented. This method resulted in substantial time savings and increased expertise in overall ratings. Results indicate the students in aggregate were most skilled in choosing sources related to the research question and selecting those sources based on multiple criteria. Students were least skilled in the proper citation of sources and in communicating and synthesizing literature information into a coherent argument. Two outcomes that were strongly related to high report grades were being able to properly paraphrase literature information as well as properly synthesize it into an argument. These last two outcomes were particularly weak for teams consisting solely or primarily of graduate students. It is recommended that undergraduate students receive reinforcement of library research skills, while graduate students require additional instruction in paraphrasing, synthesis of ideas, and ethical attribution. Additional research is needed to examine the IL background of international students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable concern has emerged over the potential use of AI tools by students for completing assignments in their classes. Reactions in academia have been mixed, with some describing such use of AI tools as "cheating" while others compare it to the use of calculators and see it as the impetus for enabling deeper learning by students. To analyze some of these issues, the recently released AI tool ChatGPT was used to respond to actual Discussion Board questions in our online cybersecurity classes. ChatGPT was also asked to write a Python program to develop a backpropagation Neural Network for XOR. The results were excellent, both for answering the Discussion Board Questions and for writing code. Four findings emerged from this effort: 1) ChatGPT does an exceptional job of answering questions and generating code, 2) it is not clear how student submissions generated with AI should be graded, 3) along with the AI tools themselves, tools have been developed that can detect whether AI was used to generate a student submission but with a high rate of false positives, and 4) despite these three findings, students could and should be encouraged to collaborate with AI tools, similar to the way they would collaborate with other students. These results led to four conclusions: 1) ethically, the use of tools such as ChatGPT without acknowledging that they have been used is cheating, 2) it will be impossible to stop students from using tools like ChatGPT, but unacknowledged use can be detected, albeit with a very high percentage of false positives, 3) use of AI tools should be encouraged rather than discouraged, and 4) higher education should focus on new methods and mechanisms for assessing student learning that take advantage of the AI tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aviation has become a trusted forefront and reliable mode of transportation for both people and goods. In recent years, the rapid growth of the air transport industries has also increased International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the United Nations (UN) attention to sustainable aviation. In alignment with ICAO's promotion of sustainability actions and plans, this paper explores the impacts of aircraft engine washes, not only in terms of technical impacts but also environmental impacts. This paper describes the education environment and inclusion of engine washing technologies in courses. To enable students to more fully understand aviation sustainability, one way that might be effective is to combine practical and technical knowledge. Therefore, aerospace and aeronautical education environments need to teach students practical engine washing technologies and the sustainability impacts. This paper may be useful in educational environments as a starting point of including both practical and sustainability knowledge in courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the mental health of science, engineering, and math (SEM) graduate students using quantitative analysis on the survey data provided by the Healthy Minds Network (HMN): Research on Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health group, coined the Healthy Minds Study (HMS). The aim of the study is to answer the following research questions: (1) How has the mental health of SEM graduate students, measured by depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and flourishing, changed over the past three academic years? (2) What role, if any, does the climate of SEM programs, measured by the proxies of campus environment, encouraging dialogue, prioritizing mental health, and receptive administration, have on SEM graduate students' self-reported mental health measures of depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and flourishing, when accounting for students' gender, race, international student status, degree, and discipline? Attention to the mental health of students in higher education has grown in recent years. Prior work has shown that several factors can influence an individuals' mental health, including, but not limited to, a students' demographics, social factors, available resources, values, motivation, and more. The purpose of this study, however, is to focus specifically on how the culture of SEM programs influences SEM graduate students' mental health. In this context, mental health refers to one's mental and emotional well-being. Therefore, this paper will leverage previous work that has indicated the role of academic disciplines' cultures on mental health. SEM graduate students are of interest because they are understudied in the literature despite being more likely to report mental health problems. In addition, graduate students have a variety of academic and personal experiences that are different from undergraduate students due to their roles as students, instructors, and researchers, resulting in a different acculturation process. In addition, this process can impact students of diverse backgrounds inequitably, with minoritized students facing more negative mental health consequences and feeling like they are less supported than their non-marginalized peers. This study explored measures of program climate to assess how students' perceptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts impact SEM students' self-reported mental health. In this work, we performed a quantitative analysis on the Health Minds Network (HMN) data on SEM graduate students. We calculated bivariate statistics and developed regression models for each of the four outcome measures while accounting for relevant demographic measures. We first show that there have been changes in students' self-reported mental health, with the general trend of increasing mental health problems. In terms of program climate, our regressions found that students' beliefs about the climate had a statistically significant influence over their reported mental health measures, and that these experiences varied for different demographic groups. The results from our work highlight areas of focus for future research. Furthermore, this work can help enable SEM graduate students, faculty, and staff to reflect on the changes in the past years and to use these results to promote change at individual, program, and systematic levels to improve SEM graduate students' mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship programs in higher education are typically housed under the umbrella of a business department or an engineering department. Within these departments and, within their university ecosystems more broadly, an oft stated goal is to develop within their students an "Entrepreneurial Mindset". However, this is often a somewhat nebulously defined concept. Many definitions of the Entrepreneurial Mindset include a mish-mash of skills, cognitive processes, habits, and worldviews. While this broad conceptualization of a mindset can be useful in marketing terminology, it lacks the specificity needed to allow for rigorous assessment. This Work-In-Progress paper will explore one approach to developing a rigorous definition of the Entrepreneurial Mindset as a cognitive construct, a method for quantitatively measuring development of the mindset through students' journey through an entrepreneurship program, and methods for qualitative analysis to better understand the nuances of how student perceptions, actions, and behavioral changes as they relate to entrepreneurial experiences within higher education. For entrepreneurship programs to have meaningful impact it is vital that they clearly define the mindset they are trying to instill in students. Further, these programs require a clear definition of the Entrepreneurial Mindset in order to engage in quality assessment of the educational impacts their programs are having. These two factors, clear definition of the desired mindset and high-quality assessment, must be present to allow for self-reflection on program impacts and to provide a framework for determining educational outcomes. We will present survey instruments for assessing the Entrepreneurial Mindset, or at least our definition of the Entrepreneurial Mindset, a semi-structured interview protocol, methodology for determining the vision of the Entrepreneurial Mindset that most applies to a given institution, and finally the initial analysis of 213 pre/post surveys collected during the fall semester 2021. Initial results are positive and significant for one of the three courses where the survey was deployed. The remaining two courses with substantially smaller class sizes have not yet reached a sufficiently large dataset to draw conclusions from. We will also discuss how inclusivity, race, and gender considerations can help guide the creation of instruments and