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2014 IEEE Frontiers in
Education Conference
Opening Doors to Innovation and Internalization in Engineering
Education
Conference Program
Melia Castilla Hotel & Convention Center, Madrid, Spain
October 22-25, 2014
Sponsored by
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
Educational Research Methods (ERM) Division
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
IEEE Computer Society
IEEE Education Society
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
i
FIE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
The FIE 2014 conference proceedings is provided to all registrants on a USB drive.
To obtain copies of the USB version of the proceedings, please contact:
Mail IEEE Customer Service Department
Hoes Lane
PO Box 1331
Piscataway, NJ 08855-1331 USA
Phone Toll-free 800-678-IEEE (4333) or 732-981-0060
USB Version of Proceedings IEEE Catalog Number and ISBN
IEEE Catalog Number: CFP14FIE-ART
USB version, IEEE Catalog Number: CFP14FIE-USB
ISBN: 978-1-4799-3921-3
©
2014 IEEE
Copyright and Reprint Permission:
Unless otherwise noted on the first page of each paper, IEEE copyrights all papers.
©
IEEE 2014
Copyright and Reprint Permission: Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. Libraries are
permitted to photocopy beyond the limit of U.S. copyright law for private use of patrons those
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MA 01923. For other copying, reprint or republication permission, write to IEEE Copyrights
Manager, IEEE Operations Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854. All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2014 by IEEE.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
FIE 2014 CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS ......................................................................... ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................................... iii
CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE ........................................................................................... v
WELCOME FROM THE GENERAL CO-CHAIRS .............................................................. vi
WELCOME FROM THE PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS ............................................................ vii
MESSAGE FROM THE FIE STEERING COMMITTEE .................................................... viii
FIE 2014 PLANNING COMMITTEE.................................................................................... ix
FIE STEERING COMMITTEE .............................................................................................. x
FUTURE FIE CONFERENCES ............................................................................................ x
SPONSORS ........................................................................................................................ ix
FIE 2014 EXHIBITORS ........................................................................................................ x
Exhibitor Showcase Presentations................................................................................... x
WORKSHOPS .................................................................................................................... xi
KEYNOTES ...................................................................................................................... xiv
NEW FACULTY FELLOW PROGRAM ............................................................................. xv
CONFERENCE AMENITIES ............................................................................................. xvi
AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE CHAIRS ................................................................. xvii
Frederick Emmons Terman Award .............................................................................. xviii
IEEE Education Society Hewlett-Packard Harriett B. Rigas Award ............................ xxi
Benjamin J. Dasher Best Paper Award ....................................................................... xxiii
Helen Plants Award Best Nontraditional Session at FIE 2013 ................................... xxv
Ronald J. Schmitz Award ............................................................................................xxviii
IEEE Education Society William E. Sayle II Award for Achievement in Education... xxx
IEEE Transactions on Education Best Paper Award..................................................xxxii
IEEE Education Society Edwin C. Jones, Jr. Meritorious Service Award ...............xxxiii
IEEE Education Society Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award .........xxxv
IEEE Education Society ...............................................................................................xxxvi
Student Leadership Award ..........................................................................................xxxvi
REVIEWERS .................................................................................................................xxxvii
SESSION CHAIRS..........................................................................................................xlviii
SESSION GRID – WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22ND ......................................................... lii
SESSION GRID – THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23RD ........................................................... liii
SESSION GRID – FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24TH .................................................................. liv
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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SESSION GRID – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25TH ............................................................. lv
TECHNICAL SESSIONS ................................................................................................... lvi
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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CONFERENCE AT A GLANCE
Wednesday, October 22
12:00 PM– 8:00 PM
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Registration Open
Workshop Session 1
Workshop Session 2
Thursday, October 23
8:00 AM – 6:00 PM
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
10:30 AM – 6:00 PM
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
12:45 PM – 2:15 PM
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM
Registration Open
Focus on New Attendees Breakfast
Plenary Session
Exhibit Hall Open
Exhibit Hall Break
Technical Sessions (T1)
HP Terman and Rigas Awards Lunch
Technical Sessions (T2)
Exhibit Hall Break
Technical Session (T3)
Friday, October 24
8:00 AM – 6:00 PM
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
10:00 AM – 5:30 PM
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
12:45 PM – 2:15 PM
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM
7:30 PM – 10:00 PM
Registration Open
Breakfast
Technical Sessions (F1)
Exhibit Hall is open
Exhibit Hall Break
Technical Sessions (F2)
Lunch and Plenary Session
Technical Sessions (F3)
Focus on Exhibits and New Faculty Fellows
Technical Sessions (F4)
Reception and Awards Banquet
Saturday, October 25
8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM
9:00 AM – 10:30 AM
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
12:45 PM – 2:15 PM
2:30 PM – 4:00 PM
4:00 PM – 4:30 PM
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM
Registration
Breakfast
Technical Sessions (S1)
Break
Technical Sessions (S2)
Lunch
Technical Sessions (S3)
Break
Technical Sessions (S4)
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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WELCOME FROM THE GENERAL CO-CHAIRS
One of the most rewarding tasks a conference chair has is the pride of becoming, for a few days, an ambassador of his
city and having the responsibility and opportunity to repay to his colleagues the many experiences, the knowledge
acquired, and the friendships that are the results of his past conference attendance.
The 44th Annual Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference, as any of the past editions, is special. However, this one stands
out for the fact that it is held, for the first time in more than 25 years, outside the United States, thanks to the
consideration and trust shown by the sponsoring entities: the IEEE Education Society, the IEEE Computer Society, and
the ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division, through the FIE Steering Committee.
What can you expect from Madrid during your visit? Testimonies from attendees to other organized events endorse
Madrid as a luminous city, just as Velazquez portrayed it, a result of its multicultural composition, its presentation of
history through its museums and monuments, and its modern cutting-edge ambiance. You will feel welcomed by its
people, who haven’t necessarily been born in Madrid.
In addition, FIE 2014 in Madrid is inspired by this year´s theme “Opening Doors to Innovation and Internationalization
in Engineering Education.” Analogous to the city, we engineering educators search for new roles in the face of the world
challenges and necessities which transcend boundaries, by using innovation and generously sharing both resources and
educational practices.
This has been the guideline that has lead to the participation of more than 500 speakers and that continues a long
tradition of disseminating the results of educational innovations and research in engineering and computing. We are
thankful for these speakers and the hard and brilliant work performed by the co-chairs of the Program Committee, who
have selected and organized the papers submitted: Monica Cardella, ASEE Program Co-Chair; Russ Meier, IEEE
Education Society Program Co-Chair; and Arnold Pears, IEEE Computer Society Program Co-Chair. Also to be thanked
is the FIE Steering Committee, which by representing the three Societies, has achieved, despite the present situation of
global, political and educational crisis, the success of this journey.
Thanks also to the logistic support of Assistant to the General Chairs Kevin Curry, University of Kansas Continuing
Education, and to Conference Catalysts, for their work on the computer applications and the web site.
We have to thank our sponsors - the academic host institutions: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Madrid Technical
University) and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spanish University of Distance Education); our other
sponsors: The Madrid Convention Bureau, Hewlett-Packard, Edibon, Mathworks; and our exhibitors.
Madrid will play the role of a hub, a meeting point for professionals from different parts of the world to share ideas and
learn about developments in computer science, engineering, and technology education and to interact with colleagues in
these fields. Enjoy the history of the city, and the passion with which the artistic and sporting events are experienced. We
hope that Madrid will forever find a place in your heart.
Conference General Co-Chairs
Manuel Castro, UNED, Madrid, Spain
Edmundo Tovar, UPM, Madrid, Spain
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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WELCOME FROM THE PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS
Dear Colleagues,
It gives us great pleasure to welcome you to Madrid, Spain, and the 2014 Frontiers in Education Conference.
As conference programme co-chairs we have had the stimulating challenge of managing the reviewing, selection, and
scheduling of submissions for what promises to be a truly outstanding conference. This year we received close to 900
submissions, from which we have selected approximately 500 for presentation in different formats. The result is a
research and innovation packed programme that commences with a day of pre-conference workshops on Wednesday,
followed by three full days of presentations, special sessions, mini-workshops, keynotes, and last, but not least, many
opportunities over breakfast, lunch and dinner events to meet new friends, renew old acquaintanceships and engage in
inspiring debate and discussion.
We have spent a most exciting six months preparing the technical programme. We hope that you enjoy the fruits of our
labour, and find the conference as stimulating and interesting to attend, as we have found the process of putting it all
together.
Welcome to FIE 2014 in Madrid!
Monica Cardella
ASEE ERM
Russ Meier
IEEE Education Society
Arnold Pears
IEEE Computer Society
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
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MESSAGE FROM THE FIE STEERING COMMITTEE
¡Bienvenidos a Madrid!
You are attending the 44th annual Frontiers in Education conference and we are happy to see you here! The Steering
Committee is especially excited about this conference, as it has been 14 years since the last time FIE was held in Europe.
As FIE is one of the premier conferences in engineering education, we look forward to increasing the frequency that FIE
is held outside the United States so that we can all better learn from engineering educators from around the world.
FIE is a space where we can be challenged, invigorated and encouraged to think in new ways to facilitate our
engineering students’ learning. I hope you come away from this conference changed in some way - be it how you see
your students, how you see yourself or how you see your institution and its role in educating future engineers.
One of the wonderful aspects of FIE is the community we continue to create and maintain. Over these next few days, I
hope you meet some new colleagues and perhaps make a new friend. For those of you that have been coming to FIE for a
while, I encourage you to make the extra effort to reach out to those that are new to the conference and make them feel
welcome. FIE is a special time and place that we can welcome others to.
Many volunteers, including the Steering Committee work to continually innovate and improve the conference. This year
you will notice it is our first year without a physical program. We look forward to hearing your response to this new
change that is easier on the planet and our pocketbooks.
Below is the list of all current members on the FIE Steering Committee. You can find us at the conference as we will be
wearing Steering Committee ribbons on our conference badges. We represent you and your needs for this conference.
Please let us know how to improve FIE.
ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division Representatives
•
Beth Eschenbach (Chair), Humboldt State University, Elizabeth.Eschenbach@humboldt.edu
•
Archie Holmes, University of Virginia, ah7sj@virginia.edu
•
James Morgan, Texas A&M University, jmorgan@civil.tamu.edu
IEEE Computer Society Representatives
•
Stephen Frezza, Gannon University, FREZZA001@gannon.edu
•
Arnold Pears, Uppsala University, Arnold.Pears@it.uu.se
•
Deborrah Trytten, University of Oklahoma, dtrytten@ou.edu
IEEE Education Society Representatives
•
Russ Meier, Milwaukee School of Engineering, meier@msoe.edu
•
James Sluss, University of Oklahoma, sluss@ou.edu
•
Edmundo Tovar, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, etovar@fi.upm.es
As the senior ASEE ERM representative, this conference begins my first of a two year rotation as FIE Steering
Committee Chair. I want to thank our recent past chairs, Dr. Russ Meir (IEEE Ed. Soc. 2012-2014) and Arnold Pears
(IEEE Comp. Soc. 2010-2012) for their vision and leadership. I look forward to working with all of you to continue to
keep FIE on the frontier.
¡Amigos y colegas, espero que disfrutéis de la Conferencia!
Beth Eschenbach, Chair
Frontiers In Education Steering Committee
Humboldt State University
Arcata, CA USA
Elizabeth A. Eschenbach, Ph.D
Department Chair & Professor
Environmental Resources Engineering
1 Harpst Street
Humboldt State University
Arcata, CA 95521
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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FIE 2014 PLANNING COMMITTEE
General Co-Chairs
Manuel Castro
Spanish National Distance University
mcastro@ieec.uned.es
International Co-Chair, Africa
Hamadou Saliah Hassane
University of Quebec in Montreal (TELUQ/UQAM)
saliah@teluq.uqam.ca
Edmundo Tovar Caro
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
etovar@fi.upm.es
International Co-Chair, Asia
Ming Zhang
Peking University
Assistant to the General Chairs
Kevin Curry
University of Kansas
kgcurry@ku.edu
International Co-Chair, Australasia
Mark Lee
Charles Sturt University
ASEE/ERM Program Co-Chair
Monica Cardella
Purdue University
mcardell@purdue.edu
IEEE/Computer Society Program Co-Chair
Arnold Pears
University of Uppsala, Sweden
Arnold.Pears@it.uu.se
IEEE/Education Society Program Co-Chair
Russ Meier
Milwaukee School of Engineering
meier@msoe.edu
Local Arrangements Chair
Clara Perez
Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED),
Spain
International Co-Chair, Europe
Edmundo Tovar
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
International Co-Chair, South America
Melany M. Ciampi
VP COPEC- Science and Education Research Council
melany@copec.org.br
Exhibitions Chair
Robert Hofinger
Purdue University
Conference Historian
Ed Jones
Iowa State University
Awards Chair
Ed Jones
Iowa State University
FIE STEERING COMMITTEE
ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division
Representatives
 James Morgam
(June 2011 - June 2014)
 Archie Holmes, University of Virginia
(June 2012 - June 2015)
 Beth Eschenbach , Humboldt State University
(June 2010 - June 2016)
IEEE Education Society
 Russ Meier, Milwaukee School of Engineering,
Steering Committee Chair
(June 2007 - present)
 Edmundo Tovar, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid
(June 2008 - June 2014)
 James Sluss, University of Oklahoma
(June 2012 - June 2015)
IEEE Computer Society
 Arnold Pears, Uppsala University
(June 2009 - June 2015)
 Stephen Frezza, Gannon University
(June 2011 - June 2014)
 Deborah Trytten
(June 2013 - June 2016)
FUTURE FIE CONFERENCES
FIE 2015 El Paso, Texas
FIE 2016 Erie, Pennsylvania
FIE 2017 Indianapolis, Indiana
Are you interested in hosting a future FIE conference?
Leave your business card at the registration desk, and
an FIE steering committee member will contact you
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
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SPONSORS
Society Sponsors
The 44th Annual Frontiers in Education Conference is sponsored by the IEEE Education Society, the IEEE Computer
Society, and the ASEE Educational Research and Methods Division.
Academic Host Institutions
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (The National University of Distance Education)
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) is a distance learning and research university
founded in 1972 and is the only university run by the central government of Spain. UNED is headquartered
in Madrid and has centers in all of the Spanish Autonomous Communities as well as in thirteen countries
in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. The University awards undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, as
well as non-degree qualifications such as diplomas and certificates, or continuing education units. UNED
has more than 205,000 students, making it the largest student population in Spain and is one of the largest universities in
Europe.
La Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (The Technical University of Madrid)
La Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) was founded in 1971 by the merging of the higher technical
schools of engineering and architecture, most of which originated in the 18 th and 19th centuries. According
to the annual university ranking conducted by El Mundo Newspaper, UPM ranks as the number two
university in Spain and as the top technical university. The majority of its engineering schools are
consistently ranked as the leaders in their fields in Spain, and among the very best in Europe. UPM is attended by over
44,000 students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, as well as those in permanent training.
Local Sponsor
The Madrid Convention Bureau is a non-profit organization, created by the City Council with the
collaboration of a group of public and private companies in the sector, with the objective of promoting
Madrid as an attractive and competitive destination for national and international meetings, and
providing technical and institutional assistance for their staging. Since 2013, the Bureau has been a
department of the company Madrid Destino Cultura Turismo y Negocio and is currently comprised of nearly 200
members. The Madrid Convention Bureau places itself at the disposal of all associations, groups and companies who
wish to hold their meeting or incentive trips in Madrid, and offers its expert knowledge and best practices to guarantee
their success.
Diamond Sponsor
Hewlett-Packard sponsors the ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award and the IEEE Harriet B. Rigas
Award as well as the luncheon where the awards will be presented.
Silver Sponsor
Edibon is a designer and manufacturer of hi-tech Technical Teaching Units for Universities, including
the SCADA-NET and PID Control units using Labview. A visit to the laboratories and design facilities
will be available to FIE 2014 attendees on Thursday afternoon of the conference. They will have a
show room ready with a variety of trainers that can help engineering professors in their different fields of teaching and
research.
Name Badge Sponsor
MathWorks- The MATLAB and Simulink product families are fundamental computational tools at
the world's educational institutions. Adopted by more than 5,000 universities and colleges,
MathWorks products accelerate the pace of learning, teaching, and research in engineering and science. MathWorks
products also help prepare students for careers in industry worldwide, where the tools are widely used for collaborative
new product development. For more information, visit www.mathworks.com/academia
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
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FIE 2014 EXHIBITORS
Exhibit Hall Hours
The exhibits will be open in Patio 2 from 10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Thursday and from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday.
EXHIBITOR
WEBSITE
ABET
http://abet.org/
ARM
http://www.arm.com/
Cengage Learning
http://www.cengage.com/
Cypress Semiconductor
http://www.cypress.com/
Digilent
http://www.digilentinc.com/
Edibon
http://www.edibon.com/
Nazarbayev University
http://nu.edu.kz
Focus on Exhibits and New Faculty Fellows Poster Presentation
Attendees and participants will be encouraged to visit the exhibit area throughout the conference. In order to provide full
exposure for the exhibits, a special "Focus on Exhibits" session is planned for the afternoon of Friday, October 24th,
during which time there will be no technical sessions scheduled. The New Faculty Fellows will also display their posters
at this time. Door prizes contributed by some of the exhibitors will be awarded during the Focus on Exhibits. You must
be present to win.
Exhibitor Showcase Presentations
ARM - Thursday, October 23, 4:30 – 6 PM
Albeniz Room
Case Study: Technical University of Madrid and the ARM Lab-in-a-Box Programme
Teaching staff from the Technical University of Madrid will share their experiences in redesigning an Embedded
Systems / MCU course using the ARM University Programme’s mbed based Lab-in-a-Box. The Lab-in-a-Box contains
seed hardware, licences to Keil MDK-ARM software and a full suite of teaching materials. Using project based learning
principles (PBL) and allocating 3 hours a week in the schedule, the course attracted over 50 enrolled students. During
the semester teaching staff saw an increase in competencies of students in using the Keil MDK-ARM toolkit, an
understanding of hardware and software applications and an increased knowledge of the basic concepts of MCUs.
ARM - Friday, October 24, 11 AM – 12:30 PM
Albeniz Room
Introducing the ARM University Programme’s Digital Signal Processing Lab-in-a-Box
The Digital Signal Processing (DSP) session features the ARM University Program DSP Lab-in-a-Box which takes
advantage of cost effective ARM Cortex-M4 based microcontroller boards and provides educators with an affordable
hardware platform for hands-on DSP teaching. It contains extensive teaching materials, including lecture slides and
laboratory manuals, as well as numerous example projects for use with the Keil MDK-ARM development environment.
The session will feature a demonstration of selected program examples as well as an overview of the complete DSP Labin-a-Box offer.
Cypress Semiconductor - Friday, October 24, 11 AM – 12:30 PM Albeniz Room
Cypress PSoC kits are being used in over 950 schools and universities worldwide. This session will explain what PSoC
is and how your university can participate. A special guest, Dr. Khaled Benkrid, who is the Global University Manager
at ARM, will present an overview of the new Lab in a Box that uses the PSoC 4 Pioneer kit with the Cortex M0 as the
target technology. A glimpse into the future and a new PSoC family that will enable Internet of Things applications will
also be presented.
Mathworks - Friday, October 24, 5 – 6:30 PM
Albeniz Room
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
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GROUP MEETINGS
Tuesday, October 21
12:00 PM - 7:00 PM
EDSOC Strategic Planning Meeting
Jardin Room
Joint Meeting for IEEE Education Society Standards
Committee & P1876TM Standards Association Working Group
FIE Steering Committee
Escudo Room
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
EDUCON Steering Committee Meeting
Turina Room
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
EDSOC Board of Governors Meeting
Turina Room
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
FIE Steering Committee
Albeniz Room
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
FIE 2015 Planning Committee
Albeniz Room
2:30 PM - 4:30 PM
ERM Business Meeting
Albeniz Room
Wednesday, October 22
1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
3:00 PM
Escudo Room
Friday, October 24
Saturday, October 25
WORKSHOPS
Workshop 1A
Your Data Deserve Better than Pies and Bars: An R Graphics Workshop for the Timid
The workshop is designed for engineering educators interested in communicating quantitative data visually. The goal is
to increase one's graphical repertoire by adopting design principles and practices of the data visualization community.
Conventional displays (pie charts, bar graphs, and tables) are often ineffective for discovering and telling the stories in
one's data. The "dot plot" is an effective alternative. Workshop participants learn to create dot plots and to explain their
rationale.
We'll actively use R and RStudio: open-source software for Windows, MacOS, or UNIX. No prior experience required--this workshop is for R beginners. Participants are invited to bring sample data from their own prior work, especially data
they displayed in a pie chart, bar graph, or table. Student-tested tutorials are provided.
On completing the workshop, participants should be able to describe the limitations of conventional graphs, cite
principles underlying effective graphical communication, and use R to create dot plots.
Workshop 1B
Evaluability Assessment for Engineering Educators
Evaluability assessment is used to determine the readiness of programs for outcome evaluation. For engineering
educators, obtaining meaningful outcomes for educational programs can be demanding and illusive. This workshop has
critical importance for engineers as the expectation for real educational impact continues to increase.
In this workshop participants will learn the essential elements of evaluability assessment, the strengths and benefits of
this approach, and how to immediately apply the strategy to important programs of interest and properly prepare them
for outcome assessment. This includes programs preparing for accreditation as well as innovative educational projects
funded externally. Key elements of evaluability assessment include the development of a program theory and logic
model, obtaining feedback on the model from key stakeholders, and using the evaluability assessment to improve the
program and make recommendations for outcome assessment. Case examples from actual engineering programs will be
used to illustrate key features of evaluability assessment.
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WORKSHOPS, CONTINUED
Workshop 1C
Training Student in Responsibility for Their Own Learning: True Student Centered Learning
Faculty often speak of students not taking responsibility: not reading assignments, missing homework, or not
participating in lab assignments and still expect a good grade! Simply put, more and more students are not taking
responsibility for their own learning. But I don’t believe that the reason is because students don’t want to do so. My
question is “So, what are we (faculty) going to do about it?” Usually the answer I get is “It’s their responsibility, they
are in college!” However, doing nothing does not produce change.
This workshop is about doing something different—providing faculty with proven tools that instill student responsibility
for their own learning. The workshop will focus on pragmatic and effective methods that create a clear and common
understanding of what is meant by student responsibility for learning. It will clarify both effective and ineffective
behaviors of both students and faculty, and how to instill these skills. Specific active and experiential lessons will be
presented in a highly animated format.
In our implementation of these methods, we have found benefits to both students (e.g., increased student
engagement/learning and more effective teamwork) and faculty (e.g., increased coverage of material and a dramatic
decrease in student complaints).
This workshop is for anyone who believes “I know students can do better, I just don’t know how to make it happen.” Or
for those who simply want to dramatically reduce student complaints or excuses in a positive way.
Workshop 1D
Using Community Engagement to Teach Engineering and Computing
Community engagement (service learning) is a way to equip tomorrow's leaders in engineering and computing while
addressing needs within our communities today. It is a growing pedagogy globally that is well-matched with calls for
strong technical skills along with a broad set of professional and cultural skills that are beings demanded by industry and
accreditation bodies. It provides the kind of curricular efficiency to meet these broad set of attributes without adding
times to graduation. Community engagement has been used in many countries to provide service to their communities
and enhance learning. This workshop will guide faculty through an introduction to the pedagogy and engage them in
active discussions about how engagement is perceived and exists within different countries' cultures. Resources,
partnerships and potential barriers will be discussed to provide strategies for successful implementation. Successful
models will be presented and discussed including the EPICS model from Purdue University.
Workshop 2A
Developing and Evaluating Active Learning Classroom Experiences with Tablet PCs and Slate Devices
Using Tablet PCs, instructors are able to increase their effectiveness by making more dynamic presentations and by
incorporating active exercises into their classroom environments. Tablet PCs also enable better and more natural notetaking by students and easier after-class review of course material and notes. Students participating in classrooms from
remote locations can more easily be engaged since they are able exchanging visual descriptions of concepts with the
instructor and the rest of the class. Several software packages are available to support the pedagogical needs of the
university classroom as well as typical group collaborative environments. Classroom Presenter, DyKnow, LectureTools,
and OneNote with the Math Addin are examples packages to be discussed. In this hands-on tutorial faculty will receive
an introduction to the use of several tablet-based teaching tools. We will show faculty pedagogical practices that we find
helpful in using technology tools in the classroom. Faculty will be tasked with developing short active learning exercises
starting from the development of goals for the exercise, through the desired student interaction, and ending with the
exercise assessment and improvement strategies.
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WORKSHOPS, CONTINUED
Workshop 2B
Qualifying Qualitative Research Quality (The Q3 Project): An interactive discourse around research quality in
interpretive approaches to engineering education research
This workshop is part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation (CAREER #1150668) to build capacity
and social capital around the issue of research quality in qualitative or interpretive approaches to engineering education
research (Qualifying Qualitative Research Quality - The Q3 Project).
The workshop will introduce participants to a theoretical framework for ensuring quality in interpretive research that was
recently published in the Journal of Engineering Education (Walther, Sochacka, & Kellam, 2013). The framework will
be offered as a lens and language for participants to actively explore conceptions and practices around qualitative
research quality in the context of their own research projects.
The interactive session will: (i) provide participants with a foundational and at the same time practice-based
understanding of issues related to research quality in interpretive engineering education inquiries and, (ii) foster an active
and sustained discourse within the research community around this important issue.
Workshop 2C
Using and Disseminating a Taxonomy for Engineering Education Research
Engineering education research is a broad-based, rapidly-evolving, diverse, interdisciplinary, and international field.
There is a clear need for a standardized terminology and organizational system – a set of keywords – to map the field and
communicate research initiatives. Such a taxonomy could provide multiple benefits, including: better connections
between research and researchers; more accessible research results; recognition for and identification of emerging
research areas; a way to describe the diversity of engineering education research areas; and a common terminology with
which researchers could frame their efforts. This workshop will allow attendees to use the taxonomy and assist in
planning for its wide dissemination. Anyone interested is invited to attend - workshop fees will be covered through an
NSF grant, so there is no charge to participate.
Workshop 3D
Mathworks
Simulink for Project-Based Learning using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT
To address the growing need in curriculum and research for low-cost, easy to use hardware and software environments,
Simulink now includes the capability to program low-cost hardware such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, LEGO
MINDSTORMS NXT, and other platforms.
The purpose of this workshop is to demonstrate how using Simulink to program low-cost hardware can enhance courses
in signal processing, computer vision, communications, data acquisition, instrument control, embedded systems, and
more, by easily going from theory to practice.
This workshop uses LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT as the target platform. Participants will develop and test robot control
algorithms that access and use standard NXT sensors and actuators, and automatically generate code to program the
robot. They will also gain hands-on experience with Simulink as a complete, industry standard environment for
modeling, analysis, simulation, and embedded code generation.
MATLAB & Simulink with Raspberry Pi - A hands-on workshop on hardware support
The workshop aims to address the growing need in curriculum and research for low-cost, easy to use hardware and
software environments. Based upon on the widely used MATLAB & Simulink, the session describes the built-in support
for prototyping, testing, and running Simulink models on Raspberry Pi.
Simulink includes the capability to program low-cost hardware such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, LEGO MINDSTORMS
NXT, and other platforms. This hands-on workshop is designed to be an introduction to Simulink’s hardware support
capabilities. This session will allow participants to develop, simulate, and test custom algorithms and implement the code
on an embedded system from within the Simulink environment.
Lab modules will include examples of video and image processing algorithms, from very simple video in/out handling to
a more sophisticated processing such as object recognition and edge detection. The workshop will provide practical
hands-on experience and by extension offer attendees an understanding of the potential for use in the classroom,
research, and student projects.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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KEYNOTES
Thursday, October 23, 9:00 AM
Tapices
Reinventing Education in the Internet Age
Speaker: Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
We find ourselves at a crossroads. In Higher Education, we have to teach young people to
work in jobs that don’t exist to solve problems we don’t know of, with technology that has
not yet been developed. There are even problems today that are complex and wicked
enough. And this in a context, where the professor cannot be any more the source of all
knowledge. On the other side, we are witnessing a commoditization of educational content.
Content abounds and becomes richer and more interactive. The Internet and ICT have
reinvented the photography, music and news industries. How to reinvent the education
industry?
Carlos Delgado Kloos received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Technische
Universität München and in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universidad
Politécnica de Madrid. He is Full Professor of Telematics Engineering at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he
is the Director of the GAST research group, Director of the UNESCO Chair on “Scalable Digital Education for All”,
Director of an online Master program on e-learning, and Vice-Rector of Infrastructures and Environment. He is also the
Coordinator of the eMadrid research network on Educational Technology in the Region of Madrid.
His main research interests are in the area of Technology-enhanced Learning. He has been involved in more than 30
projects with European (Esprit, IST, @LIS, eContentPlus), national (Spanish Ministry, Region of Madrid) and bilateral
(Spanish-German, Spanish-French) funding. He has published over 200 articles in national and international conferences
and journals. He has further written a book and co-edited over a dozen. He is the Spanish representative at IFIP TC3 on
Education and Senior Member of IEEE.
Friday, October 24, 12:45 PM
Tapices
Who am I? Who are you? Where are we going?
Speaker: John Heywood, Life member and Fellow ASEE, Life Senior Member IEEE
Dr John Heywood is best known for his IEEE/Wiley publication Engineering Education:
Research and Development in Curriculum and Instruction. He has been engaged in R and D
in Engineering and Higher Education since 1960 and during that period studied change,
been a change agent and an innovator. He is author of Learning, Adaptability and Change:
The Challenge for Education and Industry. He has made other contributions to management
including a study of engineers at work, and has a particular interest in policy making. He
has made a special study of assessment both in high schools and higher education and three
editions of his book on Assessment in Higher Education have been published. In
engineering he had the privilege to direct the British Astronomical Association’s and Radio
Society of Great Britain’s observations of Sputniks I and II. He is currently interested in the
development of philosophy as applied to engineering education and the development of engineering and technological
literacy. He has made many contributions to Frontiers in Education Conferences. John Heywood is a Professorial Fellow
Emeritus of Trinity College Dublin in the School of Education of the University of Dublin.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xiv
NEW FACULTY FELLOW PROGRAM
Each year, FIE invites new engineering and computer science faculty to submit applications for possible selection as
New Faculty Fellows. A review panel of engineering and computer science faculty from assistant, associate, and full
professorship levels completes a rigorous peer review of each applicant’s conference paper, nomination letters and
professional résumé. The fellowship provides a $1,000 grant for conference travel expenses.
The purpose of the program is to promote the involvement of new faculty in the Frontiers in Education Conference so
they will be exposed to the "latest and greatest" in engineering educational practices and will have the opportunity to
exchange information with leaders in education innovations. This year, FIE 2014 will provide registration and travel
grants for the awardee to attend the conference.
Focus on New Faculty Fellows
Each fellow will present a conference paper during FIE 2014. Join them in their session and share your thoughts and
ideas about the future of engineering education. Also, during the Focus on Exhibits session Friday at 4 p.m., the Fellows
will display posters describing their interests and activities and previewing the full papers that they will present as part of
the FIE 2014 technical sessions.
2014 New Faculty Fellow:
James Huff, Ph.D.
Harding University
Session EER6: Engineering Education Research Methods and Methodologies
From Methods to Methodology: Reflection on Keeping the Philosophical Commitments of Interpretative
Phenomenological Analysis
Denise Simmons
Virginia Tech University
Session TLE7: Improving Academic Experiences
Improving the Student Academic Experience through Lean Engineering Principles
Session PRO2: International Approaches to Teaching Professional Skills
Co-curricular experiences link to nontechnical skill development for African-American engineers: Communication,
Teamwork, Professionalism, Lifelong Learning, and Reflective Behavior Skills
Lia Sadita
Kampus Baru UI Depok
Session DIS2: Assessing Student Success Factors in Distance Learning
Social, Cognitive, Teaching, and Metacognitive Presence in General and Focus Group Discussion: Case Study in
Blended e-Learning Linear Algebra Class
Session DIS3: Distance Education in Multiple Disciplines
The Use of Self-Monitoring Tools for Linear Algebra Course in Student Centered e-Learning Environment
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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CONFERENCE AMENITIES
Breakfast ● Tapices Room
Breakfast is included with hotel registration at the conference hotel. It is separate from your conference registration.
However, our conference attendees who are staying at the Meliá Castilla will eat in a separate breakfast room from the
other hotel guests so we have more freedom to network. Breakfasts will take place in the Tapices Room. On Thursday
and Friday, breakfasts will include plenary presentations.
If you registered for the conference, but do not stay at the Meliá Castilla, you will be responsible for your own breakfast.
Nonetheless, you will be able to come to the plenary sessions following the breakfasts on Thursday and Friday.
8:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Thursday
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Friday
8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. Saturday
Includes Plenary Session
Refreshment Breaks
Morning and afternoon breaks Thursday and Friday Exhibit Hall – Patio 2
Morning and afternoon breaks Saturday – Outside Patio Rooms by Conference Registration
Lunches ● Tapices Room
Frederick Emmons Terman and Harriett B. Rigas Awards Luncheon
Sponsored by the Hewlett-Packard Company
12:45a.m. –2:15 p.m. Thursday
The Frederick Emmons Terman Award is presented annually to an outstanding young electrical engineering
educator by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Division of the American Society for Engineering
Education. The Harriett B. Rigas Award is presented annually to an outstanding woman engineering educator in
recognition of her contributions to the profession.
Luncheon
12:45a.m. –2:15 p.m. Friday
Includes Plenary Session
Luncheon
12:45a.m. –2:15 p.m. Saturday
New Faculty Fellows ● Exhibit Hall ● Patio 2
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. Friday
A special session focusing on the New Faculty Fellows will be held on Friday. This session will provide an opportunity
to meet this year’s New Faculty Fellows, a group of new CSET educators who were selected based on an application and
a full paper being presented at this year’s conference. There will also be an opportunity to view their poster presentations
at this time.
Focus on Exhibits ● Exhibit Hall ● Patio 2
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. Friday
Visit the FIE exhibits and check out the latest textbooks, computer software, lab equipment, and other innovations while
enjoying refreshments.
Awards Banquet ● Tapices Room
7:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m. Friday
This year's awards banquet features fine food, drink, and camaraderie along with presentation of special awards from
FIE, the IEEE Education Society, and the IEEE Computer Society. There is a separate charge for the banquet.
FIE Registration Conference Desk ● Lobby Level by Patios 1, 2 & 3
Registration will be open during these times:
Wednesday
12:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Thursday
8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Friday
8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Saturday
8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xvi
AWARD SELECTION COMMITTEE CHAIRS
Frontiers in Education Conference
Benjamin J. Dasher Best Paper Award ........................................................... Jenefer Husman
Helen Plants Special (Non-Traditional) Session Award ................................. Mats Daniels
Ronald J. Schmitz Conference Service Award ............................................... Jennifer Karlin
ASEE Electrical and Computer Engineering Division
Hewlett-Packard Frederick Emmons Terman Award ..................................... Mung Chiang
IEEE Education Society
IEEE Education Society HP Harriett B. Rigas Award .................................... Joanne Bechta-Dugan
IEEE William E. Sayle Award for Achievement in Education ....................... Lyle Feisel & Susan Conry
IEEE Transactions on Education Best Paper Award ...................................... Susan Lord
Edwin C. Jones, Jr. Meritorious Service Award ............................................. Edwin C. Jones, Jr
Mac Van Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award ..................................... Hossein Mousavinezhad
Student Leadership Award .............................................................................. Edwin C. Jones, Jr.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xvii
ASEE ECE Division Hewlett-Packard
Frederick Emmons Terman Award
For integrating outstanding research in the field of Microwave
Engineering into the classroom and for the book Microwave
Motion Sensing and Analysis
Changzhi Li
Texas Tech University
Past Recipients
’69 Michael Athans
’70 Andrew P. Sage
’71 Joseph W. Goodman
’72 Taylor L. Booth
’73 Sanjit Mitra
’74 Leon Ong Chua
’75 Michael L. Dertouzos
’76 Stephen W. Director
’77 J. Leon Shohet
’78 Ronald A. Rohrer
’79 Martha E. Sloan
’80 V. Thomas Rhyne
’81 Ben Garland Streetman
’82 Toby Berger
’83 Daniel P. Siewiorek
’84 Mathukumalli
Vidyasagar
’85 Peter S. Maybeck
’86 Lance A. Glasser
’87 Kenneth L. Short
’88 Adel S. Sedra
’89 Frank L. Lewis
’90 Jerry D. Gibson
’91 Barry W. Johnson
’92 H. Vincent Poor
’93 Mark S. Lundstrom
’94 Supriyo Datta
’95 Perinkolam P.
Vaidyanathan
’96 Prithviraj Banerjee
’97 Edward A. Lee
’98 Edwin K. P. Chong
’99 Randy H. Katz
Dr. Changzhi Li excels in teaching and research at Texas Tech University (TTU).
He received the TTU Alumni Association New Faculty Award for Teaching
Excellence, the Whitacre Research Award and an NSF CAREER Award. His
teaching evaluations are among the very best in the Department. His students have
received two fellowships/scholarships from the IEEE Microwave Theory and
Techniques Society (MTT-S), six best paper awards from premier IEEE
conferences, one outstanding student award from a foreign government, and a
prestigious graduate student award. Dr. Li attracted more than at $1.2 Million in
competitive funding while a tenure-track professor.
Dr. Li joined TTU in fall, 2009 from the University of Florida, and was promoted
to Associate Professor in 2014. He has built an RF microwave program focused on
non-contact detection of vital signs such as heartbeat and respiration, enabling
monitoring of patients using low-power radar without body sensors. He expanded
this technique to enable tumor tracking during cancer treatment with precisely
targeted radiation, enabling therapeutic radiation focused on the cancer while the
target area moves due to breathing and other random patient movements. He
developed a portable radar sensor device (iMotion) that is used by researchers at
the University of Florida, UCLA, SUNY Buffalo, and Deakin University
(Australia). He has more than 63 journal papers, 67 conference papers , and
approximately 1200 citations.
To date his most impressive and prestigious scholarly work is a 238 page book of
which he is lead author: Changzhi Li and Jenshan Lin, Microwave Motion Sensing
and Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, ISBN: 978-0470642146, which this award
recognizes. To quote one reviewer, “Unquestionably, this book, which is inclusive
of various technologies now in use in microwave noncontact motion sensing and
their prospective implementations, is an important addition to the microwave
literature.”
