P.K. Raju

Identification of factors that lead to perceived learning improvements for female students

Past research has shown that females have more negative attitudes toward engineering and technology than do males. These negative attitudes may explain the decreasing number of females choosing technical careers. Past studies have shown that a change in learning environments and the methods by which learning takes place might foster a change in this situation. A multimedia case study incorporating a real-world engineering and technical problem faced by a power plant was developed in order to provide a new learning environment for engineering and business students. This research investigates whether the use of this material by female and male students led to differences in perceived higher level cognitive skills and, if so, seeks to identify the factors that cause the difference. The results suggest that when designing new learning environments, it is important for the female students to be challenged and have opportunities both to learn by themselves and to learn from others. These results have implications for teaching programs, such as the provision of opportunities for group learning, especially for female students.

A Curriculum to Enhance Decision-Making Skills of Technical Personnel Working in Teams.

Rapidly changing engineering designs and business scenarios make it essential for engineers and technical personnel to be trained to be effective team players and project managers. This paper reports the experiences gained in developing and implementing a workshop to train engineers at a steel manufacturing plant. The objective of the workshop was to foster team-working skills among the participants and to improve the decision-making skills of these engineers so that they could be groomed to take over project management responsibilities. In order to achieve these objectives, a curriculum consisting of personality identification, lectures on engineering and management topics, hands-on exercises using multimedia case studies and feedback sessions was developed. In this paper, the details of developing, implementing and evaluating the curriculum in two three-day workshops are discussed. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation results indicate that the objectives were achieved very well and the curriculum has the potential to help engineers and technical personnel improve their decision-making skills, thereby preparing them to solve the complex technical problems that they will face in their professional lives.

Use of Multi-Media Courseware to Teach Real-World Decision Making Skills

We combined the case study approach and information technologies to create a multi-media courseware that brought real-world decision making from engineering industry into the classrooms. This paper describes the process of developing the CD-ROM courseware, details of classroom administration, and results of measuring the effectiveness of using the courseware in classes. This courseware was selected as the Premier Courseware of 1998 by NEEDS and John Wiley and Sons through a rigorous application and review process. Evaluation results of the use of the courseware in classrooms show that it enhanced classroom experience of students and helped them understand how decisions were made in the real-world. It also enhanced their higher-level cognitive skills. We expect that widespread use of multi-media courseware build on similar principles could lead to significant changes in the way students are educated.

Enterprise Information Systems and Engineering Design at Briggs & Stratton: K11 Engine Development

Keisha Lewis, the product manager for the K-series engines at Briggs and Stratton (B&S) was involved in a serious discussion with Jim Smith, the IT Manager. She knew that B&S had sold the KO8 engine, a popular premium, 11 horsepower cool-bore engine, successfully for over 25 years. The company had started on the product development of a 13 horsepower cool-bore (aluminum) engine to be called K11 during 1993. It was not a great success so far. First, the newly developed K11 engine did not pass the emission tests. Data conf i ied that there were problems with an improper amount of oil consumption and exhaust release. The engine had to be hlly redesigned and the scheduled product launch was delayed. It was now November 1998, and Keisha had just been hired by B&S as Product Manager and given the mission to successfully steer the company through this turmoil. The engineering design team used software such as Engine Builds, Model Decoder, Metaphase, AutoCAD, and ProEngineer when designing and developing the blueprints for the K11 engine. The manufacturing, sales, and support teams used SAP Rf3, an Enterprise Resource Planning System, to manage the information flow in production, sales, and accounting. There was very little interaction between the information systems used by the engineering designers and the manufacturing plant. The top management tasked Keisha and Jim to find out whether it was feasible to integrate these two sets of information systems or it was better to leave them as standalone systems. Jim and Keisha felt they needed a good understanding of the K11 engine development process and the current information systems used before they could make a recommendation.