definitions related to the Entrepreneurial Mindset. These assessment instruments were all deployed at a Michigan State University in 2020-2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the significant link between curricula and accreditation, there is limited research on engineering educators' perspectives on accreditation related to ethics and societal impacts. This full research paper addresses the following research questions: (1) What are faculty members' perspectives on the role of accreditation in engineering ethics education? (2) How, if at all, does accreditation influence their teaching practices? This research was designed to understand the influence that accreditation, as an external force, has on ethics education via the educators tasked with teaching it. This study employed an exploratory qualitative approach and drew on semistructured interviews that probed participants' ethics teaching practices and perspectives, including the influences and motivations related to their instruction. Interviews were completed with 20 engineering ethics educators who represented a range of engineering disciplines across 17 institutions in the United States. Inductive analysis of the transcripts indicated a bifurcated response to accreditation in the context of ethics and societal impacts education. On one hand, accreditation drove the integration of ethics in the curriculum and signaled its importance in engineering. On the other hand, accreditation was perceived to reduce ethics education to a matter of compliance, create an outsize pressure on those tasked with teaching ethics, and impinge academic freedom. The findings pointed to the varying and sometimes conflicting perspectives on accreditation. An understanding of how accreditation can either spur or stifle educators' engagement in ethics instruction has implications for faculty motivation. The findings also highlight the need to think beyond accreditation in justifying and supporting the inclusion of ethics and societal impacts in engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ideology of depoliticization in engineering refers to the pervasive belief that engineering work is technical, should be carried out objectively, and should be devoid of social bias. This research paper offers a description of the development and validation of a survey instrument measuring the degree to which students believe in the ideology of depoliticization in engineering, a first step in understanding the role this ideology plays in teaching and learning, marginalization, and exclusion in engineering. I begin by describing the development of survey items related to the ideology of depoliticization in engineering. I also describe the process of establishing various forms of validity in survey design. During the scale validation process, 162 first- and second-year engineering students at a large, Midwestern research intensive institution completed online versions of the Depoliticization in Engineering scale. I used confirmatory factor analysis to establish construct validity for the scale. Results from the quantitative analysis indicate excellent model fit and offer support for the validity of the Depoliticization in Engineering instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes a case for the importance of moral imagination in ethics instruction. Incremental imagination exercises can effectively include important components of real-life ethical decisions, including the inner conflict between reflexive and cognitive responses during the decision process and perspectives that differ from personal experiences. Ethics discussions can be enriched through stretching a student's capacity to imagine increasingly distant situations and perspectives while accounting for a variety of possible outcomes and impacts. It is important to make the imaginative leap incremental so that students can relate to and imagine themselves in the scenario. This differs from some instruction methods by incorporating reflexive responses, divergent thought processes, and an understanding of an individual's decision process. Examples are provided that relate student experiences to future decisions, demonstrate how experience and time can affect decisions, and show the impacts of perspectives and decision processes on ethical decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, the aviation industry including the airlines, maintenance, and manufacturing has faced an unprecedented crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. Aviation training in Indonesia is no exception in experiencing the pandemic's negative impacts, such as disruptions in aviation training, mental health issues, and economic uncertainty. Teachers were forced to adjust instruction from in-person training to online or hybrid learning. This shift increases much concern, especially on the training effectiveness and the quality of its outcome. Perceptions of instructors need to be examined to gain a clearer understanding of the effectiveness and whether there were positive or negative consequences as well as costs from the aforementioned changes. The researchers of this study conducted seven semi-structured interviews with aviation maintenance instructors in Indonesia to determine the challenges of changing teaching methods during COVID-19. Moreover, a questionnaire was collected from 83 students in four maintenance training programs to investigate the COVID-19 learning method changes in their practical skills as learning outcomes. The Incorporation of Technology (T), Individual (I), Pedagogical (P), and Enabling Condition (EC) or 'TIPEC' Framework and Resilience Engineering Framework will be utilized as the basis to develop the questionnaire and to analyze the results of how the students responded to the new learning method. In the end, this study suggested the most effective teaching methods that can improve practical skilled aviation maintenance professionals in Indonesia during the pandemic situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Centers (ERC) are required to develop and implement education and outreach opportunities related to their core technical research topics to broaden participation in engineering and create partnerships between industry and academia. Additionally, ERCs must include an independent evaluation of their education and outreach programming to assess their performance and impacts. To date, each ERC's evaluation team designs its instruments/tools and protocols for evaluation, resulting in idiosyncratic and redundant efforts. Nonetheless, there is much overlap among the evaluation topics, concepts, and practices, suggesting that the ERC evaluation and assessment community might benefit from having a common set of instruments and protocols. ERCs' efforts could then be better spent developing more specific, sophisticated, and time-intensive evaluation tools to deepen and enrich the overall ERC evaluation efforts. The implementation of such a suite of instruments would further allow each ERC to compare its efforts to those across other ERCs as one data point for assessing its effectiveness and informing its improvement efforts. Members of a multi-ERC collaborative team, funded by the NSF, have been leading a project developing a suite of common instruments and protocols which contains both quantitative and qualitative tools. This paper reports on the development of a set of qualitative instruments that, to date, includes the following: (a) a set of interview/focus group protocols intended for various groups of ERC personnel, centered around five common topics/areas, and (b) rubrics for summer program participants' verbal poster/presentations and their written poster/slide deck presentation artifacts. The development process is described sequentially, beginning with a review of relevant literature and existing instruments, followed by the creation of an initial set of interview questions and rubric criteria. The initial versions of the tools were then pilot-tested with multiple ERCs. Feedback sessions with education/evaluation leaders of those piloting ERCs were then conducted, through which further revision efforts were made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report on a series of research projects that together motivate a larger idea: the design of lightweight, scalable, and relational learning experiences for overcoming system-level challenges in education. We start by discussing Exploratory Reading Groups, a program designed to expose students to the creative aspects of computer science and to enhance intrinsic motivation and purpose for learning through exploratory reading of research papers. Unlike traditional graduate student reading groups which focus on depth, our reading groups are designed for a broad exploration of ideas. More importantly for this paper, they are designed to be lightweight in time commitment, to be scalable and student-driven, and to foster supportive peer relationships. As we ran this program, we found that these design parameters not only led to our original goal of supporting creative exploration, but also resulted in the unexpected emergent benefit of facilitating student entry into undergraduate research experiences. There were three reasons for this. First, the lightweight nature of the program (~1-2 hours a week for 4 weeks) lowered entry barriers for busy students. Second, the scalable and student-driven nature of the program circumvented the obstacles of limited faculty time or staff resources common to many programs. Third, the relational nature of the program facilitated knowledge sharing and relational networks that helped to overcome the many systemic misalignments at the root of faculty-perceived barriers to undergraduate research, findings that came out