Dr. Li’s teaching and research are acclaimed by industrial colleagues. He taught
“Design & Analysis of Analog ICs in LBC7,” at Texas Instruments in summer,
2013. He is a lead-user for National Instruments (NI) and AWR, receiving media
coverage, equipment and cash endowments to support microwave education and
research. He delivered talks to worldwide researchers during the NI Weeks in 2012
and 2013. His research on CMOS integrated temperature sensors, funded by the
Semiconductor Research Corporation, provides an efficient way for thermal and
power management of digital processors. He collaborates with engineers from
Intel, Freescale, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Qualcomm to develop scattered
temperature sensors for multi-core digital processors.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xviii
’00 Sergio Verdu
’01 Zoya Popovic
’02 Theodore S. Rappaport
’03 Wayne Wolf
’04 Keshab K. Parhi
’05 Ali H. Sayed
’06 Vijay K. Madisetti
’07 Russel Jacob (Jake)
Baker
’08 Keith M. Chugg
’09 David Tse
’10 Bhaskar Krishnamachari
’11 Tony Givargis
’12 Ali Niknejad
’13 Mung Chiang
Dr. Li’s professional contributions include serving as associate editor for the IEEE
Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, past area editor for the International
Journal of Electronics and Communications and TPC co-chair for the IEEE
Wireless and Microwave Technology Conference (WAMICON) in 2012 and
2013. He is secretary of the IEEE South Plains Section and a member of the IEEE
MTT-S Education Committee, currently co-chairing the Graduate Fellowships
Committee.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xix
ASEE ECE Division Hewlett-Packard Frederick Emmons Terman Award
(continued)
About the Terman Award
The Frederick Emmons Terman Award is presented annually
to an outstanding young electrical or computer engineering
educator by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Division
of the American Society for Engineering Education. The
Terman Award, established in 1969 by the Hewlett-Packard
Company, consists of $5,000, an engraved gold-plated medal,
a bronze replica of the medal mounted on a walnut plaque, and
a parchment certificate.
The recipient must be an electrical engineering educator who
is less than 45 years old on June 1 of the year in which the
award is presented and must be the principal author of an
electrical engineering textbook published before June 1 of the
year of his/her 40th birthday. The book must have been
judged by his/her peers to be an outstanding original
contribution to the field of electrical engineering. The
recipient must also have displayed outstanding achievements
in teaching, research, guidance of students, and other related
activities.
About Frederick Emmons Terman
Frederick Emmons Terman received his A.B. degree in chemistry in 1920, the degree of engineer in electrical
engineering in 1922 from Stanford University, and his Sc.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1924 from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. From 1925-1965, he served as instructor, then professor of electrical engineering, executive
head of the Electrical Engineering Department, dean of the School of Engineering, provost, vice president, and finally, as
acting president of Stanford University.
Among the many honors bestowed upon him were: the IEEE Medal of Honor; the first IEEE Education Medal; the
ASEE’s Lamme Medal; the 1970 Herbert Hoover Medal for Distinguished Service to Stanford University; an honorary
doctor’s degree by Harvard; a decoration by the British government; the Presidential Medal for merit as a result of his
war work; and the 1976 National Medal of Science from President Ford at a White House ceremony.
Dr. Terman was a professor at Stanford University when William Hewlett and Dave Packard were engineering students
there. It was under Dr. Terman’s guidance in graduate work on radio engineering that Mr. Hewlett built the first tunable
and automatically stabilized Weinbridge oscillator. Partially through Dr. Terman’s urging, Hewlett and Packard set up
their partnership in an old garage with $538 and the oscillator as their principal assets.
Dr. Terman died in December 1982. It is in appreciation of his accomplishments and guidance that Hewlett-Packard is
proud to sponsor the Frederick Emmons Terman Award.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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IEEE Education Society Hewlett-Packard
Harriett B. Rigas Award
For outstanding contributions in advancing recruitment and
retention of women in IEEE, the Power & Energy Society and the
engineering professions
Noel Schulz
Kansas State University
Past Recipients
’95 Denice D. Denton
’96 Karan L. Watson
’97 Patricia D. Daniels
’98 Delores M. Etter
’99 Sherra E. Kerns
’00 Leah Jamieson
’01 Valerie Taylor
’02 Nan Marie Jokers
’03 Joanne Bechta Dugan
’04 Jennifer L. Welch
’06 Eve A. Riskin
’07 Bonnie Heck Ferri
’08 Cheryl B. Schrader
’09 Cynthia Furse
’10 Mari Ostendorf
’11 Karen Panetta
’12 Tanja Karp
’13 Nancy Amato
Dr. Noel Schulz is Associate Dean for Engineering Research and Graduate
Programs and Paslay Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Kansas
State University, Manhattan, Kansas, USA. She received her B.S.E.E. and
M.S.E.E. degrees from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA in 1988 and
1990, respectively. She received her Ph.D. in EE from the University of Minnesota
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, in 1995. Noel joined the K-State faculty in 2009
in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She started as
Associate Dean for Engineering Research and Graduate Programs in August,
2012. She has a total of over 20 years of teaching experience including Michigan
Technological University, Mississippi State University, University of North
Dakota, and Virginia Tech.
Noel has been an advocate for women in engineering for all of her career, starting
groups for women faculty in engineering at two universities. She has coordinated
the IEEE Power & Energy Society women power faculty networking activities for
over 20 years. As IEEE Power & Energy Society President for 2012 and 2013,
advancing women in the power & energy areas was one of her key platforms and
she helped initiate Women in Power events on six continents. After coming to
Kansas State University in 2009, she started an initiative called the “Women of KState.” The Women of K-State Vision is “to make Kansas State University the
university of choice for women,” and its mission is “to create a structure and
support system that helps K-State provide a superlative environment for the
growth and advancement of all women.”
Noel is active in teaching, research, and service. In research and graduate studies,
she has been very active having graduated 43 MS and 12 PhD students; published
160 papers and 2 book chapters; and brought in over $10 M in external research
through individual and collaborative projects including an U.S. National Science
Foundation CAREER award. She currently serves as the Immediate Past President
for the IEEE Power & Energy Society. Noel is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, Tau
Beta Pi, the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the Society of
Women Engineers, and the National Society of Black Engineers. She served on
the Board of Directors for ASEE from 2008 to 2010.
As Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs, she has advanced faculty
development activities especially for untenured faculty, and is working to cultivate
the graduate student program and environment in the College of Engineering
Noel and her husband, Kirk, have two sons—Timothy, a graduate student in
computer science at the University of Tulsa; and Andrew, a student in mechanical
engineering at Oklahoma State University.
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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IEEE Education Society Hewlett-Packard Harriet B. Rigas Award (continued)
About the Rigas Award
The Harriett B. Rigas Award is presented annually to recognize outstanding faculty women who have made significant
contributions to electrical and computer engineering education. The award consists of an honorarium, plaque, certificate,
and Frontiers in Education Conference registration.
The recipient must be a tenured or tenure track woman faculty member in an ABET-accredited engineering program in
the United States, with teaching and/or research specialization in electrical or computer engineering.
About Harriett B. Rigas
Dr. Harriett B. Rigas (1934-1989), an IEEE Fellow, was an electrical engineer with an international reputation for her
hybrid computer and computer simulation research. At Washington State University between 1966 and 1984, she was
eventually both full professor and chair of Electrical and Computing Engineering School. Later she chaired larger
departments at the Navy's Postgraduate School in Monterey and, at the time of her death, Michigan State University.
Her achievements in engineering research, administration, and service were widely recognized. In 1975-76, Harriett was
a Program Director at the National Science Foundation and, over the years, a member of numerous panels and advisory
committees at both the NSF and the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Rigas' success was achieved within a profession and within university administrative structures where there
were very few women. Her character and courage were both evident in her strong advocacy of advancement for women.
She was involved both locally and nationally in the Society of Women Engineers.
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
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Frontiers in Education Conference
Benjamin J. Dasher Best Paper Award
Carry-on Effect in Extreme Apprenticeship
by Hansi Keijonen, Jaakko Kurhila and Arto Vihavainen
FIE 2013, Session Number F4D
Hansi Keijonen
University of Helsinki
Jaakko Kurhila
University of Helsinki
Arto Vihavainen
University of Helsinki
Past Recipients
’73 Walter D. Story
’74 Richard Hooper
’75 John J. Alan III and
J.J. Lagowski
’76 John Hipwell and
David Blaume
’77 John W. Renner
’78 Albert J. Morris
Hansi Keijonen graduated from the Tampere University of Technology with an
MSc (Engineering) in textile technology in 2003. He rapidly advanced to a
position of factory manager in Marimekko, the leading textile and design company
in Finland. He left the company in 2010 and started his second career from scratch
by enrolling into the Introduction to Programming course at the University of
Helsinki. He finished his MSc in Computer Science in 2014. During 2012-13 he
was a member of the Agile Education Research group RAGE and built a tool for
students’ study path examination.
Dr. Jaakko Kurhila graduated from the University of Helsinki with an MSc in
Computer Science in 1997, a PhLic in 2000, and a PhD in 2003. Currently he is
the head of studies of the Department of Computer Science at the University of
Helsinki. His background is in adaptive educational systems and collaborative
e-learning. In addition to the administrative position, he leads Agile Education
Research group RAGE, concentrating on computer science education. He is the
President-elect of the University of Helsinki Teacher’s Academy (2015-2016), an
academy formed from the top educators within the University of Helsinki, and the
spokesperson in Finland when talking about MOOCs in programming. He is an
eager proponent of excellence in education, and has extensive international
experience in building ICT education for development in international settings.
Arto Vihavainen finished his MSc in Computer Science in 2011. Before
graduation, he worked in the software industry for several years, spent some time
working as a research assistant, and was involved in improving the teaching
offered at the University of Helsinki. After graduation, he worked as a University
Instructor at the University of Helsinki with the responsibility of creating and
upgrading courses that were mostly related to software engineering, including
MOOCs in programming. His role was crucial in the re-design of the software
engineering curriculum at the department. In 2013, he started to work on his PhD
in computer science education, even though he was a founding member of the
Agile Education Research group RAGE already in 2011.
’79 Donald R. Woods, Cameron
M. Crowe, Terrence W. Hoffman,
and Joseph D. Wright
’80 Marilla D. Svinicki
’81 Martha Montgomery
’82 A.L. Riemenschneider and
Lyle D. Feisel
’83 Davood Tashayyod, Banu
Onaral, and James M. Trosino
’84 Bill V. Koen
’85 Bill V. Koen
’86 Richard S. Culver
’87 David A. Conner, David G.
Green, Thomas C. Jannett, James
R. Jones, M.G. Rekoff, Jr.,
Dennis G. Smith, and Gregg L.
Vaughn
’88 Richard M. Felder
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxiii
’89 Richard C. Compton and
Robert York
’90 Cindy A. Greenwood
’91 Robert Whelchel
’92 William LeBold and Dan D.
Budny
’93 Daniel M Hull and Arthur H.
Guenther
’94 Burks Oakley II and Roy E.
Roper
’95 Curtis A. Carver, Jr. and
Richard A. Howard
’96 Val D. Hawks
’97 Edwin Kashy, Michael
Thoennessen, Yihjia Tsai, Nancy
E. Davis, and Sheryl L. Wolfe
’98 A.B. Carlson, W.C. Jennings,
and P.M. Schoch
‘99 Wayne Burleson, Aura Ganz,
and Ian Harris
’00 David W. Petr
’02 Zeynep Dilli, Neil Goldsman,
Lee Harper, Steven I. Marcus, and
Janet A. Schmidt
’03 Glenn W. Ellis, Gail E.
Scordilis, and Carla M. Cook
’04 Matthew W. Ohland, Guili
Zhang, Brian Thorndyke, and
Timothy J. Anderson
’05 Gregory A. Moses and
Michael Litzkow
’07 Donna Riley and Gina-Louise
Sciarra
’08 Eric Hamilton and Andrew
Hurford
‘09 Steve Krause, Robert
Culbertson, Michael Oehrtman,
Marilyn Carlson, Bill Leonard,
C.V. Hollot, and
William Gerace
’10 Glenda Stump, Jenefer
Husman, Wen-Ting Chung and
Aaron Done
’11 Jeffrey L. Newcomer
‘12 Kristi J. Shryock, Arun R.
Srinivasa and Jeffrey E. Froyd
’13 Robin Adams, Alice Pawley
and Brent Jesiek
Frontiers in Education Conference Benjamin J. Dasher Best Paper Award (continued)
About the Dasher Award
The Benjamin Dasher Best Paper Award is given to the best paper presented at the annual Frontiers in Education
Conference, as demonstrated by technical originality, technical importance and accuracy, quality of oral presentation,
and quality of the written paper appearing in the Conference Proceedings. Papers are nominated for the award by
reviewers.
A committee with representation from each of the organizing societies (ERM, IEEE Ed. Soc., IEEE Comp. Soc.) is
formed to review nominated papers. During the FIE meeting, the committee attends presentations of the nominated
papers. The committee then makes a final recommendation to the FIE Planning Committee for the Ben Dasher Award
winner based on the overall quality of both the paper and the presentation.
About Benjamin J. Dasher
Benjamin J. Dasher was born December 27, 1912 in Macon, Ga. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in
electrical engineering in 1935 and 1945, respectively, and graduated with a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1952
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, Dr. Dasher worked on the electronics of instrumentation of
electromechanical transducers and analog-to-digital converters. He was the author of “Dasher’s method” for synthesis of
resistance-capacitance two-port networks, which is found in standard textbook treatments.
While at Georgia Tech, Dr. Dasher served as a graduate assistant in 1936, then as an instructor in 1940, and became an
assistant professor in 1945. While earning his PhD at MIT, he was an instructor from 1948-51. Before finishing with his
PhD, he became an associate professor at Georgia Tech in 1951, was promoted to professor in 1952, and became director
of the School of Electrical Engineering in 1954, where he served in that capacity until 1969. In 1968, Dr. Dasher was
appointed associate dean in the College of Engineering. At Georgia Tech, Dr. Dasher served as director of network
synthesis projects and transistor oscillator projects. His fields of interest included advanced network theory, electronic
theory, electronic circuits, electrical engineering education, machine translation, speech analysis, and pattern recognition.
He was credited for bringing undergraduate engineering education to the forefront at Georgia Tech and for increasing
interactions between undergraduates and industry.
Dr. Dasher was a member of Phi Kappa Phi, ASEE, Sigma Xi, and the American Association of University Professors;
he was a Fellow of both the IEEE and the Institute of Radio Engineers. He served as a regional director for IEEE and as
the chair for the Atlanta section of IEEE; he was on numerous committees for IRE, AIEE, and IEEE. He served as
President of the IEEE Education Group in 1970-71.
Ben Dasher organized the first Frontiers in Education Conference; it was held in Atlanta in 1971, and attracted 100
participants. There were 34 papers in six technical sessions.
Dr. Dasher died of congestive heart failure on December 13, 1971 in Houston, Texas.
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Frontiers in Education Conference Helen
Plants Award Best Nontraditional Session
at FIE 2013
The Lord of PhD: Fellowship of the Dissertation; A Guide to the
Engineering PhD
Stephanie Cutler, James Pembridge, Matthew Verleger, Lauren
Thomas, FIE 2013, Session Number S2A
Stephanie Cutler
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
James Pembridge
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
Matthew Verleger
Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University
Stephanie Cutler is a Research Specialist with the Rothwell Center for Teaching
and Learning Excellence for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Worldwide
campus. Dr. Cutler works as a faculty development facilitator aiding faculty in
creating inquiry-based learning activities for their classrooms. Her teaching aligns
with her research interests focusing on faculty development and integrating
research into the classroom stemming from her dissertation research investigating
faculty members’ decisions about using Research-Based Instructional Strategies
(RBIS) when teaching in the statics classroom. Dr. Cutler also enjoys watching all
three Lord of the Rings movies back-to-back and has greatly enjoyed discovering
the connections between this source of entertainment and her professional
activities. Dr. Cutler has been a member of the American Society for Engineering
Education (ASEE) since 2009. She was also a founding member of the Graduate
Engineering Education Consortium of Students (GEECS).
James J. Pembridge is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Fundamentals at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. His research
and work in the classroom focus on exploring models and theories from multiple
disciplines that can promote the innovation cycle of educational practice and
research (as described by Jamieson & Lohmann, 2009). His research has led to the
development of a model of mentoring as pedagogical practice in project-based
courses, especially in senior design courses. Pembridge is currently working on
implementing a web-based peer-review process, along with his colleagues Yosef
Allam and Lisa Davids, which will encourage the diffusion of evidence-based
instructional strategies and the modeling of pedagogical change in STEM
classrooms. His application of education and engineering education research in his
classroom has provided him the opportunity to attend the 2013 NAE Frontiers of
Engineering Education symposium as well as provide his first-year engineering
students experiences with service learning, working on design projects local to the
Daytona Beach community. Pembridge is active in the engineering education
community, participating in several ASEE divisions and serving as a co-chair for
ERM division’s Apprentice Faculty Grant.
Matthew Verleger is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Fundamentals at
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. His research
interests are focused on using action research methodologies to develop
immediate, measurable improvements in classroom instruction and the use of
Model-Eliciting Activities (MEAs) in teaching students about engineering
problem solving. Dr. Verleger is an active member of the ERM division, having
served on the nomination committee in 2013 and 2012, interim member of the
Helen Plants Award Committee in 2011, and an at-large director in charge of
Monolith User Testing in 2010-2011. He is also on the professional advisory board
for the ASEE Student Division. He also serves as the developer and site manager
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for the Model-Eliciting Activities Learning System (MEALearning.com), a site
designed for implementing, managing, and researching MEAs in large classes.
Lauren D. Thomas, PhD is an alternative-academic who aims to improve STEM
education through research and practice. Lauren’s graduate research explored the
identity-trajectory of graduate students and early career academics. Her research
interests also include non-profit organizations and STEM education policy. As a
graduate student, Lauren was also the chairperson for the Graduate Engineering
Education Consortium for Students, GEECS. Dr. Thomas is an involved member
of the American Society of Engineering Education, ERM division.
Lauren Thomas
University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill
Past Recipients
‘80 Helen Plants
’81 Jim Russell and
John C. Lindenlaub
’82 Karl A. Smith and
Harold Goldstein
’83 E. Dendy Sloan and
Charles F. Yokomoto
’84 David W. Johnson and
Karl A. Smith
’85 Billy V. Koen
’86 Martha A. Nord and
Patricia H. Whiting
’87 John C. Lindenlaub
’89 Karl A. Smith
’91 Troy E. Kostek
’92 Barbara M. Olds and
Ronald L. Miller
’93 John C. Lindenlaub and
Alisha A. Waller
’94 Billy V. Koen
‘95 Burks Oakley II and
Mark Yoder
’96 Alisha A. Waller,
Edward R. Doering, and
Mark A. Yoder
‘97 Karl A. Smith, James D.
Jones and Elizabeth Eschenbach
’98 Alice Agogino
’99 Melinda Piket-May and
Julie L. Chang
’03 William C. Oakes
’04 Susan M. Lord,
Elizabeth A. Eschenbach, Alisha A. Waller, Eileen M. Cashman, and Monica
J. Bruning
‘05 Ruth A. Streveler
‘06 Ruth A. Streveler, Karl A. Smith, and Ronald L. Miller
’08 Maura Borrego, Lynita Newswander, and Lisa McNair
’09 Lisa C. Benson, Sherrill B. Biggers, William F. Moss, Matthew Ohland,
Marisa K. Orr, and Scott D. Schiff
’10 Russell Korte and Karl A. Smith
’11 Mark Somerville, Dave Goldberg, Sherra E. Kerns, and Russell Korte
’12 Şenay Purzer and Jonathan C. Hilpert
’13 Lynn Andrea Stein, and Caitrin Lynch
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About the Plants Award
The Helen Plants Award is given for the best special (non-traditional) session at the FIE conference, as demonstrated by
originality, session content and presentation including the use of written materials and visual aids, and participation of
session attendees.
About Helen Margaret Lester Plants
Helen Margaret Lester was born in Desloge, Missouri, in March 1925, the only child of Rollo Bertell and Margaret
Stephens Lester.
She entered the University of Missouri as a journalism major, but soon switched to Civil Engineering. She received her
BSCE in 1945. She joined West Virginia University in 1947 as a graduate student and Instructor in Mechanics, and
received her MS in Civil Engineering in 1953. She was a Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and of
Curriculum and Instruction in the Division of Education at WVU. She became Professor Emeritus, Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering in 1983. From 1985 to 1990 she served as Chair of Civil Engineering Technology at Indiana
University-Purdue University - Fort Wayne.
Her husband Ken Plants had been a "bureaucrat" with the US Bureau of Mines in Morgantown - a chemical engineer
with great expertise in cost estimation. Some of their "courting" evenings were spent manually checking the design
calculations on the Star City, WV Bridge, designed by the Dean and State Bridge Engineer. While in Morgantown,
Helen was active in Trinity Episcopal Church where she served as a Vestryman and Bishop's Man. For many years she
was a Girl Scout leader. Helen died in Tulsa, Oklahoma in September 1999.
From the beginning of her academic career, she was a gifted teacher and a role model for the few women students at
West Virginia University at that time. Later, she became an advocate of programmed and individualized instruction. She
and Wally Venable wrote series of papers on these topics and several texts: Introduction to Statics, a Programmed Text,
(1975), A Programmed Introduction to Dynamics (1967), and Mechanics of Materials, A Programmed Textbook (1974).
She established the first doctoral program in Engineering Education at West Virginia University.
In 1975, the University of Missouri at Columbia recognized her with the Missouri Honor Award for Distinguished
Service in Engineering. She became an ASEE Fellow in 1983 as a member of the first class of Fellows. She also
received Distinguished Service Award, Western Electric Fund Award, and was an ASEE Vice-President (1974 – 1976).
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Frontiers in Education Conference
Ronald J. Schmitz Award
For outstanding service to the Frontiers in Education Conference
Cynthia Finelli
University of Michigan
Past Recipients
’84 Carol Schmitz
’85 Lawrence P. Grayson
’86 John C. Lindenlaub
’87 George Burnett
’88 James R. Rowland
’89 Lyle D. Feisel
’90 Edwin C. Jones, Jr.
’92 Karl A. Smith
’92 Victor K. Schutz
’93 Bruce A. Einstein
’94 David V. Kerns, Jr.
’95 David R. Voltmer
’96 William E. Sayle II
’97 Richard S. Culver
’98 Dan Budny
’99 Robert J. Herrick
’00 Larry J. Shuman
’01 David L. Soldan
‘02 Goranka Bjedov
’03 Larry G. Richards
’04 James A. Roberts
’05 Robert J. Hofinger
’06 Jane Chu Prey
’07 Joseph L. A. Hughes
’08 Ted E. Batchman
’09 Russ Meier
’10 Dan Moore
’11 Susan M. Lord
’12 Arnold Pears
’13 Jennifer Karlin
Dr. Cynthia Finelli earned B.S.E.E., M.S.E.E., and Ph.D. degrees from the
University of Michigan (U-M) in 1988, 1989, and 1993, respectively. She began
her career at Kettering University where she was the Richard L. Terrell Professor
of Excellence in Teaching, founding director of the Center for Excellence in
Teaching and Learning, and associate professor of electrical engineering prior to
joining U-M in 2003. Dr. Finelli currently serves as Director of the Center for
Research and Learning in Engineering and Research Associate Professor in the
College of Engineering at U-M.
In her present roles, Dr. Finelli consults with administrators, faculty, staff, and
graduate students; offers workshops and seminars on teaching and learning; and
supports college-wide initiatives in engineering education. In addition, she actively
pursues research in engineering education at the U-M and assists other faculty in
their scholarly endeavors. She is PI on several research projects, including (1) a
multi-university collaborative project to identify strategies to lower student
resistance to faculty’s use of active learning techniques; (2) a multi-institution
project to develop a practical instrument to assess students’ ethical development
and, thereby, to study the impact of individual ethics initiatives; and (3) a project
to promote substantive and sustained teaching practices to improve student success
and support a diverse student body in engineering at U-M. She also leads an
international effort to develop and refine a taxonomy (i.e., a keyword outline) for
the field of engineering education. The taxonomy is designed to be used by
researchers, educators, funding agencies, journal editors, and others in the broad
community.
Dr. Finelli also provides national leadership in engineering education research.
She is Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Education, is
past chair of the Educational Research and Methods Division of American Society
of Engineering Education (2007 – 2009), and has served as program co-chair for
both the 2003 Frontiers in Education Conference and the 2006 Annual ASEE
Conference. She also is a Fellow Member of ASEE.
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Frontiers in Education Conference Ronald J. Schmitz Award (continued)
About the Schmitz Award
The Ronald Schmitz Award is given to recognize outstanding and continued service to engineering education through
contributions to the Frontiers in Education Conference.
About Ronald J. Schmitz
Ronald J. Schmitz was born near Ionia, Iowa on April 25, 1934. He attended a one-room country school through the
eighth grade and then, as was not uncommon at the time, decided to forgo high school and work on his father’s farm. At
age 18, he joined the United States Navy. He served as an Electricians Mate, spending much of his enlistment at sea and
made a round-the-world cruise aboard the USS Saipan.
In the Navy, Ron found an interest in and an aptitude for technology and recognized the need for further education. He
completed a GED program in the Navy and, when he was discharged, enrolled in electrical engineering at Iowa State
University. He received all his degrees there, finishing his doctorate in 1967.
In the fall of 1967, he accepted appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City. He was involved in various research activities and
directed both masters and doctoral students, but his strongest interest was always in teaching. Ron was a consummate
teacher, patient with students who were having difficulty but intolerant of sloth. He received the School of Mines
Teaching Award in 1975 and the Western Electric Fund Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1981.
Dr. Schmitz was very active in the IEEE, especially the Education Society, and served as Secretary Treasurer of the
Society. He was also active in ERM and attended, and contributed to, many Frontiers in Education Conferences. He
served as general chair of FIE 1981 in Rapid City.
Ron was an avid hunter and fisherman, a devoted husband and father and a faithful friend. He served his church as
Lector and Lay Minister and was active as a Boy Scout leader.
Ron contracted cancer in 1983 and died on July 19, 1984.
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IEEE Education Society William E. Sayle II
Award for Achievement in Education
For educational leadership, inspirational teaching and research,
and for developing books, videos and web courses in
electromagnetics and fiber optic communication.
Raghunath
Shevgaonkar
I.I.T. Deli
Past Recipients
’79 Lawrence P. Grayson
’80 Demetrius T. Paris
’81 Lindon E. Saline
’82 Anthony B. Giordana
’83 Joseph Bordogna
’84 John C. Lindenlaub
’85 John D. Ryder
’86 James R. Rowland
’87 Bruce Eisenstein
’88 Mac Van Valkenburg
’89 Edward W. Ernst
’90 Ernst Weber
’91 J. David Irwin
’92 Jerrier A. Haddad
’93 Chalmers F. Sechrist
’94 Eric A. Walker
’95 Stephen W. Director
’96 William H. Hayt, Jr.
’97 Jerry R. Yeargan
’98 Ted E. Batchman
’99 Lyle D. Feisel
’00 Irene C. Peden
’01 Donald E. Kirk and
Eli Fromm
’02 Burks Oakley II
’03 Frank Barnes and
Delores Etter
’04 William E. Sayle II
’05 H. Vincent Poor
’06 George D. Peterson
’07 Sarah A. Rajala and
Marwan A. Simaan
’08 James A. Roberts
’09 Jose B. Cruz, Jr.
’10 Rob Reilly
’11 Susan E. Conry
’12 Theodore Rappaport
’13 Karen Panetta
Professor Raghunath K Shevgaonkar is the Director of IIT Delhi and Fellow of
IEEE. He received a B.E. in Electrical Engineering with a Gold Medal from Jiwaji
University, Gwalior. After receiving his M.Tech. from IIT Kanpur, he joined the
Indian Institute of Astrophysics/Raman Research Institute, Bangalore. He received
a Ph.D. on Astronomical Image Restoration from IIT Bombay and was a Faculty
Research Associate at University of Maryland. He is a passionate academician and
researcher who has provided dynamic leadership in Engineering Education in
India for more than three decades. He received the “IEEE Undergraduate Teaching
Award 2011” and “Excellence in Teaching Award 2004” of IIT Bombay.
Professor Shevgaonkar has occupied many academic and administrative positions:
Deputy Director, Dean of Students Affairs, Dean of Resource Mobilization, Head
of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Head of Centre for Distance
Engineering Education program, etc. at IIT Bombay. Presently he is the Director
of I.I.T. Delhi, the top ranked institution in the country. He was the ViceChancellor of University of Pune, one of the largest universities in India where he
established a unique industry sponsored technology department to carry out
industry oriented research. For his contributions to higher education, he received
the "Top Management Consortium Award-2010" for Excellence in Education,
"Dewang Mehta Business School Award 2010" and "National Education
Leadership Award 2012" by Headlines TODAY for Outstanding Contribution to
Education.
He is the author of an undergraduate text book, Electromagnetic Waves (McGrawHill Education India, 2005), which is in wide use across India and also in other
countries. Recognizing that many colleges and universities in India have
inadequate number of quality faculty, he pioneered the activity of e-education in
India. He is the Principal National Coordinator for “Electronics and
Telecommunication” under the National Project on Technology Enhanced
Learning (NPTEL) of the Government of India. He led the e-education activities
“from the front” by personally developing video and web-based courses which are
also available on YouTube. He is the Chairman of the UG Curriculum Committee
of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the apex body
governing engineering education in India. He was also the National Coordinator
for the Post Graduate Curriculum development in Electronics under AICTE. He is
a member of the Council of National Board of Accreditation, India. He was also
the Convener and Member of the Apex Committee appointed by the Governor of
Maharashtra State for Higher Education Reforms in Maharashtra, India.
Professor Shevgaonkar’s research areas are radio astronomy, electromagnetics,
optical communication and photonics, and image restoration. He played a lead role
in analysis, design and commissioning of the Decameter Radio Telescope at
Gauribidnur, India (a unique low frequency radio telescope in the world), and
made significant contributions to low frequency radio astronomy. Later while
working with the world’s largest radio telescope, the Very Large Array (VLA) at
New Mexico, USA, he developed, for the first time, a three dimensional model of
the solar active regions with multi-frequency microwave observations. His
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research of solar flares provided clear evidence of emergence of magnetic loops and magnetic re-connections in the preflare phase. In the area of Optical Communication and Electromagnetics, he proposed a generalized and systematic
approach for designing optical fibers with a variety of dispersion characteristics. For his work in fiber optics, he received
the IETE COET-94 Award for “outstanding contributions in opto-electronics.”
Professor Shevgaonkar is also a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of National Academy of
Science, Fellow of Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers, Fellow of Institution of Engineers,
Fellow of Optical Society of India, and Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Science. He was Technical Chair for the
International Conference on Photonics 2002 and Hon. Editor of IETE Special Issue on “Next Generation Networks.”
About the Sayle Award and William E. Sayle II
The William E. Sayle II Award is presented to recognize a member of the IEEE Education Society who has made
significant contributions over a period of years in a field of interest of the IEEE Education Society. The award consists of
a plaque, a certificate, and paid registration to the Frontiers in Education Conference.
Dr. William (Bill) E. Sayle received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D.
from the University of Washington. He joined the faculty in electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in
1970, just as Georgia Tech was beginning the transition from an undergraduate institution to a research university. He
was the ECE associate chair for undergraduate affairs from 1988-2003 and, following retirement in 2003, served as
director of undergraduate programs at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in France until 2007. Bill was a tireless advocate for
students, putting in countless late night and weekend hours in addressing student issues, assigning teaching assistants,
and meeting with prospective students and parents.
Throughout his career, Bill touched the lives of many people in the worldwide academic community. He was a leader
and a pioneer in many areas. In the 1970s, he was a founding member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, where he
served in many leadership roles over the years. He was a champion of diversity and in recruiting underrepresented
minorities and women to engineering and science, long before it became a national issue. He visited many high schools
on behalf of the Southeastern Consortium for Minorities in Engineering, a role where he made many friends for Georgia
Tech among high school administrators and students in the southern part of Georgia.
In his 30-year career at Georgia Tech, Bill received the ECE outstanding teacher award twice, as well as the Georgia
Tech outstanding teacher award and outstanding service award. Bill lent his voice and efforts to Georgia Tech faculty
governance throughout his career, serving as an elected member of Institute-level committees, the Academic Senate, and
the Executive Board.
Bill was a long-time member and active volunteer in the IEEE Education Society and the Electrical and Computer
Engineering Division of ASEE. He was a Fellow of both IEEE and ASEE. He was the recipient of the Education
Society's 2001 Meritorious Service Award and 2004 Achievement Award and of the ECE Division's 2001 Meritorious
Service Award and 2006 ECE Distinguished Educator Award. Bill was the General Chair of the 1995 Frontiers in
Education (FIE) Conference, which is still remembered for its all-vegetarian menu, and received the 1996 Ronald J.
Schmitz Award for outstanding service to FIE.
Much of Bill's professional career was devoted to engineering accreditation, serving at various times as member and
chair of the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities and the IEEE Accreditation Policy Council. He
participated in more than 20 visits as a program evaluator, in addition to serving as a team chair and member of the
Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET for more than five years. Bill received the IEEE Educational Activities
Board Meritorious Achievement Award in Accreditation Activities in 2004.
Dr. Sayle passed away on February 2, 2008.
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IEEE Transactions on Education Best
Paper Award
Using Multi-Robot Systems for Engineering Education: Teaching and Outreach
with Large Numbers of an Advanced, Low-Cost Robot,” James McLurkin,
Joshua Rykowski, Meagan John, Quillan Kaseman, and Andrew J. Lynch,
vol. 56, no.1, pp. 24-33
James McLurkin
Rice University
Joshua Rykowski
United States
Military Academy
James McLurkin is an Assistant Professor at Rice University in the Department
of Computer Science, and director of the Multi-Robot Systems Lab. Current
projects include using distributed computational geometry for multi-robot
configuration estimation and control, and defining complexity metrics that
quantify the relationships between algorithm execution time, inter-robot
communication bandwidth, and robot speed. Previous positions include lead
research scientist at iRobot corporation, where McLurkin was the manager of the
DARPA-funded Swarm project. Results included the design and construction of
112 robots and distributed configuration control algorithms, including robust
software to search indoor environments. He holds a S.B. in Electrical Engineering
with a Minor in Mechanical Engineering from M.I.T., a M.S. in Electrical
Engineering from University of California, Berkeley, and a S.M. and Ph.D. in
Computer Science from M.I.T.
Joshua B. Rykowski received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the
United States Military Academy, in 2004. He received the M.S. degree in
Computer Science from Rice University, in 2011. He is a United States Army
telecommunications officer and has served on active duty continuously since 2004.
From 2004 to 2008 he served as a combat engineer platoon leader at Fort Bragg,
North Carolina. He was designated as a telecommunications officer in 2008 and
then attended Rice University and attained his M.S. in Computer Science. His
follow on assignment was as an Instructor and Assistant Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the United States
Military Academy from 2011 to 2014. His primary research interests include
multi-robot systems, state estimation and resource constrained networking.
Meagan John is a graduate of Rice University with a BS in Computer Science.
She is currently working at TripAdvisor as a Software Engineer.
Quillan Kaseman, as a student, participated as an undergraduate research scholar
in Professor McLurkin’s Multi Systems Laboratory at Rice University.
Meagan John
Past Recipients
’99 J.A. Buck, H. Owen, J.P. Uyemura,
C.M. Verber, and D.J. Blumenthal
’00 David J. Russomanno and Ronald D.
Bonnell
’01 Christopher W. Trueman
’02 Mohan Krishnan and Mark J. Paulik
’03 Tyson S. Hall, James O. Hamblen,
and Kimberly E. Newman
Andrew J Lynch received his BSE degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Texas, and his MS degrees in mechanical engineering and in
computer science from Rice University in 2010 and 2011, respectively. He is with
Sparx Engineering, Manvel, TX, where his main interests are in robotics and
embedded systems development.
’04 M. Brian Blake
’04 Russell L. Pimmel
’05 Antonio J. Lopez-Martin
’06 Euan Lindsay and Malcolm C. Good
’07 Jason A. Day and James D. Foley
’08 France Bélanger, Tracy L. Lewis,
George M. Kasper, Wanda J. Smith and
K. Vernard Harrington
’09 Kenneth Ricks, Jeff Jackson, and
William A. Stapleton
’10 Keith Holbert and George G. Karady
’11 Julie A. Rursch, Andy Luse, and
Doug Jacobson
’12 Susan Lord, Richard Layton, and
Matthew Ohland
’13 Benjamin Hazen, Yun Wu and
Chetan Sankar
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IEEE Education Society Edwin C. Jones, Jr.
Meritorious Service Award
For Outstanding Achievements in the Organization and
Administration of IEEE Conferences
Danilo Garbi Zutin
Carinthia University of
Applied Sciences
Past Recipients
’78 Warren B. Boast
’79 Joseph M. Biedenbach
’80 Edwin C. Jones, Jr.
’81 Lyle D. Feisel
’82 Roy H. Mattson
’83 Robert F. Fontana
’84 Gerald R. Peterson
’85 Luke H. Noggle
’86 James A. Mulligan
Sidney S. Shamis
’87 Thomas K. Gaylord
’88 Robert F. Cotellessa
’89 E. Ben Peterson
’90 Darrell L. Vines
‘91 Victor K. Schutz
’92 William K. LeBold
’93 Frank S. Barnes
’94 Patricia D. Daniels
’95 Robert W. Ritchie
’96 Marion O. Hagler
Donald E. Kirk
’97 Robert Sullivan
’98 Burks Oakley II
’99 Gerald L. Engel
’00 Ted E. Batchman
’01 William E. Sayle II
’02 James Rowland
’03 David A. Conner
’04 Trond Clausen
’05 J. David Irwin
Rodney J. Soukup
’06 Robert A. Reilly
’07 David V. Kerns, Jr.
’08 James J. Sluss, Jr.
’09 Manuel Castro
’10 Michael E. Auer
’11 Russ Meier
'11 Claudio da Rocha Brito
and Melany M. Ciampi
'12 Susan Lord
'13 Charles Fleddermann
Danilo G. Zutin is currently Assistant Professor at the department of Engineering
& IT at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria and a PhD candidate
at Technical Univesity of Ilmenau, Germany. He holds a degree in electrical
engineering at the State University of Sao Paulo (UNESP), Brazil, and obtained his
Master degree in Systems Design (specialization in Remote Systems) at the
Carinthia University of Applied Sciences in Villach, Austria. His research interests
are in the field of remote engineering, online labs, remote control of devices and
software development for online labs. Danilo Garbi Zutin is currently a senior
Researcher and team member of the Center of Competence in Online Laboratories
and Open Learning (CCOL) at the Carinthia University of Applied Sciences
(CUAS), Villach, Austria, where he has been engaged in projects for the
development of online laboratories.
In January 2010 Danilo Garbi Zutin was appointed Secretary General of the
International Association of Online Engineering and in the following year
Secretary General of IGIP (International Society for Engineering Education)
Danilo is author or co-author of more than 30 scientific papers published in
international journals, magazines and conferences. Most of these papers are in the
field of online laboratories and issues associated with their dissemination and
usage.
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October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxiii
About the Edwin C. Jones Award
The Edwin C. Jones Meritorious Service Award is presented to recognize a member of the IEEE Education Society who
has made pioneering contributions to the administrative efforts of the IEEE Education Society over a period of years.
The award consists of a plaque, a certificate, and registration to the Frontiers in Education Conference.
