Diana Bairaktarova

Engineering Student’s Ethical Awareness and Behavior: A New Motivational Model

Professional communities are experiencing scandals involving unethical and illegal practices daily. Yet it should not take a national major structure failure to highlight the importance of ethical awareness and behavior, or the need for the development and practice of ethical behavior in engineering students. Development of ethical behavior skills in future engineers is a key competency for engineering schools as ethical behavior is a part of the professional identity and practice of engineers. While engineering educators have somewhat established instructional methods to teach engineering ethics, they still rely heavily on teaching ethical awareness, and pay little attention to how well ethical awareness predicts ethical behavior. However the ability to exercise ethical judgement does not mean that students are ethically educated or likely to behave in an ethical manner. This paper argues measuring ethical judgment is insufficient for evaluating the teaching of engineering ethics, because ethical awareness has not been demonstrated to translate into ethical behavior. The focus of this paper is to propose a model that correlates with both, ethical awareness and ethical behavior. This model integrates the theory of planned behavior, person and thing orientation, and spheres of control. Applying this model will allow educators to build confidence and trust in their students’ ability to build a professional identity and be prepared for the engineering profession and practice.

How Engineers Perceive the Importance of Ethics in Finland.

ABSTRACT Success in complex and holistic engineering practices requires more than problem-solving abilities and technical competencies. Engineering education must offer proficient technical competences and also train engineers to think and act ethically. A technical ‘engineering-like’ focus and demand have made educators and students overlook the importance of ethical awareness and transversal competences. Using two Finnish surveys, conducted in 2014 and 2016, we examine how engineers perceive working life needs regarding ethics. The data consider different age groups. We research whether an engineer’s age affects their perception of the importance of ethics in their work and if there are differences between young experts and young managers in their use of ethics within work. The results indicate that practising engineers do not consider ethical issues important in their work. This especially applies to younger engineers; the older an engineer, the more important they consider ethics. No statistically significant difference was found between young engineering experts and managers.

CAD Platform Independent Software for Automatic Grading of Technical Drawings

Spatial visualization is the ability of an individual to visualize an object mentally and understand its spatial orientation. It plays an important role in engineering. There have been multiple works that show that spatial visualization skills can be improved with the right training. Creating technical drawings requires mental manipulation and visual thinking. Strong spatial visualization abilities are required for such a mental process. To train students in this process and to improve their spatial skills, Professor Diana Bairaktarova conducted a class in spatial visualization for freshmen in engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The class consisted of 169 students from different engineering disciplines. One of the major pedagogical techniques used in the class was to give students three assignments on drawing sectional views of mechanical objects with a pre-defined cutting plane. All three assignments had the same six mechanical objects to assess their improvement through the class. Students were not given feedback after completion of each assignment. They were asked to do the first assignment at the beginning of the course, the second assignment during the middle of the semester and the final assignment towards the end of the semester. The students were given instructions on how to draw the 2D sectional views. The assignments were then graded by the teaching assistants for the class and the improvement of the students through the semester was recorded. Assignments were graded manually by two different raters using a pre-defined grading rubric. An inter-rater reliability was established between the graders. There were drawbacks to this process. It was extremely time consuming since there were more than 500 assignments to be graded by the teaching assistants. Also, to establish inter-rater reliability, the assignments had to be graded twice. The process would have been more efficient if there was a software that could automate the grading process. Also, this would eliminate the need to establish an inter-rater reliability. This research aims at developing a software for automatic grading of the technical drawings. The software gives students’ feedback on the drawings describing their mistakes. This would give a more complete learning experience as the students would get a better understanding of the internal details of the object with the help of the feedback they are getting. In addition, the software is independent of the CAD platform used to create the drawings. The instructor can also upload a batch of images that can be processed by the software at once. The grading rubric that was used for manual grading can be implemented in the software. The software uses Image processing and Computer Vision toolboxes in MATLAB which enables the comparison between the submitted technical drawing and the source (solution) drawing. The software is currently developed for simple geometries with less complicated features as it is being employed in a course where students are new to CAD environment. Students can also use this software as an interactive learning tool as they create 3D models and sectional views of mechanical objects. The proposed software reduces the amount of effort put in by faculty on grading the assignments. It also gives students feedback on the drawings, making it an interactive tool which improves the learning experience. This software can be a powerful pedagogical tool to improve spatial visualization skills. Development of CAD Platform Independent Software for Automatic Grading of Technical Drawings Sanchit Sanjay Ingale GENERAL AUDIENCE ABSTRACT Every freshman engineering student needs to take a course in engineering graphics and technical drawings. These courses aim to improve the spatial visualization skills of students. Spatial Visualization is defined as ‘the ability to mentally manipulate, rotate, twist, or invert a pictorially presented stimulus object’ [1]. These skills play an important role in problem solving and learning capabilities of individuals. Professor Diana Bairaktarova from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University conducted a course in Spatial Visualization during Fall 2016. The course aimed at introducing freshman students to Computer Aided Drafting (CAD), which is the use of computer software to create mechanical drawings of mechanical parts in their design stage. They were also taught to create sectional views of mechanical objects. Sectional view is a drawing which describes a hidden area or the interior part of a mechanical object. The class consisted of 169 students from various disciplines of engineering. Students were given assignments to create sectional views and 3D models throughout the semester using the same mechanical objects to assess the improvement in their spatial visualization skills. The teaching assistants had to manually grade more than 500 sets of assignments throughout the semester which was a time consuming process. In order to ease the grading process and improve the learning experience of students, a software for automatic grading of technical drawings was developed. Programming language MATLAB was used to create the software. Students need to submit their assignment solutions in the form of an image. The software compares the submitted image with the solution images stored in the software and grades them according to a predefined grading scheme. It also provides a description of the mistakes created by students. The software can grade multiple files at once and store the results in an Excel sheet. This helps reducing the time required for grading the assignments and returning them to students. The software can be installed on any computer and does not require the system to have the programming software MATLAB installed. This software is independent of the CAD software used to create the drawings and thus stands out