of a series of interviews we conducted with STEM faculty on barriers to undergraduate research. We conclude by proposing that the design of lightweight, scalable, and relational learning experiences may be an effective approach to overcoming system-level challenges in education and discuss a few examples of what that might look like and future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the current shortage of employees entering the microelectronics workforce, the U.S. defense industrial base (DIB) is faced with the growing challenge of where to obtain qualified workers. The challenge for engineering educators is how best to educate and train a workforce for the DIB's specific technical and professional skill requirements to meet the growing demand for technicians and engineers in microelectronics. As workforce development programs grow and expand in the engineering education space, there is a need to ensure that students are developing both technical and professional skills. The purpose of this Work in Progress Paper is to describe the initial development of a certification framework for students in a microelectronics engineering program. The primary goals of developing the framework are that it be straightforward to use by faculty and students at any university and easily transferable to other domains. The research questions for this paper are: (1) what are the high-level technical and professional knowledge, skills, and abilities that students in a microelectronics workforce development program need to be certified? (2) What are the overall framework components for certification, and what is the supporting literature? (3) What is a current example of the framework applied to professional skills for undergraduate students, and what are the next steps for technical skills? This paper includes detailed examples of the framework and supporting literature for professional skills (i.e., teamwork, lifelong learning), and how technical skills (i.e., circuits, quantum mechanics, quantum computing) are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This evidence-based Work in Progress research paper will explore how collaborative technology impacts student engagement with teams and programming activities in an introductory first-year engineering course. Introduction to engineering has been a historically difficult course for undergraduates as they are introduced to algorithmic thinking, design processes, and problem-solving methodologies. To assist students, a variety of approaches can be employed in the classroom; teambased capstone projects with end of course demonstrations, synchronous collaborative technology that supports teamwork and communication in and out of class, pair-programming, and visual-based programming languages. Each of these provides benefits to the students individually, but with COVID-19 forcing a shift to remote learning, collaborative technologies experienced an unprecedented development of innovations and tools. A return to in-person classes may incline educators to drop collaborative technologies for teaching, but remote control, screen share, and collaborative tools are still beneficial if using teamwork in the class. This paper investigates the following research question: to what degree is student engagement impacted by the usage of synchronous collaborative tools in a teambased, in-person undergraduate introductory engineering course? An experimental setup was implemented in three different sections of an introductory engineering course at a large, midwestern, R1 institution. All three sections had different instructors and a class size of around 50 students. One of the three sections implemented a technology that allowed students to connect to a teammate's computer and share control of keyboard/mouse, enabling real-time collaborative programming in a normally individual programming environment. The other two sections were control sections with no specific implementation differences. A survey instrument grounded in Burch et al.'s conceptual framework was developed and distributed at strategic times to measure students' engagement with their team and inclass programming tasks. Results presented include a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) that supports the factor structure of the student engagement survey and an analysis of variance (ANOVA) procedure to compare the three sections and investigate significant differences between them through student grades. The results of this research have potential to provide direction for usage of remote collaborative technology for in-person, academic settings. Future implications of research include investigating the impact of similar technologies on student engagement and learning outcomes; contributing a validated instrument to measure students' engagement with their programming tasks and teams; and provide educators with potential methodologies to improve student engagement in team-based coursework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine identified a need for undergraduate students to have access to critical data science skills development opportunities. Over the next several decades, the world's reliance on cloud computing and big data will continuously increase, and new data-centric technologies and engineering approaches will be developed. Due to this rapidly developing field, there is a need to track these trends and incorporate the corresponding developments into our current science and engineering curriculum. Besides data science skills already taught in traditional engineering curricula, such as mathematical, computational, and statistical foundations, the National Academies guide discusses that key concepts in developing data acumen include domain-specific considerations and ethical problem-solving. This work-in-progress (WIP) paper will highlight the foundation of a comprehensive study to explore data science education in two domain-specific programs: material science and engineering and architectural engineering. This project is broken down into the following objectives: 1) facilitate data science education and workforce development for engineering and related topics, 2) provide opportunities for students to participate in practical experiences where they can learn new skills through opportunities in new settings to transform data science education, and 3) expand the data science talent pool by enabling the participation of undergraduate students with diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills, and technical maturity. The paper will focus on the topics, deployment strategies within courses and curricula, establishing data sets, representative examples of work-in-progress efforts and their success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a national shortage of skilled technicians and engineers in the microelectronics industry, developing talent to fill roles in the workforce is critical for the U.S. national security and economy. Given this, a public-private-academic ecosystem was formed with the goal of further developing the U.S. microelectronics workforce. This Work in Progress Paper describes one of seven findings of a workforce needs assessment study completed by this group. Communication was a key finding of this assessment and was a link between the technical and professional skills identified. This finding guided the research questions for this paper: (1) What value do hiring professionals and supervisors in microelectronics engineering place on communication when hiring entry-level microelectronics technicians and engineers? (2) How do microelectronics industry professionals describe desired communication skills? Looking specifically at communication, the following sub theme was identified. Within microelectronics, effective communication among individuals and within interdisciplinary teams is necessary as it allows technical information to be quickly "distilled" and understood by management and other nontechnical stakeholders. However, participants shared that individuals often lack sufficient oral and written communication skills that allow them to quickly and succinctly articulate the "so what" to non-technical stakeholders. This paper includes detailed examples of how microelectronics professionals describe and value communication skills and identifies ways that focusing on communication as a professional skill improves student development, the associated student outcomes, and career readiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses some of the difficulties we see in many engineering classes. A majority of engineering classes are still taught using the conventional lecturing system whereby the professor talks in front of an audience, be it in person, online, pre-recorded, or a hybrid system. In today's information technology age, students naturally turn to online lectures and YouTube videos for topic-specific notes or practice to get ready for the exams. Many of the incoming college or university students spent their high school years in social isolation or lock - down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The concept of teams and collaborations has not been the main mode of their learning and engagement in classes. This situation can have an adverse effect on their development when they join an institution of higher learning. There is considerable research conducted on the advantages of integrating elements of teamwork, collaboration, and experimentation with the team for in-class activities. This approach is shown to be especially effective for some of the early classes. In this work, we would like to focus on our experience in using in-class engagement and collaborating activities as the main mode of our classes in Introduction to Electrical Engineering