About Edwin C. Jones
Professor Jones served as a Society officer from 1970 through 1976; this service included two years as president. He
served as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Education from 1982-84. Since he first became involved in the
Society in the late 1960s, he has held virtually every office in the Education Society. Professor Jones also serves the
IEEE as a member of the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities. Dr. Jones is University Professor
and Associate Chair, emeritus, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University. Prior to
joining Iowa State in 1966, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois from 1962-66. He received his
PhD in 1962 from the University of Illinois; the DIC in 1956 from Imperial College of Science and Technology,
London; and the BSEE in 1955 from West Virginia University. Dr. Jones’ honors and awards include: Fellow, Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Fellow, American Society for Engineering Education; Fellow, American
Association for Advancement of Science; Fellow, Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology; IEEE
Centennial Medal, 1984; ASEE Centennial Medal, 1993; and the Grinter Distinguished Service Award from ABET in
2001. Some of his students founded a scholarship for Electrical and Computer Engineering students at Iowa State
University in his honor.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxiv
IEEE Education Society Mac Van
Valkenburg Early Career Teaching Award
For leadership in establishing sustainable communities of
engineering education innovation and outstanding classroom
teaching
Jill Nelson
George Mason
University
Past Recipients
’04 Parham Aarabi
’05 John R. Buck
’06 Lisa G. Huettel
’07 Susan C. Hagness
’08 Kathleen E. Wage
’09 Min Wu
’10 Craig Ziles
’11 Jonathan Makela
’12 Babak Ayazifar
’13 Muhammad Zaman
Jill Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at George Mason University, where she has been a faculty
member since 2005. She earned a BS in Electrical Engineering and a BA in
Economics from Rice University in 1998. She attended the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign for graduate study, earning an MS and PhD in Electrical
Engineering in 2001 and 2005, respectively.
Dr. Nelson’s teaching interests include signals and systems, continuous and
discrete-time signal processing, communication theory, and advanced algorithms
for adaptive signal processing.
She incorporates interactive pedagogical
approaches such as group problem-solving and reflection in her courses and
emphasizes the importance of connecting course material with real-world
problems. Beyond the classroom, Dr. Nelson is a principal investigator for two
National Science Foundation engineering education research projects focusing on
broadening the use of innovative teaching practices in university science, math,
and engineering courses. The aim of these projects is to use small, long-term
teaching development groups to motivate and support faculty in moving toward
more student-centered instruction. In past engineering education research, she has
studied how students transfer mathematical knowledge to engineering problems,
as well as how students’ conceptual understanding of engineering material relates
to their interest in and motivation for the field.
Dr. Nelson’s disciplinary research focus is in statistical signal processing,
specifically detection and estimation for applications in target tracking, physical
layer communications, and music signal processing. Her work on target detection
and tracking is funded by the Office of Naval Research. She is a 2010 recipient of
the NSF CAREER Award; the educational outreach element of her CAREER plan
includes developing college-level problem-based learning curriculum in
probability and random processes.
Dr. Nelson’s teaching accomplishments have been recognized with the George
Mason University Teaching Excellence Award in 2014, as well as the Volgenau
School of Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award in 2011. She was also
selected to participate in the 2012 National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of
Engineering Education Symposium. Since 2006, Dr. Nelson has been the faculty
advisor of the IEEE Student Chapter at George Mason University. She is a
member of Phi Beta Kappa, Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, ASEE, and the IEEE
Signal Processing, Communications, and Education Societies.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxv
IEEE Education Society
Student Leadership Award
For student team leadership resulting in national and
international awards, and for serving as a section leader and guest
Editor-in-Chief for IEEE ITEE
Liang-Bi Chen
National Sun Yat-Sen
University
Past Recipients
‘09 Seiji Isotani
‘10 Emmanuel Gonzalez and
Kai-Pan Mark
’11 Dario Schor
’12 Elio San Cristobal Ruiz
and Sergio Martin
’13 Subhamoy Mandal
Liang-Bi Chen received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electronic Engineering from
the National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, in
2001 and 2003, respectively, and is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of
Computer Science and Engineering at the National Sun Yat-Sen University,
Kaohsiung, Taiwan. From 2004 to 2011, he also served as a teaching and research
assistant at the National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
From August 2008 to September 2008, he had an internship of Department of
Computer Science at the National University of Singapore, Singapore. He was also
a visiting researcher in the Department of Computer Science at the University of
California, Irvine, CA, U.S.A. during September 2008 to August 2009 and in the
Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Waseda University,
Tokyo, Japan between July 2010 and August 2010, respectively. He has published
more than 60 papers in national/international journals and conferences. He led
many student teams to win more than 20 awards in national/international contests.
Since 2013, he served as a section editor leader and a guest Editor-in-Chief for the
IEEE Technology and Engineering Education (ITEE). He also served as a TPC
member, an IPC member or a reviewer for many IEEE/ACM international
conferences and journals.
Since 2004, he served as an adjunct lecturer at the National Sun Yat-Sen
University, the National Taichung University of Science and Technology
Kaohsiung Campus, the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology,
the National Pingtung Institute of Commerce, the Tajen University, the Kun Shan
University, the Shih-Chien University Kaohsiung Campus, and the Meiho
University, in Taiwan. From 2004, he also worked as an adjunct teacher at the
Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Industrial High School, the Kaohsiung
Municipal Kaohsiung High School of Commerce, and the Kaohsiung Municipal
Chung-Cheng Industrial High School in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Since May 2012, he joined BXB Electronics Co., Ltd., Kaohsiung, Taiwan, as a
R&D Engineer. Since May 2013 he was transferred to executive assistant to Vice
President, BXB Electronics Co., Ltd., Kaohsiung, Taiwan. His research interests
include VLSI design, power/performance analysis for embedded mobile
applications and devices, power-aware embedded systems design, low-power
systems design, digital audio signal processing, engineering education, projectbased learning education, SoC/NoC Verification, and system-level design space
exploration.
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxvi
REVIEWERS
This year, FIE 2014 had over 900 papers and presentations submitted for consideration. The FIE 2014 Program
Committee wishes to thank the following individuals for acting as abstract and paper reviewers. The program committee
asked these individuals to help control the quality of the presentations at this year's conference by reviewing the
submissions for FIE 2014. Their outstanding effort has helped maintain the high standard that has become the reputation
of each FIE conference.
Name
André Abade
Institution
Universidade Federal de São Carlos - Brasil
Haqiq Abdelkrim
Hassan 1 university
Azim Abdool
The University of the West Indies
Pramod Abichandani
Drexel University
Maurice Aburdene
Bucknell University
Otavio Acosta
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Olusola Adesope
Washington State University
Juan Aguilar-Peña
Universidad de Jaén
Benjamin Ahn
Purdue University
Mahmoud Al-Qutayri
Khalifa University
Nancy Alajarmeh
New Mexico State University
Carlos Alario Hoyos
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Concepción Aldea
University of Zaragoza
Ana Alejos
Universidade de Vigo
Sadot Alexandres
Universidad Pontificia Comillas
Fuad Alhosban
Durham University
Vicki Allan
Utah State University
Colin Allison
University of St Andrews
Montserrat Alsina
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech
Ainhoa Álvarez
University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU
Luis Alvarez
University of Vigo
Rafael Alvarez-Horine
San Jose State University
Alexandre Alvaro
UFSCar - Sorocaba
Luis Alves
Polytechnic Institute of Bragança
Hector Amado-Salvatierra
Universidad Galileo
Ana Paula Ambrosio
Federal University of Goias
Toni Amorim
Universidade Estadual do Mato Grosso
Margarita Anastassova
CEA LIST
Paul Anderson
College of Charleston
Ruth Anderson
University of Washington
Hidetoshi Ando
University of Yamanashi
Paulo André
Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa
Boon Chong Ang
EASIC
Luis Anido-Rifon
University of Vigo
Jose Antonino-Daviu
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia
Eduardo Aranha
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN)
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxvii
Catalina Aranzazu-Suescun
University of Antioquia
Eliane Araujo
Federal University of Campina Grande
Glauber Araujo
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN)
Maurício Arimoto
University of São Paulo
Sanjeev Arora
Fort Valley State University
Ana Arruarte
University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
Enara Artetxe González
CreativiTIC Innova SL
Ernesto Arzabala-Contreras
Universidad Tecnologica de Chihuahua
Emmanuel Arzuaga
UPRM
Michael Auer
Carinthia Tech Institute
Janice Austin
Virginia Tech
Francisco Javier Ayala Álvarez
Universidad de Málaga
Cristina Azcona
University of Zaragoza
Asad Azemi
Pennsylvania State University
Patricia Backer
San Jose State University
Abdel-Hameed Badawy
Arkansas Tech University
David Baez-Lopez
Universidad de las Americas Puebla
Nilufar Baghaei
Unitec Institute of Technology
Diana Bairaktarova
University of Oklahoma
Silvia Baldiris
Universitat de Girona
Ellen Barbosa
University of São Paulo
Paulo Barbosa
Federal University of Alagoas
Javier Barrachina
University of Zaragoza
Belén Barragáns-Martínez
Centro Universitario de la Defensa, Escuela Naval Militar, Marín
Edurne Barrenechea
Universidad Pública de Navarra
Leonor Barroca
The Open University
Rebecca Bartlett
Liverpool John Moores Unviersity
Mohammed Basheri
King Abdulaziz University
Julian Bass
Robert Gordon University
Concha Batanero Ochaita
University of Alcala
Milton Batres Márquez
Universidad Tecnológica de Chihuahua
Eric Baumgartner
Ohio Northern University
Kemal Bayrakceken
Turkish Air Force Academy
Dmitry Bazylev
ITMO University
Cathy Beaton
Rochester Institute of Technology
Kacey Beddoes
Oregon State University
Mark Bedillion
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
Luiz Begosso
Fundacao Educacional do Municipio de Assis
Luiz Begosso
Fundacao Educacional do Municipio de Assis - FEMA
Patricia Behar
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
José Benlloch-Dualde
Universitat Politècnica de València
Bridget Benson
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Lisa Benson
Clemson University
Mary Besterfield-Sacre
University of Pittsbugh
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxviii
Lamjed Bettaieb
ESPRIT
Prabir Bhattacharya
University of Cincinnati
Marcos Bichet
Federal University of Rio Grande
Angela Bielefeldt
University of Colorado Boulder
Anna Bilyatdinova
University ITMO
Roberto Bittencourt
State University of Feira de Santana
Brit-Maren Block
Leuphana University of Lueneburg
Klavdiya Bochenina
University ITMO
Leonard J. Bohmann
Michigan Tech
Vanessa Borges
University of Sao Paulo
Lakshmi Bose
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Kollam
Silvia Botelho
Federal University of Rio Grande
Ivica Botički
University of Zagreb
Brian Bowe
Dublin Institute of Technology
Marija Božić
Autonomous University of Barcelona
Kalinka Branco
USP - University of São Paulo
Anarosa Brandão
Universidade de São Paulo
Leônidas Brandão
University of São Paulo
Catherine Brawner
Research Triangle Educational Consultants
Andrew Brightman
Purdue University
Rex Bringula
University of the East
Alisson Brito
Federal University of Paraiba
Claudio Brito
Science and Education Research Council
Andrea Brose
Hamburg University of Technology
Michael Brown
University of Michigan
Philip Brown
Virginia Tech
Natalia Andrea Bueno Pizarro
Universidad EAFIT
Frank Bullen
University of Southern Queensland
Jaime Busquets
Universitat Politecnica de Valenica
Elizabeth Cady
National Academy of Engineering
Manuel Caeiro
University of Vigo
Carlos Caicedo Bastidas
Syracuse University
Agustin Caminero
The National University of Distance Education
Nathan Canney
Seattle University
Juan-Carlos Cano
Universidad Politecnica de Valencia
Adam Carberry
Arizona State University
Monica Cardella
Purdue University
César Cárdenas
Tecnológico de Monterrey - Campus Querétaro
Amilcar Cardoso
University of Coimbra
Dale Carnegie
Victoria University of Wellington
Cheryl Carrico
Virginia Tech
German Carro Fernandez
UNED - Spanish University for Distance Education
Fabricio Carvalho
Federal University of Paraiba - UFPB
Alberto Castro
UFAM - Federal University of Amazonas
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xxxix
Manuel Castro
Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED
Walter Cerroni
University of Bologna
Norberto Charczuk
National University of Lanus
Ankur Chattopadhyay
University of Wisconsin, Green Bay
Dmitriy Chebanov
LaGuardia Community College of CUNY
Wei-Fan Chen
Penn State University
Ye Cheng
MathWorks
Ken Christensen
University of South Florida
Mel Chua
Purdue University
Melany Ciampi
Safety, Health and Environment Research Organization
Robin Clark
Aston University
José Alberto Cocota
Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP)
Maxine Cohen
Nova Southeastern University
Joanne Cohoon
University of Virginia
Sandra Courter
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Paul Crilly
United States Coast Guard Academy
Caridad Cruz
Universidad de las Américas Puebla
Davidson Cury
UFES- Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo
I Dabipi
University of Maryland Eastern Shore
Danilo Dalmon
University of São Paulo
Chad Davis
University of Oklahoma
Juan Pablo de Castro Fernández
University of Valladolid
Michael DeAntonio
New Mexico State University
Kimberley DeLong
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gabriel Díaz
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia - UNED
Leda Digión
National University Investigator and Teacher
Susan Donohue
University of Virginia
Adam Doupe
University of California, Santa Barbara
Nemesio Duarte Filho
University of São Paulo - ICMC/USP
John Dyer
University of Oklahoma
Olga Dziabenko
University of Deusto
Mauricio Dziedzic
Universidade Positivo
Maria Earle
Mississippi State University
Joshua Earnest
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research, Bhopal
William Eberle
Tennessee Tech University
Stephen Edwards
Virginia Tech
Rob Elliott
IUPUI
Michael Elmore
Binghamton University
Jon Elorriaga
University of the Basque Country
Daniel Epstein
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS
Elizabeth Eschenbach
Humboldt State University
Jeffrey Evans
Purdue University
Courtney Faber
Clemson University
Ramón Fabregat Gesa
Universitat de Girona
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xl
Fabian Fagerholm
University of Helsinki
Maria Feldgen
Universidad de Buenos Aires
Daniel Ferguson
Purdue University
Manuel Fernández Iglesias
University of Vigo
Deller Ferreira
Federal University of Goias
Maria Joao Ferreira
Universidade Portucalense
Damon Fick
Montana State University
Cliff Fitzmorris
University of Oklahoma
Givon Forbes
Innovative STEM Foundation (ISF)
Robin Fowler
University of Michigan
Henrique Freitas
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais
Stephen Frezza
Gannon University
Wilhelm Friess
University of Maine
Jeff Frolik
University of Vermont
Jeffrey Froyd
Texas A&M University
Steven Fulton
US Department of Defense
Rose Gamble
University of Tulsa
Vinicius Garcia
Federal University of Pernambuco
Melchor García Dominguez
Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias
Ramon Garcia-Martinez
Information Systems Research Group
Javier Garcia-Zubia
University of Deusto
Anne Gardner
University of Technology, Sydney
Kevin Gary
Arizona State University
Koenraad Gieskes
Binghamton University
Kyle Gipson
James Madison University
Anabela Gomes
Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra
Wade Goodridge
Utah State University
Aldo Gordillo
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Ann Gordon-Ross
University of Florida
Laura Grabowski
University of Texas-Pan American
Antoni Grau
Technical Univ of Catalonia
Olaf Hallan Graven
Buskerud and Vestfold University College
Sarah Grigg
Clemson University
Minzhe Guo
University of Cincinnati
Shashi Gupta
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research
Paulo Gurgel
University of São Paulo
Laura Hanlan
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Firas Hassan
Ohio Northern University
Keith Hedges
Drury University
Jonathan Hilpert
Georgia Southern University
Linda Hirsch
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Margaret Hobson
Texas Engineering Experiment Station--Texas A&M System
Melinda Holtzman
Portland State University
Liang Hong
Tennessee State University
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xli
Samuel Huang
University of Cincinnati
Lisa Huettel
Duke University
James Huff
Harding University
Meriel Huggard
Trinity College Dublin
Thorna Humphries
Norfolk State University
Luis Inostroza Cueva
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Seiji Isotani
University of Sao Paulo
Hudson Jackson
United States Coast Guard Academy
Peter Jamieson
Miami University
Brent Jesiek
Purdue University
J Jobin
GE Global Research
Lynette Johns Boast
The Australian National University
Edwin Jones
Iowa State Univ, Univ of St Thomas
Karl Jones
Liverpool John Moores University
Anthony Joseph
Pace University
Hwee-Joo Kam
Ferris State University
Chinami Kaneshiro
Okinawa National College of Technology
Jamie Kennedy
Drexel University
Sarah Kiden
Uganda Christian University
Howard Kimmel
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Adam Kirn
Clemson University
Alexander Kist
University of Southern Queensland
Kathleen Kitto
Western Washington University
David Klotzkin
Binghamton University
Vitaly Klyuev
The University of Aizu
Daniel Knight
University of Colorado Boulder
Daniel Krutz
Rochester Institute Of Technology
Amruth Kumar
Ramapo College of New Jersey
Stan Kurkovsky
Central Connecticut State University
David Kwartowitz
Clemson University
Gerard Lachiver
Universite de Sherbrooke
Micah Lande
Arizona State University
Mikel Larrañaga
University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU
Eric Larson
Seattle University
Marcia Laugerman
Iowa State University
Oenardi Lawanto
Utah State University
Wendy LawrenceFowler
The University of Texas-Pan American
Alistair Lawson
Edinburgh Napier University
Jennifer LeBeau
Washington State University
Khuan Lee
Universiti Teknologi MARA
Wookwon Lee
Gannon University
Young Lee
Texas A&M University-Kingsville
Kenneth Leitch
West Texas A&M University
Raymundo Lerma Gutiérrez
Universidad Tecnologica de Chihuahua
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xlii
Michael Leverington
University of Nevada, Reno
Dalit Levy
Zefat Academic College
Xiaosong Li
Unitec Institute of Technology
Pengtao Lin
Gannon University
Julie Linsey
Georgia Institute of Technology
Julie Little-Wiles
IUPUI
Martin Llamas-Nistal
University of Vigo
Carlos Lopes
Federal University of Uberlândia
Vicente Lucena
University of Amazonas
Anne Lucietto
Purdue University
Terry Lucke
University of the Sunshine Coast
Alejandra Magana
Purdue University
Mitsunori Makino
Chuo University
Natasha Mamaril
University of Kentucky
Aleardo Manacero
São Paulo State University - UNESP
Theodore Manikas
Southern Methodist University
Vincent Manno
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
Rachid Manseur
SUNY Oswego
Mario Manso Vazquez
University of Vigo
Ashutosh Marathe
University of Pune
Farshid Marbouti
Purdue University
Maria Marcelino
University of Coimbra
Theresa Marks
University of Oklahoma
Sergio Martin
Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED
Jorge Martin-Gutierrez
University of La Laguna
Carlos Martins
Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais
Scheila Martins
University of Coimbra
Tom McEwan
Edinburgh Napier University
Amy McGovern
University of Oklahoma
Kathleen Meehan
University of Glasgow
António Mendes
University of Coimbra
Andrea Mendonça
Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Amazonas (IFAM)
Andrew Meneely
Rochester Institute of Technology
Crediné Menezes
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Georgette Michko
University of Houston
Alan Miller
University of St Andrews
Lee Miller
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Mani Mina
Iowa State University
Angela Minichiello
Utah State University
Sumita Mishra
Rochester Institute of Technology
Elif Miskioglu
The Ohio State University
Mahnas Mohammadi-Aragh
Mississippi State University
Devlin Montfort
Oregon State University
Natalia Mosina
The City University of New York
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xliii
Joao Mota
UFC
Pedro Muñoz Merino
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Andrew Nafalski
University of South Australia
Masoud Naghedolfeizi
Fort Valley State University
Hideo Nagumo
Niigata Seiryo University
Jagadeesh Nandigam
Grand Valley State University
Debora Nascimento
Federal University of Bahia
Andres Navarro
Universidad Icesi
Francisco Navas
Generalitat Valenciana
Afrin Naz
West Virginia University Institute of Technology
Prema Nedungadi
Amrita University
Victor Nelson
Auburn University
Ida Ngambeki
Purdue University
Jerry O'Connor
San Antonio College
Matthew Ohland
Purdue University
Asako Ohno
Osaka Sangyo University
Aurenice Oliveira
Michigan Technological University
Elaine Oliveira
Federal University of Amazonas
Neusa Oliveira
Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica
Osvaldo Oliveira
Faculty of Campo Limpo Paulista
Rick Olson
University of San Diego
Pablo Orduña
Deusto Institute of Technology - DeustoTech, University of Deusto
Marisa Orr
Louisiana Tech University
Nestor Osorio
Northern Illinois University
Ranilson Paiva
Universidade Federal de Alagoas
Enrique Palou
Universidad de las Américas Puebla
Rui Pan
Purdue University
Rafael Pastor Vargas
Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED
Arnold Pears
Uppsala University
Timothy Pearson
Raptor Engineering
Daniela Peixoto
CEFET-MG
Branimir Pejcinovic
Portland State University
Andy Peng
University of Wisconsin - Stout
Jian Peng
Southeast Missouri State University
Jesus Alfonso Perez Gama
IEEE Life Senior Member - LMAG Colombia Chair
Jorge Perez-Martinez
Technical University of Madrid
Antoni Perez-Navarro
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
Anne-Kathrin Peters
Uppsala University
Olivier Pfeiffer
TU Berlin
Mary Pilotte
Purdue University
Nicole Pitterson
Purdue University
Gabriella Povero
Istituto Superiore Mario Boella
Cheryl Zhenyu Qian
Purdue University
Rajendra Raj
Rochester Institute of Technology
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xliv
Joseph Ranalli
Penn State - Hazleton Campus
Felipe Razo
CSU East Bay
Jodi Reeves
National University
Luisa Regueras
Universidad de Valladolid
Kenneth Reid
Virginia Tech
Carl Reidsema
University of Queensland
Christine Reilly
University of Texas - Pan American
Martin Reisslein
Arizona State University
Rodolfo Resende
Federal University of Minas Gerais
Renata Revelo Alonso
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Pedro Ribeiro
University of Minho
Presentacion Rivera-Reyes
Utah State University
Mona Rizvi
Norfolk State University
O'Connell Robert
University of Missouri-Columbia
Luz Robles
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia - UNED
Antonio Robles-Gómez
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
Kelsey Rodgers
Purdue University
Josef Rojter
Victoria University
Carla Romney
Boston University
Karla Maria Ronquillo Gonzalez
Universidad Tecnológica de Chihuahua
Salvador Ros
UNED
Warren Rosen
Drexel University
Irene Rothe
Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University
Siegfried Rouvrais
Telecom Bretagne
Diane Rover
Iowa State University
Susan Ruff
MIT
Anthony Ruocco
Roger Williams University
Julie Rursch
Iowa State University
Adrian Rusu
Rowan University
Amalia Rusu
Fairfield University
Barbara Sabitzer
Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt
Luis Sanchez Ruiz
Universitat Politècnica de València
Elio Sancristobal
Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED
Álvaro Santos
Center for Informatics and Systems – University of Coimbra
Juan Santos
University of Vigo
Leonardo Santos
UFAM - Federal University of Amazonas
Simone Santos
Federal University of Pernambuco
Harry Santoso
Faculty of Computer Science, University of Indonesia
Gerardo Sarria
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana - Cali
Walter Schilling
Milwaukee School of Engineering
Lizabeth Schlemer
Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
Susan Schneider
Marquette University
Dario Schor
Magellan Aerospace
Andrea Schwandt
Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xlv
Elena Seleznova
Hlukhiv Pedagogical University
Mack Shelley
Iowa State University
Mark Sherriff
University of Virginia
Kristi Shryock
Texas A&M University
Thomaz Edson Silva
Federal University of Ceará
Kumar Singh
Miami University
Brian Skromme
Arizona State University
Lynne Slivovsky
California Polytechnic State University
James Sluss
The University of Oklahoma
Richard Smith
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Thérèse Smith
University of Connecticut
Chris Snook
University of Southern Queensland
Marc Sosnick-Pérez
San Francisco State University
John Springer
Purdue University
Jon Sticklen
Michigan State University
Itana Stiubiener
Universidade Federal do ABC UFABC
Aaron Striegel
University of Notre Dame
Vignesh Subbian
University of Cincinnati
Durga Suresh
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Andrea Surovek
SDSM&T
Dan Tappan
Eastern Washington University
Kassim Tarhini
United States Coast Guard Academy
Adam Taylor
Auckland University of Technology
Khallai Taylor
Triton College
Sujata Telang
Carnegie Mellon University
Hon Jie Teo
Virginia Tech
Neena Thota
University of Saint Joseph
Dion Timmermann
Hamburg University of Technology
Carlos Tobar
Pontifical Catholic Universisty of Campinas
Llanos Tobarra
UNED
Edmundo Tovar
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
Joseph Tranquillo
Bucknell University
James Trevelyan
University of Western Australia
Deborah Trytten
University of Oklahoma
Janet Tsai
University of Colorado Boulder
Stephen Turner
University of Michigan-Flint
Luther Tychonievich
University of Virginia
Suleyman Uludag
The University of Michigan - Flint
Leo Ureel
Michigan Technological University
Tristan Utschig
Georgia Institute of Technology
James Vallino
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rosa Vasconcelos
Minho University
Carlos Vaz de Carvalho
Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto
Srinivasa Vemuru
Ohio Northern University
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xlvi
María Jesús Verdú Pérez
Universidad de Valladolid
Camilo Vieira
Purdue University
Arto Vihavainen
University of Helsinki
Vimal Viswanathan
Tuskegee University
Susan Walden
University of Oklahoma
Charles Wallace
Michigan Technological University
Alisha Waller
Georgia Institute of Technology
Andrew Wandel
University of Southern Queensland
Guoping Wang
14927 Sea Holly Ct.
Xiaofang Wang
Villanova University
Christopher Watson
Durham University
Heather Watson
James Madison University
Alfred Weaver
University of Virginia
Jacob Wheadon
Purdue University
Patricia Widder
Washington University in St. Louis
Marco Winzker
Bonn-Rhine-Sieg University
Kumar Yelamarthi
Central Michigan University
Wook-Sung Yoo
Fairfield University
James Young
Rice University
Xiaohong Yuan
North Carolina A & T State University
Luis Felipe Zapata Rivera
EAFIT University
Sarah Zappe
Penn State University
Yevgeniya Zastavker
F. W. Olin College of Engineering
Amir Zeid
American University of Kuwait
Ya Zhou
Beijing Institute of Technology
Quanyan Zhu
New York University
Rebecca Ziino
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Carla Zoltowski
Purdue University
Sergio Zorzo
Federal University of Sao Carlos
Danilo Zutin
Carinthia University of Applied Sciences
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xlvii
SESSION CHAIRS
The conference committee would like to thank the people that have agreed to act as session chairs at
the 2014 Frontiers in Education Conference. Session chairs play an important role in ensuring the
conference runs smoothly and that the technical presentations are a valuable experience for both
speakers and attendees. Session chairs also have served a critical role in helping with the Ben Dasher
Award process.
The primary responsibilities of session chairs are to:
• Read the session's papers in advance and recommend papers for the Ben Dasher Best Paper
committee.
• Contact the authors in the session and become familiar with the authors who are presenting.
• Introduce the session and make any FIE announcements that are needed.
• Briefly introduce each speaker and paper.
• Manage audience questions, and ensure that presentations begin and end within their time slots.
The program committee would like to thank the following individuals and those session chairs not
listed for their efforts to help make FIE 2014 both informative and successful:
Code
CUR
EER1
FYE1
GDI1
PHI1
Title
Setting the stage for CE2016: A Revised
Body of Knowledge
Research on Blended Learning
Environments
First Year Engineering 1
Overcoming Stereotypes to Help Students
Succeed in Engineering and Computer
Science Education
Philosophy of Engineering Education
Developing Technical Communication as a
Professional Skill
Remote Laboratories, implementation and
REM1
evaluation
Inspiring Learning in Different Domains
SCL1
through Student-centric Learning
Increasing the Relevance in Teaching and
TLE1
Learning
Systems and Standards for Computer Based
CBL2
Learning
Electrical and Computer Engineering
EEC1
Courses and Laboratories
eMadrid Network
EER
PRO1
EER2
GBL2
Dissemination of Research and Teaching
Innovations
Advances in Game Based Learning
Start time
11:00 AM
Chair
Eti de Vries (Hanze UAS, The
El Escorial
Netherlands)
Azim Abdool (The University of the West
Aranjuez
Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Christine F Reilly (University of Texas Doblon
Pan American, United States)
James Huff (Harding University, United
Patio 1
States)
11:00 AM
La Granja
11:00 AM
11:00 AM
11:00 AM
Room
11:00 AM Comendador
11:00 AM
Escudo
11:00 AM
Alcalá
11:00 AM
La Galería
2:30 PM
Patio 3
2:30 PM
Doblon
2:30 PM
El Escorial
2:30 PM
Aranjuez
2:30 PM
La Granja
Paul B Crilly (United States Coast Guard
Academy, United States)
Ronald Harichandran (University of New
Haven, United States)
Diana Urbano (Faculdade de Engenharia
da Universidade do Porto, Portugal)
Julie Linsey (Georgia Institute of
Technology, United States)
John Mativo (University Of Georgia,
United States)
Victor F. A. Barros (Science and Education
Research Council, Portugal)
Robert Weissbach (Penn State Erie, The
Behrend College, United States)
Michael DeAntonio (New Mexico State
University, United States)
Richard Layton (Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology, United States)
Paul Anderson (College of Charleston,
United States)
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xlviii
Code
Title
Start time
Room
Chair
Recruiting and Retaining Female Students to
Lecia Barker (University of Texas, United
GDI2
2:30 PM
Patio 1
Engineering and Computer Science
States)
Evaluating the Flipped Classroom
Pramod Pathak (National College of
HFC1
2:30 PM
Escudo
Experience
Ireland, Ireland)
International Approaches to Teaching
Charles Wallace (Michigan Technological
PRO2
2:30 PM Comendador
Professional Skills
University, United States)
Leveraging Student-centric Learning in
Aubrie L Pfirman (Clemson University,
SCL2
2:30 PM
Alcalá
Practice
United States)
The Teaching and Learning Experience in
Vu Nguyen (University of Science,
TLE2
2:30 PM
La Galería
Computing
Vietnam)
Supporting Computer Based Learning
Jinghua Zhang (Winston-Salem State
CBL3
4:30 PM
Patio 3
University, United States)
Computer Science and Software
Jaspal Subhlok (University of Houston,
CUR1
4:30 PM
Doblon
Engineering Curricula Design 1
United States)
Massively Open On-line Courses: Then and
Manuel Castro (Spanish University for
DIS1
4:30 PM
Escudo
Now
Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Programming and Game Based Learning
Leônidas O Brandão (University of São
GBL1
4:30 PM
La Granja
Paulo, Brazil)
Developing a Diverse and Inclusive Faculty
DeLois Kijana Crawford (Rochester
GDI3
4:30 PM
Patio 1
Institute of Technology, United States)
Assessing Student Professional Skills
Jesus Alfonso Perez Gama (IEEE Life
PRO3
4:30 PM Comendador Senior Member - LMAG Colombia Chair,
Colombia)
Student-centric Learning, Beyond the
Jenni Rikala (University of Jyväskylä,
SCL3
4:30 PM
Alcalá
Classroom
Finland)
Enhancing the Teaching and Learning
Wilhelm Friess (University of Maine,
TLE3
4:30 PM
La Galería
Experience
United States)
Creativity and Innovativeness in
Stuart Kellogg (South Dakota School of
EER4
9:00 AM
Aranjuez
Engineering
Mines and Technology, United States)
First Year Engineering 2
Catherine E. Brawner (Research Triangle
FYE2
9:00 AM
Doblon
Educational Consultants, United States)
Diverse Perspectives on Game Based
Oscar Coltell (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
GBL3
9:00 AM
La Granja
Learning
Overcoming Gender, Diversity, and
Oladipo Onipede (Penn State Erie, The
GDI4
9:00 AM
Patio 1
Inclusivity as Barriers to Education
Behrend College, United States)
Techniques and Tools to Teach Professional
Karl O. Jones (Liverpool John Moores
PRO4
9:00 AM Comendador
Skills
University, United Kingdom)
Exploring Learning Opportunities using
Hamadou Saliah-hassane (TELUQ REM2
9:00 AM
Escudo
Remote Laboratories
University of Quebec, Canada)
Student-centric Learning in Engineering
Jordi Fortuny-Santos (Universitat
SCL5
9:00 AM
Alcalá
Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Developing Professional Competencies
Venky Shankararaman (Singapore
TLE4
9:00 AM
La Galería
Management University, Singapore)
Models and Methods in Computer Based
Pramod Abichandani (Drexel University,
CBL5
11:00 AM
Patio 3
Learning
United States)
Modeling and Predicting Student Behavior
Laura R. Hanlan (Worcester Polytechnic
EER5
11:00 AM
Aranjuez
Institute, United States)
Flipped Classroom in Practice
Luis M. Sanchez Ruiz (Universitat
HFC2
11:00 AM
Escudo
Politècnica de València, Spain)
Research and Practice in Precollege
Mary M Capraro (Texas A&M University,
PRE1
11:00 AM Comendador
Education
United States)
Student Retention and Persistence
Lisa Zidek (Florida Gulf Coast University,
SBM1
11:00 AM
Patio 1
United States)
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
xlix
Code
SCL4
TLE5
ASM1
CUR3
DIS2
EER6
FAC3
PRE2
SBM2
SCL6
TLE6
DIS3
EER7
FAC2
Title
Reflection and Student-centric Learning
What do We Teach and How do Students
Learn?
Novel Assessment Approaches
Civil, Chemical, and Mechanical
Engineering Curricula Design
Assessing Student Success Factors in
Distance Learning
Engineering Education Research Methods
and Methodologies
Faculty Development: Initiatives and
Research
Programs and Activities in Precollege
Education
Student Motivation
Impact of Student-centric Learning
Technologies and Practices for Teaching
and Learning Engineering
Distance Education in Multiple Disciplines
Reflection and Metacognition
Supporting and Empowering Faculty
Measuring the Outcomes of Precollege
Education
Student Beliefs, Motivation, and Persistence
SBM3
Through the College Years
Problem Solving, Mathematics and Design
EER8
PRE3
Start time
Room
11:00 AM
Alcalá
11:00 AM
La Galería
2:30 PM
Patio 3
2:30 PM
Doblon
2:30 PM
Escudo
2:30 PM
Aranjuez
2:30 PM
La Granja
2:30 PM
Comendador
2:30 PM
Patio 1
2:30 PM
Alcalá
2:30 PM
La Galería
5:00 PM
Escudo
5:00 PM
Aranjuez
5:00 PM
La Granja
5:00 PM
Comendador
5:00 PM
Patio 1
9:00 AM
Aranjuez
Delivery Techniques for Precollege
9:00 AM Comendador
Education
Student Beliefs, Motivation, and Persistence
SBM4 in Precollege and the First Year of
9:00 AM
Patio 1
University Study
The Capstone Experience
CAP1
11:00 AM
Alcalá
PRE4
DIS5
LAN1
PRE5
SBM5
CSE1
EER9
Computer Tools for Distance Education 2
Assessing Student Performance Using
Learning Analytics
Teachers in Precollege Education
Pathways into Engineering and Computer
Science Education
Learning to Program
Creating Successful Teams
11:00 AM
Escudo
11:00 AM
La Granja
11:00 AM Comendador
11:00 AM
Patio 1
2:30 PM
Alcalá
2:30 PM
Aranjuez
Chair
Robert Craig (PETROLEUM INSTITUTE,
UAE)
Diana Bairaktarova (University of
Oklahoma, United States)
Jia-Ling Lin (University of Minnesota
Twin Cities, United States)
Alicia Triviño (University of Malaga,
Spain)
Anurima Chatterjee (Educational
Initiatives Pvt. Ltd., India)
Adam R Carberry (Arizona State
University, United States)
Uma Garimella (Nalla Malla Reddy
Engineering College, India)
Rosa Maria Vasconcelos (Minho
University, Portugal)
Margaret D Sullivan (Mathematica Policy
Research, United States)
James Widmann (California Polytechnic
State University, United States)
Adrian Rusu (Rowan University, United
States)
Bridget Benson (Cal Poly, San Luis
Obispo, United States)
Chris Venters (East Carolina University,
United States)
Luis Amaral (University of Minho,
Portugal)
David Reeping (Ohio Northern University,
United States)
Rodany A Merida (University of the East,
Philippines)
Robert M Capraro (Texas A&M
University, United States)
Ann Kaiser (La Salle Academy, United
States)
Eugenia Fernandez (Indiana UniversityPurdue University Indianapolis, United
States)
Vasiliki Ikonomidou (George Mason
University, United States)
Hector R. Amado-Salvatierra (Universidad
Galileo, Guatemala)
Cory Brozina (Virginia Tech, United
States)
Nancy K DeJarnette (Rowan University,
United States)
Tom G McEwan (Edinburgh Napier
University, United Kingdom)
Juan M Montero (Universidad Politecnica
de Madrid, Spain)
Susan Nolen (University of Washington,
United States)
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
l
Code
ENT1
OER1
CUR7
ENT2
Title
Cultural Dimensions in Entrepreneurship
Evaluating Open Educational Resources
Experiences in Curriculum Design
Exploring the limits of Entrepreneurship
Tools and Techniques for Learning
LAN3 Analytics 2
MAT1
Mathematics in Engineering and Computer
Science
Start time
Room
2:30 PM
Patio 1
2:30 PM
Escudo
4:30 PM
Doblon
4:30 PM
Patio 1
4:30 PM
4:30 PM
Chair
Andrew O. Brightman (Purdue University,
United States)
William Jobe (Stockholm University,
Sweden)
Ziming (Tom) Qi (Otago Polytechnic, New
Zealand)
Kavi Arya (IIT Bombay, India)
Mariluz Guenaga (Deusto Institute of
La Granja Technology - DeustoTech, University of
Deusto, Spain)
Duane F Shell (University of NebraskaComendador
Lincoln, United States)
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
li
SESSION GRID – WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22ND
2:00 PM
6:00 PM
El Jardin
Alcalá
1A: Your Data
Deserve
Better than
Pies and Bars:
An R Graphics
Workshop for
the Timid
1B:
Evaluability
Assessment
for
Engineering
Educators
2A: Developing
and
Evaluating
Active
Learning
Classroom
Experiences
with Tablet
PCs and Slate
Devices
2B:
Qualifying
Qualitative
Research
Quality
(The Q3
Project): An
interactive
discourse
around
research
quality in
interpretive
approaches
to
engineering
education
Patio 1
1C: Training
Student in
Responsibility
for Their Own
Learning: True
Student
Centered
Learning
2C: Using and
Disseminating a
Taxonomy for
Engineering
Education
Research
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Comendador
1D: Using
Community
Engagement
to Teach
Engineering
and
Computing
2D: Simulink for
Project-Based
Learning using LEGO
MINDSTORMS NXT
and
MATLAB & Simulink
with Raspberry Pi - A
hands-on workshop on
hardware support
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
lii
SESSION GRID – THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23RD
Alcalá
11:00 AM
2:30 PM
4:30 PM
SCL1:
Inspiring
Learning in
Different
Domains
through
Studentcentric
Learning
Aranjuez
EER1:
Research on
Blended
Learning
Environments
SCL2:
Leveraging
Studentcentric
Learning in
Practice
EER2:
Dissemination
of Research
and Teaching
Innovations
SCL3:
Studentcentric
Learning,
Beyond the
Classroom
EER3: Diverse
Perspectives
and
Experiences
in Engineering
and Computer
Science
Comendador
Doblon
El Escorial
El Jardin
CUR: Setting
the stage for
CE2016: A
Revised
Body of
Knowledge
EER: How do
we talk about
impact?:
Engineering
education
change
language
beyond
"dissemination"
HFC1:
Evaluating the
Flipped
Classroom
Experience
DIS1:
Massively
Open On-line
Courses: Then
and Now
PRO1:
Developing
Technical
Communication
as a
Professional
Skill
FYE1: First
Year
Engineering
1
PRO2:
International
Approaches to
Teaching
Professional
Skills
EEC1:
Electrical
and
Computer
Engineering
Courses
and
Laboratories
EER:
eMadrid
Network
SCL: Mini
Workshop Developing
Engineers for
a Changing
World through
Modeling and
Simulation based
Pedagogy
PRO3:
Assessing
Student
Professional
Skills
CUR1:
Computer
Science
and
Software
Engineering
Curricula
Design 1
MINI WS: To
what extent
can
instructors
influence
student
motivation in
the
classroom?
