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One of the key components to an introductory Computer Science course is the lab component. This serves as a time for students to gain hands on experience with the concepts they are learning in lecture that week. Typically, the way the lab time is structured is students will be given the assignment and be allotted the entire lab period to work on their own with instructor help available if need be. While straightforward enough, this approach is less than ideal. With lab sizes in introductory courses increasing the number of students who need instructor help during the lab time increases. This approach leads to students not being able to get the attention they need as the instructor needs to move between students quickly or even worse...students may "fall through the cracks" as demand for help outpaces the instructor resources available. The result is students leaving lab with knowledge gaps regarding the topic that prevent them from creating a solid foundation on which to build their basic programming knowledge. Even worse is the fact this approach teaches students when they are handed a programming task to dive straight to code as fast as possible which may not be consistent with how they will work in industry. The goal of this paper is to outline a new paradigm for structuring the lab period which teaches students how to work with peers to solve a problem, think before they code, and build conceptual understanding. In this approach students do a combination of group work, individual work, and whole class work to solve the problem. This allows the instructor to better manage the students in the class and enables them to point out common "pain points" with the material being covered that week and show ways to optimize / speed up the code being written. This paper discusses the effectiveness of this approach by looking at qualitative student feedback as well as analyzing the student performance (grades) across sections of the class that had this new, combination approach versus the normal approach to lab of giving students the lab and having them work independently. The initial statistical analysis (difference in means, 95% confidence level) shows a statistically significant increase in lab, homework, and overall course grades for students that experienced the new, combination approach when compared to the students that experienced the normal approach to the computer science lab experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to provide details on an Engineering Economy course offered to a part-time (evening) MBA program at William & Mary. The students included engineers and non-engineers. All students had taken multiple courses in accounting and finance prior to taking Engineering Economy. Thus, the focus of the course was on relevant applications of engineering economy through journal paper reviews, public media, traditional homework assignments, and the creation of a Social Security tool. The course was not focused primarily on typical time value of money concepts, since those concepts were well known from the finance courses. The course included a project, which was completed in pieces. The project was to build an individual Social Security tool in Microsoft Excel. The tool incorporated the various breakpoints for when to claim and the risk of claiming early versus late, etc. The first stage of the tool was to complete the Microsoft Excel tool for just the basic breakpoints (i.e., earliest claiming age, full retirement age, and age 70) where month-by-month was the time frame; calculating the Net Present Value (NPV) for a given time value of money rate (8%) and age of death (85th birthday). The second stage of the tool was to determine the optimal claiming age given different ages of death. The third stage was to do a sensitivity analysis on the age of death, the time value of money rate, and whether or not Social Security "runs out of money" (i.e., drops benefits to 75%). This stage used a mortality calculator to assign a probability of death in any given month, and to calculate the NPV and the standard deviation of the various claiming scenarios (i.e., to measure risk). The readers of this paper will benefit from learning about this course since it is an applied course with professional students. The students were fairly aware of the time value of money concepts, but were lacking in applications outside of their industry domain and the usage of Microsoft Excel to calculate these problems. Furthermore, using a project that impacts all (Social Security) sparked interest in the course and its material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over five years of work in an industrial engineering manufacturing process course has been carried out to understand engineering undergraduate student perceptions of manufacturing in the United States. This paper discusses a holistic approach being taken in an industrial engineering program to understand Millennial and Generation Z student manufacturing perception while working to get students interested in manufacturing careers through coursework, internships, and co-op experiences. The generation divisions are often argued about, but Millennials are generally thought of as being born from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s with Generation Z following. Millennials can be defined as those born from 1981 to 1996, with Generation Z following from 1997 on. The results of over five years of questionnaire data shows that a welldesigned manufacturing processes course equipped with hands-on labs, plant visits, and manufacturing job fairs can be effective in changing student's perception of manufacturing. It is also shown that campus location may play a key part in industrial engineering student knowledge of manufacturing and the percentage of students completing internships and co-ops in manufacturing. Data was collected across two campuses within the same U.S. University where both campuses offer B.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering. The enrollment at the two campuses and manufacturing footprint around the two campuses are significantly different and this is discussed with the results of the survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is having a diverse team most useful for hard problems? This paper presents prior literature and results from a classroom activity that explores individuals versus homogeneous groups versus heterogeneous groups for solving complex problems. The forecasts from a classroom activity with 246 undergraduate and graduate students showed that the Random Groups (Heterogeneous Groups) forecasts were statistically better than Homogeneous Groups forecasts and Individual forecasts using the Mann-Whitney test. Combining this classroom exercise with a lecture focused on building diverse teams for forecasting (and other difficult problems), showed a statistically significant difference in pre-lesson perceptions versus post-lesson perceptions of the students using a test of marginal homogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous research studies have shown that college students prefer face-to-face, verbal communication for their college courses, rather than social communication (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, apps, text messages); despite the