Hands-On Experiences for Problem Solving in Engineering Education Based on Trees and Plants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gustavo Vargas-Silva ◽  
Mariappan Jawaharlal
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Local Area ◽  
Plant Kingdom ◽  
Conflicting Objectives ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Learn Problem

We teachers know that problem solving is a crucial skill for our students. It is indispensable for developing original and creative thinking. We also know that deep learning of engineering fact can be assisted by using non-conventional tools and heterodox ideas for teaching, learning and presenting technical concepts. On that sense, we propose that engineering students could learn how to solve hands-on problems from nature; in particular from the plant kingdom. In addition, we engineers should not turn our back to nature. We should start a new voyage of discovery, seeking new landscapes with a different outlook. But how? The present paper presents an approach to integrate trees and plants into engineering education to learn problem solving hands-on experiences. The aim of this approach is to teach engineering design using trees in the local area with an emphasis on structural strategies. Students taking courses such as statics, dynamics, strength of materials, stress analysis, material science, and design courses can benefit tremendously from studying trees. Furthermore, this approach provides an exciting opportunity for students to understand the complexities of real world living systems, appreciate the genius of nature’s design, and develop methods to create sustainable designs. We think that those kind of natural realistic problems are complex: they have conflicting objectives, multiple solution methods, non-engineering success criteria, non-engineering constraints, unanticipated issues, interactions, collaborative activity systems, and multiple forms of problem representation. From an educational point of view, using a tree can bring tremendous practical benefits for problem solving in engineering education. Trees are everywhere, and they can easily integrate them into the classroom. Trees offer unlimited potential for teaching and research. For example, each student will have a different tree, and there are plenty of them, so each problem will be original and creative for each student providing a genuine learning experience. The present work puts on view a new development for teaching structural mechanics based on plant biomechanics, i.e. the study of the structural strategies of plants (and trees). The goal is to understand and emulate structures and functions of the plant kingdom to develop structural solutions in engineering. Therefore this paper presents teaching results and novel concepts for problem solving in engineering education, seeking new landscapes.

scholarly journals An Arts-Based Instructional Model for Student Creativity in Engineering Design

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Laduca ◽  
Adrienne Ausdenmoore ◽  
Jen Katz-Buonincontro ◽  
Kevin Patrick Hallinan ◽  
Karlos Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Student Growth ◽  
Instructional Model ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Over the past twenty years, nearly all job growth in the United States has emerged from new companies and organizations with assumedly innovative products, services, and practices. Yet, the nurturing of student creative thinking and problem solving is infrequent in engineering education. Inherent to developing these creativity skills and attributes is the need to be exposed to difference — in people and environment. Engineering education rarely offers such opportunities. Additionally, engineering students are rarely presented opportunities to develop designs responding to real human problems. This paper puts forth a new instructional model to address these needs by utilizing arts processes and practices as catalysts for both creativity development in students and transdisciplinary collaboration on problems addressing deep human needs. This model is premised on the substantiated role of the arts in developing creativity and growing understanding of the human condition. This art-based instructional model was piloted as exploratory pedagogical research during the summers of 2015 and 2016 as a partnership between the Arts Nexus (IAN) and the School of Engineering at the University of Dayton. In each year, this program supported twelve student interns from engineering, business, science, the arts, and the humanities to develop innovative technologies and services meeting client needs. Student growth in creative problem-solving and transdisciplinary collaboration, as well as the success of the completed innovation technology prototype were assessed by the project mentors and participating students via survey evaluations and narrative responses. The assessment results revealed substantial student growth in student creativity and transdisciplinary collaboration and a remarkably strong evaluation of the success of the students’ innovations. Also realized for all students was a transformation in their perception of their place in the world as professionals post-graduation.

