Gretchen Hein

Sustainability in a common first year engineering program

Do the lifestyle and technology of today compromise the ability of future generations to meet their own needs? Since the Fall of 2005, first year engineering students at Michigan Technological University have been considering this question. They began by learning the definition of sustainability and then examined its importance to engineering through: (i) Researching and presenting the sustainability of 20th century engineering achievements. (ii) Investigating the ethical issues involved in sustainable technologies. (iii) Evaluating sustainability case studies using global Sullivan principles. (iv) Calculating their individual electrical energy consumption within their residence hall room and the resultant carbon dioxide produced. From this, they proposed methods to reduce their energy consumption.(v) Analyzing the sustainability of their semester design projects. From these activities, students learned that engineers need to evaluate the economic, environmental and social aspects of their designs in order to produce sustainable solutions. They investigated the differences of sustainable technologies in developing and developed countries. They determined the effect their lifestyle had on the environment by calculating both their carbon and ecological footprints. This paper will describe the incorporation of these sustainability activities into the Michigan Tech first year engineering program and the assessment methodology used.

A student mentoring and development program for underrepresented groups in engineering

The graduate, undergraduate initiative for development and enhancement (GUIDE) program creates a supportive environment for first year engineering students from underrepresented groups. This 4 year NSF program has just completed its second year of funding. GUIDE provides first year students with student mentors, financial assistance and faculty advisors to assist them with the transition to university life. In addition, the GUIDE scholars attend engineering seminars and career workshops. This paper describes the GUIDE program and the skills students gain from participating in the program. It also outlines the logistics involved in a student mentoring program that is coupled with seminars and workshops.

How important is high-school computing experience for first-year engineering student success?

First-year engineering students enter our university with differing experiences using computers and technology. This affects the classroom dynamic especially with large differences between students. With this in mind, faculty must address the following questions when planning their course: Where should the faculty focus their time? Do they focus on bringing everyone to a specific level? Do they teach to the average student and hope the less experienced keep up and the more experienced are not bored? The first step to answering these questions is to determine the distribution of experience. To assess this, first-year engineering students at Michigan Technological University were given the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) Computer Access and Familiarity Survey (Grade 12) during their first week of classes. The NAEP survey measures access to and familiarity with technology. The survey was modified to measure the familiarity with computing tasks students use in their first engineering courses. This paper will focus on determining: how much exposure to computers and technology have our students had, what exactly is the depth and breadth of the skills they enter the university with, and are there any factors within access or familiarity that impact success in the first-year engineering courses?

Work in progress — Refining a technical communication rubric for first-year engineering instructors

At Michigan Technological University, we offer approximately 23 sections of first-year engineering courses (ENG1001, ENG1101, and ENG1102) every fall semester. For course assessment and accreditation reporting, it is important to have a reliable metric of student performance. Perhaps even more important is for this metric to produce comparable results when used by different instructors. The authors began by reviewing the reliability of a rubric developed by Washington State University. For our courses, this rubric was not applicable for all assignments and not reliable between instructors teaching different sections of the same course. Therefore, the rubric was modified to reduce inconsistencies in grading between different instructors and standardize it so that the same rubric could be used for first-year engineering technical communication assignments. This paper focuses on the process of adapting and evaluating a technical communication rubric for use with multiple instructors and assignments. Our process for developing, refining and using a common rubric will be discussed as well as the challenges encountered and the modifications required making it an effective tool for course assessment.

Computerizing Exams: The Michigan Tech Testing Center

Universities such as Brigham Young offer a central facility for computerized testing. Michigan Technological University is following this model with the establishment of the Michigan Tech Testing Center (MTTC) in 2012. The center creates a space that supports flexible, high integrity computerized exams. This paper focuses on the pilot testing of a spreadsheet lab practical using file submission through Canvas and Jotform.

Utilizing university research and upper-division course material for an enhanced first-year design experience

Design projects give instructors a chance to integrate lecture material into an engaging engineering experience. Students working on “real-world” design projects can see how their projects apply to life outside the classroom. There has been much talk about implementing a “cornerstone” design experience into first-year classes, but how “real-world” can a design project be for first-year engineering students without the technical background of their upper-division counterparts? Can students see the applications of their designs when their models and simulations are limited due to their skill set? At Michigan Technological University, we are investigating what happens when first-year students learn about future research opportunities and coursework from upper-division students, and how this material is related to their design project. It is hoped that students will have a greater enthusiasm for their project when they know that their knowledge will be useful in the future or when they see where their design project work could lead. In addition, it is hoped that students will have a greater understanding of the application of their own work.

Enhancing student learning shrough self-assessment

First year engineering courses at Michigan Technological University have instruction and activities that address studentspsila various learning styles. Traditionally, these courses have focused on increasing active learning through in-class examples, team exercises and design projects. Despite these activities, there have been several course topics where the students continue to have difficulty applying the principles to an engineering problem. To address this issue, in the fall of 2007, self-assessments were introduced to enhance the resources available for students. The assessments were a series of non-graded questions designed for students to explore the course topics in greater detail on their own time. As this was not part of the overall course requirements, student participation was voluntary. The questions applied lecture material to real world applications. The self-assessments were administered through Blackboard CE. Students were able to log into Blackboard, complete the assessment and receive immediate feedback regarding their performance. To enhance their understanding of the material, they could repeat this process multiple times. This paper will discuss student responses to this learning approach as well as assessment data to determine the effectiveness of this method as a teaching tool.

Multi-disciplinary applications in an introductory thermo-fluids course

In the fall of 2003, ENG3200, thermo-fluids was developed at Michigan Technological University to introduce biomedical engineering students to thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. Since then, the course has evolved into a course for a diverse group of majors: biomedical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, geological engineering. Additionally, other engineering undergraduate and graduate students have elected to take the course. This diverse group has presented challenges in presenting the material such that the students see how thermodynamics and fluid mechanics relate to their fields. As material is introduced, students learn conceptually about different applications or data. Additionally, materials and examples have been developed and/or modified to illustrate how the course concepts can be applied and used in real world applications. This paper will describe examples and problems that students learn to solve in class that are different from traditional thermo-fluids problems. Student reactions and comments regarding these problems will be presented. As part of the course assessment, students complete a pre- and post-test containing many thermo-fluids definitions. The paper will contain data to show that as the course material relating to the various majors increases, the post- assessment scores improve.

Work in progress-a four year follow-up: integration of math, physics and engineering, a pilot study for success

The inherent integration between mathematics, physics, and engineering is obvious to experienced engineers and faculty, however, many incoming students find it hard to see the connections. During the 1999-2000 academic year, a pilot study was conducted to see the effects of cohort scheduling students into integrated sections of calculus, physics, and first year engineering courses. Calculus-ready student were chosen randomly and asked to participate in this study. Those declining our offer were used as our control group. The control and the test groups had similar compositions of majors, SAT/ACT scores, and high school backgrounds. Initial results of this study show that students in the test group scored significantly higher on common exams. One year follow-up analysis shows that these students continue to have overall higher grade point averages, and self-report a high level of academic confidence. This work in progress highlights the integration process, including the active collaborative teaching/learning styles used, and shows the progress of the cohort students four years after the initial study. It builds heavily on prior work of these authors.