fact that college students communicate more via text messages than any other communication option (e.g., face-to-face, email, text). This paper describes a study in which the instructor did not email the students, but instead communicated information face-to-face during class and kept the learning management system up-to-date in terms of calendar deadlines, assignments, grades, and course notes. The results of this study show that students were very satisfied with the instructor-student communication methods used in the industrial engineering classroom. The results show that the majority of students accessed the learning management system 2 to 3 times a week, daily, or multiple times in a day. The students reported logging into the learning management system most commonly to check grades, print lecture notes, and check the course calendar for upcoming course assessments and topics to be covered on assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now more than ever manufacturing in the United States needs a workforce with a blend of both strong hands-on trade skills and the technical problem solving skills typically learned through the completion of a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering program. This paper discusses a holistic approach being taken in an industrial engineering program to increase student interest in manufacturing by providing a hands-on educational experience in a manufacturing processes course while providing ample opportunities for students to gain hands-on manufacturing work experience through undergraduate teaching internships and manufacturing co-ops and internships. The research shown in this paper discusses the active role that senior undergraduate students with manufacturing internship and co-op experience play in helping to deliver the manufacturing processes course. Senior undergraduate industrial engineering students with manufacturing industry internship or co-op work experience have been helping to deliver a manufacturing processes course through hands-on lab instruction, on site plant visits, industry speakers and networking sessions, and a final course case study. The paper displays the results of a questionnaire that included a blend of qualitative and quantitative questions administered to the junior and senior level industrial engineering students completing the manufacturing processes course. In addition to data collected on student satisfaction and motivation with course delivery, the survey also collected data inquiring prior student knowledge of manufacturing processes, perception of manufacturing, and student interest in manufacturing careers before and after taking the manufacturing processes course. The survey also inquired on student internship and co-op trends for the industrial engineering students completing this manufacturing processes course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now more than ever companies are expecting students graduating from baccalaureate engineering degree programs to have both strong technical problem solving skills and a level of business expertise. With corporate investment and engineering project funding decisions becoming increasingly reliant upon company financial statement and stock price impact, it is crucial for engineers to have a working knowledge of financial accounting and finance. This paper discusses an integrated approach being taken in an industrial engineering program to increase student interest in engineering and business while teaching the important business concepts outlined above in a required engineering economy course for industrial engineering students. This paper discusses the evolution of a student group deemed the "Business and Engineering" group in industrial engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park campus. The paper discusses the curriculum changes in the engineering economics course to incorporate important financial accounting and finance topics. The paper will discuss in detail a large U.S. retail company sponsored case study competition implemented into the course to complement the financial statement analysis curriculum added to the course. Student feedback regarding the updated curriculum, course delivery, and the company sponsored case study competition is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two growing trends in education are the increasing use of distance or on line delivered instructional materials and the struggle for improving the effectiveness of learning. There is a significant body of literature which examines both aspects of on line versus traditional instructional methods and the issues of effective teaching. This paper contributes to this literature by examining student perception and actual accomplishment of learning outcomes in engineering economics courses delivered in two universities and with different course delivery techniques: live face to face lectures compared to live distance delivered lectures. Three sections of engineering economics with three different instructors (two face to face and one distance delivered) participated in the study. All three sections used consistent exam questions, evaluated learning outcomes using shared rubrics, and compared student self-assessment of learning with actual results. The paper analyzes similarities and differences in student accomplishment based on these exam questions and student responses to related survey questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the case for why engineering economics should be a commonly accepted general education course. Currently, most engineering courses are not considered appropriate for the general education of a college or university student. In the past an engineering economics course focused primarily on financial mathematics; however, the modern engineering economics course centers on financial decision making in addition to financial mathematics. These topics are applicable, if not mandatory, for students pursuing interests in engineering, law, product development, public service, entrepreneurship, marketing, business, finance, political science, sociology, government, and ethics. This issue is timely because schools at various levels (e.g., K-12, community colleges, and universities) are including the concepts of quantitative and financial literacy into their required curricula, with some being required by state law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a new approach taken in industrial engineering course delivery that brings real life case studies and active learning activities into the industrial engineering classroom. The active role that senior undergraduate students with internship and co-op experience play in helping to deliver the real life, active learning components of the course is also discussed. The paper first briefly summarizes the results of work that was completed on modeling student satisfaction and motivation in industrial engineering education. The results of this work led to this current effort of studying this new approach in industrial engineering course delivery. The paper goes on to explain the current and ongoing work being carried out in an engineering economy course to upgrade the curriculum, while also improving student satisfaction in the course by improving course delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]