Enhancing Engineering Learning Experience at UTB by Freshmen iHOP

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nazmul Islam
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Real World ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Project Based Learning ◽  
Senior Design ◽  
Team Selection ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Lower Division

Most of the engineering courses focus more on theory and very little on hands-on, project-based learning in the classroom. Integration of real-world engineering problems and applications in lower division engineering courses will produce engineering students, who will be technically sound and be able to execute and manage real-world projects, when they will do senior design projects in their final year of engineering study. To overcome the engineering design challenges we have developed iHOP (Ingenieŕia Hands on Project) and integrate it with our lower division engineering courses. iHOP has been developed to emphasis the design component at the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB) Engineering Physics curriculum and the project is now an integral part of Introduction to Engineering class. The iHOP project is one that is challenging, fun, requires teamwork, associated with the engineering material being studied, low cost, and doable in a limited amount of time. The experience from iHOP project motivates our freshman students to choose a better senior design project in senior year of their college career. The objectives of the iHOP projects are — to have students develop teamwork skills, and to teach students basic engineering design concepts in a complementary format to the traditional lecture. Various techniques related to team selection, encouraging teamwork, incorporation of engineering topics, keeping costs down, project results presentations, and gathering feedback from students will also be presented in this paper. Integrating iHOP Project with Introduction to Engineering class helped us to improve our retention effort in the engineering department.

scholarly journals AN OPEN-ENDED DESIGN-BASED LAB EXERCISE FOR A FIRST THERMOFLUIDS COURSE

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Hastie ◽  
Jan Haelssig
Keyword(s):  
Creative Thinking ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Work Skills ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
First Semester ◽  
Design Project ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Hands On Learning ◽  
The Many

The Thermo-Fluid Engineering I course provides all first-semester second-year engineering students at Dalhousie University with a basic introduction to thermodynamics and fluid mechanics. In the past three years, we have used a combination of six traditional laboratory exercises and a short four-week design project to provide students with hands-on learning experiences in this course. In general, these projects have been well-received by students as a welcome break from the many abstract theoretical concepts that are normally associated with introductory thermodynamics. However, two of the continuing challenges with these projects have been the students’ limited engineering design experience and the availability of time to perform a design project. To address these challenges, in the fall 2015 offering of Thermo-Fluid Engineering I, the four-week design project was replaced by an open-ended design-based lab exercise.The open-ended lab exercise required groups of students to develop specific laboratory experiments related to thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, given a limited quantity of resources. While the focus shifted away from a traditional short design project, the open-ended lab exercise continues to allow students to develop their creative thinking, critical analysis, hands-on, communication, and team work skills, which was the primary purpose of the short design projects in the first place.

Epistemology in Engineering Education: An Overview

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurzal Effiyana Ghazali ◽  
Zuraidah Abu Bakar ◽  
Mohd. Shafie Bakar ◽  
Tengku Nur Zulaikha Tengku Malim Busu ◽  
Nor Farahwahidah Abdul Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
General Context ◽  
Engineering Education Research ◽  
Faculty Management

Epistemology is a branch of philosophy, a study of how a person knows and knowing. Engineering epistemology is one of the new disciplines in engineering education research. Unfortunately, little research has been done on engineering education. In this paper, epistemology is discussed in the general context then, specifically for the engineering education context. Furthermore, the engineering epistemology framework and instrument to investigate engineering epistemology among engineering educators and students have been presented. Theory for knowledge development has been discussed in general and how that developmental model is important for higher education. Finally, epistemology in teaching and learning has been introduced in the context of engineering educators and engineering students. In summary, engineering educators’ epistemology will shape future engineers based on their class design. Therefore, developing engineering students from dualists to commitments of the relativist is very important. Finally, suggestions for engineering faculty management in developing engineering educators and engineering students for a better teaching and learning experience are provided.

scholarly journals The Impact of Entrepreneurship on Engineering Education

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Majed Jarrar ◽  
Hanan Anis
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Technological Innovation ◽  
Direct Observation ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Graduate Attributes ◽  
Start Up ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Survey Results ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact

Engineering schools are integrating entrepreneurship within their curriculum in order to equip their students with the capacity to adapt quickly to technological innovation. The University of Ottawa has developed an entrepreneurship course that is open to all engineering students, and aims to provide them with a hands-on approach to starting and growing a technology start-up. This paper is centred on assessing the students who took this course. The results of the survey analyze the impact entrepreneurship has had on their engineering skillset. This skillset reflects the graduate attributes that the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) expects engineering students to develop. We will observe whether this impact has changed since the inception of this course in 2012 and throughout 5 course cycles. Using the survey results as well as the direct observation during those semesters, we present our analysis on how these outcomes can be replicated in other environments.