The New Renaissance Artificers: Harnessing the Power of Creativity in the Engineering Classroom

Creativity and interdisciplinary have been identified as critical skills for twenty-first century engineering education. The National Academy of Engineers termed our future engineering graduates as renaissance engineers. Changes for transformative learning in engineering education are taking place slowly across universities. To prepare the renaissance engineers of the future we look to the past, where renaissance artificers embraced art, technology, and science. This phenomenon was not isolated, but rather the supremely creative culmination of a long process. We are challenged to open the door to our students to an education that combines art, technology, and science as united phenomena which transform our classrooms into workshops and studios bursting with activity. Attempts to harness the power of creativity in the engineering classroom are more widespread than formal literature indicates. Creative faculty find ways to let our students take risks, collaborate, and create. We have been serenaded by students with songs about the virtues of thermodynamic principles. We have watched examples of scientific events played out in films. We have read poems penned by students that lyrically explain the four laws of thermodynamics. Through their innovative DNA, our students find beauty is truth in art and in engineering.

Thermodynamics in High Rhythms and Rhymes: Creative Ways of Knowing in Engineering.

Thermodynamics is a foundational course in nearly every engineering program. In a traditional classroom, instructors focus on the analysis of thermodynamic energy systems and their application to real world contexts. Because these complex systems can be difficult to understand, some instructors encourage students to tap into their creative side and translate thermodynamics into a language they can clearly understand. In this study, the instructor of a sophomore-level engineering thermodynamics class asked students to generate a creative interpretation of Thermodynamics. The presentations were a high-energy event in rhythms and rhymes, as students presented their creative work; evaluation shows the creative interpretation helped clarify course concepts and increased students’ appreciation of thermodynamics and the engineering profession. This study further investigates the relationship between students’ performance on problems and final exam scores [N=147]. Results indicated that students’ engagement in creative presentations contributed to their learning on the topic chosen by students in their creative entries.

Autism spectrum disorder and engineering education - needs and considerations

Universities are experiencing an increase in enrollment of high-functioning students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Even though many students with ASD do not attend college, it is reported that students with this diagnosis who do, often come from well to do families, and select STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education areas at rates above both the general population, and other differently-abled groups. While students classified with this diagnosis may hail from privileged educational exposures and demonstrate higher cognitive abilities, they often lack the ability to empathize and experience difficulty to socially connect with others. This includes an inability to decode informal social cues, which can impact the ability to communicate ideas during classroom situations. Concurrent to this notable shift in STEM student demographics, the landscape of engineering education is also changing. Greater emphasis is placed on providing an engaging and interactive student learning environment, bolstered by research demonstrating improved learning outcomes and higher retention rates. This work in process is the development of an emergent literature review, looking for the intersection between this student diagnosis, and the impact on the engineering education classroom and related stakeholders. Our work is an important first step in informing and guiding faculty and staff engagement on this unique and growing student population, especially in light of a national focus on STEM education, and dynamic changes in engineering education.

The role of virtual objects in performing engineering related task

Many engineering disciplines are concerned with the creation of tangible objects, however using physical objects to facilitate learning in the engineering classroom is not broadly applied. Tangible objects are primarily used in design projects, with less attention to objects in other engineering activities. Nowadays a lot of attention is given on the Making and Maker movement. Questions remain whatever these activities help people learn engineering. We have completed two studies investigating the efficacy on concrete objects in the same engineering task with different experiential conditions. This work-in-progress is the third study from a line of research, where now virtual objects are included as a new study condition.