Carla Egelhoff

Work in progress — A Concept Map for Mechanics of Materials

The Mechanics of Materials course is fundamental to all areas of solid mechanics in engineering. It is commonly a “gatekeeper” course and generally considered “difficult” by students. Educators across several engineering disciplines have attempted to improve learning through efforts such as: developing physical demonstration models for classroom use, writing computer programs for independent learning, and conducting concept inventory studies to uncover the underlying cause of learning difficulty. This paper describes the development of a Concept Map for Mechanics of Materials. The map serves as the focal point for discussions and questions, and is simple enough so that anyone can re-create its salient features as a hand-drawn sketch. This concept map has been used and assessed as a tool to review the Mechanics of Materials course before administering a gateway exam in the next-level course, and as a tool for the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam review course. Preliminary assessment results indicate this concept map is an effective tool to use for teaching or reviewing Mechanics of Materials.

Learning from disasters: developing mechanical engineering topics

Engineering disasters are compelling events which interest students and provide a basis for teaching professional history and essential skills of the engineering discipline. This presentation outlines the development of disaster cases for undergraduate mechanical engineers, providing the content to integrate skills in research, writing, speaking, critical analysis and ethical evaluations.

Innovative equation management techniques for implementation in kinematics and dynamics courses

The scope of this paper is the description of techniques and algorithms which engineers use in mathematically modeling physical systems. This work builds on recently developed algorithms that can be used to guide students in solving and understanding the mathematical modeling of physical systems. The techniques have been developed for general use in a number of applications, especially in a kinematics and dynamics course. The techniques allow easy manipulation of equations and systems of governing equations in complex situations. The algorithms and techniques generally guarantee, and actually restrict, the student to specify a design variables set in a manner that solutions are possible. This paper documents that the selection of design variables is difficult anti-intuitive and, in some cases, it is humanly impossible to generate all of the possible combinations of constraints. While currently the algorithms are implemented in a computer program, the techniques can also be applied to hand calculations. By way of demonstration, a kinematics and dynamics design software program was developed which exemplifies the usefulness and, more importantly, the key benefits of the developed algorithms. The intention is to show that the algorithms are applicable to any set of equations and can be used to enhance students problem solving abilities.

Work in progress: Building information literacy assessment

In todays electronic age, information literacy skills are more important than ever. It has been challenging for most engineering faculty to find a place to infuse and integrate information literacy into already demanding curricula. However, engineering faculty need to address the topic of information literacy in order to support achievement of ABET student outcomes related to communication, contemporary issues, and lifelong learning. This paper presents the steps taken to assess and evaluate information literacy skills through the development of specific performance indicators related to ABET student outcomes g, i, and j. Using existing assignments, assessment data were captured and preliminary results are presented.