scholarly journals Lab@Home: The Open University of Catalonia Hands-on Electronics Laboratory for Online Engineering Education

Electronics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Monzo ◽  
Germán Cobo ◽  
José Antonio Morán ◽  
Eugènia Santamaría ◽  
David García-Solórzano
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Education ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Open University ◽  
Online Students ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Students Satisfaction ◽  
Self Administered Questionnaire

Practical experimentation is essential for electronics learning. As the acquisition of practical and professional competences in full online scenario is concerned, it is very relevant the use of technology that allows students to carry out hands-on experiments. This paper presents Lab@Home, the Open University of Catalonia (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, UOC, Barcelona, Spain) hands-on electronics laboratory, which allows online students to carry out practical experiments anywhere and anytime at a reduced cost and with good portability characteristics. Lab@Home features and students satisfaction are analyzed during six consecutive semesters in two different subjects by means of a self-administered questionnaire, showing the benefits of using Lab@Home in the acquisition of the subjects contents and gathering how could be improved students learning experience by using this kind of electronics laboratory.

Using MATLAB to Enhance Engineering Students’ Analytical Problem-Solving Skills

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liang-Wu Cai
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Mathematical Software ◽  
Analytical Problem ◽  
Mechanical Vibrations ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Analytical Skills ◽  
Symbolic Calculations

Symbolic analysis is one of the most feared tasks for many undergraduate students in engineering disciplines. Students argue that, without numerical values, it is difficult to make a sense out of a long expression. Instructors have experienced that students are diffident in such analyses; and they quickly lose interest in the topic. This trend has been enhanced with more prevalent use of computers in engineering curricula in recent years. In the senior level Mechanical Vibrations course, this author has experimented with an innovative procedure of using mathematical software such as MATLAB to enhance the students’ learning experience with extensive symbolic calculations. In this experiment, MATLAB is used as a rudimentary plotting device that allows students to plot curves. The procedure provides students a systematical approach to produce parametric plots from an analytical expression, and to validate the expression on physical grounds. This innovative procedure has changed students’ perception about long expressions, decreased their fear, and boosted their confidence in their analytical skills. All these help student to develop a more positive altitude towards symbolic analyses.

Case study of enquiry-based learning designed for rotating magnetic fields in electric machinery course

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liu Huijuan ◽  
Zhang Zhenyang ◽  
Song Tengfei
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Learning Problem ◽  
Rotating Magnetic Fields ◽  
Electric Machinery ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Positive Support

This paper describes a case study of enquiry-based learning to teach problem solving, innovation, group working, and presentation skills for electrical engineering students in electric machinery course at Beijing Jiaotong University. The research project is designed by teachers and students go through three processes: project-based teaching and learning, problem-based derivation and simulation, and enquiry-based presentation. The multidiscipline project is innovated to meet the requirements of engineering education while keeping its traditional effectiveness in driving students to apply knowledge to practice and problem solving. The feedback from students shows positive support for the innovations.

Promoting Effective Student Problem Solving

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Engineering Education ◽  
Student Development ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Course Development ◽  
Complex Problem Solving ◽  
Problem Solvers ◽  
Student Problem ◽  
Effective Problem

If one were to ask most anyone what engineers do, they would say “solve problems.” And indeed, engineers do [but I would suggest that all people solve problems regardless of their chosen careers]. What are less obvious are [a] whether engineering students and graduates are effective problem solvers; [b] whether engineering education is facilitated effectively as a “problem to be solved” and [c] whether that engineering education intentionally facilitates the development by students of an effective problem solving approach. In this paper, it is argued that instructors use of effective problem solving in course development, preparation, and facilitation must include the explicit attention to the student development of effective problem solving procedures. In this paper, it is argued that students will become more effective problem solvers if instructors encourage them to use procedures that embrace ambiguity and if instructors more consistently expect them to apply the procedures to open-ended problems throughout the curriculum. As students move from well-defined problem solving to more complex problem solving, they will benefit from one general and effective problem-solving procedure that is sufficiently flexible to include the various and more specific procedures that students will encounter. With career paths continually evolving and with information generation growth ever expanding, such skills are absolutely critical to success, again regardless of career choice.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document