TLE:
Improvisation
as a Tool to
Develop
Creativity
Escudo
REM1: Remote
Laboratories,
implementation
and evaluation
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
La Galeria
La Granja
Patio 1
Patio 3
PHI1:
Philosophy
of
Engineering
Education
GDI1:
Overcoming
Stereotypes to
Help Students
Succeed in
Engineering and
Computer
Science
Education
CBL1:
Developing
professionals
TLE2: The
Teaching and
Learning
Experience in
Computing
GBL2:
Advances in
Game Based
Learning
GDI2: Recruiting
and Retaining
Female
Students to
Engineering and
Computer
Science
CBL2:
Systems
and
Standards
for
Computer
Based
Learning
TLE3:
Enhancing the
Teaching and
Learning
Experience
GBL1:
Programming
and Game
Based
Learning
GDI3:
Developing a
Diverse and
Inclusive Faculty
CBL3:
Supporting
Computer
Based
Learning
TLE1:
Increasing the
Relevance in
Teaching and
Learning
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
liii
SESSION GRID – FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24TH
Alcalá
Comendador
Doblon
El Escorial
9:00 AM
SCL5:
EER4:
Studentcentric Creativity and
Learning in Innovativeness
Engineering in Engineering
PRO4:
Techniques
and Tools to
Teach
Professional
Skills
FYE2: First
Year
Engineering
2
ETH:
Defining and
Assessing
Engineering
Ethics in an
International
Context
MINI WS:
Inquiry Based
REM2:
Learning
Exploring
Activities:
Learning
Hands on
Opportunities
Activities to
using Remote
Improve
Laboratories
Conceptual
Understanding
11:00 AM
SCL4:
Reflection
and
Studentcentric
Learning
PRE1:
Research and
Practice in
Precolleger
Education
CUR2:
Computer
Science
and
Software
Engineering
Curricula
Design 2
GDI: Special
Session "Stereotype
Threat" and
my
Students:
What can I
do about it?
Pursuing the
Frontiers: The
TLE5: What do GBL4: Game
History and HFC2: Flipped We Teach and
Based
Future of the
Classroom in
How do
Learning,
Frontiers in
Practice
Students
Theory and
Education
Learn?
Applications
Conference
PRE2:
Programs and
Activities in
Precollege
Education
CUR3: Civil,
Chemical
and
Mechanical
Engineering
Curricula
Design
EER/SCL:
Designing
and Refining
Reflection
Activities for
Engineering
Education
PRE3:
EER7:
Measuring the
Reflection and Outcomes of
Metacognition
Precollege
Education
CUR4:
Using
Learning
Theories to
Guide
Curriculum
Design
2:30 PM
5:00 PM
Aranjuez
EER5:
Modeling and
Predicting
Student
Behavior
EER6:
SCL6:
Engineering
Impact of
Education
Studentcentric
Research
Learning
Methods and
Methodologies
SER1:
Explorations
in Service
Learning
El Jardin
INT: Special
Session:
Potential
Futures for
Engineering
Education
through
Scenario
Planning
Escudo
DIS2:
Assessing
Student
Success
Factors in
Distance
Learning
MINI WS:
PHI: Special
Special Session
Session:
on Design &
Agents for
DIS3: Distance
Failure: How STEM Change Education in
Philosophy and Articulating
Multiple
Belief Impact
the Goals of
Disciplines
Design
Our
Education
Community
978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
La Galeria
La Granja
Patio 1
Patio 3
TLE4:
Developing
Professional
Competencies
GBL3:
Diverse
Perspectives
on Game
Based
Learning
GDI4:
Overcoming
Gender
Diversity, and
Inclusivity as
Barriers to
Education
CBL4Case
Studies in
Computer
Based
Learning
SBM1: Student
Retention and
Persistence
CBL5:
Models and
Methods in
Computer
Based
Learning
TLE6:
Technologies
and Practices
for Teaching
and Learning
Engineering
FAC3:
Faculty
Development: SBM2: Student
Initiatives
Motivation
and
Research
ASM1: Novel
Assessment
Approaches
TLE7:
Improving
Academic
Experiences
SBM3: Student
FAC2:
Beliefs,
Supporting
Motivation, and
and
Persistence
Empowering
Through the
Faculty
College Years
ASM2: Uses
of
Assessment
to Promote
Learning
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
liv
SESSION GRID – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25TH
9:00
AM
11:00
AM
2:30
PM
4:30
PM
Alcalá
Aranjuez
Comendador
Doblon
SER2:
Service
Learning
Challenges
EER8:
Problem
Solving,
Mathematics
and Design
PRE4: Delivery
Techniques for
Precollege
Education
CSC1:
Computer
Science
Teaching
El Escorial
CAP1: The
Capstone
Experience
EER10: OutofSchool
Time Learning
Communities
PRE5:
Teachers in
Precollege
Education
CUR5:
Global
Experiences
in
Curriculum
Design
CSE1:
Learning to
Program
EER9:
Creating
Successful
Teams
PRE6:
Diversity in
Precollege
Education
CUR6:
Mathematics
and
Science
Curricula
Design
CSE2:
Innovation
in
Computing
Education
MINI WS:
Beyond
Reflection:
Using
Discourse
Analysis to
Understand
Classroom
Culture
MAT1:
Mathematics
in Engineering
and Computer
Science
CUR7:
Experiences
in
Curriculum
Design
SS3:
Building
dispositions
towards
models and
modelbased
reasoning in
engineering
education
SER: STEM
Education
Outreach
through
IEEE's PreUniversity
Programs Engaging
volunteers
to benefit K12 education
and local
communities
MINI WS:
Quality
Course
Development
for Online
Learning
El Jardin
Escudo
La Galeria
La Granja
Patio 1
Patio 3
DIS4:
Computer
Tools for
Distance
Education 1
INT1:
International
Dimensions of
Engineering
Education
FAC1:
Faculty
Roles
SBM4: Student
Beliefs,
Motivation, and
Persistence in
Precollege and
the First Year of
University Study
ASM3:
Evaluation
of
Assessment
Approaches
and
Instruments
MINI WS: A
StudentDIS5:
Centered
Computer
Approach to
Tools for
Designing
Distance
Teaming
Education 2
Experiences
PWI1:
Challenges
and
Opportunities
in Partnering
with Industry
LAN1:
Assessing
Student
Performance
Using
Learning
Analytics
SBM5: Pathways
into Engineering
and Computer
Science
Education
ASM4:
Assessment
in
Engineering
and
Computer
Science
LAN2: Tools
and
Techniques
for Learning
Analytics 1
ENT1: Cultural
Dimensions in
Entrepreneurship
DES1: Novel
Approaches
for Teaching
Design
LAN3: Tools
and
Techniques
for Learning
Analytics 2
ENT2: Exploring
the limits of
Entrepreneurship
DES2:
Design (and
Design
Learning) as
a Process
MINI WS:
Helping
OER1:
Students to
Evaluating
IDP1:
Learn to Use
Open
Interdisciplinary
Diagramming Educational
Learning
as a Problem Resources
Solving Tool
OER2:
MINI WS:
Platforms
Building
and
Diversity by
Technologies
Embracing
for Open
Intellectual
Educational
Diversity
Resources
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EDT1:
Technology
Enhanced
Learning
Experiences
October 22-25, 2014 Madrid, Spain
2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference
lv
TECHNICAL SESSIONS
Wednesday, October 22nd
1A: Your Data Deserve Better than Pies and Bars: An R Graphics Workshop for the Timid
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Room: El Jardin
YOUR DATA DESERVE BETTER THAN PIES AND BARS: AN R GRAPHICS WORKSHOP FOR THE TIMID
Richard Layton (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA)
Conventional data displays such as pie charts, bar charts, and tables are generally ineffective at communicating the logic
of an argument. Effective alternatives exist are less well-known. Reasons for the prevalence of pie charts, bar charts, and
tables include: they are native to Office software; engineers and engineering educators generally lack training in visual
rhetoric; new designs require additional work and technical skill of the author; and audiences resist change. This
workshop addresses some of these barriers to change. The superior alternative to pie charts, bar charts, and (some) tables
is the dot plot, a display type absent from Office but native to R, an open-source software environment originating in the
statistics community. Workshop participants learn why dot plots are effective and how to create them using R. The
workshop is designed for R beginners. The agenda includes active learning, demonstration, and discussion.
Programming topics are developed using self-paced tutorials. Participants, from any discipline, interested in learning
why and how to improve their graphical communication of quantitative data are welcome. Participants should bring
wireless-capable laptops. After completing the workshop, participants should be able to describe the limitations of pie
charts, bar charts, and tables, cite principles underlying more effective graphs, and use R to create dot plots. By
developing participants' technical skills and rhetorical skills in this way, we serve the greater goal of improving their
abilities to explore data and communicate findings, helping them use the logic of a display design to better support the
logic of their argument.
1B: Evaluability Assessment for Engineering Educators
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
EVALUABILITY ASSESSMENT FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATORS
Michael S. Trevisan (Washington State University, USA)
Tamara Walser (University of North Carolina-Wilmington, USA)
Evaluability assessment (EA) is used to determine the readiness of a program for outcome evaluation. For engineering
educators, obtaining meaningful outcome evaluation findings can be illusive. Determining whether a program is ready
for such an evaluation, has critical importance, particularly as expectations for engineering education programs to have
real impact, continue to increase. EA use is on the rise both nationally and internally with vibrancy in its application
across a wide variety of disciplines and programs. Its use has expanded to include formative evaluation, implementation
assessment, evaluation planning, program development, and technical assistance. EA is also being used to increase
stakeholder involvement, understand program culture and context, facilitate organizational learning and evaluation
capacity building. However, there continues to be ambiguity and uncertainty about the method. Although several EA
models exist, the essential elements of EA include focusing the EA, developing a program theory, gathering feedback on
program theory, and using the EA. In this workshop, a modern model of EA will be presented that incorporates the
essential elements of EA with current evaluation theory and practice. Participants will learn the "What, Why, and How"
vantages of conducting an EA. How:
Participants will learn how to implement the EA model presented. Participants will be exposed to a variety of case
examples that illustrate features of EA that show how EA can be used across disciplines. Brief video clips of evaluators
will be presented to illustrate for participants how evaluators developed and carried out EA projects, issues that arose and
how they were dealt with, and unique aspects that emerged in each EA. Participants will also engage in application
exercises and related discussion to practice implementing the EA model. These exercises will come from actual
engineering education projects and programs, clearly illustrating application of EA for engineering educators. We will
administer a pre-workshop questionnaire to identify participant characteristics and prior experience with and interest in
EA to better tailor the workshop to participant needs.
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1C: Training Student in Responsibility for Their Own Learning: True Student Centered Learning
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Room: Patio 1
TRAINING STUDENT IN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN LEARNING: TRUE STUDENT CENTERED
LEARNING
Peter Shull (Penn State University, USA)
I often hear faculty speak of students not taking responsibility. We all have students who do not read the assignments,
miss or turn in incomplete homework, or do not actively participating in lab assignments and still expect a good grade!.
Simply put, more and more students are not taking responsibility for their own learning. But I don't believe that the
reason is because students don't want to do so. My question is "So, what are we (faculty) going to do about it?" Usually
the answer I get is "It's their responsibility, they are in college!" This common faculty response reminds me of Einstein's
definition of insanity: "Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert
Einstein This highly interactive workshop is about doing something different—providing faculty with proven tools that
instill student responsibility for their own learning. The workshop will focus on pragmatic and effective methods that
create a clear and common understanding of what is meant by student responsibility for learning. It will clarify both
effective and ineffective behaviors of both students and faculty, and how to instill these skills. Specific active and
experiential lessons will be presented in a highly animated format. The methods used rely on common engineering tools
such as the engineering design process—although here it is used as a metacognitive learning tool. This direct connection
to engineering increases buy-in from students who are reluctant to learn "non-engineering" material and increase the ease
for faculty to teach the material. In our implementation of these methods, we have found benefits to both students (e.g.,
increased student engagement/learning and more effective teamwork) and faculty (e.g., increased coverage of material
and a dramatic decrease in student complaints). This workshop is for anyone who believes "I know students can do
better, I just don't know how to make it happen." Or for those who simply want to dramatically reduce student
complaints or excuses in a positive way.
1D: Using Community Engagement to Teach Engineering and Computing
2:00 - 5:00 PM
Room: Comendador
USING COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT TO TEACH ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Goal(s) Introduce participants to the pedagogy of community engagement Explore how community engagement could be
integrated into their curriculum It is an innovative pedagogy of FIE for more than a decade but is newer and growing
within the global community. Exploring community engagement will engage participant in discussion about
engagement, student learning, cultural issues and change within the academy. EPICS is a Signature Program of the
IEEE. Community engagement (service learning) is a growing pedagogy within engineering, and computing globally. It
is well-matched with calls for strong technical skills along with a broad set of professional and cultural skills that are
beings demanded by industry and accreditation bodies. It provides the kind of curricular efficiency to meet these broad
set of attributes without adding times to graduation. Community engagement has been used in many countries to provide
service to their communities and enhance learning. This workshop will guide faculty through an introduction to the
pedagogy and engage them in active discussions about how engagement is perceived and exists within different
countries' cultures. Resources, partnerships and potential barriers will be discussed to provide strategies for successful
implementation. Successful models will be presented and discussed. The facilitators have conducted more than 70
workshops on six continents. William Oakes, P.E. is the Director of the EPICS Program at Purdue University, one of the
founding faculty members of the School of Engineering Education He was the first engineer to win the Campus Compact
Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award for Service-Learning and was a co-recipient of the 2005 National Academy of
Engineering's Bernard Gordon Prize for Innovation in Engineering and Technology Education. Carla Zoltowski, Ph.D.,
is the Co-Director of EPICS at Purdue University. She has been recognized at Purdue for her leadership within
community engagement. She has published on her research on design education, ethics in engineering and computing
and the experience of community engagement. AGENDA •Introduction •Needs assessment •Getting started, what are the
first steps •Course and curriculum issues •Break •Maximizing Learning with Reflection •Assessing student learning
•Developing partnerships - •Building institutional support •Tools and resources •Sharing of Models •Discussions
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•evaluation Current and future engineering, and computing educators interested in multidisciplinary teams, diversity
innovation, design education, community engagement and service learning will find this workshop valuable. Audience
up to 40. Participants will leave with an understanding of community engagement and its benefits within the curriculum.
They will leave with example materials for assessment, reflection, design and teamwork/leadership development and
ethics from the EPICS Program. The workshop is designed for each participant to work through an customized plan to
adapt the curriculum for their own institution. Discussion of the plans will leave participants with ideas and critiques of
their plans along with a network of other participants who are interested in similar work. They will also be provided
contact information for staff in the EPICS Program who can provide additional materials and support for their work.
2A: Developing and Evaluating Active Learning Classroom Experiences with Tablet PCs and Slate Devices
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Room: El Jardin
DEVELOPING AND EVALUATING ACTIVE LEARNING CLASSROOM EXPERIENCES WITH TABLET PCS
AND SLATE DEVICES
Joseph G Tront (Virginia Tech, USA)
Flora McMartin (Broad-based Knowledge, USA)
Using Tablet PCs, instructors are able to increase their effectiveness by making more dynamic presentations and by
incorporating active exercises into their classroom environments. Tablet PCs also enable better and more natural notetaking by students and easier after-class review of course material and notes. Students participating in classrooms from
remote locations can more easily be engaged since they are able exchanging visual descriptions of concepts with the
instructor and the rest of the class. Several software packages are available to support the pedagogical needs of the
university classroom as well as typical group collaborative environments. Classroom Presenter, DyKnow, LectureTools,
and OneNote with the Math Addin are examples packages to be discussed. In this hands-on tutorial faculty will receive
an introduction to the use of several tablet-based teaching tools. We will show faculty pedagogical practices that we find
helpful in using technology tools in the classroom. Faculty will be tasked with developing short active learning exercises
starting from the development of goals for the exercise, through the desired student interaction, and ending with the
exercise assessment and improvement strategies. Tutorial participants: • Will be able to use Tablet PCs to significantly
enhance the teacher-student and student-student interaction in the engineering learning environment. • Will have the
understanding of how to transform their classrooms into a much more active learning environment. • Will be able to
evaluate the effectiveness of the course transformations produced by the introduction of the Tablet PC and new
pedagogical techniques as related to the overall course learning objectives. Intended Audience Faculty members from a
broad spectrum of disciplines can benefit from attending this tutorial. The desire to improve teaching and learning
through the appropriate use technology is the only prerequisite. The tutorial will be at a level that will allow faculty
members who have a minimum of technology training to participate. Presenters: Joseph G. Tront, Virginia Tech,
jgtront@vt.edu, 540-231-5067 Presenter's Qualifications Dr. Joseph G. Tront is a professor in the Bradley Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech and Director of Education for the Hume Center. In 2005, Dr.
Tront won the Excalibur Award for Excellence in Teaching with Technology, in 2007 the Laureate Award from The
Computerworld Honors Program, and in 2008 he the W.S."Pete" White Award for Innovation in Teaching. He is
currently the W.S. Pete White Chair for Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. He has presented this workshop at over
50 venues in the US and abroad. Dr. Flora McMartin is the president of Broad-based Knowledge, LLC, a company that
provides consulting services on program and product assessment and evaluation. She has worked on multiple NSF and
privately funded efforts to build DLs and online communities including: SMETE.org, MERLOT, Apple Learning
Initiative and KEN -Knowledge Exchange Network. She is currently working on grants to examine online idea sharing
as a dissemination mechanism, an effort to understand how to use reward mechanisms to positively influence faculty
teaching behaviors, and a study of how students use the contents of digital libraries.
2B: Qualifying Qualitative Research Quality (The Q3 Project): An interactive discourse around research quality in
interpretive approaches to engineering education research
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
QUALIFYING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH QUALITY (THE Q3 PROJECT): AN INTERACTIVE DISCOURSE
AROUND RESEARCH QUALITY IN INTERPRETIVE APPROACHES TO ENGINEERING EDUCATION
RESEARCH
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Joachim Walther (University of Georgia, USA)
Nicola Sochacka (University of Georgia, USA)
This workshop is set against the context of a growing methodological diversity in the field of engineering education
research with a range of qualitative or ‘interpretive’ methods currently being adopted by the research community. This
mini-workshop will introduce participants to a theoreticalframework for ensuring quality in interpretive engineering
education research that was recently published in the Journal of Engineering Education. The framework will be
introduced as a lens and language for participants to actively explore their own conceptions and practices around
qualitative research quality.
2C: Using and Disseminating a Taxonomy for Engineering Education Research
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Room: Patio 1
USING AND DISSEMINATING A TAXONOMY FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION RESEARCH
Cynthia Finelli (University of Michigan, USA)
Golnoosh Rasoulifar (University of Michigan, USA)
Engineering education research is a broad-based, rapidly-evolving, diverse, interdisciplinary, and international field.
There is a clear need for a standardized terminology and organizational system - a set of keywords - to map the field and
communicate research initiatives. Such a taxonomy could provide multiple benefits, including: better connections
between research and researchers; more accessible research results, recognition for and identification of emerging
research areas, a way to describe the diversity of engineering education research areas, and a common terminology with
which researchers could frame their efforts. The goals of our NSF-funded project, then, are two-fold: (1) to develop a
comprehensive taxonomy of keywords that could be used to describe engineering education research projects,
publications, authors, and peer reviewers, and (2) to establish an inclusive process for developing the taxonomy that
invited the participation of the diverse global community. To achieve our project goals, we used an iterative process to
develop and refine a taxonomy of keywords which involved a variety of stakeholders in multiple settings. We were
assisted in our efforts by a professional taxonomist and supported by an advisory board that included ten engineering
education leaders and editors of several engineering education journals. We intentionally designed an inclusive process,
involving faculty, administrators, and graduate students from across the world, and we used this opportunity to develop a
globally-relevant taxonomy for use in the United States. We issued open calls for participation and advertised broadly for
key opportunities to be involved. We created transparent selection processes, criteria that encouraged diversity, and
engaging activities that de-emphasized hierarchy and privilege of particular research areas. At workshops and conference
sessions, we adapted activities to be relevant in the local context for engineering education research. To date, our
activities have engaged more than 220 participants from 30 different countries at in-person workshops and conference
sessions. Through a process of iterative community engagement and review by a professional taxonomy firm, we drafted
multiple versions of the taxonomy. The sixth/current version of the taxonomy includes 14 categories and five levels of
organization for the 452 terms. At this session, participants will engage in a series of activities to use the taxonomy and
to suggest ways to ensure its widespread dissemination. Interested participants at any experience level are encouraged to
join this dialogue.
2D: Simulink for Project-Based Learning using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and MATLAB & Simulink with
Raspberry Pi - A hands-on workshop on hardware support
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Room: Comendador
SIMULINK FOR PROJECT-BASED LEARNING USING LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT
Mathworks
MATLAB & SIMULINK WITH RASPBERRY PI - A HANDS-ON WORKSHOP ON HARDWARE SUPPORT
Mathworks
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Thursday, October 23
CBL1: Developing professionals
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Patio 3
MERLIN-KNOW, AN INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL TEACHER FOR IMPROVING LEARNING IN MOODLE
Raquel Hijon-Neira (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Celeste Pizarro-Romero (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Luís Carriço (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
When teaching in university courses, one of the main problems is the students' lack of motivation for everyday study.
Learning management systems (LMS) provide a set of tools that students must handle to follow the course, but usually
students need additional aid to effectively mastering these tools. We present here Merlin-Know, a new module for the
Moodle LMS to help students do extra work and reviewing on-line. It is based on a virtual teacher who guides, motivates
and encourages students. We also show two kinds of evaluation. First, the system was used for revising the activities of
students along the semester. We conclude that Merlin-Know has a statistically positive influence on students' learning
outcomes, obtaining a positive correlation for all difficulty levels. Second, we conducted a usability evaluation to assess
the acceptance by students' and to detect ways of improvement. Average students said that Merlin-Know was useful and
helped them to be more effective and productive, it was easy to learn and use and it has a friendly interface, and they
easily remembered how to use it.
MANAGING AND ASSESSING GROUP WORK FROM A DISTANCE
Alvaro Figueira (University of Porto, Portugal)
Rui Pereira (University of Porto, Portugal)
Group work is an essential activity during both graduate and undergraduate formation. Students develop a set of skills,
and employ criticism which helps them to better handle future interpersonal situations. There is a vast theoretical
literature and numerous case studies about group work, but we haven't yet seen much development concerning the
assessment of individual group participants. It is not always easy to have the perception of each student contribution to
the whole work. Nevertheless, more than frequently, the assessment of the group is transposed to each group participant,
which in turn results in each student having the same final mark. We propose and describe a tool to manage and assess
individual group work taking into account the amount of work, interaction, quality, and the temporal evolution of each
group participant. The module features the possibility to create two types of activities: collaborative or cooperative group
work. We describe the conceptual design of our tool and present the two operating modes of the module, which is based
on events, alerts and conditions. We then describe the methodology for the assessment in the two operating modes and
how these two major approaches can be deployed through our module into pedagogical situations.
A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH TO USE TECHNOLOGICAL SUPPORT ON TEACHING AND LEARNING
DATA STRUCTURES
Ronaldo Correia (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)
Rogério Garcia (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)
Celso Olivete Junior (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)
Analice C. Brandi (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)
Guilherme Cardim (Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil)
The Data Structure discipline consists on studying data organization in computer memory, primary and secondary ones.
Data access and structure must be performed in a suitable way, considering space and time constraints. Data structures
are organized using conceptual and behavioral issues that require high degree of abstract representation. In order to
improve the comprehension, students must have consolidated the knowledge about data structures before any practical
activity. It has been observed significant difficulty, by students, to understand the abstract concepts related, which is
remarkable during practical tasks. In fact, practical tasks are essential to consolidate knowledge about data structures, but
the students need support to understand the abstract concepts previously practical tasks. There are several works in
literature showing tools to support conceptual and behavior comprehension, each one with specific features. However,
the tools by themselves are not enough, dealing with specific data structure, with severe constraint. In literature, some
tools are presented using case studies specific to the data structures supported. And we observed that the tools are
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presents focusing on their functionalities (the case studies are designed to explore such functionalities). Also, we
observed the lack of a methodological approach to incorporate tools in a learning process effectively. In this scenario, we
address the use of technological support to teaching-learning process. We propose a methodology based on
constructionism, in which students, tasks (home works) and tools are coordinated by a teacher in favor of knowledge
construction. In order to present our methodology, we use a learning tool, named CADILAG, developed using visual
resources to support students understand data structures concepts. The visual resources aid the student to learn abstract
concepts easier, in comparison to imagining how data structures algorithms work - students are able to simulate data
structures operations and, then, to have their own reflection about the algorithm. We used the developed tool during the
teaching process at São Paulo State University (UNESP), applying the methodology proposed for two years. The
positive results are observed in students grades and their evaluation. Also, according to the teacher, the students have
shown interest and more motivation.
BUILDING SCORM EMBEDDED WEBLABS WITH LMS INTERACTION
Ildefonso Ruano Ruano (University of Jaen, Spain)
Javier Gámez García (University of Jaen, Spain)
Juan Gómez Ortega (University of Jaen, Spain)
This paper outlines a new procedure for building educational Web Laboratories (WebLabs). These WebLabs are based
on JAVA and are offered to learners from Learning Management Systems (LMSs). The Virtual-Remote Laboratories
(VRL) are JAVA Applets embedded in Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) packages that are able to
interact with the LMS where they are hosted. This interaction is based on the exchange of information defined by the
Run-Time Environment (RTE) and the Run-Time Navigation (RTN) SCORM data models. Both models are managed by
the LMS where the SCORM content has been loaded. There are three types of data: read-only, write-only and read/write.
In addition, a new JAVA package called scormRTE is presented; it has been developed to facilitate the VRL-LMS
information exchange. This package enables a JAVA applet to manipulate directly all the elements of RTN and RTE
data models. For the validation, a VRL, created with Easy Java Simulations (EJS), has been developed using this
proposal. This VRL has been embedded into a SCORM package to build a virtual WebLab about dynamic system
modeling. It's the modelling and identification of a car's suspension dynamics. This WebLab is used in several
Engineering Grades of the University of Jaén.
A SCORM BASED PACKAGE MODEL FOR WEBLABS
Ildefonso Ruano Ruano (University of Jaen, Spain)
Javier Gámez García (University of Jaen, Spain)
Sebastián Dormido (UNED, Spain)
Juan Gómez Ortega (University of Jaen, Spain)
Web Laboratories (WebLabs) are essential resources for engineering education. Within this type of laboratory, a new
Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) package design model is shown in this work. The proposed model
is based on a set of resources that form a complete educational structure; taking into account the sequencing and
navigation among the elements that compose it. In addition, it can be uploaded to a Learning Management System
(LMS), offering to the students an effective tool to work with web labs. The package is structured in 4 sections or pages:
Introduction, Theory, Virtual/Remote Laboratory (VRL) and Assessment; where the last performs an automated
verification of the work done by the learner. In this way, one of the advantage of this methodology is that the instant
results of the assessments, performed by the SCORM package, is stored in the inner LMS. Some WebLabs performing
this methodology are being developed in the University of Jaén. In this work, an example is developed: "Modelling of
Dynamic System: DC Motor". This WebLab is used in the Industrial Automation course that is included in several
Industrial Engineering degrees.
AUTHENTIC LEARNING IN NETWORK AND SECURITY WITH PORTABLE LABS
Dan Lo (Southern Polytechnic State University, USA)
Kai Qian (Southern Polytechnic State University, USA)
Wei Chen (Tennessee State University, USA)
Hossain Shahriar (Kennesaw State University, USA)
Victor Clincy (Kennesaw State University, USA)
This paper is addressing the challenges of incorporating networking and security concepts into effective teaching and
learning platform (PLab) that highlights real-world technical issues. PLab is an innovative portable learning platform that
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allows network applications to be safely tested. The isolated network without the need for a server promotes learning at
anytime and anywhere. The strong connection between academic subjects and reality and digital-native students'
everyday lives engages students in learning this emerging field, and better prepares students for the high industrial
demands in mobile application development workforce. Moreover, this pedagogical model will help faculty develop
expertise in the latest development of networking and security. The modular labware is designed to offer faculty the
flexibility to implement it in many existing courses. Curricular materials will be delivered on Google cloud for its
sustainability. This "ready-to-adopt" model will greatly save resources and time for enhancing modern networking and
security education to meet the emerging workforce.
CUR: Setting the stage for CE2016: A Revised Body of Knowledge
Chair: Eti de Vries
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: El Escorial
SETTING THE STAGE FOR CE2016 A REVISED BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
Eric Durant (Milwaukee School of Engineering, USA)
John Impagliazzo (Hofstra University, USA)
Susan Conry (Clarkson University, USA)
Robert Reese (Mississippi State University, USA)
Mitchell A Thornton (Southern Methodist University, USA)
Herman Lam (University of Florida, USA)
Victor Nelson (Auburn University, USA)
The audience will discuss the current state of the effort to update the 2004 document titled "Curriculum Guidelines for
Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Engineering," also known as CE2004. The presenters represent the ACM
and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS), which are leading the effort. They will engage participants on ways of
improving the body of knowledge so that the document reflects the state-of-the-art of computer engineering education
and practice that is relevant for the coming decade. *Goals* The goals of this session are to present the work of the
CE2016 task force, to solicit suggestions for improvement through audience participation, and to share results with the
professional community. *Session topics* In 2011, the ACM and the IEEE-CS created a task force and charged it with
reviewing and determining the extent to which the CE2004 document required revisions. Based on a survey of both
faculty and industry, the task force reported that moderate updates were required, primarily to add and remove topics
that, respectively, had grown and waned in importance since 2004. Progress since then includes identification of updates
to the structure and content of the body of knowledge (BOK) based on the survey results plus feedback received through
conference workshops and special sessions conducted in 2012 and 2013. This special session will summarize the process
and revisions to date and engage the audience on ways in which the updated report should evolve. *Agenda* 0:00-0:15:
Overview of CE2004 and summary of the updated BOK structure 0:15-0:25: Overview of key areas receiving initial or
significantly enhanced coverage: embedded systems, digital systems design, multicore, security, mobile and power
aware, software engineering, and verification and validation of computing systems 0:25-0:35: Upcoming milestones and
ways individuals can contribute to the process 0:35-1:05: Small group discussions among the audience participants: Are
the revised BOK areas reflective of current and emerging practice? Is the breadth and depth of coverage in the proposed
core appropriate for the coming decade? 1:05-1:20: Report feedback to all attendees 1:20-1:30: Questions and comments
from audience participants *Anticipated audience* Computer engineering educators and individuals interested in
computer engineering education *Expected outcomes or future work* The task force will incorporate the feedback
gathered at this special session into a draft of the next version of the guidelines document, which will become available
for community review. *Justification* The special session format will meet the dual goals of gathering knowledge from
the computer engineering community and sharing the results of the task force's work in progress. It is important that
IEEE-CS and ACM keep the curricular guidance documents current. Therefore, audience involvement for this
presentation is essential and FIE provides an optimal venue for this important event.
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EER: How do we talk about impact?: Engineering education change language beyond "dissemination"
11:00 AM - 12:30
Room: El Jardin
HOW DO WE TALK ABOUT IMPACT? ENGINEERING EDUCATION CHANGE LANGUAGE BEYOND
"DISSEMINATION"
Mel Chua (Purdue University, USA)
Robin Adams (Purdue University, USA)
Sally Fincher (University of Kent, United Kingdom)
Lynn Andrea Stein (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
When we discuss the "impact" of initiatives to transform engineering education, we often use that term as if it were
synonymous with quantifiable dissemination. It is easy to reach for familiar metrics and the framework of causality: how
many countable alumni, downloads, or citations can be unambiguously traced back to our efforts? However, it is also
valuable to step back and explore how we can expand the language we use to articulate the difference our work is
making in the world. This special session is an opportunity to collaboratively explore what such a dialogue might sound
like, and to practice engaging in it as it emerges. GOALS OF THE SESSION 1. Experience a variety of participation
architectures geared towards transformative learning and self-authorship. 2. Make sense of our own experiences running
and participating in engineering education change initiatives and connect them with the experiences of others. 3. Reflect
on the language we use to articulate "impact" and "success" when we describe our engineering education change
initiatives. DESCRIPTION OF CONTENT This special session explores the ways we discuss the "impact" of
engineering education change initiatives. The medium - an emergent, communicative experience - is also the message or
"learning objective," which is to explore alternatives to our usual framing of "impact" as "information dissemination."
Participants are encouraged to bring their own engineering education transformation initiatives and ideas to the table;
these can be projects they have engaged in as leaders and/or participants in the past, projects they plan to engage with in
the future, and blue-sky projects they dream of someday doing. Using an experience-first approach, we will examine
multiple alternative perspectives on what "impact" means. The vocabulary of self-authorship and transformative learning
[3] will be introduced as tools to think with as we alternate between hands-on activities and reflective dialogues. Since
the dialogue of participants reflecting on our language use is a goal of the workshop, we will use realtime transcription to
make-visible our habitual frames of reference for "impact" and our determining factors of "success," using our own
experiences and live transcripts of our discussions as "data" for co-analysis.
EER1: Research on Blended Learning Environments
Chair: Azim Abdool
11:00 AM - 12:30
Room: Aranjuez
E-PARTICIPATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION THE IMPORTANCE OF NON-TECHNICAL FACTORS AS
IDENTIFIED IN THE EU-PROJECT MYUNIVERSITY
Pooyeh Mobini (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Henrik Hansson (Stockholm University, Sweden)
E-participation not only covers the general participation of citizens, but also enables higher education decision makers to
communicate with all involved stakeholders. EU has funded projects in the area of e-participation in order to respond to
this emerging requirement. Lots of studies have been published about these projects. But they have mainly covered
technical aspects and less about non-technical challenges. In the present study, we have been trying to identify the nontechnical factors. The EU-funded project MyUniversity has been selected as a case study. Data collection was conducted
by means of recorded semi structured interviews with stakeholders. Data-analysis was done using a systematic coding of
audio files. The following non-technical factors were identified and analyzed as crucial for the success of e-participation
in higher education: 1) The socio-cultural context, 2) Identification of users, 3) Usability, drivers and motivation. The
study showed that deeper needs assessments locally at each university and "cultural studies" should not be neglected.
Moreover, each educational institute should use its own motivational techniques based on their cultural studies. This
study concludes that the "business strategies" used by EU for introducing e-participation projects in higher education,
need to be revised taking into account the identified issues.
USING TEXTUAL ANALYSIS WITH CONCEPT INVENTORIES TO IDENTIFY ROOT CAUSES OF
MISCONCEPTIONS
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Andrea Goncher (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Wageeh Boles (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Dhammika Jayalath (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Engineers must have deep and accurate conceptual understanding of their field and Concept inventories (CIs) are one
method of assessing conceptual understanding and providing formative feedback. Current CI tests use Multiple Choice
Questions (MCQ) to identify misconceptions and have undergone reliability and validity testing to assess conceptual
understanding. However, they do not readily provide the diagnostic information about students' reasoning and therefore
do not effectively point to specific actions that can be taken to improve student learning. We piloted the textual
component of our diagnostic CI on electrical engineering students using items from the signals and systems CI. We then
analysed the textual responses using automated lexical analysis software to test the effectiveness of these types of
software and interviewed the students regarding their experience using the textual component. Results from the
automated text analysis revealed that students held both incorrect and correct ideas for certain conceptual areas and
provided indications of student misconceptions. User feedback also revealed that the inclusion of the textual component
is helpful to students in assessing and reflecting on their own understanding.
"TAP IT AGAIN, SAM": HARMONIZING THE FRONTIERS BETWEEN DIGITAL AND REAL WORLDS IN
EDUCATION
Bernardo Tabuenca (Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands)
Marco Kalz (Open University of The Netherlands, The Netherlands)
Marcus Specht (Open University of the Netherlands, The Netherlands)
Lifelong leaners are intrinsically motivated to embed learning activities into daily life activities. Nevertheless, finding a
suitable combination of the two is not trivial since lifelong learners have to face conflicts of time and location. Hence,
lifelong learners normally build personal learning ecologies in those moments they set aside to learn making use of their
available resources. On the other hand, the advent of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology facilitates the
harmonization in the interactions between the digital world and daily physical spaces. Likewise, NFC enabled phones are
becoming more and more popular. The contribution of this manuscript is threefold: first, scientific literature where NFC
has been used with a direct or indirect purpose to learn is reviewed, and potential uses for lifelong learners are identified;
based on these findings the Ecology of Resources for Lifelong Learning is presented as suitable setup for the scaffolding
of learning activities with NFC augmented physical spaces; finally, this ecology is piloted and different learning
scenarios are proposed for further extensions.
CLASSROOM DISCOURSE DEVELOPMENT FOR "FLIPPING CLASSROOMS": THEORETICAL CONCEPTS,
PRACTICES, AND JOINT EFFORTS FROM ENGINEERING STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS
Jia-Ling Lin (University of Minnesota Twin-Cities, USA)
Paul Imbertson (University of Minnesota Twin-Cities, USA)
Tamara J. Moore (Purdue University, USA)
"Flipping classrooms" is an emerging instructional approach that replaces traditional lectures with other learning
activities during in-classroom periods. We have developed a Four-Practice Model for a revamped electrical energy
systems curriculum in the Electric and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota. It requires
students to watch online video modules before coming to lectures. The in-classroom period is used for group problemsolving and other activities to make the best out of the precious face-to-face learning time. Classroom discourse is
developed to facilitate such teaching and learning. Decades of research on discourse has supported the fundamental role
of classroom talks in education. This paper presents a measured method to assist in discourse development for "flipping
classrooms". The empirical approach is guided by pedagogies employed in our newly developed Four-Practice
instructional model and is supported by grounded active learning theories. It applies discourse analysis using revised
taxonomy to evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional model and assess students' learning gains simultaneously. It
examines conditions for the development of classroom discourse that facilitates learning in "flipped classrooms".
