scholarly journals Board 53: Work in Progress: Learning Assistant “Noticing” in Undergraduate Engineering Science Courses

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Wendell ◽  
Douglas Matson ◽  
Hernan Gallegos ◽  
Luisa Chiesa
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Science ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
Work In Progress ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering

Design Experience Using Software Tools in Undergraduate Engineering Mechanics Courses

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhijit Nagchaudhuri ◽  
Emin Yilmaz
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Software Tools ◽  
Engineering Science ◽  
Engineering Programs ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering Education ◽  
Engineering Mechanics ◽  
Solid Works ◽  
Design Experience

Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Materials form the basic sequence of engineering mechanics courses in engineering curricula. Traditionally, these courses have been designated as “engineering science” courses with significantly more emphasis in analysis to reinforce engineering fundamentals, and little to no importance to “engineering design”. With the outcome based approach to undergraduate engineering education adopted by Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology and the framework laid out by Engineering Criteria (EC 2000) significant reform efforts are underway to incorporate design experience throughout the engineering curricula. Most engineering programs across the nation have developed and implemented a freshman design course to introduce engineering design at the beginning of the college experience for engineering majors. To sustain the momentum, it therefore follows that subsequent courses should sustain the design emphasis in the freshman and sophomore years. Design, however, is a time consuming complex iterative process somewhat different from the convergent nature of engineering science. Modern software tools provide a time efficient and pedagogically effective way of integrating engineering design project with the engineering mechanics sequence without compromising the engineering science fundamentals. In this paper design projects that have been integrated in Statics, Dynamics, and Mechanics of Material courses offered by the author using software tools such as Working Model, MD-Solids, Pro-Engineer, Solid-works etc. supplemented by computational tools such as MATLAB and EXCEL are outlined. Discussion based on student feedback and relevance to ABET outcomes is also forwarded.

A tool for facilitating the automated assessment of engineering/science courses

2020 ◽  
pp. 002072092095313
Author(s):  
Azam Beg ◽  
Mouza Alhemeiri ◽  
Ajmal Beg
Keyword(s):  
Computer Architecture ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Traditional Learning ◽  
Engineering Science ◽  
Practice Test ◽  
Science Courses ◽  
Software Packages ◽  
Questions And Answers ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Learning Institutions

In recent years, massive open online courses (MOOCs) have become quite popular. Such courses are either completely free or cost nominally. Generally, the MOOCs face the challenge of not being recognized as ‘regular’ courses (i.e., the ones taken at the traditional learning institutions). One of the main reasons for this lack of acceptability is the assessment in an unsupervised environment, which is prone to the problems of test-taker’s online lookups or interaction with others for finding the answers to the test questions. A few ways of alleviating this problem include: limiting the time for answering the questions, the avoidance of repetitive questions, and the creation of a large number of questions. This paper presents a tool named QAgen that enables the automatic creation of a large number of questions and answers related to different topics in computer/electrical engineering (ECE), computer science, physics, etc. Specifically, the tool is related to the courses on digital logic design, computer architecture, etc. The generated questions are in a format that is suitable both for learning management system (LMS) based and/or non-LMS-based assessment in conventional courses or MOOCs. The proposed tool is based on open-source software, thus eliminating the need for any commercial software packages. The underlying principles of QAgen are applicable to other engineering/science courses as well, if the assessment methods require the creation of some connected-object diagrams, tables and equations. For assessing the usefulness of QAgen, practice question sets were created for three different courses. The student surveys for these courses indicated that the questions helped students prepare for actual tests/examinations. Especially favored by the students was the availability of correct answers at the end of each practice test/examination.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document