Denny Davis

Establishing engineering design competencies for freshman/sophomore students

Transferable Integrated Design Engineering Education (TIDEE) is the name of a project at Washington State University in cooperation with faculty at the University of Washington and Tacoma Community College that involves curriculum development and faculty enhancement. Its objectives are to: (a) establish a curricular structure for transferable introductory design education in an environment of diverse institutions, curricula and students; (b) produce transportable curricular materials and instructional methods that support effective integrated engineering design education in transfer environments; (c) enable faculty at the institutions to adopt, implement and evaluate exemplary materials and methods suitable for their programs and their students; and (d) achieve increased enrolment and retention of students in early design courses. Key design competencies to be addressed will be identified so that students who enter an engineering program will be able to build on those competencies as they participate in design activities through the remainder of their program. Curriculum materials will be developed to meet learning objectives for introductory design in order to fit a variety of institutions, and to serve students with diverse backgrounds and interests. Faculty workshops across the state will transfer these learning objectives and strategies for achieving them in a variety of settings, and they will prepare faculty to adopt materials and methods to use in classes with diverse student populations. This paper discusses the details of how this project will be carried out and the outcomes expected.

SIMULATION OF WEDGE-SHAPED PRODUCT DEHYDRATION USING MIXTURES OF SUPERHEATED STEAM AND AIR IN LAMINAR FLOW

A numerical model was developed to study the effectiveness of superheated steam, humid air, and dry air as dehydration media for wedge-shaped food products. Superheated steam had slightly higher surface friction loss than humid air and dry air except at lower free-stream temperatures. Superheated steam also exhibited higher heat transfer rates than the other fluids. The combined effect of these two characteristics was the existence of an inversion point in dehydration rate. The inversion point was the temperature at which evaporation rates for the fluids were approximately equal. The inversion points for different wedge angles were observed at approximately 275°C. The evaporation rates were greater for superheated steam than for dry air or humid air when the fluid temperature was above the inversion point. However, the evaporation rates were less for superheated steam than for dry air or humid air when the temperature was below the inversion point.

A process oriented class in engineering design: how it works

This paper describes techniques that are used in competency-based, introductory engineering design courses. Material used in the course has been produced and developed by the TIDEE (Transferable Integrated Design in Engineering Education) coalition, an NSF sponsored project with principal investigators at Washington State University, Tacoma Community College and the University of Washington. The course develops creative problem solving techniques, communication and teamwork skills. It emphasizes process improvement rather than evaluating the product and results. This provides an opportunity for students to take risks, try new approaches and gain confidence.

An engineering design summer camp for a diverse group of high school students

Engineering design is fundamental to all areas of engineering education. It takes shape as project-based learning. As a facts-based approach becomes integrated with a hands-on, learning-to-solve-problems approach, engineering design is a perfect vehicle for this integration. TIDEE (Transferable Integrated Design in Engineering Education) is an NSF grant involving Washington State University, the University of Washington, Tacoma Community College, and the Washington Council for Engineering and Related Technical Education (WCERTE). TIDEE aims to establish a flexible engineering design structure, prepare faculty to use and develop new engineering design materials, and increase the diversity of engineering enrollment. The TIDEE summer science camp is funded by both the NSF (National Science Foundation), as part of the TIDEE coalition, and the Boeing Company. The camp is funded for four annual summer sessions. The TIDEE summer science camp introduces a group of high school students to engineering design. The TIDEE camp works well. The team-based, cooperative, hands-on activities appeal to the campers. The activities are planned for success in a safe supportive environment. Teaching assistants, graduate students, instructors, and professors are good role models in engineering, tours expand their career horizons and campers acquire competencies in all aspects of engineering design. The awards banquet brings campers and their families together to understand and appreciate what is gained from the TIDEE camp.

Assessing students design capabilities in an introductory design class

Through the TIDEE (Transferable Integrated Design Engineering Education) project, assessment tools and performance criteria have been developed to quantify student achievement in the engineering design process, teamwork skills and design communication skills. A seven-point scale describes performance levels spanning from entering engineering students to professional design engineers. Mid-program assessment tools were used to assess student achievement of engineering design capabilities during introductory classes in engineering design. Assessment results describe the level of a typical entering students knowledge and performance in engineering design. These results also indicate that students can reach engineering design achievement targets set for the mid-point of an engineering degree program when the preparatory learning environment is a well-structured outcomes-based design curriculum.