WHAT STUDENTS USE: RESULTS OF A SURVEY ON MEDIA USE AMONG ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Dominik May (TU Dortmund University, Germany)
Karsten Lensing (TU Dortmund University, Germany)
A. Erman Tekkaya (TU Dortmund University, Germany)
Michael Grosch (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany)
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Ute Berbuir (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany)
Marcus Petermann (Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany)
Nowadays, university students are facing a large number of highly diverse media, including conventional books as well
as online-based mobile applications - all used to support learning. Especially the internet with connected social media
services or e-learning possibilities induced significant changes in society and in the landscape of higher education during
the last years and still do so. The four universities RWTH Aachen University, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund
University, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology conducted an exploratory student survey on media and information
use, in order to expand the empirical database on that topic. Special focus was laid on mobile learning. In this context the
survey asked for the hardware and software the students are using and for moments in which they already got in contact
with any kind of mobile learning - e.g. by using special apps for learning or because they were asked by their teachers to
use a mobile device. The results of the survey elucidate that the use of online media and especially social media as well
as mobile devices in higher education are to be promoted in future. Furthermore, it reveals demands for action in the
field of media competency concerning students and teachers.
BLENDED INSTRUCTION IN A PROGRAMMING COURSE: LESSONS LEARNED
K.-Y. Daisy Fan (Cornell University, USA)
Using a blended learning approach, a programming course in MATLAB is designed for students who already know
another programming language. The blended components of the course include recorded short lectures, textbook and
online reading, consulting sessions where students work with instructors, and both optional and required programming
exercises. Students achieve mastery in MATLAB programming in a self-paced, auto-tutorial format where in-person
interaction between instructors and students is encouraged. Time-flexibility is emphasized in the course design in order
to give students control over the pacing of their learning. Being inserted into a student schedule that was otherwise based
on a traditional course format, however, the flexibility of the auto-tutorial course led to withdrawal rates of around 50%
in the early version of the course. The main problem was that students prioritized based on deadlines; therefore the
flexibility of a self-paced course could not compete with the fixed deadlines of traditional courses. We learned three
lessons: (1) Milestones need to be established early in the course. (2) Intervention that addresses a student's weakness
must be available and employed opportunely. (3) Incentives for student ownership of their work need to be built into the
course through assessment and logistics.
FYE1: First Year Engineering 1
Chair: Christine F Reilly
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Doblon
INFLUENCE OF TEACHING ASSISTANTS' MOTIVATION ON STUDENT LEARNING
Kelsey J Rodgers (Purdue University, USA)
Farshid Marbouti (Purdue University, USA)
Ali Shafaat (Purdue University, USA)
Hyunyi Jung (Purdue University, USA)
Heidi Diefes-Dux (Purdue University, USA)
Teaching assistants (TAs) are crucial for scaffolding student learning, especially in large science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs with student-centered learning environments. To understand TAs'
perspectives of their ability to facilitate these learning environments, this research team conducted a mixed-methods
study. This study was set in the First-Year Engineering Program at Purdue University. The TAs for this program are
responsible for scaffolding student teams' learning through feedback on open-ended problems, along with some other
traditional TA duties (e.g. grading student work, answering student emails). The study began with a qualitative
component in which eight TAs were interviewed about their abilities to execute their various responsibilities. Based on
these interview findings and literature, a survey was developed to further investigate key elements that the TAs discussed
(e.g. motivation and feedback). Forty-three TAs completed the survey. Based on the analysis of TAs' responses two
linear regression models were made that describe the factors that effect TAs' likeliness to give effective feedback and
ineffective feedback. TAs with intrinsic motivation gave more effective feedback, while TAs with extrinsic motivation
gave more ineffective feedback. Also female TAs gave less feedback than male TAs in general.
SPATIAL SKILLS AS PREDICTORS OF SUCCESS IN FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING
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Sheryl Sorby (Dublin Institute of Technology, USA)
Edmund Nevin (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Avril Behan (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Eileen Mageean (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Sarah Sheridan (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Through numerous research studies conducted over the past fifty years, the importance of well-developed 3-D spatial
skills for success in engineering and other STEM fields has been widely demonstrated. Recent work has also shown the
link between spatial skills and creativity and innovation. Research conducted in the U.S. and elsewhere, has
demonstrated the high level of 3-D spatial skills found in students of engineering and architecture; however, not all of
our first-year students have strong spatial skills when they start their post-secondary studies. Poor spatial skills put these
students at a distinct disadvantage when completing introductory courses in calculus, CAD, descriptive geometry, and
graphic communications—first-year requirements in many engineering and STEM programs. In turn, this often leads to
poor grades and dropping out of engineering or architecture as a result. Unfortunately, women are disproportionally
among the group of students with weak 3-D spatial skills meaning that they could be at a greater risk of leaving
engineering due to poorly developed spatial skills when compared to their male counterparts. In this study, the spatial
skills of first-year students in several engineering and technology programs were assessed through use of two
standardized instruments widely used in spatial cognition research. The spatial skills of architecture and computer
science students were also assessed for comparison purposes. Grades at the end of the semester were obtained for the
students in the study in several key courses to determine if there is a correlation between spatial skill level and student
performance in introductory courses. This paper outlines the results obtained from this study and draws conclusions
regarding the importance of spatial skills for success in introductory STEM courses. Results obtained through this testing
will be compared across disciplines and programs and will also be compared to similar data obtained from testing
engineering students in the U.S.
ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT PREPAREDNESS FOR FRESHMAN ENGINEERING COURSES THROUGH
ASSESSMENT OF MATH BACKGROUND
Branimir Pejcinovic (Portland State University, USA)
Donald Duncan (Portland State University, USA)
Phillip K Wong (Portland State University, USA)
Mark G Faust (Portland State University, USA)
Gerald Recktenwald (Portland State University, USA)
Our required freshman Electrical Engineering courses are: ECE 101 Exploring Electrical Engineering (introductory
course), 102 Engineering Computation (problem solving and MATLAB), 103 Engineering Programming (C
programming), and 171 Digital Circuits (up to synchronous state machines). Lack of formal prerequisites in combination
with dual enrollment with community colleges presents many challenges for assessing student preparedness. We have
observed fairly high failure rates (D, F and W) in ECE 171 and ECE 102. Transcript analysis was done to determine
which variables might best predict student success in these courses. Prior math coursework, defined as either GPA of all
prior math courses, grade in the most recent math course, or P/NP grade in college algebra or Calculus 1 course, is a
reasonable predictor of success. ALEKS scores are currently insufficient to make firm predictions but the approach is
promising enough to warrant collecting more data. Roughly 2/3 of students have already taken Calculus 1 or higher,
which defeats our intention of introducing students to electrical engineering first. High-school graduates with some
college credit were getting lower grades than average but high-school students who have not yet graduated were doing
better than average. Transfer students with 45-89 transfer credits were especially prone to withdrawals.
SELF-EFFICACY AND TASK ORIENTATION IN FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSES
Debbie Chachra (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Alex Dillon (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Elizabeth Spingola (Ohio Northern University, USA)
Briana Saul (Louisiana State University, USA)
Many engineering programs are implementing hands-on engineering experiences early in the curriculum, typically in the
form of a project-based course in which students design and build a prototype as a team. However, research on these
courses suggests that task orientation is correlated with gender, as are the increases in self-efficacy observed. As
engineering self-efficacy is a critical determinant of persistence in engineering, particularly for underrepresented groups,
this suggests that these courses may be reinforcing existing differences in self-efficacy by failing to provide mastery
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experiences to those with low engineering self-efficacy at the start. This work-in-progress presents some preliminary
research on investigating the relationship between self-efficacy, tasks undertaken in courses of this nature, and other
factors including demographics and teaming experiences. The goal of this work is to enable educators to design teambased engineering courses that allow all students to have equal access to tasks, both to develop their engineering skills
and to increase engineering self-efficacy.
RELEVANCE-BASED LEARNING IN STUDENTS' EARLY ENGINEERING EDUCATION EXPERIENCE
Diana Bairaktarova (University of Oklahoma, USA)
Mary K. Pilotte (Purdue University, USA)
Isaac J. Tetzloff (Purdue University, USA)
A common challenge faced by engineering instructors is to provide meaningful examples of how course content is
applicable to students' everyday lives. The underlying purpose of presenting related examples, is to help students connect
in a substantive way with course concepts. Some researchers have created relevance-based activities and suggest these
activities increase 1) students' confidence with understanding and applying the material; 2) motivation for learning
abstract concepts; 3) higher appreciation of the subject matter and persistence in the discipline. In two separate research
universities in the United States, everyday examples were developed to relate course materials in very different courses;
a first-year engineering course focused on developing MATLAB programming skills, and a sophomore fundamental
engineering thermodynamics course. These in-class experiences led the instructors to design an exploratory study
examining student tendencies (confidence, motivation, appreciation, and persistence) after incorporating relevance-based
activities in the two courses. Preliminary results suggest that students are more engaged in class, and demonstrate
retained understanding of core engineering-related concepts within the subject. While developing the everyday examples
for the courses described, the instructor and research collaborators realized that most of the examples had sound practical
use in a variety of fundamental engineering courses. A virtual "library" of examples for faculty to borrow and draw upon
was idealized, not to support a single topic or course instance, but rather to be used as thread to be woven across a
student's early engineering educational experience. Benefits of such a meaning-rich example library include instructional
productivity and continuity from course to course, while concurrently students benefit as they relate more clearly to how
the course content is applicable to their daily lives and other engineering subjects across their engineering curriculum.
Outcomes were discussed in terms of underlying processes in students' engagement, learning, and knowledge transfer
when using relevance-based examples in engineering education. Future directions for follow up research were proposed.
GDI1: Overcoming Stereotypes to Help Students Succeed in Engineering and Computer Science Education
Chair: James Huff
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Patio 1
STORIES 'TOLD' ABOUT ENGINEERING IN THE MEDIA: IMPLICATIONS FOR ATTRACTING DIVERSE
GROUPS TO THE PROFESSION
Nicola Sochacka (University of Georgia, USA)
Joachim Walther (University of Georgia, USA)
Jennifer Wilson (University of Georgia, USA)
Michael Brewer (University of Georgia, USA)
This study examines how engineering is portrayed in the media. This is set against a continuing discourse in the field
around representations and perceptions of engineering as they relate to attracting and retaining diverse groups of
students. Data comprises one year of news articles selected by the Bulletin Media service for First Bell - an electronic
news briefing that is delivered daily to members of the American Society for Engineering Education. The research
approach is informed by the concept of 'framing' from media studies and narrative policy analysis, which applies
contemporary literary theory to complex public policy issues, such as diversity in engineering. In this paper we describe
our emergent research design and current focus on more and less dominant stories that are 'told' about engineering in the
media. We then present a constructed narrative and critical analysis of one of the five dominant stories identified in the
study, namely: Students' Lack of Interest and/or Proficiency in Math and Science. Examination of this story points to
underlying assumptions about engineering that are implicit to the way engineering is framed in the public discourse. We
conclude with a discussion of possible implications of these stories for attracting diverse groups to engineering.
FEAR OF THE MOUSE - AND OTHER ICT4D CHANGE PROJECTS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Henrik Hansson (Stockholm University, Sweden)
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The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) funds an advanced training program for key
decision makers who can influence the implementation of ICT in education in developing countries. The program started
in 2012 and runs for 3 years, with an optional extension of up to 5 years. The participants from 2012 to 2014 were from
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Kosovo, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda,
and Zimbabwe. The program educates and coaches approximately 30 participants in a course (6 courses so far) that lasts
16 months. Four course weeks are located in Sweden and the remaining period is focused on the change project
implementation in the home country with coaching from Sweden using distance technology. The course modules are: 1)
Visions for learning: International, national, and regional policies for education, 2) Managing change in education:
Leadership, processes, and evaluation, 3) Interactive learning environments and digital inclusion, and 4) Support and
tools for change. The department of computer and systems sciences at Stockholm University and Life Academy Sweden
jointly run the program. Each participant is selected based on the change project suggested, personal qualifications, and
the status of the work organisation. The ICT in Education change projects initiated so far have been categorized into the
following themes: Management, Human rights (children's and women's rights), Language Learning, and Open resources
and Teacher Education. The study analyses the relevance, implementation and impact of these change projects,
highlighting contextual and universal obstacles when introducing ICT for teaching and learning on a national or local
scale. This project has created a large international network of key people who will impact development in these regions.
Master and PhD students from Stockholm University have been connected to this research and development project
providing added capacity and facilitating power. This paper outlines multi-disciplinary and international issues using a
comparative perspective.
PROVEN PRACTICES THAT CAN REDUCE STEREOTYPE THREAT IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION: A
LITERATURE REVIEW
Elizabeth A. Eschenbach (Humboldt State University, USA)
Mary Virnoche (Humboldt State University, USA)
Eileen Cashman (Humboldt State University, USA)
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Michelle Madsen Camacho (University of San Diego, USA)
"Stereotype threat" is a term used by social scientists to describe the anxiety one feels when one fears that he or she will
confirm a negative stereotype about his or her own group. This anxiety impairs performance and reduces motivation by
introducing a self-evaluative threat. More than 300 studies have verified that people underperform when put in situations
that cause stereotype threat. Documented consequences of stereotype threat include decreased performance; blaming
failure on internal, rather than external, causes; and distancing oneself from a setting that generates stereotype threat (e.g.
changing one's major from engineering or computer science). Given the plethora of research available on practices that
increase or reduce stereotype threat, a set of recommended practices can now be used in engineering education to reduce
stereotype threat and thereby increase the performance of potentially threatened groups. In this paper, we provide an easy
to use and research supported list of best practices to avoid stereotype threat in engineering education.
RELATIONSHIPS AMONG STUDENT WORK/FAMILY ATTITUDES, COMPUTING FURTHER EDUCATION
AND CAREER INTENTIONS
Leslie Cintron (University of Virginia, USA)
Joanne Cohoon (University of Virginia, USA)
Women's underrepresentation in computing stems from numerous factors, including gender and occupational
stereotypes, lack of accurate career information, and lack of encouragement. Some practitioners and authors include
perceived work/family conflicts among these factors. To investigate the role work/family attitudes play in gendered
intentions for graduate education and careers, this study analyzes Computing Research Association's (CRA) Center for
Evaluating the Research Pipeline (CERP) graduating student survey data from a multi-institutional sample of 1,111
graduates earning Baccalaureate degrees in computing majors. The analysis looks at the job characteristics young people
desire in order to understand what appeals to certain groups. The results show that gender differences, while apparent in
a few areas, have largely been overstated. Contrary to literature suggesting major gender differences, male and female
computing students share many of the same goals, interests and influences on their aspirations and intentions for further
education and careers in computing. The reason for these similarities may be that those who persist to late stages of
computing education are due to those with these interests being filtered through a system that selects for these traits.
These findings should inform effective recruiting efforts of more and diverse people into computing.
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SAME COURSE, DIFFERENT GOALS: EXAMINING THE PERSONAL GOALS OF MEN AND WOMEN IN A
PROJECT-BASED ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT
Janie Harari (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Julianne Jorgensen (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Jonathan Stolk (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
The learning goals of students are not only essential for personal guidance, but they also provide educators with insight
into individual approaches to learning and student self-perceptions. In this study, the learning goals of students in an
introductory project-based materials science course were analyzed to determine if any differences existed between
genders. Student goals were coded according to their inference of learning domains - cognitive, social, affective, and
psychomotor - as well as their level of complexity within these domains. Cognitive goals were similar for women and
men, while differences by gender appeared in the social, affective, and psychomotor domains. In the social domain,
women were more concerned with teamwork and peer learning, while men were focused on their confidence in
presentations. In the affective and psychomotor domains, the issue of low self-efficacy for some women arose, while
men were more eager to express their enthusiasm for the course projects.
PHI1: Philosophy of Engineering Education
Chair: Paul B. Crilly
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: La Granja
A KNOWLEDGE BASIS FOR ENGINEERING DESIGN
Stephen Frezza (Gannon University, USA)
This work aims to apply philosophy of engineering to our understanding of engineering design. This work takes as an
assumption that the social-historical view of engineering as a variation of applied science is fundamentally insufficient
view. Taking design as one of the distinctive components of engineering, the work explores how a knowledge-based
philosophy of engineering supports the distinctive challenges in distinguishing engineering design from scientific
exploration and artistic design. The paper then discusses implications this understanding of design has on learning of
engineering design. The central proposition that this paper explores is that fundamentally engineering design is about the
application of practical reasoning about how things aught to be. This design focus includes a recognition of the inherent
values embedded into engineering design, and how this shifts the emphasis onto understanding sufficiency, and involves
understanding and applying the social context inherent to any human problem being solved. This shift has significant
impact on both practice and pedagogy: A move away from single-solution thinking, away from concept that one single,
best right answer that comprises good engineering.
AN ANALYSIS OF CONSISTENCY IN, AND BETWEEN, ONTOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE AS CONTAINED STUDIES OF THE FIRST YEAR EXPERIENCE
Gavin Duffy (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Brian Bowe (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Recurring themes in the literature on students' experiences of their first year in college education include performance
and retention, socialisation, learning and teaching methods, interaction with staff and the student's history prior to
college. Methods used to collect and analyse data vary considerably and reflect differences among researchers in the
philosophical positions underpinning these projects. In this paper, we analyse a number of studies of the first year
experience (FYE) that reflect the variation in ontology, i.e. what can be known about the FYE as manifest in the
questions asked, and also epistemology, i.e. how we can learn about it as manifest in the methods used. The ways in
which studies are conducted and data are collected and analysed are used to categorise the philosophy driving these
research projects. We describe some studies carried out from the positivist perspective and highlight not only the
variations within this group but the difficulty these researchers have in maintaining this perspective when reporting their
findings. We analyse the objectivity that is claimed to exist in the survey instruments used. Phenomenology, in contrast,
has very different underlying assumptions about what can be known about the FYE and studies in this group deliberately
avoid the hypothesis testing that characterises the latter. Examples of how this qualitative method has been employed in
studying the FYE are provided along with the types of findings that emerge from this work. While positivism seeks to
explain and model, phenomenology only aims to describe yet both camps seek to obtain some sense of truth. While
phenomenologists claim to have truth but lack certainty in a generalisable sense, the positivists are certain but do they
really know the truth? What can we learn from these two approaches? We contrast the findings that emerge from both
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methods and discuss the relevance and importance these have for the issue at hand - improving the first year experience
in a real way.
SCENARIO PLANNING TO ENVISION POTENTIAL FUTURES FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Jeffrey E Froyd (Texas A&M University, USA)
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
Kishore Prahallad (International Institute of Information Technology, India)
Euan Lindsay (Charles Sturt University, Australia)
Burton Dicht (IEEE, USA)
Various technological, economic, and social developments may radically reshape engineering and computer science
education in the next 20-30 years. Leaders in engineering education, such as IEEE, that play key roles must decide how
they will innovate and support initiatives to improve engineering education. Decisions must be guided by both historical
trends and potential future evolutions of engineering education. Since the future cannot be predicted, the IEEE's
Curriculum and Pedagogical Committee (CPC), which is charged with helping IEEE forecast the future of engineering
education and make decisions about IEEE's roles in preparing for and crafting that future, engaged in a scenario planning
exercise to help understand how various influences and trajectories could influence engineering education. Scenario
planning methodology has been used by many organizations making long-term investments to understand how future
developments could be taken into account when making key decisions. After considering influencers in the engineering
education environment; important stakeholders and their roles (influencer, purchaser, end-user, decision maker); goals,
constraints, and outcomes for key stakeholders; and potential uncertainties, the CPC, as a crucial step in the process,
identify two critical uncertainties over the next five years: (i) How will engineering programs innovate and adapt? (ii)
What will be the values and competencies of engineering faculty? By considering two extremes for each of these
uncertainties, CPC crafted four scenarios to characterize potential future trends and how different scenarios will
influence the evolution of engineering education. These scenarios have since been further operationalized through the
development of a survey capturing both academic and industry perspectives. The survey will be administered to
individual faculty members, department heads, and deans at engineering programs across the world. Some of the areas
addressed by the survey include: enabling technologies; program strengths; markets for engineering graduates;
expectations of employers for engineering graduates; characteristics of accreditation systems; approaches for assessment
and development of selected student attributes, such as engineering design; and faculty experience. This paper offers
scenarios for the evolution of the engineering education enterprise.
EXPLORING CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND PERSONAL EPISTEMOLOGIES THROUGH
METAPHOR
Kacey Beddoes (Oregon State University, USA)
Devlin Montfort (Oregon State University, USA)
Shane Brown (Oregon State University, USA)
While epistemologies have long been of interest in other fields, they have only recently begun to receive attention within
engineering education. In particular, engineers' personal epistemologies (PEs) are a significant but understudied facet of
engineering and engineering education. PEs are individuals' beliefs and attitudes that consciously and subconsciously
affect the ways they think about knowledge, learning, and the validity and justification of arguments. PEs encompass
various dimensions of knowledge: where it comes from, how it is created, how it is organized, how universal it is, etc.
Likewise, despite their significant role in structuring thought and action, metaphors have received scant attention within
engineering education. The work that does explore metaphors in engineering education focuses on issues of
underrepresentation. Metaphors are not mere linguistic devices, but rather play central roles in cognition and categorical
perception. Therefore, this paper draws on epistemological and metaphorical work from other fields in order to analyze
the metaphors employed by engineering students in discussions of their personal epistemologies.
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PRO1: Developing Technical Communication as a Professional Skill
Chair: Ronald Harichandran
11:00 AM - 12:30
Room: Comendador
A COMPREHENSIVE ENGINEERING COLLEGE-WIDE PROGRAM FOR DEVELOPING TECHNICAL
COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN STUDENTS
Ronald Harichandran (University of New Haven, USA)
Jean Nocito-Gobel (University of New Haven, USA)
Eric Brisart (University of New Haven, USA)
Nadiye Erdil (University of New Haven, USA)
Michael Collura (University of New Haven, USA)
Samuel Daniels (University of New Haven, USA)
David Harding (University of New Haven, USA)
David Adams (Consultant, USA)
The Project to Integrate Technical Communication Habits (PITCH) is being implemented in the Tagliatela College of
Engineering at the University of New Haven across seven engineering and computer science undergraduate programs.
PITCH develops written, oral and visual communication skills in students starting in the very first semester and
continuing through all four years of each program. Communication instruments encompass technical memoranda, poster
presentations, oral presentations, laboratory reports, proposals, and senior design reports, including the use of tables and
graphics in each. Advice tables, annotated sample assignments and grading rubrics are being developed for each
instrument to assist students in their work and facilitate consistency in instruction and assessment across multiple
instructors teaching different course sections. Within each of the seven programs, specific courses that span all four years
are targeted for implementation and assessment of technical communication skills. The different communication
instruments are distributed across courses as appropriate, and the skills are developed at deeper and deeper levels as
students progress through the years. A critical feature of the project is that technical communication skills are integrated
into the content of regular engineering courses and are taught by regular engineering faculty.
TECHNICAL WRITING KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER FROM FIRST YEAR COMPOSITION TO MAJOR
COURSES
Robert Weissbach (Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, USA)
Ruth C Pflueger (Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, USA)
Written communication skills among engineers are critical to their career development. In industry, success in science
and engineering fields is very much linked to skill in conveying complicated solutions in a manner that is accessible to
decision-making authorities with varying technical comprehension. Unfortunately, students often have limited
opportunity to hone these skills. Many programs require only one or two writing courses outside of the major. In
addition, courses that require communication in the form of laboratory reports often provide minimal feedback regarding
writing style, the effective support of results with analysis, and maintaining efficiency in writing. The authors have been
developing a process built upon the principles of knowledge transfer whereby non-technical peer writing tutors are
trained to provide feedback to engineering students. The tutors learn to employ concepts of persuasion already in use
when tutoring nontechnical subject matter to a technical writing assignment. Results of using this method include
improved engineering student perceptions of the process and increased tutor feedback. Finally, the authors propose a
partnership between engineering faculty and instructors of first-year composition courses to further improve knowledge
transfer.
ENABLING HIGHER ORDER THINKING AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION - AN INDIAN CONTEXT
FOR OBE
Naresh Kumar Mallenahalli (National Remote Sensing Centre, India)
Uma Garimella (Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College, India)
Divya Nalla (Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College, India)
Work-in-progress (WIP): Much research into how people learn and which skills are required for professional
competence has gone into designing curricula in higher education. Benjamin Bloom, Fink, Eric Mazur, Richard Felder
and many others have significantly contributed to the design of aligned courses where outcomes, teaching and
assessment complement each other resulting in effective learning. This is the basis of the international accreditations
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using outcome based education (OBE). Moreover,the Indian accreditation agency National Board of Accreditation
(NBA) has adopted outcome based education for colleges seeking accreditation now. In this paper, we specifically
describe the work in progress implementation of social constructive approaches such as eBridge and talent Identification
strategies in Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College which is affiliated to JNTU, India. These strategies are aimed at
fulfilling all the graduate attributes according to Washington Accord. In the present paper, we propose to show the
processes, the data and some outcomes of these initiatives. The measured outcomes have demonstrated the positive
influences of social constructivism in skill development and employability of the students.
THROWING OUT THE FIRST PITCH
Adrienne Decker (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Christopher Egert (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Stephen Jacobs (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Over the last several years, faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology's School of Interactive Games and Media
have been working with students to refine their ideas regarding game design, game production, and the overall ideation
process. Most of our students are technology focused, and have to learn the process of communicating their ideas in a
practical manner. They must learn the balance between being passionate about their ideas and forming a cogent argument
as to why their idea matters. In short, they must learn the difference between having "the great idea" and being able to
ideate over hundreds, if not thousands of ideas. Through the use of the game concept pitch as a tool for communicating
their ideas, we are challenging students to express themselves in a particular way. Over the course of the semester, we
explore game concept pitch processes, critique, iteration, and refinement of the student's ideas as well as presentation and
communication skills. We also examine how the process of "first pitch" is applicable to wider areas of computing,
engineering, and science education along with career and field skills.
PROJECT-BASED LEARNING OF SCIENTIFIC WRITING AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS FOR
POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS
Anthony Mandow (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
Martínez Jorge (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
Alfonso García-Cerezo (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
This paper addresses education on scientific publication skills for post-graduate engineering students. In particular, a
project-based learning strategy is proposed to lead students through the preparation a research paper. Expected learning
outcomes are related to finding and evaluating the quality of references, editing and formatting text in LaTeX, writing
scientific papers with appropriate style and structure, peer reviewing, and making technical presentations. This approach
has been developed to increase the internationalization and visibility of young researchers by improving the quality
standards of their published works. The purpose of this innovative practice is that students confront the major challenges
of the publication process in the classroom, which is in contrast with the traditional self-taught approach experienced by
the authors and many senior researchers. The proposed strategy is being applied as a required course in the Master in
Mechatronics Engineering of the University of Malaga. This work-in-progress paper offers preliminary results from this
experience.
REM1: Remote Laboratories, implementation and evaluation
Chair: Diana Urbano
11:00 - 12:30
Room: Escudo
EDUCATIONAL BIOGAS INSTALLATION MONITORING USING VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTATION
CONCEPTS
Adrian Cioabla (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
Mihaela Lascu (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
Raul Ionel (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
This paper presents the implementation of a Virtual Instrumentation (VI) based system which is used for remote
monitoring of biogas production activities. The proposed measurement approach was designed and is used by students
during Measurement and Instrumentation lectures. It combines hardware and software knowledge while allowing the
users to interact with a domain of great interest - biogas production. The software component was developed using
National Instruments' LabVIEW while dedicated gas sensors have been employed for gas concentration monitoring. The
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application can be used via mobile devices since it includes a Data Dashboard (DD) interface. This feature has been
considered since the proliferation of remote monitoring, with the help of mobile tools, has earned a great interest in the
last years. Of course, by using a computer with Internet connectivity, the students are able to connect to the measurement
front panel and operate the proposed experiments. Testing of experimental results has been performed with dedicated
stand alone instruments. Consequently, the students have the possibility of discussing important VI aspects compared
against classic methodologies impacting the test and measurement of biogas production emissions.
A LIQUID-LEVEL CONTROL TRAINING LAB INCLUDING A MODEL-BASED DESIGN FOR ELECTRONICS
TECHNOLOGISTS AND INSTRUMENTATION TECHNICIANS
Daniel Cheverez-Gonzalez (University of Puerto Rico-Bayamón, Puerto Rico)
Wesley Feliciano de Jesús (University of Puerto Rico-Bayamón, Puerto Rico)
Yamil Huertas Morales (University of Puerto Rico-Bayamón, Puerto Rico)
Luis Meléndez Lorenzana (University of Puerto Rico-Bayamón, Puerto Rico)
This work describes the teaching strategies in the control systems field in an engineering technology program. A liquidlevel control training station is developed and a model-based design is explained. Instrumentation standards such as
actuators and transducers are used in the laboratory. The instrumentation equipment is included in the model-based
design. A teaching technique for topics like Laplace and Zeta transforms in control system technology is included in this
paper. The absence of courses like differential equations in engineering technology programs is assumed in the technical
explanations. Experimental time domain plots are compared with numerical solutions of the models throughout this
work. The focus of this publication is an educational technique explaining the dynamic behavior of a level-control
training lab used in the University of Puerto Rico-Bayamón (UPRB). The electronics program at UPRB tries to cover
some of the concepts of any engineering control system course with precalculus, physics, and analog electronics as the
only prerequisites. The challenge of any professor educated in formal engineering schools is to select the topics and
pedagogical techniques to train the future electronics technologists and instrumentation technicians.
GENERIC INTEGRATION OF REMOTE LABORATORIES IN PUBLIC LEARNING TOOLS:
ORGANIZATIONAL AND TECHNICAL CHALLENGES
Pablo Orduña (DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology, Spain)
Agustin Caminero (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Irene Lequerica (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Danilo G. Zutin (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria)
Philip Bailey (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Elio Sancristobal (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Luis Rodriguez-Gil (DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology, Spain)
Antonio Robles-Gómez (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Miguel Latorre (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Kimberley DeLong (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Llanos Tobarra (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Salvador Ros (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Manuel Castro (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Diego López-de-Ipiña (DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology, Spain)
Javier Garcia-Zubia (DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology, Spain)
Educational remote laboratories are software and hardware tools that allow students to remotely access real equipment
located in universities as if they were in a hands-on-lab session. Federations of these remote laboratories have existed for
years, focused on allowing two universities to share their equipment. Additionally, the integration of remote laboratories
in Learning Tools -LT- (Learning Management Systems, Content Management Systems or Personal Learning
Environments) has been achieved in the past in order to integrate remote laboratories as part of the learning curricula,
being part of the practice exercises or even as a tool of evaluation. An cross-institutional initiative called gateway4labs
has been created to perform this integration through federation protocols. In this contribution, this initiative adds support
for OpenSocial as a new protocol for Learning Tools (in particular, for EPFL Graasp), as well as for the iLab Shared
Architecture (in addition to WebLab-Deusto and UNR FCEIA laboratories already supported). Supporting OpenSocial
opens a number of new technical and organizational challenges since public labs should be supported without registering
students, teachers or schools. The focus of this contribution is to show these challenges and how they are tackled in the
proposed open source implementation
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CRITICAL FACTORS IN THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN OF MODERN EDUCATIONAL REMOTE
LABORATORIES
Mohamed Tawfik (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
David Lowe (University of Sydney, Australia)
Christophe Salzmann (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland)
Denis Gillet (EPFL, Switzerland)
Elio Sancristobal (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
Manuel Castro (Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED), Spain)
The expansion of the application of remote laboratories, along with the shift from eLearning 2.0 towards eLearning 3.0,
have raised many implementation issues and demanded several considerations in their architectural design. Current array
of concerns in the development of remote laboratories is primarily focused on issues related to their delivery format and
their pedagogical impact. These issues encompass their integration with heterogeneous educational systems and coupling
with heterogeneous services and learning objects—instead of being monolithic with fixed design—in order to yield a
rich scaffold educational environment and hence better learning experience and outcomes. On the other hand, the goal is
to promote sharing resources across institutions and hence more availability and cost offset. From the hardware
perspective, common issues encompasses: their performance at real-time; the flexibility of their manipulation; reusing
and exchanging components, as well as, leveraging legacy equipment; and support for high voltage applications. In
response to these needs, we realize a literature review on the common encountered hardware and software
implementation issues nowadays, in order to provide a generic model for developing and implementing modern remote
laboratories suited for a wide spectrum of application categories and for next generation educational systems.
ARDUINO AND LABVIEW IN EDUCATIONAL REMOTE MONITORING APPLICATIONS
Delia Calinoiu (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
Raul Ionel (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
Mihaela Lascu (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
Adrian Cioabla (University “Politehnica” Timişoara, Romania)
This paper presents the implementation of Virtual Instrumentation (VI) based system used for remote monitoring of
selected environmental parameters: humidity, temperature, light intensity and methane. The educational benefits
(learning outcomes) of this application are the following: design and implementation of the monitoring circuitry,
programming for both LabVIEW and Arduino, understanding VI concepts and using mobile devices for parameters
monitoring. The proposed application was developed by students during Measurements and Virtual Instrumentation
programming courses. It includes traditional data acquisition hardware (NI USB 6251) and the Arduino Uno device. A
Cinterion MC55iT GSM/GPRS terminal is used for sending automatic alerts to authorized mobile phones. E-mail
warnings are also available. If established parameters exceed imposed limitations, the warning system will activate.
Distance operation of this application is available via LabVIEW Remote Panels technology and Data Dashboard running
on iOS. In this way one can use the learning process in the form of a distance laboratory.
SCL1: Inspiring Learning in Different Domains through Student-centric Learning
Chair: Julie Linsey
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Alcalá
USING THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN BIOLOGICAL AND COMPUTER VIRUS BEHAVIOR TO CONNECT
AND TEACH INTRODUCTORY CONCEPTS IN CYBERSECURITY IN A BIOLOGY CLASSROOM
Camilla Nix (Drexel University, USA)
Jessica Ward (Drexel University, USA)
Adam Fontecchio (Drexel University, USA)
Jared Ruddick (Girard Academic Music Program, USA)
This paper describes a cybersecurity and virus themed project within a high school biology classroom. The project was
implemented as part of a yearlong partnership between the School District of Philadelphia and Drexel University and
sponsored by the National Science Foundation grant for Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 education. Students spent the
school year learning about the behaviors of biological and computer viruses through various activities, lectures and
discussions. At the end of the school year, students used that information to present solutions for a scenario in which a
virus outbreak occurred within their high school. The project was successful in increasing knowledge of engineering
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subjects and class observations showed student engagement and enjoyment in project activities. Future work will focus
on improving project implementation by evaluating how administration in short vs long time periods could affect student
engagement and project outcomes. This project can serve as a model for those who would like to integrate engineering
into the science curriculum.
HELPING STUDENTS TO FIND BIOLOGICAL INSPIRATION: IMPACT OF VALUABLENESS AND
PRESENTATION FORMAT
Jin Woo Kim (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Daniel McAdams (Texas A&M University, USA)
Julie Linsey (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Analogy and bioinspired design have demonstrated applicability as effective tools for innovation, but they can be very
difficult to implement. One challenge faced by students and other novice designers is their lack of knowledge to base
analogies on. This challenge is also faced by engineers making distant-domain analogies to biology. Other open research
questions surround effective strategies for students attempting to implement analogies. When students seek analogies
should potential analogues be presented one at a time or should multiple analogues be presented simultaneously
(presentation format)? This study implements a 2x2 between-subject factorial design to further explore the impact of
presentation format and students' perceived valuableness of passages. Impact is measured in terms of the quality,
novelty, and variety of ideas generated. Two additional control conditions were also included, one with no passages and
another with random passages. The results from this study have shown that quality is significantly affected by
valuableness of passages, novelty is not affected by any factor, and variety is significantly affected by both factors.
A MOBILE LEARNING SYSTEM TO ENHANCE FIELD TRIPS IN GEOLOGY
Edgar Marçal (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil)
Rossana Maria de Castro Andrade (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil)
Windson Viana (Federal University of Ceará, France)
Daniel Nascimento Jr. (Federal University of Ceará, Brazil)
The activities developed in field trips are essential for learning in several STEM courses, as in geological engineering,
biosciences and geosciences. Particularly in Geology, these activities represent one of the most exciting tasks of the
course, where students experiment practices like identification of rocks, minerals, and fossils. Some of disciplines that
employ field trips in Geology are: Introduction to Geology, Paleontology, Sedimentology, Hydrogeology, and Energetic
Resources. During field trips, besides the annotations in the field notebook, there are other means of information
acquiring, such as photos, georeferencing and geological orientation. The main difficulties in the field reported by
students are organization, standardization and integration of data. Some factors that could justify these problems are
hostile environments, dispersion of students, and lots of information to be got and necessity of using different tools
(notebook, camera, compass, GPS, etc.) that not operate all together. Taking in consideration what was mentioned before
and the fact that mobile technologies have been successfully applied to enhance learning activities in various education
areas, this research proposes a mobile-learning-based approach, which aims to extend the benefits of Geosciences field
trips and overcome the difficulties. Our research has begun in 2012 and, first, we tested the use of tablets in Geology
field trips. The results showed that some features improved field activities (e.g., camera and gps). However, the lack of
data integration and a non-user friendly interface were impediments. As a consequence, we developed a specific
smartphone application called Geomóvel. It helps annotations in field trips, integrates multimedia features (photos and
audio recording) and data sensing (accelerometer, magnetometer, and GPS). Moreover, Geomóvel exports the
information to be manipulated in GIS tools. At the beginning of 2013, before using Geomóvel in real field trips, we
performed a pilot study with four students and one professor within the Department of Geology in a Brazilian University.
After analyzing the questionnaires and notes taken during the test, we observed that the participants accomplished the
proposed activities (e.g., photos, notes, and geological measures). Some improvements were suggested, as the
implementation of a "bubble" like in the conventional compasses. At the end of 2013, a case study was conducted during
a field trip with 18 students of the Sedimentary Petrology discipline. Regarding the main activity (i.e., measuring
attitudes of the rock features with Geomóvel), 100% of students completed it. Regarding other tasks, 83% of the students
made notes in the application. On the usability test, 94.6% agreed that it was easy to use. The main benefits highlighted
were: practicality, ease of use and flexibility for recording data in the field. Finally, after this test, all the collected data in
the field were exported and visualized by the professor in the Google Earth tool, to evaluation of the activities. The
general results of the tests and resources available by Geomóvel indicates that it can be an important tool for field trips of
Geology, even expanding its benefits since the information collected until the treatment, presentation and evaluation of
the associated tasks.
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SMART PHYSICS WITH SMARTPHONE SENSORS
Enrique Ballester Sarrias (Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Spain)
Juan Carlos Castro Palacio (Universität Basel, Switzerland)
Luisberis Velázquez Abad (Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile)
Marcos Giménez (Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Spain)
Juan Antonio Monsoriu Serra (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Luis M. Sanchez Ruiz (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Smartphones' acceleration sensors have got useful applications in standard physical situations. We have taken advantage
of its capabilities in a number of Physics experiments and perform them in a series of examples within classical
mechanical and kinematic situations such as free and damped oscillations due to Earth's gravity. By properly connecting
the smartphones other data may be collected and the corresponding situations are studied such as rotational motion. This
gives room to relate the corresponding formulae with data obtained. In fact different mobile devices find an increasing
use in all the teaching levels of Physics over the past years. This is the case of digital cameras, webcams, optical mouse
of computers, wiimote, other game console controllers which are among portable devices that find an increasing use in
Physics over the past years. Digital techniques have been widely used to visualize Physics concepts. By analyzing the
recorded video, distances and time intervals can me measured in order to fully determine the trajectory of a moving
body. On the other hand, wireless devices (such as the wiimote) have also been applied in Physics teaching providing a
low cost way to track the motion in a variety of Physics experiments; however, it is not a common device at the Physics
laboratories. More recently, smartphones have been incorporated into the variety of portable devices in Physics teaching.