and the undergraduate-level Electromagnetism. This process is a modified version of existing active learning practices. The main idea is to engage students with continued in-class activities and team-based work that encourages students to examine and learn together. Students will work together to tackle problems that would emphasize the basic and the main ideas, methods, and thought process that we would like the students to engage with and develop conceptual comfort and mastery over time. The paper will introduce the idea and process that we have reported in earlier papers after working with undergraduate students over the years. Next, we will introduce and discuss the two classes (Freshman Engineering and Electromagnetism) where we deployed the method. We will also highlight the students' work and introduce their journeys by sharing their reflections and some examples of their activities and challenges. The main question that we are trying to ask and find evidence for is, "Can we re-engineer mistakes and use them as an important part of the learning, changing, and adapting to the process, examinations, and growth of the students?" We found that providing low-stakes learning opportunities is impactful in encouraging collaborations among the students and allowing them to openly engage in their own identity, discuss, examine their knowledge and not be afraid of mistakes. In addition, students are more willing to learn from their mistakes, which we argue is the more meaningf ul approach to achieving effective learning because they are experiencing a better path and interactions for facilitating their experience that would result in remembering the learning and the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become a foundational metric for advancing engineering education in non-traditional ways, similar to the NSF's Big 10 Ideas and the Grand Challenges. Recently, there has also been a national push to use machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to advance engineering techniques in all disciplines ranging from advanced fracture mechanics in materials science to soil and water quality testing in the civil and environmental engineering fields. Using AI, specifically machine learning, engineers can automate and decrease the processing or human labeling time while maintaining statistical repeatability via trained models and sensors. Edge Impulse has designed an open-source TinyML-enabled Arduino education tool kit for engineering disciplines. This paper discusses the various applications and approaches engineering educators have taken to utilize ML toolkits in the classroom. We provide in-depth implementation guides and associated learning outcomes focused on the Environmental Engineering Classroom. We discuss five specific examples of four standard Environmental Engineering courses for freshman and junior-level engineering. There are currently few programs in the nation that utilize machine learning toolkits to prepare the next generation of ML & AIeducated engineers for industry and academic careers. This paper will guide educators to design and implement ML/AI into engineering curricula (without a specific AI or ML focus within the course) using simple, cheap, and open-source tools and technological aid from an online platform in collaboration with Edge Impulse. Specific examples include 1) facial recognition technologies and the biases involved, 2) air quality detection using an accelerometer, 3) roadside litter detector, 4) automated bird identifier, and 5) wildlife camera trap detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this experience-based practice paper, peer-to-peer evaluation was used to improve students' team-based learning experience. For the future workforce, the ability to collaborate well in multidisciplinary teams is a highly valued professional skill. Many educational institutions have implemented project-based learning to develop students' teamwork skills. One of the top challenges is managing potential conflicts after team formation. Although constructive conflict may increase team productivity according to Tuckman, conflicts were viewed as negative and the primary cause of dysfunctional teams [1]. A critical first step for first-year students to achieve team success is to understand what types of negative conflicts could emerge, as well as train them to understand how to cope with and/or resolve the conflicts. In this experience-based practice paper, peer-to-peer evaluations were used to improve students' team-based learning experience. The research question of this study is: How could course instructors utilize a content analysis of a peer feedback system to improve guidance for first-year students on resolving negative conflicts? At New York University, six hundred first-year engineering students participate in free-choice open-ended semester-long projects annually. The primary aim is to allow students to explore, prototype, and refine possible solutions to tackle real-world problems through project-based, collaborative learning. As the teams may have issues such as interpersonal relationships, mismatched schedules, task assignments, and leadership responsibilities, an effective tracking platform is required to manage more than 70 teams per semester. CATME (Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness) peer evaluations consist of two parts: quantitative rating as well as written confidential comments to the instructor and shared peer-to-peer comments. CATME highlights potential conflicts based on self-adjustment factors. This study aims to categorize the conflicts by training a text classifier. Firstly, all the comments were filtered to identify negative comments by sentimental analysis. The negative comments were then categorized into major issues mentioned by the Lencioni Model [2]: lack of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability; inattention to results. A detailed intervention guideline would also be provided in this study. A mixed-method analysis was used to evaluate the impact of instructors' interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This evidence-based research paper emanates from an Iraqi context. After 15 years of conflict, Iraqi higher education institutions are crucial to the country's efforts to rebuild and unify. Engineering in particular is an important discipline for the individual and socio-economic development of skilled workers needed to restore and rebuild national infrastructure. Engineering faculty enabled with the tools and skills to productively teach, learn, and research can mentor graduates with the technical and professional skills needed to support the country's economic growth. In 2019, the US Department of State funded a project to invest in the Liberated Universities of Iraq1. One of the focus areas of this project was the professional development of each University's engineering educators because of its affordances for sustainable economic growth. Subsequently, Purdue University, World Learning, and an Iraqi University conducted a joint needs assessment to identify the specific areas of interest for the engineering faculty members. A population survey was conducted with all 161 faculty members of the College of Engineering. The needs assessment identified student-centered learning, blended learning, and culturally relevant pedagogy as the faculty members' core pedagogical areas of interest. These needs were identified in a conscious attempt to navigate the disruption to normal day-to-day classroom practices caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings were further used to design and facilitate a virtual 7-session three-month faculty development workshop. Our research team was interested in the cultural lens of engineering education in this context. Our research questions were as follows: What does culturally relevant engineering education look like in the context of Iraq? How do engineering faculty members who participated in a focused professional development workshop provide culturally relevant support to their students? We recruited 19 workshop participants, and 9 consented to participate in this study. Our data consist of semistructured interviews, reflection journals, and survey questions developed to investigate the three criteria (academic achievement, cultural competence, and critical consciousness) suggested by Gloria Ladson Billings in her theory for Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (1995). Using content analysis, we coded the data and categorized the three criteria. Our analysis showed that of all three, participants in this specific context leaned more toward cultural competence. This was evidenced by their frequent use of Arabic language code-switching to navigate the difficulty of explaining technical engineering jargon to their students. Additionally, most of the participants reported frequent cases of using contextual analogies in their engineering classes. This paper further nuances the tripartite criteria of culturally relevant pedagogy, illuminating through the voices of participants in this context, a different way to understand what culturally relevant pedagogy looks like in racially homogenous yet ethnically heterogeneous cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Work-in-Progress paper, scaffolding training for Workforce 4.0 was described. The onset of Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, will add new challenges to the shortage of skilled labor, such as CNC programmers and machinists. Like any new technology, new job categories are emerging that require new skill sets, presumably not replacing the current workforce but rather reinventing it. Some projections claim that between 75 and 375 million workers globally may need to change their occupational categories by 2030 due to a sizable amount of employment being automated or digitized. Within a vertically integrated project program of New York University, a systematic training scheme was developed for training undergraduate students with the xArm educational robot, as mentioned in our previous ASEE publication. The goal of the training is to lay the technical foundations for undergraduate students who have no experience in robotics for their future careers in Workforce 4.0. By the end of the training, the students should be ready to solve openended problems in automated production lines. The overall training lasts 12 weeks in total, there are no pre-requisite courses for the training, and it is open to all STEM majors. 