TIDEE: the first year of a design engineering educational partnership for Washington State

TIDEE (Transferable Integrated Design Engineering Education) is an NSF sponsored partnership of four year universities and community colleges in the state of Washington. TIDEEs focus is to develop a unified vision of design competencies required for first and second year university students. This competency based design education will be shared by all of the community colleges and four year universities in the state of Washington. The competencies have been developed through workshops and then assigned to categories and levels of achievement.

Workshop — Using IDEALS to demonstrate development of professional skills in project courses

Professional skills are vital to preparing engineers for their careers, but how well do we teach and assess them in our professional programs? Many design faculty are unclear about the required skills, how to develop them, and how to assess them. In response to this need, the Integrated Design Engineering Assessment and Learning System (IDEALS) promotes professional skills in a semi-authentic community of practice found in team-based design project classes. This workshop outlines practical learning outcomes for professional skills, team-based active learning materials, and aligned assessment instruments for measuring growth in professional development. The IDEALS learning model is derived from learning and motivation theories and seeks to elevate student learning through reflective practice. This session will alternate between short presentations, opportunities to score student work, and group discussion. Participants will also examine how to report classwide results for ABET within IDEALS. This workshop is intended for faculty who teach project courses across all disciplines and for ABET coordinators from a broad spectrum of engineering programs.

Building Entrepreneurship across the University: Cross-Campus Collaboration between Business and Engineering

Abstract Both Washington State University (WSU) and the state of Washington have a rich, entrepreneurial history. Seeking to capitalize on that strength, leaders at WSU sought to create cross-campus partnerships in the hopes that they could better educate and train tomorrows entrepreneurial leaders. Perhaps the best operationalization of that vision is the Frank Institute, a partnership between the business schools Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and the College of Engineering and Architectures Harold Frank Engineering Entrepreneurship Institute. The Frank Institute selects 12 promising business and engineering students each year to undertake an invigorating yearlong program designed to teach the students how to launch new technology ventures. Now going into its fifth instantiation, the Frank program has enabled students, faculty, and university leaders to learn a great deal about the benefits of multidisciplinary teaching of technology entrepreneurship. In this case study, we discuss how cross-campus collaborative efforts at WSU were achieved, how the award winning Frank Fellows program operates, and some lessons learned from the success and challenges with this approach to cross-campus collaboration in entrepreneurship education.

Statewide endorsement of design in Washington

The statewide organization of engineering programs in Washington, Washington Council for Engineering and Related Technical Education (WCERTE) has endorsed the incorporation of design education into the first two years of engineering and engineering technology curricula. This design education includes the development of competence in communication, teamwork and the creative problem solving or engineering design process. Each institution is to determine for itself in which class or classes the desired educational outcomes for design education are to be achieved. This paper discusses the categories of competencies for design and to what level each competency is to be achieved by the end of the first two years of the program. It also discusses how faculty from a variety of institutions helped to define the competencies and levels of achievement which have been accepted. The endorsement will help to ensure that students who transfer within the state will enter the junior year with some design background upon which to build additional competence in the final two years of their engineering program. The effort to seek the endorsement was led by the PIs for the Transferable Integrated Design Engineering Education (TIDEE) project which is funded by NSF, Division of Undergraduate Education.

Work in progress: Help in finding evaluation instruments for engineering education innovations

This paper describes the first-year progress of a TUES Type 2 project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that supports scholarly innovation in engineering education. The project, known as the Appraisal System for Superior Engineering Education Evaluation-instrument Sharing and Scholarship (ASSESS), builds on a precursor NSF CCLI Type 1 project, the Inventory of Evaluation Tools for Engineering Education Projects. The paper reports on the process and framework for developing ASSESS as a sustainable library of superior evaluation instruments that promote scholarly innovation in engineering education. The online database supports information storage, retrieval, and input as well as expert review and user feedback. Adoption research currently being conducted will determine factors that influence broad utilization of the database. Feedback is invited from the community to produce a user-friendly website that enables engineering educators to locate and implement tools that can be used to credibly evaluate the impacts of engineering education innovations.