Smartphones integrate in one device many capabilities which were apart previously. These capabilities may include a
camera, a microphone, a speaker, an accelerometer sensor, a magnetic field sensor, and an ambient light sensor. In this
Paper, we focus on the accelerometer sensor of the smartphones and its applications to the study of phenomena within
the topic of Mechanics where "acceleration" plays a central role. These experiences have been carried out at the Higher
Technical School of Design Engineering (ETSID in Spanish) of the Universitat Politècnica of València (Spain) and
through these examples students learn amenable applications of the capabilities of their very familiar smartphones, that
facilitate their interest and motivation in introductory and first-year university Physics courses.
MARTHA MADISON: MARVELOUS MACHINES - EXPLORING SIMPLE MACHINES IN AN OPEN-ENDED,
COLLABORATIVE SANDBOX
David Simkins (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Adrienne Decker (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Christopher Egert (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Anne Snyder (Second Avenue Learning, USA)
Victoria Van Voorhis (Second Avenue Learning, USA)
In this paper we discuss the construction of Martha Madison: Marvelous Machines, a serious video game designed to
help students learn about the use of simple machines in the everyday world. Game participants are introduced to realworld, meaningful tasks that must be solved through the placement and manipulation of simple machines. The game
provides in-game scaffolding and is played collaboratively by students co-located in the same space, playing on the same
computer. The Martha Madison game provides learners specific tasks and goals to complete and an open world in which
to complete them. The design of Martha Madison is intended to create a dialogue between players in the service of
solving authentic problems presented in the game world and providing opportunities for students to change overall
perceptions regarding the social and collaborative aspects of STEM work. The authors discuss the reasons, approaches,
and challenges of the design of Martha Madison.
ENHANCING COLLABORATIVE PROJECT-BASED LEARNING USING PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
APPROACH
Jianyu Dong (California State University Los Angeles, USA)
Xuan Qin (California State University Los Angeles, USA)
Pearl Chen (California State University Los Angeles, USA)
In this work-in-progress paper, an innovative curriculum design process using participatory design strategy is presented.
The principle of participatory design is to involve the end users (which are the students in our case) in every stage of the
design process. Guided by the theory of situated learning, the faculty and student co-designers re-examined the
Collaborative Project-based Learning (CPBL) model based on the evidence collected to identify effective pedagogical
components to address the learning needs of under-represented minority students. In the course redesign process, the
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faculty and students worked together to improve the pedagogical methods based on cognitive apprenticeship and its four
building blocks including content, method, sequence, and sociology. The redesigned course is currently being offered in
Spring 2014, where both qualitative and quantitative data are collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the course
redesign. We expect to share both the course re-design process and what we learn from the implementation of the redesigned course with the broad engineering education community during the conference.
TLE1: Increasing the Relevance in Teaching and Learning
Chair: John Mativo
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: La Galería
DESIGN BASED WILDERNESS EDUCATION: A CROSS-CULTURAL EXPERIENCE IN ENGINEERING
EDUCATION
Christopher R. Saulnier (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
Aikaterini Bagiati (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
John Brisson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been collaborating since 2010 with the Singapore Ministry of
Education to help develop the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). One element of this
collaboration, the Global Leadership Program (GLP), aims to provide SUTD students with the opportunity to interact
with the MIT community and experience MIT's academic culture, while at the same time participating in programming
to assist with the development of leadership skills. This paper describes a curriculum combining the pedagogies of
design-based learning and wilderness education that was implemented in the summer of 2014 as a component of GLP.
Wilderness education was selected as a pedagogical framework for this program as it may be well suited to create
effective learning environments for engineering education, cross-cultural learning, and fostering conceptual change.
Through design activities both for and in a natural environment, students were encouraged to develop competency in
engineering science while exploring the diverse attributes essential for success as an engineer.
EXPLOITING RESEARCH RESULTS IN ICT TO EXTEND THE SCOPE OF EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES
Maurizio Molinaro (ISMB, Italy)
The purpose of this work-in-progress paper is to report on the processes that are taking place at ISMB, an Italian research
center active in the ICT domain. The links between research and higher education at ISMB are explained. The outcomes
of a general assessment on existing courses are discussed, describing the profiles of courses included in ISMB portfolio,
from those devoted to purely technological topics to those exploring in depth complex processes; the different types of
recipients addressed; the environment (professional and academic) where they are delivered. The four main activity lines
aimed to extend the scope of educational activities are introduced and explained in some detail: (a) defining innovative
models for technical education and training; (b) enlarging the network of potential partners and customers; (c) exploiting
the expertise in managing ICT tools to produce more effective instructional materials; (d) building on recent research
projects to improve the educational offer also in terms of contents. Finally, a summary of the results obtained and the
difficulties encountered until now is given.
INTERNATIONALIZING ENGINEERING EDUCATION WITH PHASED STUDY PROGRAMS: INDIAEUROPEAN EXPERIENCE
Krishnashree Achuthan (Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India)
Maneesha Ramesh (Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India)
Sasikumar Punnekkat (Mälardalen University, Sweden)
Raghu Raman (Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India)
Most of the critical challenges seen in the past decades have impacted citizens in a global way. Given shrinking
resources, educationists find preparing students for the global market place a formidable challenge. Hence exposing
students to multi-lateral educational initiatives are critical to their growth, understanding and future contributions. This
paper focuses on European Union's Erasmus Mundus programs, involving academic cooperation amongst international
universities in engineering programs. A phased undergraduate engineering program with multiple specializations is
analyzed within this context. Based on their performance at the end of first phase, selected students were provided
opportunities using scholarship to pursue completion of their degree requirements at various European universities. This
paper will elaborate the impact of differing pedagogical interventions, language and cultural differences amongst these
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countries on students in diverse engineering disciplines. The data presented is based on on the feedback analysis from
Eramus Mundus students (N=121) that underwent the mobility programs. The findings have given important insights
into the structure of the initiative and implications for academia and education policy makers for internationalizing
engineering education. These included considering digital interventions such as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses)
and Virtual Laboratory (VL) initiatives for systemic reorganization of engineering education.
STUDENTS' RESEARCH ON LEAN AND GREEN
Itziar Lujan (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jordi Fortuny-Santos (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Spain)
This paper reports on the contribution of students to a research project. Its distinct characteristics are the relation between
teaching and research, the early involvement of undergraduate students in research and the aim of raising students'
environmental awareness. A group of students taking a compulsory course on Operations Management were asked to
survey companies on the existence of synergic relations between lean manufacturing and environmental performance,
which is the research topic of a Ph.D. candidate. The research began with the design of a structured questionnaire. The
students interviewed operations managers in manufacturing companies. Since this subject is part of a blended learning
program in engineering, many students already work in companies and interviewing their managers allowed them to gain
a different view of the firm's activities. The results of the experience show the total involvement of the students. They
learnt about lean manufacturing practices and about environmental issues. The study showed the relation between "lean"
and "green" topics.
ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGICAL PROJECTS IN THE COMPUTER ENGINEERING PROGRAM
Ricardo Santos (Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil)
Given the importance to understand the sustainability and environment concepts and how the technology can help
solving environmental issues, we propose a course and methodology where computer engineers students discuss, learn,
and contribute to minimize the problems of those areas. This paper presents the experience with the design and
developing of environmental technological projects in the Society and Environment (SE) course of the computer
engineering undergraduate program at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) in Brazil. The SE course
comprises the theory and discussion of environment and sustainability topics and project proposals and practical
developing related to the theoretical topics. The approach has been applied since 2012 in classes with 30-40 students
divided into teams of four students for each project. According to the students evaluation, the course contents and
methodology have helped them to understand the problems and recognize technological solutions for important themes
nowadays. In 2013, one of the SE projects has been awarded the best environmental technological products for
improving traffic mobility in cities.
CBL2: Systems and Standards for Computer Based Learning
Chair: Victor F. A. Barros
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Patio 3
A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR AUGMENTED REALITY MOBILE LEARNING
Joaquín Cubillo Arribas (National University for Distance Education of Spain, Spain)
Sergio Martin (National University for Distance Education of Spain, Spain)
Manuel Castro (National University for Distance Education of Spain, Spain)
Gabriel Díaz (National University for Distance Education of Spain, Spain)
Antonio Colmenar (National University for Distance Education of Spain, Spain)
Ivica Botički (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
This paper presents a learning environment based on augmented reality (ARLE), which can be used to develop quality
AR educational resources and to acquire knowledge in an area. Common problems teachers have in applying AR have
been taken into account by producing an authoring tool for education with the following characteristics: (1) the ability to
incorporate diverse digital resources in an easy manner, 2) the ability to incorporate tutored descriptions into virtual
resources (thus, the student is provided with an context about the resource, while the content gets adapted and
personalized), (3) the possibility to incorporate multiple choice questions (MCQ) into the virtual resource (useful for
instant feedback to students, it can be useful for the student to know what are the most important points of that issue and
for the teacher to assess whether the student distinguishes different concepts), (4) library of virtual content where all
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resources are available. ARLE is used to add AR technologies into notes created by the teacher, thereby supplementing
the theoretical and practical content without any programming skills. In addition to presenting system architecture and
the examples of its educational use, a survey concerning use of AR amongst teachers in Spain has been conducted.
A CROWDSOURCING CAPTION EDITOR FOR EDUCATIONAL VIDEOS
Rucha Deshpande (University of Houston, USA)
Tayfun Tuna (University of Houston, USA)
Jaspal Subhlok (University of Houston, USA)
Lecia Barker (University of Texas & School of Information, USA)
Video of a classroom lecture has been shown to be a versatile learning resource comparable to a textbook. Captions in
videos are highly valued by students, especially those with hearing disability and those whose first language is not
English. Captioning by automatic speech recognition (ASR) tools is of limited use because of low and variable accuracy.
Manual captioning with existing tools is a slow, tedious and expensive task. In this work, we present a web-based
crowdsourcing editor to add or correct captions for video lectures. The editor allows a group, e.g., students in a class, to
correct the captions for different parts of a video lecture simultaneously. Users can review and correct each other's work.
The caption editor has been successfully employed to caption STEM coursework videos. Our findings based on survey
results and interviews indicate that this innovative crowdsourcing tool is effective and efficient for captioning lecture
videos and has considerable value in educational practice. The caption editor is integrated with Indexed Captioned
Searchable (ICS) Videos framework at University of Houston that has been used by dozens of courses and 1000s of
students. The ICS Videos framework including the captioning tool is open source software available to educational
institutions.
ON USING THE CLOUD TO SUPPORT ONLINE COURSES
Germán Moltó (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Miguel Caballer (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
The increasing interest of online learning is unquestionable nowadays, with MOOCs being taken by thousands of
students. However, for online learning to go mainstream it is necessary that professors perceive that the effort required to
prepare and manage an online course is manageable. Today, a myriad of inexpensive tools and services can be used to
produce and manage online courses with unprecedented ease and without distressing the professor. For that, this paper
proposes an architecture based on Cloud services that simplifies the process of managing an online course, from
delivering on-demand fully customized remote laboratories to communication automation for student engagement and
feedback gathering. This approach has been applied to produce, distribute and manage an Online Course on Cloud
Computing with Amazon Web Services. The paper describes the methodology, tools and results of this experience to
point out that it is possible to deliver online courses with automatically provisioned labs, with minimal management
overhead, while still providing a high quality learning experience to a worldwide audience.
IMPROVING LEARNING OUTCOMES BY DESIGNING ENGAGING EDUCATIONAL TOOLS
John Allan Casey (Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand)
Nilufar Baghaei (Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand)
Kalpana Nand (Mission Heights Primary School, New Zealand)
The success rate of computer games in engaging children has prompted educational researchers to investigate if similar
techniques can be used to engage children with learning. In this paper, we present the results of a study conducted with
120 primary school children, in which two versions of our proposed educational tool (Features Enriched Game (FEG) vs
Feature Devoid Game (FDG)) were used for four weeks to teach primary school curriculum areas of Numeracy and Te
Reo Maori language. The effectiveness of the educational tool was measured using a pre-test and a post-test, as well as
the frequency and duration of time on playing the game. The results showed that the FEG version enhanced children's
learning - it was more effective as an educational tool in both Numeracy and Te Reo curriculum areas, when compared
to the FDG version. In the case of Numeracy, the increase in scores was twice as much as the FDG version and in the
case of Te Reo (Maori Language) it was five times as much. Similar results were also shown by other indicators such as
time and frequency. Finally, the results showed that the FEG version of the game was more popular with children.
DEVELOPING INTERACTIVE CLASSROOM EXERCISES FOR USE WITH MOBILE DEVICES TO ENHANCE
CLASS ENGAGEMENT AND PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS
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Debzani Deb (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
Mohammad Muztaba Fuad (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
Waleed Farag (Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA)
A recent Pew research center study of mobile device usage revealed that, African American and Latinos are the most
active users of the Internet from mobile devices. The study also revealed that minority cell phone owners take advantage
of a much greater range of their phone's features compared with people of other ethnicities. At Winston Salem State
University (WSSU), it is common for students to multi-task and use their mobile devices while in class for studying, or
performing other activities. This paper reports our ongoing experiences running a National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored targeted Infusion Project (TIP) in Computer Science that aims to leverage this situation by developing a
mobile classroom response system (MRS) to help students solve interactive problems in their mobile devices in order to
improve their class engagement and problem solving skills. By allowing them to solve problems in their preferred
devices, the project expects to create a friendly learning environment where the students want to retain, be active and
skillful.
EEC1: Electrical and Computer Engineering Courses and Laboratories
Chair: Robert Weissbach
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Doblon
DEPECABOT: A HANDS ON WORKSHOP TO TEACH ROBOTICS AND TO IMPROVE STUDENTS
ELECTRONICS KNOWLEDGE
Julio Pastor (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Pedro Revenga (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Marcelo Salazar Arcucci (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Ángel Sánchez García (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Carlos de la Rubia (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Juan García Domínguez (University of Alcalá, Spain)
Francisco Rodriguez (University of Alcalá, Spain)
This paper describes the hands on workshop experience using a robot kit DepecaBot, as a part of a global effort of
teaching robotics as a way of improving skills for students in field of computer science, electronics, and
telecommunications. The Robotics Week has been taking place at the University of Alcalá since 2000. This Robotics
Week comprises different activities: sumo fighting robots, autonomous race robots, conferences, mini-conferences and
workshops. In this framework, the DepecaBot hands on workshop is held in parallel with other working activities. In this
paper, the bases, creation, evolution, development, and assessments of this hands on workshop are shown as a part of a
continuous effort. These efforts try to improve skills, motivation, by making things by using robotics. Participants in the
workshop make a complete working robot, from the scratch. A small competition takes place in the end of the workshop
in order to test the acquired skills.
A NOVEL APPROACH TO TEACHING PHASED ARRAY ANTENNA SYSTEMS
Paul B Crilly (U.S. Coast Guard Academy, USA)
Richard J Hartnett (U.S. Coast Guard Academy, USA)
Betty-Rose Santrach (U.S. Coast Guard Academy, USA)
Carlos Palenzuela (U.S. Coast Guard Academy, USA)
Phased array antenna systems provide a practical method of achieving directivity and hence are covered in undergraduate
antenna courses. In order to facilitate understanding, we describe a simple, but elegant method to provide a full sensory
experience that describes the operation of a phased array antenna system. Our method is based on using an audio source
that feeds an array of speakers appropriately spaced apart such that when a listener walks around the array, they
experience the null points as well as the primary lobe and minor lobes. It is extremely profound for the student to
experience a relatively loud tone, and then when moving just a few inches perceives the complete absence of the tone.
The apparatus is economical and relatively easy to implement and test as compared to an RF antenna phased array. The
ideas presented are applicable to other courses in electrical and mechanical engineering that cover array signal
processing, beamforming, and acoustics. Preliminary student assessment has shown that the proposed method greatly
enhances understanding of phased array systems.
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A FIRST YEAR, VHDL BASED, DIGITAL ELECTRONICS COURSE
José Daniel Muñoz Frías (Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain)
Sadot Alexandres (Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Spain)
Most classical digital electronics textbooks have addressed the design with hardware description languages (HDL) as an
addition to the traditional curricula. This is true, due that the design of digital circuits and the HDL specification are no
taught simultaneously, but separated through time. Usually both are studied in different courses. The goal of this paper is
to present a novel approach that simultaneously performs the introduction to digital electronics with the introduction to
the specification of circuits using the VHDL language. In addition, the course is designed for the Telecommunications
Program first course (spring) with option in telematics, so the previous knowledge of the students is reduced to a
fundamental course in electrical circuits. The course starts as any other basic course in digital electronics: introduction to
digital world, Boolean algebra, number systems and digital codes. Then, an introduction to VHDL is given, showing the
basic file structure, basic data types and concurrent constructs; that is, the fundamentals to describe combinational
circuits using the most common levels: structural and behavioural levels. After this introductory section, the course deals
with the study of combinational systems: arithmetic circuits (adder, subtractor and multiplier) and others basic
combinational blocks (multiplexers, encoders, comparators, etc.). All circuits are designed in the first time using logic
gates, then the same circuit is described in VHDL. In this way the student learns the use of hardware description
languages as something natural. New VHDL language statements are then introduced step-by-step into the most
favourable context. An excellent example is the for..generate sentence that is introduced to describe an n-bit adder by
instancing a one-bit adder n-times. In addition, if a circuit can be described in various terms, we try to show both
methods. Following the adder example, the course describes how to specify it using the + operator. The next part of the
course deals with sequential circuits. The section starts studying the fundamental concepts as feedback, state,
synchronism, etc., and basic memory elements as latches and flip-flops. Then state machines and his VHDL specification
are described. To do that, it is necessary to introduce new VHDL constructs: the process and the sequential statements if
and case. Finally registers and counters blocks are discussed. The course ends with the introduction to complex digital
systems, showing the design of this kind of systems. Complex digital systems are designed dividing them in a datapath
and a control circuit. The whole course is complemented with experimental sessions in a laboratory in which the student
designs circuits using a powerful CAD system (Quartus II from Altera). The implementation of the designed circuits are
done using programmable logic devices. The course has been taught during four years, with good feedback from the
students. In the final version of the article it will be shown both course development and the book prepared for the
student,
which
is
under
the
creative
commons
license
and
available
at:
http://www.dea.icai.upcomillas.es/daniel/asignaturas/SistDig1_1_ITL/ApuntesED.pdf
ELECTRONS TO LIGHT BULBS: UNDERSTANDING ELECTRICITY WITH A MULTI-LEVEL SIMULATION
ENVIRONMENT
Elham Beheshti (Northwestern University, USA)
Asmaa Aljuhani (Northwestern University, USA)
Michael Horn (Northwestern University, USA)
Electrical circuits are difficult to understand. Novices tend to have inadequate understandings of what happens at the
level of atoms and electrons, leading to difficulty predicting the outcomes of electrical circuits at the level of wires,
resistors, and light bulbs. In this paper, we argue that integrating micro and macro representations of an electrical circuit
can provide students with a better understanding of fundamental concepts of electricity. We then introduce Spark, an
interactive multi-level simulation environment that enables learners to interact with representations of electrical circuit at
both levels. The primary goal of our design is to familiarize students with electrical current, resistance, and potential
difference in a circuit. We conducted a study with 17 university students that shows the ability of our design to improve
novice understanding of electrical circuits. Our study offers evidence that learners are able to develop better
understandings of fundamental concepts of electricity drawing on both micro-level and macro-level representations of an
electrical circuit.
INVESTIGATING STUDENT LEARNING OF THE VOLTAGE AND POTENTIAL CONCEPTS IN
INTRODUCTORY ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Dion Timmermann (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Christian Kautz (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Voltage is one of the most fundamental concepts in electrical engineering, but nevertheless has been shown to be a
difficult concept for many students. To help solve those difficulties, we designed a tutorial worksheet similar to those
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published by the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington. In this activity, students were introduced to
electric potential and compared and contrasted it to voltage. As electric potential and Kirchhoff's Voltage Law are
closely related, we assumed learning about potential would help students gain a better qualitative understanding of
voltage. Post-test and exam data from an introductory circuits course show that after the tutorial many students still had
difficulties with voltage and potential. More than three quarters of the responses concerning voltage and potential were
inconsistent. This suggests that most students were unable to link those two concepts. Tutorial worksheets have been
shown to be generally effective in helping students overcome conceptual difficulties. As we cannot find any problems
with the design or use of our worksheet, we therefore conclude that potential and voltage remain conceptually very
different for students in their learning process. It is likely that there are specific difficulties with these concepts that have
not yet been identified.
A MODEL OF PHOTO-VOLTAIC GENERATOR FOR EDUCATION
Joan Pons-Llinares (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
José Belda-Gisbert (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Carla Montagud (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Jose Antonino-Daviu (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Photo-voltaic generators are no longer an energy source mainly useful for off-grid applications, such as satellites. Their
presence in the energy mix of developed countries has substantially increased. Moreover, their price downward trend,
together with the upward trend of electric energy prices, might increase their role, if allowed by the legal context. The
behavior of photo-voltaic generators is complex, especially under partial shading. In order to enhance the learning of
their characteristic current-voltage curve, the paper presents an easy and fast to apply model. The state of the art for
modelling photo-voltaic cells has been reviewed. Upon the different types of models, a balanced option between
complexity and precision has been chosen. Then, a model of a panel is built, by connecting an arbitrary number of cells,
with an arbitrary number of bypass diodes. An arbitrary number of panels are connected to construct a string, including
the correspondent blocking diode, and a set of strings constitute the generator matrix of panels. The model has been
implemented in Matlab. Finally, several exercises have been developed, following a "learning by doing" methodology:
students learn, from the influence of the cell parameters on its current-voltage curve, to the generator behavior under
partial shading.
EER: eMadrid Network
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: El Escorial
ROADMAP TOWARDS THE OPENNESS OF EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: OUTCOMES OF THE
PARTICIPATION IN THE EMADRID NETWORK
Edmundo Tovar (Technical University of Madrid, Spain)
Nelson Piedra (Technical University of Loja, Ecuador)
Jorge Lopez-Vargas (Technical University of Loja, Ecuador)
Janneth Chicaiza (Technical University of Loja, Ecuador)
The contribution of GICAC UPM group in the eMadrid initiative has focused to the application of semantic web
technologies in the Open Education context. This work presents the main results obtained through different applications
and models according to a roadmap followed by the group.
ENHANCING HIGHER EDUCATION EXPERIENCE: THE EMADRID INITIATIVE AT UNED UNIVERSITY
Miguel Rodriguez-Artacho (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
Manuel Castro (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
Luz Robles (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Colombia)
Sergio Martin (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
Salvador Ros (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
In this paper we focus on the achievements of eMadrid initiative in some fields of technology-enhanced learning, mainly
involving the improvement of the mechanisms for open educational content retrieval from Internet, considering Internet
resources as potential learning objects. Also we facilitate the integration of external tools in virtual campuses
architectures supporting enriched capabilities and describe a way to cluster and identify learner weaknesses using a
learning analytics approach in combination with the item response theory.
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SERIOUS GAMES: A JOURNEY FROM RESEARCH TO APPLICATION
Pablo Moreno Ger (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Ivan Martinez-Ortiz (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Manuel Freire (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Borja Manero (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
This paper presents our point of view of the serious games research area covering relevant aspects of the current situation
and what we consider are the key elements to be developed in the next years. This is a long journey from niche research
to application in real settings and to what could be the generalization of games in mainstream education. We describe
some of the lines of research we consider more relevant for completing this journey.
A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF TRENDS IN EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
Carlos Delgado Kloos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
María-Blanca Ibáñez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Carmen Fernandez-Panadero (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Pedro J. Muñoz Merino (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Iria Estevez-Ayres (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Raquel Crespo (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Carlos Alario Hoyos (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
Mar Pérez Sanagustín (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)
This paper summarizes some of the work that has been carried out within the eMadrid research network in the last four
years in the area of educational technology at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. In order to organize the findings and
identify future trends and possibilities, a framework space is used with three dimensions: physical-digital, local-global,
and formal informal. Research results are presented along the three dimensions and possible future developments are
suggested in this framework.
EXPLORING ON E-LEARNING ENHANCEMENT BY MEAN OF ADVANCED INTERACTIVE TOOLS:
THE GHIA (GROUP OF ADVANCED INTERACTIVE TOOLS) PROPOSALS
Xavier Alamán (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Rosa M. Carro (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Ivan Claros (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Ruth Cobos (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Leovy Echeverria (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Colombia)
Javier Gomez (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Pablo A. Haya (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Francisco Jurado (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Germán Montoro (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Jaime Moreno-Llorena (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain)
Alvaro Ortigosa (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
Pilar Rodriguez (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain)
This document introduces the GHIA research group, summarizes its main research areas regarding e-Learning systems
and spot out some of its future work, exposing all this information within the context of the eMadrid network.
AUTOMATIC DETECTION OF BAD PROGRAMMING HABITS IN SCRATCH: A PRELIMINARY STUDY
Jesús Moreno León (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologias Educativas y de Formacion del Profesorado, Spain)
Gregorio Robles (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Using the Scratch environment as a tool to teach programming skills or develop computational thinking is increasingly
common in all levels of education, well-documented case studies from primary school to university can be found.
However, there are reports that indicate that students learning to program in this environment show certain habits that are
contrary to the basic programming recommendations. In our work as instructors with high school students, we have
detected these and other bad practices, such as the repetition of code and object naming, on a regular basis. This paper
focuses on verifying whether these issues can generally be found in the Scratch community, by analyzing a large number
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of projects available on the Scratch community website. To test this hypothesis, we downloaded 100 projects and
analyzed them with two plug-ins we developed to automatically detect these bad practices. The plug-ins extend the
functionality of the Hairball tool, a static code analyzer for Scratch projects. The results obtained show that, in general,
projects in the repository also incur in the investigated malpractices. Along with suggestions for future work, some ideas
that might assist to address such situations are proposed in the conclusions of the paper.
EER2: Dissemination of Research and Teaching Innovations
Chair: Richard Layton
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Aranjuez
CATALYZING RESEARCH-TO-PRACTICE CONVERSATIONS: A GLOBAL, INTERDISCIPLINARY AND
EMERGENT SYMPOSIUM IN THE CONTEXT OF LEARNING TO DESIGN
Robin Adams (Purdue University, USA)
Andrew O. Brightman (Purdue University, USA)
Patrice Buzzanell (Purdue University, USA)
Monica Cardella (Purdue University, USA)
Nathalie Duval-Couetil (Purdue University, USA)
Michael Fosmire (Purdue University, USA)
Holly Jaycox (Purdue University, USA)
Shannon McMullen (Purdue University, USA)
Senay Purzer (Purdue University, USA)
David Radcliffe (Purdue University, USA)
Junaid Siddiqui (Purdue University, USA)
Fu Zhao (Purdue University, USA)
This paper describes the design of an international symposium whereby design researchers and design educators from
diverse disciplines form a learning partnership to advance design thinking. This Design Thinking Research Symposium
(DTRS) involves sharing a research dataset of design review conversations: digital videos of conversations between
those who give and those who receive feedback, guidance or critique during a design review event. Design researchers
are invited to apply their expertise to the dataset and share their insights at the symposium to contribute to a working
synthesis on design thinking and learning. Similarly, design teachers participate in the research discussions and codevelop solutions to design teaching and learning challenges. Concepts from three theoretical frameworks, the
scholarship of integration, learning partnerships and complexity theory, were used to design interactions before, during,
and after the symposium. This transformative approach provides a potentially more effective means than the traditional
diffusion model (research-disseminate-adopt) to translate educational research into teaching practice.
LEARNING FROM THE BEST: HOW AWARD-WINNING COURSEWARE HAS IMPACTED ENGINEERING
EDUCATION
Flora McMartin (Broad-based Knowledge, LLC, USA)
Sarah Giersch (Broad-based Knowledge, LLC, USA)
Joseph Tront (Virginia Polytechnic University, USA)
Joshua Morrill (Morrill Solutions, USA)
This paper describes research 1) to examine the impact of the Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education
Courseware on the faculty members who developed and used award-winning courseware with their students and 2) to
examine how the rewards system within higher education has changed in its valuation of innovative teaching. A case
study was conducted with the faculty members who won the Premier Award from 1997 to 2012. The research team also
gathered data from related populations (engineering deans and administrators; courseware end users) to provide a
nuanced perspective on successful dissemination methods for courseware and on changes in the reward and recognition
system in higher education.
DEVELOPMENT AND PROPAGATION: A CASE STUDY OF THE AICHE CONCEPT WAREHOUSE
Debra Gilbuena (Oregon State University, USA)
Christina Smith (Oregon State University, USA)
Milo Koretsky (Oregon State University, USA)
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Propagation is a widespread goal of educational innovations. If an innovation is effective in one environment, developers
usually desire to share it with other instructors and institutions to have a larger impact and improve education more
broadly. Additionally, funding agencies like the National Science Foundation require a "broader impact" component in
all grant proposals. One aspect commonly missing when an innovation is shared is a reflective, evidence-based
description of the process as the innovation moves from the home institution to other institutions with different faculty,
different students and a different culture. In analogy to molecular diffusion, E.M. Rogers put forth a theory, Diffusion of
Innovations, that offers one framework with which to examine this process. In this context, Rogers describes diffusion as
"the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social
system." We report on the first two years of propagation of the AIChE Concept Warehouse, a cyber-enabled website to
support the chemical engineering education community's use of conceptual learning. It contains large sets of conceptbased clicker questions (or ConcepTests), Concept Inventories and interactive virtual labs for core chemical engineering
classes. In this paper, we focus on the evolution of propagation strategies used by the developers of this tool to highlight
aspects of diffusion that other innovators may want to consider and provide an example of how these aspects can be
examined in the early stages of an innovation's life. We asked the following research questions: Who are the change
agents and what propagation strategies have they used? How have the strategies changed over time? What aspects of the
community culture afford and constrain propagation? Change agents were identified as the developers of the tool and as
non-developer opinion leaders who have actively propagated the tool. Related to the developers, we examined the
original proposal to identify initial strategies the developers had described when conceiving of the tool. The proposal was
analyzed with a coding scheme designed by Henderson et al. to identify propagation strategies. We also examined the
proposal for reasons for particular strategies and indications for how those strategies were intended to . In addition, we
interviewed each of the PIs and asked them to reflect on their original intent, the current state, and the future vision for
the AIChE Concept Warehouse, with specific attention to the developers' propagation strategies and the perceived
effectiveness of those strategies. Initially the developers described the intent to conduct multiple workshops at
institutions expecting an increase in adoption as a result of the workshops. As the project progressed their strategies
evolved. We found that the developers had not anticipated many of the strategies that they have now come to identify as
some of the most effective, specifically the power of collaborative projects for increasing adopters.
PROMOTING MORE EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION OF STORIES IN THE DATA
Richard Layton (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA)
Richard House (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
George Ricco (Purdue University, USA)
Practitioners in engineering education, in studying and presenting their quantitative data, typically seek meaning---an
inherently rhetorical activity. Data displays are an important part of this discourse. Visual conventions (pie charts, bar
charts, and line charts, for example) can help or hinder the discovery of meaning in a data set. Our work concerns the
visual rhetoric of this community: we assess current conventions and promote contemporary approaches to more
effectively discover and communicate stories in the data. In this work in progress, we present three data displays from
the Journal of Engineering Education representing commonly encountered, conventional designs. We assess the
rhetorical merits and shortcomings of the displays, redesign them using principles and practices from the data
visualization community, and discuss the results. We conclude that intentional design of data displays can help
researchers explore their data, discover questions that might not have arisen otherwise, and convey compelling messages
to their audiences.
ENHANCING COLLABORATION AND DISSEMINATION THROUGH A FACULTY SCHEDULED
DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK
Shohreh Hadian (Camosun College, Canada)
Colleges provide professional development opportunities to faculty to promote knowledge growth and improvement of
skills. At Camosun College, Scheduled Development (SD) time for faculty is based on the educational practice and
recognition of the need for continuous professional development of faculty members. The paper presents the
development of an online environment to enhance and promote active collaboration among faculty in the context of
professional development. The Scheduled Development (SD) Connect tool is under development, implementation and is
currently undergoing testing. SDConnect is a multi-facet targeted software tool that aids in dissemination, collaboration,
tracking, and integration of faculty SD for post secondary institutions The tool will also enable Camosun College faculty
and staff to access the information database on SD activities, with the goal that it may lead to active collaborations and
synergies among the faculty, departments and schools. This project will also enable the administration to efficiently
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administer SD proposals and approvals and to establish historical records and trends of the SD activities of faculty for
better resource management. SDConnect is part of an ongoing project called DEAL (Diversity In an Environment of
Accessible Learning) at Camosun College.
GBL2: Advances in Game Based Learning
Chair: Paul Anderson
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: La Granja
TAKING IT TO THE NEXT INTERFACE LEVEL: ADVANCING GAME DESIGN FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
STEM APPLICATIONS
Elizabeth Lennon (Manhattan College, USA)
Brian Moriarty (Stevens Institute of Technology, USA)
Marko Zivkovic (Stevens Institute of Technology, USA)
Despite the demand for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professionals and their role in driving
innovation and economic growth, literature consistently reports that less than forty percent of students in the United
States starting out in a STEM college program complete their degree. One way to increase the pipeline of STEM
professionals in the near-term is to increase the retention rates of students pursuing STEM degree programs. It is wellestablished that a key component of achievement in STEM-related curricula at every level (elementary, secondary, or
post-secondary) is the student's degree of engagement with the subject matter. This work details the development of a
game platform that integrates undergraduate STEM content in a compelling and holistic fashion in which users can
navigate the environment using natural gestures. Recognizing that the inclusion of games in educational contexts is a
broad area of ongoing study, the authors confine the scope of this project to the development of advanced game systems
for higher education STEM applications. Using natural gestures to navigate and control software environments presents a
unique way of exploring multidimensional game environments as well as information in problem solving scenarios. Last
summer our interdisciplinary team of faculty and research students completed an initial game prototype, "CONST∆NT."
This prototype was designed as a first person role playing game (RPG) with an intuitive natural gesture interface
specifically designed to explore calculus concepts. Lessons learned from the summer development effort of
"CONST∆NT" were presented at the World Engineering Education Forum (WEEF) 2013 Conference. This paper reports
on the follow-on development since the initial demonstration prototype. Three particular aspects of the development
effort have been advanced: 1) hardware and middleware updates 2) modularization of the software for more expeditious
adaptation to other STEM subjects, and 3) improvements to the game platform to enhance the overall user experience.
For example, the relative novelty and emergent capabilities of natural gesture interfaces heavily informs the ways in
which calculus problems in the game are generated and presented. To assess the immersion of users in the game,
preliminary measures of gestural, visual, and narrative engagement within the RPG environment have also been
collected and compared. Ultimately this research and development endeavor aims to take STEM educational games to
the next level of interface design in which students actively interface and experience given subject matter via natural
gesture controls. The gesture integration serves to actively increase the students' engagement with STEM content in an
entertaining and modern game environment.
A GAME-BASED APPROACH TO INFORMATION LITERACY AND ENGINEERING IN CONTEXT
Kristin Boudreau (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Laura R. Hanlan (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Engineering students need complex skills to be effective in college and post-graduate employment. Beyond technical
skills, the ability to integrate varied types of information is essential for competence in applying engineered solutions to
real-life situations. While research shows that project-based learning favorably affects engineering student success and
retention as well as recruitment of diverse populations to STEM, it is challenging to find ways to incorporate projects
during the first two years, where in the U.S. general education requirements typically precede major course work. As a
work in progress, we report on the first phase of an experiment at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) using a
sophomore-level humanities course to teach information literacy. Students develop a pedagogical role-play game to
explore a historical situation simulating engineered solutions. The game offers the advantages of project-based learning
within a traditionally framed classroom environment, and before students address complex engineering problems within
their major areas of study. To assess the effectiveness of our educational approach we reviewed the quality and type of
sources located by students and completed a textual analysis of students' reflective essays. Through game development,
students effectively located information, and saw value in the research skills they gained.
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EDUCATIONAL GAMES FOR IMPROVING THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS OF A CLIL SUBJECT:
PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY IN SECONDARY EDUCATION
Raquel Rodriguez (Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Spain)
Manuel Blazquez (Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Spain)
Beatriz López-Medina (Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Spain)
Manuel Castro (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Elio Sancristobal (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Sergio Martin (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Introduction Few would dispute the fact that today´s students process information, think and learn differently from their
predecessors, owing to the fact that computer games, internet, mobile phones or instant messaging are essential for their
everyday lives. As a result, due to the fact that technology seems to have changed the way our students learn we might
also need to modify the approaches, methods and techniques of teaching in order to meet these new demands. The use of
educational games in an academic context seems to be a superb alternative to traditional learning activities, such as drilltype exercises, in order to engage 21st-century students. Consequently, this work tries to raise the following objectives:
analyse the effectiveness of game-based learning, characterise game elements that may contribute to create playing
experiences, comprehend how different player types interact with games and, finally, design interactive games which
may create challenges, set goals and provide feedback on progress while motivating learners to study physics and
chemistry in a foreign language in the second cycle of Spanish Secondary Education. The scope of the paper Throughout
this paper we explain how we came up with the idea of designing games for improving the teaching-learning process of
physics and chemistry in the Second cycle of Secondary Education in a bilingual context. Afterwards, we describe the
objectives to be achieved and the state of the art related to game-based learning and their effectiveness versus traditional
case-based learning. Furthermore, we specify the theoretical framework, synthesizing the approaches, methods and
techniques of teaching that support the use of games in an academic context. Subsequently, we may point out and justify
the game elements and Web 2.0 tools that we have chosen to create playing experiences, as well as some contents related
to physics and chemistry in the Second cycle of Secondary Education that could be taught through games. Specifically,
we have used several Web 2.0 tools (Hot Potatoes, Scratch, What2Learn and SMART Notebook 11) and applications
(Microsoft PowerPoint and Microsoft Excel) in order to create the games; and these games are based on the successive
contents: laboratory safety, laboratory equipment, stoichiometry, atomic structure, electronic configuration, the periodic
table, forces, motion and energy. Lastly, we may analyse the games which would have been designed in order to attempt
to create challenges, set goals and provide feedback on progress while engaging learners to study physics and chemistry
in a foreign language. Finally, we should describe briefly the conclusions of this TFM, as well as its limitations.