16 students participated in the training. The training scheme has been divided into two major blocks: the first block is foundational training, and the second block is advanced training. In the foundational training, the first week is to understand fundamentals by reviewing at least five research papers. The second week is to work on the mechanical assembly of the xArm robots. Robotic kinematics is introduced from the third to the fifth week. In the advanced training, the students were then divided into two specialized groups based on their own interests: Computer Vision (CV) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). There is a seminar about the Robotic Operation System (ROS). The final week is to assess training outcomes. Collaborative teams are formed to build a mini version of a production line using xArm robots, a conveyor belt, and selected sensors. An end-of-course learning assessment survey indicated that students self-reported an improved understanding of the course topics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This engagement in practice paper addresses the development of school system partnerships for the Get Outside And Learn (GOAL) program. This outreach program provides hands-on physical componentry and design challenge curriculum that engages middle and high school students from historically underrepresented and first-generation-college populations. The program was initially conceived during the height of the COVID pandemic, and over 5000 kits have been manufactured and distributed in the first 2.5 years. A major feature of the kit program are culminating events, the scope of which varies from large (600-700 participants) to small (60-100 participants). Challenge events provide a venue to familiarize participants with the University of University of Maryland (UMD) and pathways toward higher education while building excitement and school spirit in a team-based engineering competition. This paper discusses the rapid development of two major school system collaborations in neighboring counties of UMD. The first consideration is the integration into the school system's curriculum and building the program within the schools' existing infrastructures. One school system implements the kits through a two week summer bridge program for students entering 9th grade, and the second incorporates the kits into their coursework during the academic year. The UMD team provides implementation support to teachers and administrators. Teacher co-development of the componentry and curriculum is a major program characteristic. Another element of discussion is the progression of the culminating event logistics through the evolution of the COVID restrictions spanning implementations of fully online, hybrid, in-person off-campus, and finally toward in-person on-campus events. The funding structure and necessary on and off campus partnerships are presented along with current challenges. Future growth directions and expansion are described, including additional school system integrations, future co-development with stakeholders, teacher support communities, an online resource library, program evaluation, and international expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nigerian students account for more than a quarter of all African students in the US, having just recently overtaken Mexico as the United States' 9th highest source of international students. These huge numbers, however, have not necessarily translated into seamless transitions for students who still have to cope with cases of systemic racism, discrimination, and microaggression. While schools boast of diversity and their promise of inclusion and equity continue to successfully attract these students, how might they deliver on these promises and actually create environments where these students feel prepped for success? I argue that the answer may lie not in the US, but in their home countries, by investigating the principles of culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP). This paper shares emerging insights from ongoing research investigating how engineering educators might provide culturally relevant engineering education to Nigerian and Nigerian International students. On the broader research project, a comparative case study using explanatory sequential mixed methods was designed surrounding engineering education in Nigeria and the US. This work-inprogress paper tells half of the story, focusing primarily on the emerging results in Nigeria. It contributes to the broader project by answering the following research questions: what are the conceptions of engineering educators in Nigeria and how do culturally relevant engineering educators support their engineering students in Nigeria? The paper leverages the sociopsychological teacher conceptions described by Gloria Ladson Billings' CRP framework (conceptions of knowledge, of social relations, and conceptions of the self and others). Schools located in all six of Nigeria's geopolitical zones and participants fluent in her three major spoken languages are represented in the study. The analyzed data for this study include surveys, in-person and virtual classroom observations, teacher reflection journals, classroom artifacts, school policy documents, and semi-structured interviews with 37 engineering faculty members, 2 provosts, 5 engineering college deans, and 2 students. The findings reveal a strong leaning for analogies and proverbs as analogical bridges engineering instructors in this context used when traditional experiments, classroom demonstrations, or local educational resources failed. Nuances of culturally-relevant teacher conceptions are discussed in light of CRP: using proverbs to build cognitive reasoning in Nigerian engineering classrooms; visual and auditory cues as a form of formative feedback; analogies as a pedagogical form; advocating for active and authentic learning through tutorials; leveraging the communal nature of the culture in the classroom; colonial antecedents responsible for certain school policies; manifestations of Ladson-Billings' conceptions in this context; peculiarities of the three CRP criteria in this context. To fit within the scope of this paper, only two themes are extensively discussed. The paper concludes with useful suggestions for instructors looking for culturally relevant ways of supporting students of Nigerian students in their engineering classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This methods paper presents the interview quality reflection tool (IQRT) to evaluate the quality of qualitative research interviews. Qualitative researchers commonly use semi-structured interviews that rely on the interviewers' ability to improvise in real time based upon the needs of the study. Given that interviewing involves numerous tacit skills that cannot be delineated by a simple written protocol, it is necessary that researchers develop interview competencies through practice and reflection. While prior literature on interviewing has often focused on developing interview protocols, we know little about how interviewers themselves may be trained to gather high-quality data. In this paper, we focus on how the IQRT may be used to guide the selfassessment of research interviews. We discuss how interviews are used in engineering education, how we developed and applied the IQRT, and how lessons learned through using this tool might lead to improved interviewing skills through careful examination of interview structure, content, and context within the mentoring process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feedback is a key element in the development of students' understanding and evolution in their learning process. Students receive feedback in so many forms including peer feedback, instructor feedback and external feedback from employers or other industries. For this feedback to be valuable, students need to appreciate it, act on it, and consider it as part of the learning process. The literature shows that there is a discrepancy between instructors' objectives for feedback and students' perception of the effectiveness of feedback to improve learning. Mostly, students tend to focus on grades rather than reflect on the feedback and take actions to improve their learning. Even when instructors give detailed personalized comments in students' delivered work, the students may not reflect and take actions unless the reflection is part of the grading process. This paper conducts a review of the types of feedback students receive in their undergraduate studies in five different programs: architectural engineering, civil engineering, engineering technology management, environmental engineering, and geological engineering. In addition, a survey is administered to students to understand feedback techniques used in engineering undergraduate programs. In the survey, students reflect on the types of feedback they received, and indicate which types of feedback they believe are most effective in their learning