Let Them Play: The Impact of Mechanics and Dynamics of a Serious Game on Student Perceptions of Learning Engagement

Serious games are becoming important educational tools and are increasingly being integrated into courses in many different academic areas and widely portrayed as a means of helping individuals concentrate on the subject matter and enjoy learning. This paper discusses the development and testing of a serious game by using a research model where the mechanics and dynamics of the game impact perceived usefulness, ease of use, and goal clarity, which in turn lead to higher concentration and user enjoyment. This model was tested in an undergraduate product design classroom, and evaluated using a survey and a focus group. The results of qualitative and quantitative analysis show that higher concentration and enjoyment occur when students perceive clear goals, ease of use, and usefulness during gaming. The results of the study leads to recommendations to game developers on the features of serious games that need to be built and the need to carefully consider the mechanics and dynamics of a game. The results should encourage instructors to consider incorporating serious games into their classes to increase their students’ learning engagement.

Improving Mechanical Engineering Education Through Use of Case Studies

Business is increasingly conducted in a global environment, and mechanical engineering students are expected to be proficient in leadership skills as well as strong technical skills. Many authors state that instead of adding more material and more courses to the engineering curriculum, which would likely turn students away from engineering, engineering educators need to respond by opening up access to engineering with the larger world. We found that one of the effective ways of bringing real-world issues related to the areas of manufacturing and design, thermal engineering, acoustics, vibration, welding and nondestructive evaluation into classrooms is through the use of case study methodology. The Laboratory for Innovative Technology and Engineering Education (LITEE) at Auburn University has developed eighteen multimedia case studies over the past ten years. Faculty and students partnering with various industries develop these case studies. The case studies focus on real-world problems that actually occurred in the chosen industry. All the technical and business details related to the problem are provided in the case study. Through the use of information technologies we created multi-media case studies that bring real-world decision making from the engineering industry into the classrooms. The students analyze the problem in the class using role-playing, thereby simulating the decision-making scenario that occurred in the industry. The students also have an opportunity to compare their solutions to what happened in the industry. This paper describes the steps involved in developing a LITEE case study, administering this case study in engineering classrooms, and the results of evaluating the effectiveness of this method of instruction. This paper also discusses the details of different case studies related to the above-mentioned areas available through LITEE.Copyright

Experiences of a US-India Team in Developing a Case Study that Illustrates Technical and Global Issues in Weld Design

Understanding the real-world issues in the global industry is one of the ways of enhancing the learning experience of engineering students. This paper describes such an experience. This was a collaborative weld design project between Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, India and Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Tiruchirappalli, India. The main problems BHEL faced were (1) Inspection time of the welds, (2) Inaccessibility of the welds, and (3) Detection of kissing bond or pasty weld. Three possible solutions to these problems were identified by the practitioners. In order to bring this real-world issue into engineering classrooms, the authors developed a case study. The authors also developed a multimedia CD-ROM which brings the problem live into class rooms using video, audio and pictures. This case study has been tested with mechanical engineering students. The majority of the students found the use of case studies to be beneficial, particularly because of the group work and applicability to real life situations. The details of the case study and its implementation in an engineering class room at Auburn University are discussed in the paper.Copyright

Predictive Maintenance: The Case of Della Steam Plant

Della Steam Plant is one of the power plants owned by a major company in the southern part of the USA. Located between a free-flowing river and nearby coal mines, Della steam plant started generating electric power in 1917. The plant has five units in operation. It is an efficiently operated steam power plant with a capacity of about 1,000 Megawatts.

A multi‐media courseware that applies vibration theories to real‐world problems

Many engineering students lack the breadth of knowledge and skills that are fundamental to the practice of their profession. There is now a growing realization among educators of the need to put a greater emphasis on imparting higher‐level cognitive skills. The learning experience must move from lecture as a dominant mode to include a significant level of active learning approaches. In order to fulfill these needs, written case studies were developed and used to bring real‐world problems into engineering classrooms. New multi‐media information technologies provide access to vast information sources, support safe discovery‐based educational experiences, and more aggressively support peer‐to‐peer education. Studies report that the nonlinear systems associated with multimedia technologies are superior to linear paper‐based systems in improving problem solving skills and increasing user satisfaction. Therefore, the written case studies were enhanced by adding video, audio, photographs, and competency material...