THE IMPACT OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN TEACHER ACTIVITIES. A PERCEPTION
SURVEY
Sonia Valladares-Rodriguez (University of Vigo, Spain)
Roberto Perez Rodriguez (University of Vigo, Spain)
Manuel Fernández Iglesias (University of Vigo, Spain)
Montserrat Vazquez Gestal (University of Vigo, Spain)
Luis Anido-Rifon (University of Vigo, Spain)
Martin Llamas-Nistal (University of Vigo, Spain)
Antonia Blanco Pesquera (University of Vigo, Spain)
Open educational resources are a key instrument in the promotion of learning and social appropriation of knowledge in
the digital world. Providing access to existing learning resources in a way that teachers, students and parents are able to
discover, acquire, discuss and adapt them to their own learning scenarios will also promote the development of values
and attitudes that play a fundamental role in the educational process, such as team work, collaboration and critical
thinking. In turn, this will foster the development of learning networks and communities. In this context, teachers play an
instrumental role as facilitators, as their expertise enables them to assess the quality of content and to design and adapt
learning activities according to individual learners' profiles. However, we wanted to find out how the interaction with
open educational resources would enhance teachers' activities, if digital resources could be easily integrated in their
actual educational curricula, or if teachers felt that the introduction of these resources would improve the educational
experience of their students. This paper addresses the usage and usability of open educational resources from teachers'
perceptions. For this, we utilized the Open Discovery Space portal, a socially-powered and multilingual open educational
resources' repository intended to support teachers, students and parents to intuitively identify, share, reuse and revise
digital learning resources. This analysis was performed taking into account both actual content and ancillary services
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offered by the portal (e.g., content sharing, content discussion, community building), and was methodologically
organized as a streamlined cognitive walkthrough that included two evaluation workshops in late 2013 and early 2014,
and a further debriefing survey in mid 2014. The first workshop included a brief course to teachers on the functionalities
and aims of the Open Discovery Space portal and an assessment survey. The second workshop was devoted to answer
the questions posed by the teachers participating after a 6-week period of usage and reflection. Again, the workshop was
completed with an assessment survey on the portal's content and services. Finally, in mid 2014 a final evaluation, surveybased session was (will be at the time of writing this abstract) carried out after continuing interaction with the portal's
content and services during several months.
GDI2: Recruiting and Retaining Female Students to Engineering and Computer Science
Chair: Lecia Barker
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Patio 1
ANALYSIS OF WOMEN ENROLLMENT IN ENGINEERING PROGRAMS AT THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY OF
NAVARRE
Gurutze Pérez-Artieda (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Eugenio Gubía (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Edurne Barrenechea (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Pablo Sanchis (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Antonio J López-Martín (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
David Astrain (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Daniel Morato (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Jesús López-Taberna (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Ignacio R. Matias (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
The presence of women in science and technology has been historically hampered by obstacles of different kinds.
Currently women represent more than 50% of the University students both in Europe and the United States. According to
this, one might assume that the number of female students in Engineering might have been progressively increasing. But,
the under-representation of women in engineering degrees has become a persistent problem. This work presents an
analysis of women enrolment in engineering degrees at the Public University of Navarre, where a negative tendency has
been detected over the past 10 years. In order to understand the underlying causes of this situation, a survey was
conducted among students of all engineering programs. As a conclusion, some straightforward actions are proposed to
change the conception of Engineering in our surroundings. The main action lines are to modify the type of information
facilitated to prospective students and secondary schools, including aspects such as social contribution, female engineer
role models, and information about the higher success rate of female students.
EXPANDING WOMEN IN UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING:
A MIXED-METHODS ANALYSIS OF RECRUITMENT CULTURES, PRACTICES, AND POLICIES
David Knight (Virginia Tech, USA)
Brian Novoselich (Virginia Tech, USA)
Lois Trautvetter (Northwestern University, USA)
Bringing a diverse set of perspectives to bear on problems is important for spurring scientific and technical innovation,
and so it is imperative to identify effective ways to enable the recruitment of additional women into the field. Using a
concurrent mixed methods approach, we investigate this issue using 1) qualitative data from 468 faculty, student, and
administrator interviews from six case study institutions, and 2) quantitative data from nationally representative surveys
of faculty and administrators from 31 institutions. Our study highlights three themes consistent across the institutions: 1)
institutional commitment and self-awareness, 2) strategic admissions policies and "high touch" efforts, and 3) integrated
outreach programs. Quantitative data show higher diversity perceptions at case study institutions in comparison to the
full population. Outreach responsibilities tend to fall on the backs of only a few faculty members, especially women
faculty. Furthermore, there is the perception that such efforts are not given strong consideration in determining
promotion and tenure or merit salary decisions. Our findings imply that institutions need to consider ways to adjust
policies to reward faculty members for their time spent in this manner so that they will have incentives to continue
supporting activities that appear to enhance the field's diversity.
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INTEGRATED EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND TECHNICAL EXPERIENCES TO DRAW FEMALES INTO
THE ENERGY SYSTEMS AREA:
THE UPRM EXPERIENCE
Lorena Delgado-Vazquez (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Vivian Rodriguez (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Luisa Feliciano-Cruz (University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, USA)
Liann Ruiz-Crespo (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Ashley del Valle Morales (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Eduardo Ortiz-Rivera (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Traditionally, the energy systems area, and in general any STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)
area, have been male dominated. Because of this women in these fields have had a tendency to stand down when it
comes to aiding in innovation and practice within specific fields such as energy systems. To counteract this effect,
research and educational activities have been designed to create an enriched hands-on experience in energy systems for
current and future female undergraduates. As part of this paper, it is shown how the departments of mechanical,
electrical and computer engineering have developed educational strategies to increase the female and minority
participation within the area of energy systems at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus. Integrated with the
mechanical and electrical engineering class curriculums, the program presented aims to create awareness of the vast
applications in the field of energy systems that go beyond the typical stereotypes with the intention to make way for
females and minority students to take the initiative to develop themselves as professionals in this field. With this in mind
several strategies are presented including but not limited to: a) Deliver hands on experience to prospect high school and
freshmen college students, with special emphasis on female participants b) Enhance teamwork skills in project
development and interdisciplinary work c) Create lasting interest in the study and design of energy systems. This paper
presents activities designed to attract females and minorities in the area of energy systems at the University of Puerto
Rico, Mayagüez Campus.. These activities range from building simple photovoltaic arrangements and small induction
motors, to computer programming. Finally, it is the ultimate goal that this paper would serve as a tool for other
institutions to replicate the presented strategies to be able to increase the enrollment and interest of female students in the
area of energy systems.
UNDERSTANDING GENDER DIFFERENCES IN ONLINE LEARNING
Julie Little-Wiles (Indiana University-Purdue University (IUPUI), USA)
Eugenia Fernandez (Indiana University-Purdue University (IUPUI), USA)
Patricia Fox (Indiana University-Purdue University (IUPUI), USA)
As virtual learning has become increasingly popular, the question of student engagement remains a critical factor for
both administrators and faculty. Determining how students respond and participate in online courses has been studied to
some degree, but what has not specifically been addressed is the factor of gender. So simply asked: Does gender play a
significant role in how students engage with online courses? This question directed a two year study that sought to
determine if gender does play a role in student engagement in one online sophomore-level ethical decision-making
course. The project phases include planning, the pilot, and the full launch in the last two semesters. The data examined
by the research team includes students' gender, total site activity and usage, total site visits, chat room activity, message
activity, final course letter grade, and final course letter grade percentage earned. This two-year study is organized into
four phases. Currently, phases one and two are complete with phase two, the pilot study, garnering some interesting
results. Phase three, the full launch, is underway and the researchers hope it will determine if the pilot results were
correct or if a larger sample provides a clearer determination in regards to gender.
HFC1: Evaluating the Flipped Classroom Experience
Chair: Pramod Pathak
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Escudo
DO STUDENTS LIKE THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM?
AN INVESTIGATION OF STUDENT REACTION TO A FLIPPED UNDERGRADUATE IT COURSE
Rob Elliott (IUPUI, USA)
The flipped classroom pedagogy has achieved significant mention in academic circles in recent years. "Flipping"
involves the reinvention of a traditional course so that students engage with learning materials via recorded lectures and
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interactive exercises prior to attending class and then use class time for more interactive activities. Proper
implementation of a flipped classroom is difficult to gauge, but combines successful techniques for distance education
with constructivist learning theory in the classroom. While flipped classrooms are not a novel concept, technological
advances and increased comfort with distance learning have made the tools to produce and consume course materials
more pervasive. Flipped classroom experiments have had both positive and less-positive results and are generally
measured by a significant improvement in learning outcomes. This study, however, analyzes the opinions of students in a
flipped sophomore-level information technology course by using a combination of surveys and reflective statements. The
author demonstrates that at the outset students are new - and somewhat receptive - to the concept of the flipped
classroom. By the conclusion of the course satisfaction with the pedagogy is significant. Finally, student feedback is
provided in an effort to inform instructors in the development of their own flipped classrooms.
EXPERIMENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS PERFORMANCE AND
SATISFACTION IN A BLENDED MODEL OF AN INTRODUCTORY COMPUTER SCIENCE AND
PROGRAMMING COURSE
Juliana Cristina Braga (ABC Federal University, Brazil)
Edson Pimentel (ABC Federal University, Brazil)
Itana Stiubiener (ABC Federal University, Brazil)
Silvia Dotta (ABC Federal University, Brazil)
Introduction to computer science and programming are disciplines that play an important role in students' performance in
computer and engineering courses. It is in this discipline that students learn the main basic concepts and computational
structures to be applied in all kind of computer systems. Despite its importance many teachers and many studies report
difficulties observed in learning of these subjects, resulting in a high rate of failure and lack of motivation among
students. There are many experiments reported in the literature that attempted to solve this problem, such as: different
pedagogical approaches, the use of special hardware like tablets, p.ex and the use of learning objects however, all these
formats are applied based on formats traditional classroom learning which results in the same type of result. Even some
innovative approaches that did not present a formal validation of the process ended up losing as a methodology.
Considering this scenario and the importance of this discipline in students curriculum we propose a blended model that
uses distance learning environments allied to new technologies aimed to contribute with students performance and
knowledge acquirement. In this blended model one programming course was developed and applied to 90 students in
computer science and engineering courses, with course material consists of video lectures and animations used to show
and explain critical concepts of the discipline and where students often have problems. All this material was implanted
by a Learning Management System (LMS), which showed statistical reports about all activities, including collaborative
and interactive activities We also used together with the LMS, a dedicated community on Facebook and in this article we
present our analysis and some conclusions obtained by observing the interactions of students on Facebook and LMS. We
did a few meetings between students and teachers and also develop a methodology for tutoring with our tutors to
improve our students' participation in the proposed activities during the course. In this paper we describe the
methodology we develop everything. We also present the results achieved in terms of student performance and provides
a comparison with other students who attended courses in conventional programming.
AN ANALYSIS OF FLIP-CLASSROOM PEDAGOGY IN FIRST YEAR UNDERGRADUATE MATHEMATICS
FOR COMPUTING
Michael Bradford (National College of Ireland, Ireland)
Cristina Muntean (National College of Ireland, Ireland)
Pramod Pathak (National College of Ireland, Ireland)
Mathematics is a key subject for success in Computer Science and it continues to be a challenging subject. Use of
technology has given rise to a new pedagogy called Flip-Classroom (FC). FC involves creating online multimedia
content that is utilized out-of-class in conjunction with in-class learning activities such as individual and collaborative
problem solving, group-work and class-discussion. An experiment was conducted to investigate the utility of FC
pedagogy and its relationship with student learning. FC pedagogy was implemented in a first year "Introduction to
Mathematics for Computing" module for a number of core topics. A traditional lecture approach was utilized for the
remaining topics. In-class quiz based assessments, homework assignments and end of semester examinations have been
performed in order to assess the learning performance of the students. The results show that on average students
performed better in assessments on topics taught through FC pedagogy. For Continuous Assessment (CA) components
this increase was 14% and for the terminal exam this increase was 21%. The results indicate that the FC pedagogy may
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improve learning. Furthermore the students have indicated their preference in favor of FC pedagogy. This study will be
of interest to those considering integrating FC pedagogy into teaching Mathematics.
A PILOT FLIPPED ENGINEERING EDUCATION CLASS UTILIZING THE ONLINE DELIVERY OF
LECTURES WITH SPEECH-SYNCHRONIZED PC-SCREEN-CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY
Masanori Hanawa (University of Yamanashi, Japan)
Tatsuhiko Hinaga (University of Yamanashi, Japan)
Masayuki Morisawa (University of Yamanashi, Japan)
Hidetoshi Ando (University of Yamanashi, Japan)
Eriko Tamaru (Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Japan)
Atsushi Hirano (Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Japan)
Takeshi Nagamine (Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Japan)
"Flipped classrooms" have been tested in engineering education through the on-line delivery of lectures using speechsynchronized PC-screen-capture technology (SS-capture) to increase engineering students' enthusiasm towards studying.
The SS-capture system records screenshots as a series of still images synchronously with input from a microphone. The
resultant recording is akin to a slide show and can be readily distributed and viewed on-line using a web server and
browser respectively. The SS-capture system removes barriers that ordinarily inhibit average teachers in faculties of
engineering, who often lack a background in educational technology, from implementing a flipped classroom. Although
the SS-capture system requires students to exert more effort than in a traditional lecture-based classroom, they
nevertheless gave it high praise since it allowed them to learn at their own pace. The benefits of flipped classrooms
include increased learning time, proactive student participation/interaction, a subjective understanding of course content,
and a substantial rise in academic performance.
TOOLS FOR THE FLIPPED CLASSROOM MODEL: AN EXPERIMENT IN TEACHER EDUCATION
Aracele Fassbinder (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Glaucia Cruz (Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil)
Danilo Moreira (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Ellen Barbosa (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
The flipped classroom (FC) is an inverted version of the traditional learning model. An inversion between in-class and
out-of-class activities exists: students learn new content by watching video lectures at home and exercises and group
activities are performed in the classroom with teacher mentoring. Several digital technologies and tools can be used to
support instructors who want to experience the FC learning model. However, despite their relevance, these digital
resources are not prevalent in academic settings. Motivated by this scenario, in this paper, we describe an experiment
that involves the use of digital technologies and tools that support the adoption of the flipped learning model. The
participants of our experiment possessed an academic background; however, they also wanted to gain qualifications to
teach in the Brazilian network of professional and technological education. The main findings from the experiment are
related to the students' and instructors' attitudes toward the FC model and the type of tools that are employed in the
experiment.
PRO2: International Approaches to Teaching Professional Skills
Chair: Charles Wallace
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Comendador
THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSFERABLE SKILLS THROUGH CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT: A CASE
STUDY IN THE UAE
Robert Craig (PETROLEUM INSTITUTE, UAE)
.
This paper reports on a program of first year and second year study developed at a recently ABET-accredited
engineering institute in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to a population of predominantly Emirati students. The program
was developed to address the transition needs common to students world-wide but particularly those associated with
young adults studying in an additional language and beginning undergraduate study often without the basic preparation
expected from secondary education. The design of two first year communications courses was informed by the interests
of ABET Criteria 3 and focused on introducing students to research, teamwork, effective communication and life-long
learning, with the overall aim of developing language proficiency through the acquisition, internalization and articulation
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of knowledge. Initial development of the two courses was informed by in-house needs analyses and developed through
annual reviews of student performance along with feedback from students themselves and receiving engineering program
faculty, concerning strengths and weaknesses of students enrolled in their courses. While no claims are made about
finding the 'solution', a continuous improvement process, informed by research, has resulted in a program designed to
facilitate the implementation of EC2000.
CO-CURRICULAR EXPERIENCES LINK TO NONTECHNICAL SKILL DEVELOPMENT FOR AFRICANAMERICAN ENGINEERS COMMUNICATION, TEAMWORK, PROFESSIONALISM, LIFELONG LEARNING,
AND REFLECTIVE BEHAVIOR SKILLS
Glenda Young (Virginia Tech, USA)
David Knight (Virginia Tech, USA)
Denise R. Simmons (Virginia Tech, USA)
We present an analysis of the influence of co-curricular experiences on the development of communication,
professionalism, lifelong learning, teamwork, and reflective behavior skills for African American engineering students.
Astin's Inputs-Environments-Outputs, or I-E-O, model and the modifications made by Terezini and Reason provide the
conceptual framework for this study. This framework supports out of class experiences as environments that develop
student outcomes. While many studies have shown that co-curricular experiences are linked to student outcomes, this
research offers specific insight into outcomes on African American engineering students. With pervasive calls for
diversity, investigating student outcomes for specific ethnic groups is imperative for educators to ensure that all students
are properly prepared to enter the workforce. Driven by the National Academy of Engineers' Engineer of 2020
recommendations, our research utilizes two distinct data sets to investigate students' perceptions regarding five learning
outcomes. This research offers nuanced insight into co-curricular experiences given broad categories of involvement
(e.g. university level organizations) and specific experiences (e.g. National Society of Black Engineers, NSBE). Results
show that students who only participate in one type of experience may miss opportunities to develop additional skills.
Additionally, results suggest that skill development enhances as the level of involvement increases.
A SUGGESTED STRATEGY FOR TEAMWORK TEACHING IN UNDERGRADUATE
ENGINEERING PROGRAMMES PARTICULARLY IN CHINA
Dan Zhang (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R. China)
Na Yao (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)
Laurie Cuthbert (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)
Steve Ketteridge (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)
Teamwork has been considered as one of the important learning outcomes for engineering graduates. A pilot on
teamwork training was conducted in a joint degree programme between a leading British university and a top Chinese
university in 2011. A supplementary experiment in the module of Personal Development Plan was carried out using a big
sample (624 students) to compare the different group forming methods in both team and academic performance, and for
the first time it attempted to put some tests and checks in the group project of a technical module. This paper reported the
new findings from the supplementary experiments in the Personal Development Plan module and the technical module.
An improved strategy for teamwork teaching in undergraduate engineering programmes particularly in China was
suggested: students would learn teamwork skills in the PDP module in the first year of the university; attend selective
workshops for the practical instruction to transfer knowledge into action; and complete some technical coursework in
groups in senior technical modules.
AN INVESTIGATION OF THE TEAM KNOWLEDGE AND TEAM PERFORMANCE OF THE CHINESE
ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN A SENIOR TECHNICAL MODULE
Dan Zhang (Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R. China)
Paula Fonseca (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)
Laurie Cuthbert (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)
Steve Ketteridge (Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom)
Teamwork is a very important attribute for future engineers. China graduates a large number of engineering graduates
every year, so it is necessary to investigate the teamwork knowledge and performance of the Chinese engineering
students, and work out a better mechanism of teamwork teaching for them. This work investigates the team knowledge
and team performance of the Chinese engineering students in a Year 3 senior technical module - Software Engineering,
in which teamwork skills are one of the course objectives. The test results demonstrated that the declarative knowledge
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of the Year 3 students on team working increased through the years of learning but it was not successfully transferred
into action, the skill based outcome. It was found that the participation rate for teamwork training in the technical module
was low, and students focused more on the technical production. It was suggested to include the peer rating of team
citizenship with a certain percentage (5-10%) in the final coursework mark, and also a certain percentage for individual
contribution (5-10%). This will switch the product oriented to both teamwork and product oriented, and the individual
contribution assessment will prevent social loafing and hitchhiking.
UTILIZING INTERNATIONAL DESIGN COMPETITIONS FOR ENHANCING 21ST CENTURY
ENGINEERING SKILLS: THE EXPERIENCE OF SHELL ECO-MARATHON
Mahmoud Abdulwahed (Qatar University, Qatar)
Mohieddine Benammar (Qatar University, Qatar)
Mazen Omar Hasna (Qatar University, Qatar)
Saud Ghani (Qatar University, Qatar)
Engineering design venues in general allow students an opportunity to build creative and innovative solutions. They may
enable engineering students to develop a number of skills beyond the aimed technical experience; Shell Eco-Marathon
(SEM) is one of the international engineering design competitions. This paper reports on the experience of the College of
Engineering at Qatar University in SEM. It also reports on an empirical investigation of the impact of SEM on
engineering students. The paper starts with providing introductory background, reviews, and some information of Shell
Eco-Marathon (SEM) competition. This is followed by details on Qatar University history of participating in the
competition, developmental experiences gained throughout the previous cycles, and brief descriptions on the cars designs
that were prototyped and implemented by Qatar University students. Impact measure methodology of the empirical
investigation is highlighted together with the process of instruments development. This is followed by details on the
investigation findings. The paper concluded with discussion and recommendations for future developments in
engineering education institutions.
SCL: Mini Workshop - Developing Engineers for a Changing World through Modeling and Simulation-based
Pedagogy
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: El Jardin
MINI WORKSHOP - DEVELOPING ENGINEERS FOR A CHANGING WORLD THROUGH MODELING AND
SIMULATION-BASED PEDAGOGY
Kelsey J Rodgers (Purdue University, USA)
Heidi Diefes-Dux (Purdue University, USA)
Krishna Madhavan (Purdue University, USA)
Yi Kong (Purdue University, USA)
Understanding mathematical models and simulations are skills that all engineers need for industry and research, but
many engineering students lack a conceptual understanding of how to develop them. This workshop facilitates
conversations about the future of engineering education with an emphasis on the importance of mathematical modeling
and simulations. The team will introduce pedagogy used in Purdue's First-Year Engineering Program that enables
students to learn about mathematical modeling and simulation. The team will introduce model-eliciting activities
(MEAs), which enable students to learn how to build mathematical models in a learning environment that uses openended problems. The team will also introduce a well-developed design project that focuses on using mathematical
models to build simulations. The team will also introduce nanoHUB.org, an online community that enables students to
interact with expert-developed simulations and presents a platform for students to disseminate their own simulations in
the future. We will facilitate conversations about how nanoHUB.org can be used in informal and formal learning
environments. We will also discuss how nanoHUB.org presents a place for collaborative engineering education research.
All of the materials from this workshop will also be incorporated on the Nano Education Research page on
nanoHUB.org to further facilitate conversation after the conference. The context for all of the discussed content is
connected to nanotechnology, which enables students from various STEM backgrounds to work together in a crossdisciplinary environment. Overall, our mini-workshop will compliment FIE objectives by looking forward to the future
of STEM education through nanotechnology education and innovative, online learning environments.
SCL2: Leveraging Student-centric Learning in Practice
Chair: Aubrie L Pfirman
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2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
BRIDGING GAPS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION DESIGN THINKING A CRITICAL FACTOR FOR
PROJECT BASED LEARNING
Ashis Jalote-Parmar (Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India)
Design thinking plays a critical role in educating a new class of engineers who can create a better society by innovating
products & services that solve real world problems. Field research including interviews with several key academicians
and technocrats reveal several short comings amongst engineering graduates in India. Addressing the above concerns and
building upon literature, a framework is proposed for a recently established engineering institute in India. This
framework is applied to structure the curriculum for Bachelors of Technology in Information Communication and
Technology (B Tech-ICT). This framework integrates design thinking as a core subject in the 1st year via project based
engineering and promotes new product development. This paper describes an innovative curriculum structured to teach
design (User centered design UCD1 & 2) as a core course to 1st year B Tech -ICT students. A comparative study of
student performance between two semesters indicates an improvement in problem identification, design research and
new product development skills. The paper discusses the success and challenges of introducing design education to
engineering students and identifies social barriers restricting innovative thinking. This paper provided building blocks for
educators to teach design thinking for inculcating innovative thinking in engineering students.
AN ACTIVE LEARNING METHODOLOGY IN POWER ELECTRONIC EDUCATION
Francisco J. Maseda (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
Irene Martija (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
Itziar Martija (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
A novel educational methodology applied to power electronics applications is presented in this paper. A project-based
learning and a specific scenario for promoting active learning in power electronic education are combined. The proposed
scenario is a complete photovoltaic solar generation power system, designed for incorporating all basic power electronic
conversions. The project-based learning methodology based on the functional dissection of power converters allows an
efficient teamwork activity. The objective is to promote the transfer between theory and its real application. The
methodology can be applied to large student groups. The performance of educational tools such as power electronics
simulation software is improved. At the Technical Engineering School of Bilbao, in the Basque Country University,
there is a power electronics system used for active learning activities. It is formed by a 2kW solar system and 1kW gridcharger supplying a part of the Power Electronics laboratory. The different power electronic converters connect to form a
self-sufficient grid.
A CLASSROOM OBSERVATION INSTRUMENT TO ASSESS STUDENT RESPONSE TO ACTIVE LEARNING
Cynthia Finelli (University of Michigan, USA)
Matt DeMonbrun (University of Michigan & School of Education, USA)
Prateek Shekhar (Virginia Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Maura Borrego (University of Texas, Austin, USA)
Michael Prince (Bucknell University, USA)
Charles Henderson (Western Michigan University, USA)
Cindy Waters (North Carolina A+T State University, USA)
Student resistance is often cited as a major barrier to faculty's use of active learning, but there are few research-based
strategies for reducing this barrier. To address the need for such strategies, we have engaged in collaborative research.
Our efforts involve ascertaining factors that influence student resistance to faculty's use of active learning in introductory
engineering courses. We will then identify specific, research-based strategies faculty can employ to significantly reduce
student resistance. In this work-in-progress, we will describe the first part of our project - the development and pilot
testing of a classroom observation instrument to assess student responses to faculty's use of active learning. Our
instrument draws upon other published observation protocols, and it is designed to capture data about faculty's use of and
students' response to active learning. Within a specific class period, the observer identifies separate instances of active
learning. For each instance, the observer records: 1. The start time, duration, and type of active learning used by the
instructor. 2. The way the instructor introduces the activity, strategies employed (if any) to reduce student resistance, and
degree of instructor participation during the activity. 3. The way the students respond during the activity, including
participation rates, signs of passive resistance, partial compliance, or open resistance, and comparable levels of
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acceptance or enthusiasm. In addition to the instrument itself, we designed a training program to ensure consistent
interpretation and application of the instrument. Observers view videotapes of engineering class sessions featuring active
learning, and they complete the instrument and discuss results with other trained observers. We pilot tested the
observation instrument for the first three weeks of class in five large introductory engineering classes: (1) a first-year
introduction to computer programming class with 150 enrolled engineering students, (2) a sophomore-level mechanical
engineering course with 71 students enrolled, (3) a sophomore-level chemical engineering class with 115 students, (4) a
sophomore-level computer engineering class with 88 students, and (5) a sophomore-level computer engineering course
with 66 students. Following the observations, we refined the instrument to include items for classroom setup, technology
available to the instructor, ways students do or don't engage in the instructional material between active learning
instances (e.g. use of technology in note taking, discussion in groups, etc.), and specific strategies employed by the
instructor to increase student participation. Next steps in our project involve using the instrument in a broader set of
classroom observations and conducting faculty interviews and focus groups. Future efforts also include designing and
administering a survey to assess student expectations for classroom instruction and analyzing the data to identify
strategies to reduce student resistance.
USE OF ARGUMENT MAPS TO PROMOTE CRITICAL THINKING IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Sean Rocke (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Cathy-Ann Radix (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Jeevan Persad (The University of The West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Daniel Ringis (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
One challenge faced in the engineering education, is the need to imbue both technical competence and critical thinking
skills within the bounds of academic program delivery. While technical competence can be built and assessed using
structured and/or quantitative exercises, critical thinking is a skill that is both difficult to cultivate and to assess. Critical
thinking involves the possession of both an expert mental model as well as the ability to leverage this model in various
tasks. In engineering education, these tasks include making and justifying design choices, system optimization, and
predicting system performance. Prior work, by one of the authors, explored the role of graphic organizers in the
development of student's mental models. This paper describes action research underway, to explore the use of the
argument map, as a structured means of leveraging mental models to promote critical thinking. In this paper, interactive
small-group tasks based on argument maps are presented, and outputs generated by the initial cohort of undergraduate
senior learners on these tasks are examined for evidence of critical thinking. These items form the basis of a longer-term
longitudinal study in which the most effective means of deploying argument maps for promoting critical thinking will be
examined.
TLE2: The Teaching and Learning Experience in Computing
Chair: Vu Nguyen
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: La Galería
A TEACHER'S VIEW ABOUT INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING TEACHING AND LEARNING:
DIFFICULTIES, STRATEGIES AND MOTIVATIONS
Anabela Gomes (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
António José Mendes (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
The difficulties faced by students and teachers in learning and teaching introductory programming has been a research
issue over the years. Programming learning demands effort and motivation. However, demotivation is common in many
novice-programming students, who are not able to cope with the natural difficulties associated to programming learning.
Since many students lack intrinsic motivation it is up to the teacher to find strategies to help student and keep them
motivated during the course. The objective of our research was to know more about the strategies used by teachers in the
author's institutions to promote programming student's motivation. So we interviewed teachers with diversified
experiences in teaching the first programming course. Although the difficulties identified were mostly the same, the
pedagogical approaches and motivational strategies used were different. There was some consensus about the factors that
promote good results. Aspects such as the student-teacher relationship, the motivational strategies used, the assessment
method or the materials presented in class were pointed out. In this paper a research based on the views of a set of
experienced introductory programming teachers will be presented. It focuses essentially on pedagogical strategies that
may be more effective to motivate students during programming learning.
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LEVERAGING SCRUM PRINCIPLES IN COLLABORATIVE, INTER-DISCIPLINARY SERVICE-LEARNING
PROJECT COURSES
Brian Nejmeh (Messiah College, USA)
Daniel Weaver (Messiah College, USA)
This paper presents two primary results: (1) an adaptation of a Scrum-based, software-tools en- abled process used in
international service-learning project courses in the Computer and Information Sciences and other disciplines and (2) the
software applications resulting from this process. The paper begins with an overview of Scrum and the challenges of
applying it in the classroom. We survey the literature regarding adaptations of Scrum in an academic setting. Unlike a
number of applications of Scrum in the academy, we applied Scrum in the context of international service-learning
courses where we completed software application projects for clients, typically non- profit organizations that needed a
system to address some key issue. The challenges encountered with the application of Scrum in a multi-course project
setting are discussed along with the adaptations made to address these problems. We summarize some of our successful
project results and experiences to date. Finally, we discuss known issues with our approach and future directions of our
work, including our interest in partnering with other institutions and in pursuing an open source model for our projects.
CASE STUDY USING TEST-DRIVEN LEARNING METHODOLOGY FOR BUILDING CONTEXTUALIZED
FEEDBACK BY LOGICAL ERRORS IN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING LEARNING
Dirson Campos (Federal University of Goiás, Portugal)
António José Mendes (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Maria José Marcelino (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
TDL (Test-driven learning) has been proposed as a pedagogical approach for teaching computer programming in CS
courses through experiment design in classroom. Contents of course will be presented by professors using unit tests as
examples to demonstrate how programming concepts are implemented. Further, in this methodology students will be
taught to create test case by themselves. The aim is check whether implementation of pedagogical activity is logically
correct or not. Test results are obtained by comparison of current outcomes with predicted outcomes. Thus, TDL is a
mechanism for teaching and motivating because it is difficult for most students to be located programming errors in
source code, especially logical ones, in courses that adopt traditional methods of teaching programming. Students of
introductory programming courses have difficulty developing scripts by automated tests even after being exemplified by
teacher. There are automated assessment tool to be able providing automatic feedback on submissions of source code of
students. However, they have limited feedback considering the pedagogical needs of contextualization of logical errors
for novice's students. It was created and tested by us a new methodology called TDL-B (Test-driven Learning for Blind
Analysis).
"ALICE-VILLAGE" ALICE AS A COLLABORATIVE VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Ahmad Al-Jarrah (New Mexico State University, USA)
Enrico Pontelli (New Mexico State University, USA)
There is a growing literature demonstrating the importance of collaboration and teamwork in the process of learning
computational thinking and the foundational aspects of computer science. While Collaborative Virtual Environments are
becoming widespread in the software development professional domain and in various areas of advanced learning, their
use in the introductory stages of learning computing is still very limited. On the other hand, in recent years, there has
been a blooming of attractive programming environments specifically designed to expose young students (e.g., middle
school age) to computational thinking. Alice is a very popular introductory programming environment, focused on
programming through animations and story-telling. This paper introduces a novel extension of the Alice framework that
enables interaction and collaboration among students in the development of programs. In particular, the new version of
Alice described in this paper provides support for virtual pair programming. The modified version of Alice allows two
students to remotely share a virtual world, and interact in its construction; the system supports roles assignments, to
allow teachers to control activities and contributions of the two students in the creation of a programming project.
LEARNING SUPPORTED BY PEER PRODUCTION AND DIGITAL INK
José V Benlloch-Dualde (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Sara Blanc (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
This paper describes experiences that combine digital peer production with digital ink affordances. Rather than preparing
papers to obtain a summative final mark, students work over the course of the term producing different small learning
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resources such as short engineering problems, reasoning or synthesis where the lecturer acts as manager and supervisor.
Teacher intervention is carried out using digital ink over each individual student production being possible to share the
results throughout a public or group repository and in class offering a pro-active argument about preventing common
mistakes. In order to enhance students' programming skills important efforts are oriented to produce learning objects in
the form of Java applets. It has the additional advantage of fostering collaborative knowledge construction because any
object serves to the whole group as learning material as soon as it is already produced and validated. Qualitative and
quantitative results show both an overall satisfaction from students participating in the experiences, and better results in
the common written exams, when compared to the other groups following the traditional method.
CBL3: Supporting Computer Based Learning
Chair: Jinghua Zhang
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Patio 3
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE ADOPTION OF SOFTWARE PRODUCT LINES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF
MOBILE LEARNING APPLICATIONS
Venilton Falvo Júnior (ICMC/USP, Brazil)
Nemesio Duarte Filho (ICMC/USP, Brazil)
Edson OliveiraJr (UEM/PR, Brazil)
Ellen Barbosa (ICMC/USP, Brazil)
The increasing presence of mobile devices in the society has motivated the use of these gadgets in several segments. This
reality has contributed to the emergence of a new and innovative modality of learning - the mobile learning, or simply,
m-learning. In short, mobile learning is based on the use of a set of specific mobile applications, which possesses similar
features and specific characteristics according to the learning goals. In a different but related perspective, the emerging
reuse technique of Software Product Line (SPL) allows mass customization and systematic derivation of products, such
as mobile learning applications. Motivated by this scenario, we have worked on the establishment of M-SPLearning, a
SPL to the mobile learning applications domain. M-SPLearning has been developed throughout a proactive adoption
model, according to the basics of SOA. In this paper, we discuss the main aspects of the development of M-SPLearning,
focusing on the implementation phase. Also, as a case study, we illustrate two products generated by the SPL proposed.
The main results obtained suggest the practical feasibility of adopting M-SPLearning in the development of mobile
learning applications.
TEACH RECONFIGURABLE COMPUTING USING MIXED-GRAINED FABRICS BASED HARDWARE
INFRASTRUCTURE
Chenchen Deng (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
Leibo Liu (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
Zhaoshi Li (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
Shouyi Yin (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
Shaojun Wei (Tsinghua University, P.R. China)
With the prevalence of reconfigurable computing, many relevant courses are designed and taught to graduate students.
Traditional Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) based hardware platforms are far from satisfying to reflect the
important criteria characterizing a general reconfigurable computing system. In order to provide students a
comprehensive understanding of reconfigurable computing system in a broader way, this paper presents a mixed-grained
educational hardware platform. Different from the traditional ones, the proposed hardware platform includes not only
fine-grained reconfigurable fabrics (e.g. FPGAs), but also coarse-grained ones which makes it possible to reveal essential
features and intrinsic mechanisms of reconfigurable computing system. Utilizing this hardware platform, a course
including four hands-on laboratory projects is designed. The feedback from students and teachers confirms that with the
help of the proposed hardware platform, a thorough understanding of reconfigurable computing systems is achieved in
an intuitive way and the practical experience is also significantly enhanced.
USING A GAME-LIKE MODULE TO REINFORCE STUDENT UNDERSTANDING OF RECURSION
Jinghua Zhang (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
Mustafa Atay (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
Emanuel Smith (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
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Rebecca Caldwell (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
Elva Jones (Winston-Salem State University, USA)
Recursion is one of the most powerful problem-solving techniques in computer science, but many students seem to
struggle with the concept of recursion. In addition, the instructors find it hard to teach this concept using traditional
teaching method. This paper presents a game module titled "Recursive Runner" that aims to reinforce student
understanding of recursion in a game. Four undergraduate students developed the game with GameMaker Studio in three
months. The game was designed for short gameplay time and it does not require any prior experience in gaming. The
objective of the game is to provide the students with a fun environment to visualize and follow the flow of execution of
recursive functions. This paper presents the game design and implementation in detail and shares our experiences in
using this module in the CSC1311 Computer Programming II and CSC2331 Data Structures classes at Winston-Salem
State University (WSSU). A pretest, a posttest and a survey were developed and used in the evaluation process. In
addition, a lab assignment was designed to use with the game to evaluate student understanding of the concept. Initial
assessment outcomes show promising results and the feedback is positive according to the survey and interview.
ENGAGING COMPUTER ENGINEERING STUDENTS WITH AN AUGMENTED REALITY SOFTWARE FOR
LABORATORY EXERCISES
Jorge López Benito (CreativiTIC Innova SL, Spain)
Enara Artetxe González (CreativiTIC Innova SL, Spain)
Margarita Anastassova (CEA LIST, France)
Florent Souvestre (CEA LIST, France)
Work in Progress: Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology of high potential. It has already been applied in
educational fields, although its usefulness and usability have not always being empirically tested and validated. This
paper proposes the development of an AR software helping Computer Engineering students understand concepts and
processes in embedded systems during laboratory exercises. The design of the software's field of action has been realized
taking into account a task taxonomy, based on research in cognitive and educational psychology, and students' needs
established using questionnaires and interviews. The AR software has been developed under the premises of reliability,
robustness and handiness. Its effectiveness and usability will be initially evaluated within the consortium of the project.
Afterwards, using this feedback, the software will be further improved and introduced in real laboratory practices at
universities. This work was supported by the EU 7th Framework Programme project E2LP under European Commission
Grant Agreement No. 317882, 2012-2015.
SIGNALS AND SYSTEMS DEMONSTRATIONS FOR UNDERGRADUATES USING ANDROID-BASED
LOCALIZATION
Paul Curtis (Arizona State University, USA)
Mahesh Banavar (Arizona State University, USA)
Xue Zhang (Arizona State University, USA)
Andreas Spanias (Arizona State University, USA)
Vitor Weber (Arizona State University, USA)
This work in progress paper describes the design and implementation of an acoustic ranging mobile application (app)
developed for the Android platform. The work was carried out at the SenSIP center at ASU with the support of NSF
REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) and NSF REV (Research Experiences for Veterans) supplement grants.
This project aims to contribute to research in the areas of sensor network localization and engineering education, as well
as to bridge the gap between the two. An educational demonstration of sensor localization can be performed on mobile
devices, with the devices representing sensors. In a typical localization problem, several devices at known locations
(anchors) are used to estimate the location of a device at an unknown location. The first step in localization is ranging,
used to estimate the distance between a device at a known location and the one at an unknown location. The second step
is triangulation, using the pair-wise distances between devices, in order to localize the device at an unknown location. In
our approach, we use a modified version of time-difference of arrival (TDOA) using audio signals for ranging. By
exploiting two-way sensing in the form of self-recording devices, the distance between devices can be determined
without the need for any clock synchronization or specialized hardware. Using only the hardware supplied with
commercial Android devices, a ranging algorithm has been implemented, which has location estimates with a variance of
less than 1 cm at a distance of up to 4.5 meters. The educational benefit to students is multi-fold. The undergraduate
students who worked on the project were able to see the applications of concepts taught in the signal processing
curriculum, and acquire a much deeper understanding of the theory as well as the value it holds. These students also
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gained valuable experience is coding for Android devices, as well as exposure to object-oriented programming concepts.