development. The survey also evaluates how the perception of effectiveness of the type of feedback is influenced by demographic factors. This paper discusses the first stage of the research project. The next stage includes developing an information session for students that is informed by the survey results and the literature. The information session aims to provide students an understanding of how to utilize different types of feedback. Students will then be interviewed a year later to determine if their perception and use of feedback has changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional development for engineering education in the precollege space can vary widely for many reasons. One of the most compelling reasons for differentiation is the learning needs of the audience. A workshop for teachers who have immediate need for activities to incorporate in their classroom looks different from a workshop for counselors who are guiding students through career choices. This paper looks at the design considerations for professional development workshops by using two workshops conducted in 2022 with 56 participants as examples. The first workshop was for a group associated with 9 North Carolina State University College Advising Corps (CAC) members, recent college graduates who may or may not have a STEM degree. These CAC advisors with high school students in rural parts of the state to advise them along career pathways. The second workshop was for 49 teachers in a K-8 STEM school needing to understand integrated STEM instruction and get ideas for nearly immediate implementation in their classrooms. Both groups needed orientation with regards to authentic engineering for K-12 students, as well as an understanding of engineering careers. Both workshops included hands-on engineering activities, discussion of engineering habits of mind, and comparisons between science, math, and engineering. Yet both workshops could not be identical, due to the unique needs of each audience. The paper includes a description of the content of both workshops, observations of the participants as they engaged in engineering design challenges, and evaluation results of each workshop. Also included is a discussion of the realities of providing professional development as the K-12 outreach and engagement team at The Engineering Place @ NC State University College of Engineering versus the theoretical optimum approach and how to deal with the constraints of working with fund- and time-limited groups of professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of "data acumen" for STEM students has been well-articulated by scholars and industry professionals--in part because data science infiltrates many areas of engineering and science. Yet within engineering programs, students often have few opportunities to develop expertise in data science or even to explore how data science is relevant to their degree specializations. This paper reports on an NSF-funded study of a program that prepares STEM students to engage with data science in coursework and then mentors them as they secure internships and complete a capstone that demonstrates their application of data science expertise. Drawing on a mixed-methods study, including student reflections, capstone project assessment, and survey reporting, this paper suggests not only that students make deep connections between their existing majors and data science but also that students trained in our data science microcredential have unique opportunities to improve critical super-skills, including written communication, project management, iterative thinking, and real-world problem-solving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work-in-progress paper discusses the development and implementation of a board game intended to simulate conversations that may occur in design-based projects. One of the challenging tasks for a design group is learning how to collaborate and argue in a constructive and productive way. This paper provides an overview of simulations and games used to assist pedagogy as well as efforts at improving teamwork in design courses and utilizes this information to discuss the development and initial implementation of a pedagogical board game, "Teaming Tribulations." This game is intended to simulate the arguments that might occur within a design team discussion in a lighthearted and friendly atmosphere. In Teaming Tribulations, students are asked to create a quick design in response to a simple prompt. They then share their designs during the judgment-free "Concept Generation Phase." In the next phase of the game, "Concept Selection and Debate," they must argue with their teammates to select the best design to submit for their fictional group project. The twist of the game is that the initial bias of students -which design they would like the team to submit- as well as their personality -the method that they use to argue- are both determined by randomly dealt cards. This causes the students to step outside of their comfort zone and internally reflect on how they argue their opinions normally versus how others might make a similar argument. In the "Grading" phase of the game, the team receives a score based on if they were able to receive a majority or total consensus. The objective of implementing this game within a classroom environment is to start the discussion on teaming, as well as provide a low-fidelity simulation of the design process for comparison during the semester. Later in the semester, concept selection methods are taught with the reminder that it is not ideal to simply argue based on initial biases and gut feelings. The game was introduced in both a first-year and capstone engineering design course. The first-year students were asked to reflect on the experience and determine what personalities hinder a discussion and which combinations are beneficial to a group's experience and success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are multiple parameters to study when measuring the performance and efficiency of Photovoltaic solar cells. This paper is a part of one-year capstone project results for undergraduate students in Electrical Engineering major. This capstone project focuses on maximizing the efficiency of a 100-Watt, 12V solar panel and studying its implementation in a hybrid power source system. Solar cell efficiency can be checked by measuring the power output, voltage-current characteristics, and environment in which the cell is placed. In the hybrid system, the solar panel will charge a battery. This project explains the importance of using a controller between the battery and solar panel, mainly the risk of overvoltage. One solution explored is using a Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) charge controller that can prevent overvoltage by lowering the voltage of the solar cell to match the voltage of the battery. The solar cell output power is measured with a Mega 2560 Arduino and an INA219 current sensor connected to a light bulb load, a 12 V DC motor, and a 2.2k resistor attached. This project develops a DC-DC converter to run the loads with the battery banks charged from the solar cell. This project will also identify the relationship between temperature and irradiance on the effect of solar cell power output. This project is suggested for experimental learning for senior-level undergraduate students. Students conducting this project will be expected to present how their findings compare to theoretical examples via status presentations, professional writing papers, and other assignments that can assess multiple ABET student outcomes. Throughout this project, the authors have shown how experimental learning has increased their awareness in many areas of electrical engineering as they encounter various issues within their experiments. Student takeaways from this project included noting the disparity between researched theoretical results and actual collected results, which varied greatly depending on conditions, the gravity of the economic and labor impact caused by solar panel installation, and the importance of data collection and precise instrumentation to ensure their collected results reflected accurate recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary capstone projects have been used in engineering education to provide students an opportunity to collaborate on a project with students from other disciplines that are different from their own. A few of the perceived benefits of such an experience are students developing a creative problem-solving approach, learning to communicate and collaborate with individuals outside of their major, increased understanding of the connections between different technical topics, and a deeper appreciation of other disciplines. For the last three years, York College of Pennsylvania has conducted an interdisciplinary capstone project focused on designing and constructing a prosthetic hand that will interpret muscle contractions from a young amputee and output the desired movement in the hand and fingers. The overarching goal of the design was to create an affordable option compared to commercially available prosthetics as young amputees can quickly grow out of their prosthetic limb and are more likely to use a prosthetic that is visually appealing. Two features of the prosthetic design are myoelectric technology to detect muscle contractions and 3D printing technology in the construction of the hand. Each academic year, a new student team spends two semesters focused on improving the prosthetic hand design from the previous year's team. The student team was small consisting of no more than five students from the Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Engineering majors. This paper will detail the evolution of the interdisciplinary project from its first group of students who focused their efforts on researching and developing an initial prototype, due to working remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, to the current year's team concentrating on implementing sensors in the hand and refining the ergonomics of the existing design. The paper will also include student & faculty reflection and discussion of the faculty facilitation needed for such a service-based project and how engineering educators can consider implementing such projects into their programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ASEE / TELPhE have offered numerous papers, proposed many approaches, and reported on many programs and initiatives to promote and implement technological and engineering literacy. Overall, these focused on increasing the understanding of engineering and technology among K-12, undergraduates who were not engineering or technology majors, and the citizenry. These comprised K-12 STEM initiatives, success stories from faculty who established general education courses and other initiatives on engineering and technology topics for non-engineering students at their respective institutions, and reports developed in conjunction with national bodies and associations through study and focus groups with the over-arching objective being to present the need for technological and engineering literacy as a positive and beneficial initiative. The hoped-for outcome was that those who experienced this initiative, regardless of its context, would be enjoined as advocates for the importance of technological and engineering literacy as they moved among the citizenry locally, nationally, and internationally. To this end, the division developed a pedagogy, researched history, offered definitions, developed theories, recorded data, and published studies, and offered some excellent examples of "Why?" concluding with a 2021 white paper, "Future Directions for Technological and Engineering Literacy and the Philosophy of Engineering" [1] proposing eight actions through which to discuss and assess: • How to promote the "importance of" the message; • How to get the "benefits of" rationale listened to; • How to establish civic "recognition / acceptance" that technological and engineering literacy is a "constituent part" of many activities and decisions; • How to present the discussion of technological and engineering literacy in a "publicly accessible" context? This paper considers these questions vis-à-vis moving technological and engineering literacy / philosophy of engineering into mainstream conversation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a specifications grading system as applied to a system modeling course composed of mechanical and electrical engineering students. This application was inspired by the use of a specifications grading system in a fluid mechanics course that was presented at the 2022 ASEE conference. The system modeling course adopts some of the same components used by the authors of the original work taking their experiences into account. Specifically, it adopts the mastery grading philosophy of setting high standards that all students must reach to demonstrate minimum competence on exams to pass the course. There is support structure in place, and an incentive system with multiple opportunities for students to demonstrate minimum competency through exam retakes. It also includes modifications and additional learning opportunities for students to earn higher course grades. The paper compares the experiences of the students in this course to those of the original paper. It also includes student and instructor assessment along with suggestions for continued improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making engineering education accessible to under prepared students entering college from high school and students transitioning from the community college level is sometimes difficult due to the demanding mathematical requirements the major demands. One specific area of great difficulty for under prepared students is understanding the trigonometric and inverse trigonometric functions. Part of the problem is that the trigonometric functions seem mysterious to them because they are only seen as buttons on a calculator. The trigonometric functions are classified as transcendental functions. A transcendental function cannot be written as a finite combination of algebraic expressions. The key word is FINITE. This fact, in most cases eliminates the equation form from ever being seen by students. Students know them as only a word sine, cosine, and tangent that is somehow related to the sides of a right triangle. Below are the actual formulas for sine, cosine, and tangent functions. For simplicity in computational purposes only the first three terms in the series will be used. Using these formulas will give under prepared incoming engineering students the hands on feel of working with familiar functions such as y = f(x) = 3x2 + 2x - 4. They are familiar with the independent variable x and the dependent variable y. This paper is intended to help under prepared students understand the trigonometric functions and the notation used to represent them. Most students don't realize that the f in f(x) is being replaced by sin, cos, and tan. It will then be explained that these formulas are programmed into their calculators and are accessible by the sin, cos, and tan buttons on a calculator. ... This paper is not written from a research perspective. There was no collected student data. This paper will contain a full written abbreviated chapter that can be included in any first semester trigonometry or physics course. Formula derivations will not be included, and knowledge of radian measure will be assumed. It will contain several fully worked example problems. The problems will contain the use of the above functions where students only use a calculator to calculate the first three terms given in the above formulas. It is intended only as a learning resource and can be used by any math or engineering educator. The example problems will emphasize the use of the right triangle ratios b/c, a/c, and b/a as the dependent variable. Graphs of sine and cosine will also be given with the vertical axis labeled as y/A and x/A as opposed to simply y. It will be plotted this way, because students have difficulty understanding why the right triangle length ratios simply disappear when graphing the trigonometric functions. This supplemental chapter will hopefully reinforce the idea that the trigonometric functions require a real number input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethics has long been recognized as crucial to responsible engineering, but the increasingly globalized environments present challenges to effective engineering ethics training. This paper is part of a larger research project that aims to examine the effects of culture and education on ethics training in undergraduate engineering students at universities in the United States, China, and the Netherlands. We are interested in how students' curricular and extra-curricular (e.g., internships, service projects) experiences and training impact their ethical reasoning and moral dispositions, and how this differs cross-culturally. To understand this, we are conducting mixed methods research longitudinally over four years to engineering students at our participating universities to gauge their moral dispositions and ethical reasoning skills and to measure any change in these. This work-in-progress paper, however, is not about the direct outcomes of this research project. Rather, it critically examines our own practices and methods in doing this research. We begin the paper by briefly introducing the larger research project and motivating the use of comparative, multi-institutional case studies as necessary for contextualizing, complementing, and interpreting quantitative data on ethical reasoning and moral dispositions. Because the conditions related to engineering ethics education differ widely per participating institution for institutional (and also likely cultural) reasons, interpreting and analyzing quantitative survey data will require understanding contextual conditions of education at each institution. Comparative case studies can supply missing contextual information to provide a more complete picture of the engineering ethics educational contexts, strategies, and practices at each of the participating universities. However, in considering how to design and conduct these case studies, we realized we were operating under certain assumptions such as ethics in engineering as separate (and separable from) the "real," or technical engineering curriculum. These assumptions have been widely problematized in engineering ethics education (Cech, 2014; Tormey et al. 2015; Polmear et al. 2019); they are assumptions that we in our teaching and research attempt to dispel. Our paper considers (and invites discussion on) the broader implications of methodological design in conducting cross-cultural multi-sited case studies in engineering ethics education research. It explores models for designing and conducting our case studies so as not to reproduce pernicious ideas about social and ethical issues in engineering as subsidiary "interventions" in the "actual," (i.e., technical) curriculum. More generally we discuss how engineering ethics education research methods can be harnessed to overcome this established division. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work-in-progress paper, we present our initial characterization of an interdisciplinary engineering education research team's culture around the generation, expression, and application of knowledge (epistemic culture). To explore this phenomenon, we used an ethnographic case study approach, focusing on a single interdisciplinary engineering education research team. We observed six recorded team meetings that occurred across four months. For each meeting, we took fieldnotes and identified any discussion about research ideas, approaches, or questions among team members (i.e., a critical interaction). In this paper, we focus on one instance in which epistemic questions were raised but there was no true negotiation of ideas. We used Longino's critical contextual empiricism model as a lens to characterize the team's epistemic culture and gain insight into an instance that was primed for epistemic negotiation. In this paper, we present our initial characterization of the team's epistemic culture and our analysis of the instance we identified. We also discuss possible barriers to teams having epistemic negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on demonstrating how course modules could be developed via digital twins to improve students' learning experiences. The authors have taught a course named "creating digital twins of the IIT campus" two times in fall 2021 and spring 2022 and have leveraged inexpensive resources as well as open access and open-source tools to engage students in the process. The course started with utilizing iPads equipped with low-cost Lidar sensors to create the digital twins of campus. Students from different disciplines, ranging from architecture, engineering, computer science and engineering deployed different software packages, including but not limited to AutoDesk ReCap, AutoDesk Revit, Blender, Cloud Compare, Rhino, and Open3D package in Python to construct points cloud data in a 3D map space for campus buildings. Students created, collected, and combined the 3D data which will form the foundational layer of the digital twin. Then, they demonstrated the implications of these scans to: (i) create an entire scan of a new building on campus and develop building drawings (e.g., AutoCAD) and models (i.e., Revit); (ii) develop a game to utilize the scans; (iii) conduct asset management of the campus resources enabling to visualize the rooms, space information, and additional layers of information such as schedule of classes or inventory of furniture; (iv) utilize the scans to infer knowledge from the domain; and (v) demonstrate the use of the scanned data for the virtual reality (VR) for visualization, game development, other applications using Oculus headsets. This active learning process was under instructors' supervision, and they continuously provided guidance on how to work through the steps of problem-solving from the perspective of different disciplines. Students worked as teams to also identify stakeholders that would benefit from potential solutions. We also utilized a novel dissemination process and asked students to create YouTube videos. Overall, this paper is an ongoing effort to expand these active teaching usecases and include them in other courses, especially Architectural Engineering courses, in the near future to enable students to benefit from these functionalities in a digital twins domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work-in-progress paper summarizes how engineering faculty tried to make the better learning environment for the first-year engineering students by minimizing instructor involvement. In the introductory first-year course, Introduction to Engineering, the engineering design process was introduced with small practical exercises at major design steps, and discussion. Then, two different design projects were assigned to apply the engineering design process that they had learned. The learning experience as a team of 2-3 students through these projects is emphasized in this paper. The instructor provided a guideline for the design process, however, the instructor's direct inputs towards the problem-solving in the projects were minimized to encourage self-learning and learning while working together. These first-year engineering students as a team independently navigated to complete these two engineering projects. The survey data showed that majority of students felt that their projects were successful and mentioned that they had learned while working with their peers. The students were most satisfied with the projects when they met their own project goals. Even with limited data from one semester as well things to improve, the overall reflections on active learning experience under minimal instructor involvement was encouraging, which will lead us to conduct further indepth research in the following upper-division engineering courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting in 2020, ten faculty members of the University of Connecticut's (UConn) Master of Engineering program in Advanced Systems Engineering applied four existing competency frameworks to define the unique aspects of their professional training program using a competency-based education approach. The four frameworks include the 21st Century Cyber-Physical Systems Education report published by the National Academies Press, the Applied Mathematics at the U.S. Department of Energy report published by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the INCOSE (International Council on Systems Engineering) Systems Engineering Competency Framework, and the INCOSE Model-Based Enterprise Capabilities Matrix. The purpose of the use of these frameworks and reports was to identify generally desirable competencies that a professional should acquire when training at the graduate level in systems engineering for the development of complex CPS. The competency-based education process included a mapping of previously defined student learning outcomes to competencies defined in the frameworks. This paper explains the systems engineering education program background, competency-based education initiative goals, methods, process, and results. The paper concludes that a tailored approach to graduate education programming, based upon this competency-based education and course assessment method, can be used to differentiate graduate systems engineering programs from each other. The paper also concludes that customized learning, targeting specific systems engineering skillsets, can be achieved by each systems engineering student based upon offering an open and customizable course curriculum. Students can use their competency-based learning plans and social-media-recognizable badges to signify their unique systems engineering competencies and learning outcomes achieved either through a four-course Graduate Certificate or a ten-course Master of Engineering program offered by UConn. The competency definitions by graduate course can be used by graduate students to create a longer-term systems engineering professional development plan that supports life-long learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With manufacturing facilities across the country becoming more connected, it is critical that safeguards are in place to protect against threats to facilities' cyber-physical systems. Technicians with training in robotics/automation/mechatronics are well positioned to help provide a first line of defense to such threats. This work, funded through a National Science Foundation (NSF) Advanced Technological Education (ATE) grant, seeks to enhance technician cybersecurity awareness through education and training. The paper provides details on the process the project team utilized to develop an initial micro-credential in the area of cybersecurity for robotics/automation/mechatronics. The paper focuses on the badge creation process and outlines how the badge modules developed can be shared to help raise cyber awareness in other fields, such as semiconductors, solar power, and electric vehicles. The badge leverages the work of other NSF ATE projects, providing a no-cost avenue for automation technicians to expand their background by earning a digital badge that enhances their resume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Tri-Agency Council of Canada that includes the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) is implementing its Research Data Management (RDM) Policy in the Spring of 2023. The policy requires Canadian post-secondary institutions to develop an Institutional RDM Strategy to support and guide researchers funded by one or more of the Tri-Agencies. Researchers will be required to provide a Data Management Plan (DMP) and deposit their research data into a repository at the time of publication to fulfill funding obligations. This paper describes the survey results conducted at a U15 research institution in Canada asking engineering faculty about their research data sharing practices and preferences. The purpose of the survey was to answer the following questions: 1. How well prepared are engineering researchers for data deposit, 2. Are engineering researchers willing to share their data, and 3. What barriers exist for sharing engineering data? Results demonstrate knowledge of and acceptance of open access (OA) practices but when it comes to data, engineering researchers are more reluctant and less prepared to share their data widely and may need guidance on RDM best practices. Subject librarians can prepare to aid faculty and educate students by gaining an understanding of engineering data management and sharing behaviors. Faculty may benefit from RDM support through all stages of the data life cycle and students may benefit from RDM literacy introduced into their curriculum. The described survey results in this paper aim to help the subject librarian identify where they might best offer support for faculty and students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]