In addition to exposure to research topics, the activities have also helped develop technical writing and presentation skills
of the students. The app has been used for demonstrations for undergraduate students in signals and systems classes
through a workshop. At a high level, it was used to illustrate how triangulation can be used to localize devices, which is a
concept that can be extended to technologies such as GPS. The students in the workshop were also shown the
applications of signal processing techniques such as correlation and the fast Fourier transform. Pre- and post-quizzes
were also conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the app. Since the app has been developed for Android devices, it
can be made widely available and has the added benefit of appealing to an app-hungry generation of students.
CUR1: Computer Science and Software Engineering Curricula Design 1
Chair: Jaspal Subhlok
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Doblon
STUDENT-FACULTY COLLABORATION ON DESIGN OF INNOVATIVE AGILE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
CURRICULUM
Vladimir Uskov (Bradley University, USA)
Harika Govada (Bradley University, USA)
This paper presents the main findings and outcomes of analysis, design and development phases of innovative Agile
Software Engineering curriculum and courseware creation, and includes the following main sections section will be
provided at the conference): 1) analysis phase: agile methodology in SD industry; 2) analysis phase: benefits of agile
development methodology; 3) analysis phase: adoption of agile methodology in SD industry; 4) analysis phase: agile
methodology-related curricula in the U.S. and international universities; 5) the outcomes of performed analysis; 6)
design phase: goal, objectives and innovative proposed approach to be used; 7) design phase: selection of course main
topics (based on rankings of agile methods by AM experts in industry); 8) design phase: selection of agile practices
(based on rankings of agile practices by AM experts in industry); 9) design phase: selection of agile tools (based on
analysis and rankings of agile tools by authors); 10) development and pilot testing phase 11) project findings and lessons
learned.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY EDUCATION IN COMPUTING: ARRANGEMENTS AND RESULTS FROM
TWO COURSES
Matti Tedre (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Harko Verhagen (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Research methodology education is one of the less studied and discussed areas of computing education. Underplaying
methodological education starts from computing curricula, which discuss methodology to different degrees, depending
on the branch of computing. In computer science education research, programming courses have been analyzed through
and through, but methodology courses in computing are largely devoid of course descriptions, analytic studies, and
experimental studies. This paper presents the learning objectives, contents, and arrangements for a fully online graduate
level course on research methodology and research design in computing. The course was run twice in a relatively large
school of computing (6915 students) and it included students from a neighboring institution of the same size. Students'
(N=136) learning was analyzed from multiple viewpoints. Their final work was analyzed qualitatively by course
facilitators as well as scored on a 90-point scale. Their coursework was qualitatively reviewed and graded by their peers
and facilitators. The effect of students' learning approaches to course results was analyzed using Biggs' R-SPQ-2F
questionnaire. Student feedback was collected using a slightly modified course feedback questionnaire of the university.
This paper presents the course arrangements, course results, and analysis of students' learning.
GAMIFICATION OF SOFTWARE ENGINEERING CURRICULUM
Vladimir Uskov (Bradley University, USA)
Bhuvana Sekar (Bradley University, USA)
This paper presents research project findings and outcomes on gamification of entire SE curriculum, including 1)
Analysis phase: gamification and SG applications in industry (a summary of about 20 examples) 2) Analysis phase:
business power and creative power of SG; 3) Analysis phase: fusion of SG, digital games-based learning, edutainment,
entertainment education, and advanced e-learning; 4) Analysis phase: SG and gamification-related academic courses and
programs (a summary of 20 examples); 5) Analysis phase: gamification and computer science curricula (examples); 6)
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Analysis phase: gamification and SE curricula (examples); 7) Design phase: goals, objectives, and proposed innovative
approach to gamification of entire SE curriculum; 8) Design phase: proposed fusion of gamification techniques (i.e. a
total of about 25 progression, behavioral, and feedback techniques) and main components of SE curriculum; 9) Design
phase: a selection of tools for gamified SE curriculum; 10) Testing phase: pilot teaching (Spring-2013 and Fall-2013) of
gamified SE course; 11) Testing phase: student feedback on gamified SE curriculum (particularly, more than 90% of
surveyed CS&IS students like proposed implemented gamification of SE courses; some techniques got even 100%
support by students); 12) Conclusions and next steps.
AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TERM PROJECTS, COORDINATING
STUDENT EFFORTS BETWEEN MULTIPLE TEAMS OVER MULTIPLE SEMESTERS
John Bell (University of Illinois Chicago, USA)
Anushri Prabhu (University of Illinois Chicago, USA)
Software Engineering projects typically go through stages of development, with implementation near the end. Following
the normal order in a school semester leaves students with little time to develop code and little to show for their efforts
besides long written reports. Students also work in a bubble, having little contact with anyone outside their immediate
group. This paper describes an innovative approach in which students work on two half-projects in parallel during a
semester, implementing a design developed by previous students while simultaneously developing a new design to be
implemented by a following group. This approach not only starts implementation early, it also forces the students to
coordinate their efforts with two different groups of students, whom they may or may not ever meet in person. That
experience has not always been enjoyable, but it has demonstrated the value of quality documentation far more
effectively than any lecture ever could. An added benefit is that they experience two different approaches to software
engineering, and work on problems in two different domains. This novel approach to a team-based semester project is
easily applied to any field in which a term project is employed, with little adjustment needed for particular subject areas.
A MODEL FOR DESIGNING LEARNING EXPERIENCES FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE CURRICULUM
Ioana Ghergulescu (National College of Ireland, Ireland)
Paul Stynes (National College of Ireland, Ireland)
Pramod Pathak (National College of Ireland, Ireland)
Due to the fast development in computer science new modules and specializations have to be developed, and the
Computer Science (CS) curriculum needs to be reshaped in order to include 21st century skills such as problem-solving,
creativity, innovation, communication and collaboration. This paper proposes a generic model for designing learning
experiences for CS curriculum. The model builds on existing credit systems such as European Credit Transfer and
Accumulation System (ECTS), to determine if a CS programme can be reshaped to a given period of time. Furthermore
the model is capable of determining the student workload distribution across the different types of learning activities for
a module. The distribution is computed based on information such as the number of credits for the module, the number
of weeks in a semester, as well as the percentage hours of lectures, labs, independent study and other learning activities.
Preliminary data collection and analysis was conducted in order to determine the percentages on 75 computer science
modules taught at 14 universities from Ireland and UK.
DIS1: Massively Open On-line Courses: Then and Now
Chair: Manuel Castro
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Escudo
MOOCS WITH ATTITUDES INSIGHTS FROM A PRACTITIONER BASED INVESTIGATION
Monika Chadaj (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Colin Allison (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Gordon Baxter (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
In the current educational landscape of shrinking public budgets and increasing costs, MOOCs have become one of the
most dominant discourses in higher education (HE). However, due to their short history, they are only just beginning to
be systematically investigated. In an attempt to shed more light on the MOOC phenomenon, this study complements
other approaches by eliciting institutional attitudes to MOOC provision using qualitative content analysis on responses
captured in a series of semi-structured interviews with participants who hold senior positions in universities and who are
involved in creating institutional policy and/or the design and delivery of MOOCs. A context for these interviews was
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created by looking at MOOCs from historical, pedagogical, monetary and technological perspectives. Five topics
emerged that were subsequently used as common points of reference for comparisons across the interviews: motivation,
monetization, pedagogy, traditional universities and public access to higher education. The analysis of attitudes to, and
the importance of, these topics are summarized, and also illustrated through quotes from the participants. Interestingly, it
does not appear that MOOCs are regarded by insiders as disruptive as the media presents them, but rather are seen
primarily as marketing vehicles for global education brands.
ANALYSIS OF DEMOGRAPHICS AND RESULTS OF STUDENT'S OPINION SURVEY OF A LARGE SCALE
MOOC DEPLOYMENT FOR THE SPANISH SPEAKING COMMUNITY
Ignacio Despujol (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Carlos Turro (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Jaime Busquets (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Aristóteles Cañero (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
We describe the demographics and comment the completion rate and satisfaction results of the post course surveys of
Universitat Politècnica de València first three MOOC editions, 2 in its platform upvx.es based on Google Course Builder
and one in Universia's platform miriadax.net. We have the completion rate data of over 83.000 students, extensive
demographic data collected from pre-course enrollment (more than 30.000) and opinion data from post-course surveys
(9000, mostly from successful students). What we obtain from the study of gathered data is consistent with the results
found in former articles about MOOCs in the leading US platforms (Coursera, Udacity, EdX): The students like the
courses and the system (95% think that the system is excellent or good and 70% think they have learnt a lot or quite a
lot) but passing rate (15%) and engagement in forums is low. He have a majority of men and most of the enrolled
students have a university background and are between 20 and 40 years old. In the surveys we have developed an
extensive questionnaire on satisfaction to evaluate the different aspects of the MOOC experience that we comment in the
article. We also analyze the difference in the progression profile between the two different platforms (in both platforms
the completion rates are similar but in MiriadaX 75% of the enrolled people took the first activity and in UPV[X] only
25% did the same) and conclude that the use of massive email communications (not used in the first two editions of
UPV[X]) can lower the rate of people that enroll and don't make any activity on the course. In the last UPV[X] edition
satisfaction survey (880 answers) we had 39,9% answers from people that had not completed the course and the
perception of the quality of the platform and courses is similar to the former surveys, the only thing that is a little bit
lower is the answer to "My expectations have been fulfilled", that is 8,2 over 10, when in the former surveys, that were
answered mostly (89%) from people that had passed the courses, was 8,4. We have also found that most of the people
that abandon the courses say the cause is "lack of time" and very few say the cause has been the platform or the quality
of the courses.
TELESCOPE, A MOOCS INITIATIVE IN LATIN AMERICA: INFRASTRUCTURE, BEST PRACTICES,
COMPLETION AND DROPOUT ANALYSIS
Miguel Morales Chan (Galileo University, Guatemala)
Rocael Hernandez-Rizzardini (Galileo University, Guatemala)
Christian Guetl (Graz University of Technology, Austria)
Over the last years MOOCs have become increasingly interesting for students, educators, educational institutions, and
researchers. Recent results from Coursera and other initiatives are very encouraging but have also raised various issues in
terms of a sustainable business model and the very high dropout rates. In this paper we will briefly analyze critically the
phenomena of MOOCs and discus advantages and disadvantages. Based on that and as main contribution, we will
introduce our own experiences in designing and running various MOOCs for Latin America. More specifically, we will
provide results from four different MOOC experiences as part of the Telescope project at Galileo University, Guatemala
(an initiative with the similar objective as Coursera, EdX, MiriadaX, others). Galileo University is a technological
university with the largest tradition in computer science within the region. The Telescope project is an initiative carried
out by the Galileo Educational System (GES) Department, which does Educational Technology R&D at the University.
The Telescope's MOOCs 2013 experiences presented in this paper cover the following courses: 1) Introductory course of
Android development, 2) Medical Urgencies, 3) Introduction to e-Learning, 4) Cloud based (web 2.0) tools for
education. With over 15,000 enrolled students, and learners from over 15 countries, including Spain, Mexico,
Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, etc. For the large majority of the enrolled students, it were their first MOOC experience, and
they indicated that easily adapted to this online learning experience, we will present pre-course learning demographics in
detail. Then we will outline the course activities, results, motivations and feedback from learners. Important to mention
is that all courses lasted for 4 weeks, only the Android had 6 weeks. The results from peer assessment, which early
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results indicates low assessment quality and possibly a negative distortion of perceived course quality, and Gamification
approaches and its effectiveness, communication means, and others will be elaborated, with initial results that shows no
significant impact to diminish the attrition rate. The technological infrastructure, and the use of cloud-based (web 2.0)
tools for learning will be also introduced, along with its effectiveness. Also, we will present result from drop out
learners, from no shows to those who did not complete the whole course experience, presenting the main reasons for
drop out: personal reasons, academic, support and interaction; and other influencing factors such as course quality and
interaction with the tutors, course contents, materials, workload and time management; being the most cited reasons for
dropout: personal and workload reasons such as not enough time, increase workload at the job, and also the academic
workload was evaluated as too-high in some cases. Finally the impact of accreditation for these MOOCs will be
presented, and how we evolved the use of academic certificates to enhance learning motivation towards passing the
course. Hence, such results contribute to a better understanding of the learning process across a group of MOOCs from
Latin America, and will conclude with a critical discussion and insights to improve strategies and the real impact of
MOOCs.
THIS IS NOT A MOOC! REFLECTIONS ON ON-LINE ASYNCHRONOUS EDUCATION
Larry Richards (University of Virginia, USA)
The Tsunami predicted by David Brooks in his New York Times editorial has come and gone with little impact of the
practice of engineering education, or education in general. The long-term impact of the brief infatuation with massmarketing, free on-line courses is still uncertain, but many schools are having second thoughts about the wisdom is
buying into the wave. Some MOOCs have failed, and many have not lived up to their hype. There is much to be learned
from what succeeded, as well as what failed. There are many solid on-line courses offered by colleges and universities
around the world. At the University of Virginia, we have a long history of distance education and outreach that has
uniquely prepared us to adapt to the asynchronous, on-line environment made possible by the internet and World Wide
Web. In this paper we will describe the development, structure and logistics of an asynchronous on-line graduate course
in applied mathematics. It is neither free nor open enrollment. We have a fundamentally different philosophy from
Coursera or Udacity. Our goal is to make sure those students who enroll in out classes actually learn the material and get
academic credit for doing so. Our approach follows a tradition of outreach dating from the earliest days of FIE, and
represented by such innovators as Burks Oakley of the University of Illinois. The current best advocate for this approach
is Sal Khan and the Khan Academy, and it is described in his book The One World Schoolhouse and a recent report from
the National Academy of Engineering on Educating Engineers. In this paper, we review the history of personalized
instruction and how it has influenced the development of our course; as well as the results of its first four offerings in the
asynchronous on-line environment. We also discuss the potential for the future of on-line learning and the audiences for
which it is most appropriate.
UTILIZING MOOCS FOR BLENDED LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Ali Shafaat (Purdue University, USA)
Farshid Marbouti (Purdue University, USA)
Kelsey J Rodgers (Purdue University, USA)
Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) was introduced as a new instructional medium, in which peer interactions were
supposed to substitute lack of interactions between instructor and learners in online education. However, in the majority
of MOOCs that have been implemented so far, the low interactions among peers, and also between instructor and
learners are raising concerns about the preliminary assumptions. To overcome MOOC shortcomings such as low
completion rate, low level of interactions, and building on our previous team-based MOOC model, in this work-inprogress paper we propose a new model to use MOOC learning modules in blended settings. This model utilizes projectbased learning and has benefits for both instructors and students. The proposed model suggests creating re-usable
MOOC learning modules that can be used in different courses. A graduate engineering course is under development
using the proposed model. The benefits and shortcomings of this model from students and instructors' perspective will be
investigated. It is expected that this model increases interactions among students.
EER3: Diverse Perspectives and Experiences in Engineering and Computer Science
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Aranjuez
THE PEOPLE PART OF ENGINEERING: ENGINEERING FOR, WITH, AND AS PEOPLE
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Nicholas D Fila (Purdue University, USA)
Justin Hess (Purdue University, USA)
Avneet Hira (Purdue University, USA)
Cole Joslyn (Purdue University, USA)
DeLean Tolbert (Purdue University, USA)
Morgan Hynes (Purdue University, USA)
The primary goal of engineering education is to prepare students to work as productive engineers in society. This
preparation traditionally focuses on developing students' discipline related technical and analytical knowledge, skills, and
abilities. However, recent initiatives to develop a more holistic engineer have shed light on an aspect of engineering
education that is largely lacking—the development of essential non-technical knowledge, skills and abilities. In this
paper, we propose a framework for considering the people part of engineering to organize these other kinds of
knowledge, skills, and abilities that need to be addressed in engineering education. Informed by scholarly literature on
development and learning, the framework presented in this work argues for people as central to engineering. We offer a
framework on engineering for, with, and as people. Engineering for people requires a sense of the influences, constraints,
and criteria people impose on the design and development of engineering solutions. Engineering with people emphasizes
working collaboratively with a diverse group of people. Engineering as a person has one recognize the values, beliefs,
knowledge, and skills driving the development of engineered solutions. We present examples of pedagogical strategies to
integrate the various "people" skills into engineering courses and programs.
BILINGUALISM AS A MEANING-MAKING RESOURCE FOR LEARNING ENGINEERING
Alberto Esquinca (University of Texas at El Paso, USA)
Erika Mein (University of Texas at El Paso, USA)
Elsa Villa (University of Texas at El Paso, USA)
Angelica Monarrez (University of Texas at El Paso, USA)
Part of a large-scale study on Hispanic engineering students at a university on the U.S./Mexico border, this paper focuses
on participants' reported use of language in learning activities in engineering. Specifically, we call attention to the
meaning-making resources that engineering undergraduates brought to learning activities. Semiotic (or meaning-making)
resources include oral and written language (in one or more languages) as well as visual, gestural, or auditory modalities.
Whereas border Hispanic students could be (and often are) positioned from a deficit perspective, we highlight the wealth
of resources that participants avail themselves to in learning engineering. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and
observations over a two-year period, we examine participants' reported multimodal and multilingual resources. We found
that participating students 1) have a wide variety of language and literacy practices; 2) show a high awareness of
language itself and how they use it and learn it; and 3) use bilingualism and biliteracy as a resource for learning in
engineering.
DETERMINING STUDENT BELIEFS ABOUT ENGINEERING
Mary Anderson-Rowland (Arizona State University, USA)
Armando Rodriguez (Arizona State University, USA)
Anita Grierson (Arizona State University, USA)
Arizona and the United States need more engineers. It is well known that very few college freshmen choose engineering
as a major. Mathematics is not popular. A discouraging fact is that many high school and community college students
know very little about engineering and thus do not even have it on their radar as a possible career. This team of authors
have been working with pre-college and community college students for over 10 years trying to increase the number of
engineers. They have made many visits to community colleges and to high schools to talk about engineering. At the
same time they had done research on these students to better understand them and to help determine the best practices to
interest more students in engineering. This paper gives the results of surveys that have been given to high school and to
community college students to try to determine their largest areas of ignorance or misunderstanding regarding
engineering and computer science. This information can then inform how best to use a limited amount of time with
undecided students to break down these barriers.
THE POWERFUL CONSTRUCTION OF NORMS WITHIN SOPHOMORE ENGINEERING
Janet Tsai (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
Daria Kotys-Schwartz (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
Daniel Knight (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
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The second largest attrition rate during an undergraduate engineering degree occurs during the sophomore year. Students
who persist past the first year of engineering school find themselves at a transitional, stressful, and competitive turning
point as they enter the final math and physics requirements for their degrees. We adopt an ethnographic approach to
investigate the environments of critical engineering mathematics gateway courses in sophomore year that serve as
prerequisite barriers to subsequent coursework and eventual graduation. Utilizing classroom observation and semistructured interviews with students and instructors, we have a rich dataset to analyze through three intersecting
conceptual frameworks: critical ethnography, cultural analysis, and actor-network theory (ANT). The concept of a
cultural norm is paramount to our analysis, basically anything that becomes "normal" to a cultural unit such as an
engineering classroom. This paper describes our ongoing analyses that aspire to uncover the processes wherein cultural
norms are created, maintained, challenged, adjusted, and reinforced in everyday classroom practice. We seek to
understand the powerful impact of these cultural norms on students' desires to remain in engineering majors past
sophomore year.
A PILOT STUDY OF THE DIMENSIONS OF DISCIPLINARY CULTURE AMONG ENGINEERING
STUDENTS
Homero Murzi (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA)
Thomas L. Martin (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA)
Lisa McNair (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA)
Marie Paretti (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA)
Hofstede's theory of national cultures has been widely used to analyze cultural differences. In this pilot study we describe
our experiences applying an instrument based on Hofstede's work to determine whether his dimensions of national
cultures can be mapped to academic disciplines. In this paper, we present information about Hofstede's model as well as
critiques of both the model and the instrument used. We also report initial results of a pilot survey based on Hofstede's
model that we administered to a sample of 687 undergraduate engineering students. Preliminary results show that the
instrument is reliable and valid; in addition, we present preliminary results regarding how different engineering majors
map to Hofstede's cultural dimensions. This pilot serves as a starting point for our study. Subsequent studies will be
conducted in order to identify relationships between the dimensions of culture and a) student choice of major, and b)
student success within a major. We will also explore whether students' perceptions about their academic programs
change over time and under which circumstances, leading, as noted in the introduction, to an actionable theory of
engineering culture that can support pedagogies of inclusive and collaborative innovation. Keywords: Hofstede; culture;
cultural dimensions; interdisciplinarity
GBL1: Programming and Game Based Learning
Chair: Leônidas O. Brandão
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: La Granja
SERIOUS GAMES FOR MOTIVATING INTO PROGRAMMING
Raquel Hijon-Neira (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Celeste Pizarro-Romero (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Luís Carriço (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
In Computer Science Education there is a tendency to implement active learning paradigms where students are the focus
of the educational process. An instantiation of these learning methods are gaming environments. We present ProGames,
a system for learning programming skills through a leveled set of visually-attractive and interactive programming games
in Greenfoot, categorized by student's likes, offering them solutions to sets of problems that they really enjoy or like
most. We present a combined evaluation of usability (first) done during the academic course 2012-13 in three Computer
Science Degrees and an evaluation of appealing for the students (second) based on the organization in games categories
done during the academic course 2013-14. The combination of both evaluations suggests that offering students a set of
serious games that meets their likes really increases their appeal for the games and therefore for learning with them. We
present this experience to encourage academia to propose their students learning materials which really are appealing to
them and why not? fun.
A GAME ENGINE TO LEARN COMPUTER SCIENCE LANGUAGES
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Angel Serrano-Laguna (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Javier Torrente (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Borja Manero (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon (Complutense University of Madrid, Spain)
There is an increasing interest in providing Computer Science (CS) instruction to a wider sector of the population. CS
has become a powerful catalyzer for development of society. However, successful delivery of CS instruction to a wide
audience is a challenge. In this paper, we present a scalable game architecture to create videogames for learning CS
languages, along with a game engine developed as a reference implementation. Our approach separates the CS language
used to write the programs from the game design, allowing reusing the games with different CS markup or programming
languages and it provides a system of levels that allows incremental learning. The approach was tested by developing
with an educational game for learning XML. The game was tested with undergraduate students from computer science
and social sciences, by comparing it with traditional instruction (i.e. lecture). Students who played the game were much
more engaged than those who attended the lecture. Findings also suggest that the game was effective for instruction
regardless of the background of the students. However, the educational gain observed with the game-based instructional
approach was not significantly higher than traditional instruction.
EVALUATION OF THE LASTING IMPACTS ON EMPLOYABILITY OF CO-OPERATIVE SERIOUS GAMEPLAYING BY FIRST YEAR COMPUTING STUDENTS: AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS
Jyoti Bhardwaj (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
This paper reports a case study of co-operative, small-group, game-based learning, by a cohort of undergraduates on a
range of computing programmes, during the first trimester of their first year. Game-based learning in the form of a total
enterprise business simulation is presented here as a medium to promote self-efficacy and employability through
teamwork, presentation skills and self-confidence, to improve work placement and graduate employment opportunities.
The simulation is implemented to engender friendships amongst first year students, in order to foster resilience and help
prevent isolation. Appended is a discussion of the results of a small-scale exploratory evaluation of the benefits of the
simulation experience on aspects of self-efficacy, as self-reported by those students who took the module in session
2010/11 and remain on the course in the final year of their degree. The findings of the study are positive: although the
evidence for SimVenture being beneficial to gaining a placement is weak, respondents consider it enjoyable and a
valuable learning experience, and cite its importance in gaining presentation skills, improving teamworking, and in
making friends, thereby supporting the value of embedding simulations within meaningful learning activities to promote
employability
A REVIEW OF GAMES DESIGNED TO IMPROVE INTRODUCTORY COMPUTER PROGRAMMING
COMPETENCIES
Adilson Vahldick (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
António José Mendes (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Maria José Marcelino (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Learning computer programming is not simple for many students. They have to develop several complex skills to be able
to understand programs and, more important, to create programs that solve problems. This means it is important that
students have a high motivation level, so that they engage in that work and do not get frustrated with the natural errors
they will make in this process. Digital games are often used in educational contexts to attract and retain students. In
literature and on the web, we can find many games related strategies that aim to support learning in introductory
computer programming courses. One of these strategies is the using games approach: asking students to play games that
include problems that must be solved in order to progress. This paper presents a list of 40 games classified by type and
highlights the skills and topics supported by them. We hope this work helps teachers to choose games as part of their
teaching strategies, as alternative or complementary exercises to their students.
OBJECT-ORIENTED SOKOBAN SOLVER: A SERIOUS GAME PROJECT FOR OOAD AND AI EDUCATION
Zheng Li (Australian National University (ANU) & National ICT Australia (NICTA), Australia)
Liam O'Brien (Geoscience Australia, Australia)
Shayne Flint (Australian National University (ANU), Australia)
Ramesh Sankaranarayana (Australian National University (ANU), Australia)
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Serious games are beneficial for education in various computer science areas. Numerous works have reported the
experiences of using games (not only playing but also development) in teaching and learning. Considering it could be
difficult for teachers/students to prepare/develop a game from scratch during one semester, assistant educational
materials would be crucial in the corresponding courses. Unfortunately, the literature shows that not many materials from
educational game projects are shared. To help different educators identify suitable courseware and help students
implement game development, it is worth further investigating and accumulating the educational resources from
individual game projects. Following such an idea, this paper proposes a game development project of an object-oriented
Sokoban solver, and exposes relevant educational materials. The documented system design can be viewed as a ready-touse resource for education in object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD), while the Sokoban solver itself may be used
as an assignment platform for teaching artificial intelligence (AI). Further documentation, platform, and APIs will be
realized and shared in the future to facilitate others' educational activities. Overall, this work is supposed to inspire and
encourage other researchers and educators to post available materials of more game projects for the purpose of sharing
and reuse.
GDI3: Developing a Diverse and Inclusive Faculty
Chair: DeLois Kijana Crawford
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Patio 1
INSTITUTIONAL TRANSFORMATION AT A LARGE PRIVATE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY: REPORTING ON
THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF A COMBINED DATA DRIVEN TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UP APPROACH
Sharon Mason (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Carol Marchetti (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
DeLois Kijana Crawford (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Margaret Bailey (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Susan Foster (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Elizabeth Dell (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Stefi Baum (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Laurie Clayton (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Maureen Valentine (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
The underrepresentation of women faculty in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has been
studied for several decades. Many programs have been developed with a bottom-up approach toward addressing this
underrepresentation. While these bottom-up approaches are an important component in addressing the
underrepresentation, the question arises as to their sufficiency for transforming an institution to address the issue.
Another method considers the combined use of a bottom-up and a top-down approach in looking toward the goal of
institutional transformation by removing barriers to resources that support career success and creating new interventions
and resources. This paper reports on the progress of programming and activities that are underway during the first two
years of an institutional transformation project (NSF ADVANCE 1209115) at a large-private technical university that
incorporates this combined approach. The transformation is outlined using a multi-frame organizational analysis
approach from Bolman and Deal[1], which integrates several aspects of organizational theory, including structural,
human resources, political and symbolic perspectives. Data used to inform the top-down and bottom-up programming
and activities is presented, as well as a discussion of milestones, accomplishments and lessons learned in the context of
the overarching project goals and the framework posed by Bolman and Deal's lenses.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR THE EFFECTIVE MENTORING OF STEM WOMEN OF COLOR FACULTY AT A
STRIVING PRIVATE TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
DeLois Kijana Crawford (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Underrepresentation of women of color (WoC) (African American, Latina American, and Native American) faculty in
STEM disciplines, at predominately major-group institutions in the U.S., is of great concern. Of faculty positions, at the
end of the first decade of this century, American-Indian women held 0.6 percent, Latinas held 4.0 percent, AsianAmerican women held 6.7 percent, and African-American women held 7.0 percent while European-American women
held 78.2 percent [12]. Delgado and Stefancic [6], Thomas and Hollenshead [14], and Cooper and Stephens [3] point out
WoC faculty's unique challenges. Compared to their majority-group female colleagues, WoC face additional barriers
based on the intersections of race/ethnicity and gender. They live with multiple marginality [2, 5, 16, 15]. Rochester
Institute of Technology (RIT) STEM WoC faculty's representation is dismal even as some continue to be denied tenure.
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This situation provides impetus for this National Science Foundation-funded ADVANCE project whose underlying
objective is to examine barriers to STEM WoC faculty's career success. The lack of effective mentoring contributes to
the STEM WoC faculty's low retention and advancement rate. Therefore, there is a need for RIT to establish a mentoring
program that takes STEM WoC faculty's unique circumstance into consideration.
INTERACTIVE THEATRE TO ENGAGE FACULTY IN DIFFICULT DIALOGUES: FIRST
IMPLEMENTATION
Michelle Madsen Camacho (University of San Diego, USA)
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Lisa Baird (University of San Diego, USA)
Perla Myers (University of San Diego, USA)
Jane Friedman (University of San Diego, USA)
Sandra Sgoutas-Emch (University of San Diego, USA)
Science and Engineering have struggled to diversify the faculty and students in terms of race/ethnicity and gender.
Typical approaches to addressing this problem have not been successful, suggesting more innovative approaches are
needed. The University of San Diego (USD) received a National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE grant entitled
AFFIRM (Advancement of Female Faculty: Institutional climate, Recruitment and Mentoring) which aims to improve
the experiences and career development of all women faculty through climate initiatives, mentoring and professional
development. As part of AFFIRM, our multidisciplinary team is exploring an innovative methodology known as
"Interactive Theatre" to engage faculty in difficult dialogues and sensitive subjects. In this work in progress, we discuss
the first Interactive Theatre presentation at USD including the interactive theatre method, results from the climate study
we conducted to provide data for developing the skits, details of the interactive theatre experience, responses from the
attendees, and key lessons learned.
EMPHASIZING PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AND PROFESSIONAL VALUES: INVESTIGATING THE ROLE OF
FACULTY'S GENDER AND DEPARTMENTAL GENDER DIVERSITY
Matt DeMonbrun (University of Michigan, USA)
Michael G. Brown (University of Michigan, USA)
Although the number of doctoral degrees awarded to women in engineering has increased substantially over the last half
of the 20th century, women are still underrepresented among engineering faculty. Operating from the premise that a
"cultural mass" of an identity group might change organizational behavior, we explore the potential influence of gender
composition on faculty's teaching decisions, specifically as they relate to workforce development. Our study utilizes data
from a NSF-funded study from a nationally representative sample of 31 institutions representing over 120 programs in
seven engineering disciplines. Using institutional-level controls, we were able to find several forms of organizational
influence that played a significant role in instructional approaches, specifically gender balance within the organization.
We determined that gender balance increases the likelihood that a faculty member will make instructional choices that
emphasize professional values. Our initial results suggest that gender diversity in a department is significantly related to
the inclusion of professional values in course content.
MINI WS: To what extent can instructors influence student motivation in the classroom?
4:30 PM - 6: 00 PM
Room: El Escorial
TO WHAT EXTENT CAN INSTRUCTORS INFLUENCE STUDENT MOTIVATION IN THE CLASSROOM?
Jonathan Stolk (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Yevgeniya V Zastavker (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Alex Dillon (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Michael Gross (Bucknell University, USA)
Decades of scientific research have identified motivation - the psychological drive to take action - as an extremely
powerful influence in the course of an individual's life, useful for understanding general human behaviors as well as
those seen in specific contexts. Strong correlations have been found between a person's motivational state and short,
medium, and long-term outcomes such as performance, satisfaction, and persistence - three goals central to pedagogical
refinement and revision. The body of work amassed over the past three decades also presents a convincing case that
motivations are tightly connected to outcomes such as self-efficacy, critical thinking, creativity, self-regulation, and pro978-1-4799-3922-0/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
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social behavior - goals that are identified as critical to the success of future STEM graduates. However, a large gap
remains between the understanding of motivational development from the purely theoretical or educational research
points of view, and the application of those insights to the day-to-day reality of the classroom. In this mini-workshop, we
aim to narrow the gap between motivation research and practice, and enable practitioners unfamiliar with motivation
research to begin to understand and harness the power of motivation to enhance the engagement and satisfaction
experienced by their students. The workshop emphasizes the specific roles that instructors may play in influencing
students' activity-level, or situational, motivation. The specific goals of this mini-workshop are to (1) demystify student
motivation, by equipping instructors with terminology and a theoretical model for characterizing students' motivational
responses in the classroom, (2) help instructors gain awareness of their own implicit assumptions about motivation in the
classroom, (3) discuss how, and to what extent, instructors may influence student motivations at the course level, and (4)
equip instructors with simple curricular design tools that enable more effective analysis and redesign of courses to better
support students' intrinsic drive. The workshop offers an opportunity for instructors to directly apply motivation theory
and empirical research findings to practical course design, and to identify specific ways in which they may positively
influence their students' motivational responses in the classroom.
PRO3: Assessing Student Professional Skills
Chair: Jesus Alfonso Perez Gama
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Comendador
FAIR ASSESSMENT OF GROUP WORK BY MUTUAL EVALUATION BASED ON TRUST NETWORK
Yumeno Shiba (Waseda University, Japan)
Toshiharu Sugawara (Waseda University, Japan)
We propose a method for fair and accurate assessment of group work based on trust networks generated by mutual
evaluations. Group work is often used for educational activities in universities since it is an effective way to acquire
useful knowledge in a number of practical subjects. One drawback is the difficulty of deciding on final marks. Some
students may work quite hard whereas others may rarely participate in the group work, but it is almost impossible for
professors/instructors to identify contributions of individual students in detail. In contrast, students in the same group are
obvious choices for appropriate evaluators of other members since they have first-hand knowledge of the collaborative
work. However, some students may be irresponsible for their ratings and submit disputable evaluations, resulting in
inaccurate marks. We introduce a simple mutual evaluation method and generate trust networks expressing the distances
between evaluations in this paper. After that, disputable evaluations are excluded and students are marked again. We also
examine a grouping strategy to detect irresponsible students more accurately. We demonstrate the effectiveness and
limitations of our method using multi-agent simulation. Results show that our method can help with the marking of
individual students in a group work.
LEARNING AFTER LEARNING: PERCEPTIONS OF ENGINEERING ALUMNI ON SKILL DEVELOPMENT
Timothy Kinoshita (Virginia Tech, USA)
Glenda Young (Virginia Tech, USA)
David Knight (Virginia Tech, USA)
In recent years, engineering education literature has shown a need for the increased emphasis in preparing students for
professional practice. National organizations have demonstrated this need through lists of skills and outcomes required
by engineering graduates. Numerous factors have been linked to the development of these outcomes, both inside and
outside of the classroom. While these factors have been proven to be effective in developing skills important for the
engineering profession during the undergraduate years, current literature demonstrates that engineers are still required to
learn a considerable amount on the job in order to be successful. To extend prior research, this study investigates the
perceptions of skill level at two points along an engineer's career: during the senior year (as taken retrospectively) and
three years after graduation. Data were obtained from alumni though a nationally representative study of engineering
programs. Multiple linear regression analyses show how participation in co-curricular undergraduate experiences and
early career job functions relate to key technical and professional skills. Findings demonstrate the value of participation
in such organizations and the relationship between career decisions and current and future skill development.
DEVELOPING WELL-ROUNDED GRADUATES THROUGH INTEGRATION OF SOFT SKILLS IN THE
TEACHING OF ENGINEERING COURSES
Hairuzila Idrus (Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Malaysia)
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Institutions of higher education have been pressed by the industry practitioners to produce quality graduates who are
ready to compete in the competitive job market locally and globally. Graduates, especially in the technical field are
perceived as strong in their technical skills but are lacking in non-technical or soft skills that would enable them to use
their technical skills most effectively. Thus, it is vital to integrate the soft skills in the teaching and learning process
especially in the realm of engineering in order to further enhance the students' ability in non-technical. The expected
outcome would be the production of well-rounded engineering graduates with first class mentality as envisioned by the
government. This empirical study attempts to craft a richer description and understanding of how soft skills are
integrated into the teaching and learning of the formal curriculum focusing on technical courses at a private university in
Malaysia. The study was based on both quantitative method, utilizing questionnaire survey and qualitative methods
through document analysis and focus group interviews. Perspectives from both the educators and students were sought.
The questionnaire survey was aimed at providing an overall pattern of the participants' approaches and views on the
integration while document analysis and focus group interviews presented the complementary details behind their
reasons. Data for this study was obtained from 90 engineering lecturers, 300 final year engineering undergraduates and
document from 84 engineering courses. The results of the study indicate that the most pertinent teaching approaches to
be employed in integrating soft skills for technical courses are the student-centered teaching methods. The study also
reveals that the lecturers place a great deal of emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving skills as well as
communication skills which are crucial skills for engineers. However, the efforts taken by the lecturers in integrating soft
skills were not obvious to the students. The incongruence in the lecturers and students' perceptions was captured on the
integration of leadership skills, lifelong learning and information management, and ethics. The findings of the study have
drawn attention to the importance of paying heed to how students' ability in soft skills are developed by the educators on
their teaching since most of students' learning time is devoted to their core courses. The findings also acknowledge the
contributions of educators with industry experience to the development of students' soft skills abilities. This research
offers a novel perspective on soft skills development of engineering students at higher education level.
PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCY ATTAINMENT IN A PROJECT BASED LEARNING CURRICULUM
Bart Johnson (Itasca Community College & Iron Range Engineering, Aalborg University, USA)
Ron Ulseth (Iron Range Engineering, USA)
An upper division undergraduate project-based learning (PBL) engineering program in the U.S. engineering educational
system was started beginning January 2010. Students transfer into the program after completion of lower division
coursework at community colleges and other universities. They do not take classes; instead learning activities are
organized and indexed in industry projects where they are solving complex and ill-structured industry problems. Upon
completion, students receive a B.S. in Engineering with an emphasis in mechanical, electrical, biomedical, or process
engineering. True to the ABET intent, graduates emerge with integrated technical/professional knowledge and
competencies. The program has 50 graduates to date and has earned ABET-EAC accreditation. This, in progress, study
looks specifically at the impact of this PBL curriculum on student attainment of the ABET-identified professional
competencies. Trends of the initial study indicate a positive impact on student attainment of the professional
competencies in comparison to students studying in a traditional curriculum.
MISALIGNMENT OF EVERYDAY AND TECHNICAL LANGUAGE
Mirjam Glessmer (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Andrea Brose (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Technical terminology is the vocabulary with specific definitions depending on the field in which it is being used. People
working within that field are familiar with this language and use it carrying a very specific meaning that might or might
not be aligned with the use in everyday language. Technical terms often use language that carries a meaning in everyday
language. Depending on the meaning, associations are provoked that can help or hinder understanding the technical
meaning of the terms. Especially in cases where the everyday meaning of a term is not aligned with the technical
meaning, this can lead to student misunderstandings of concepts that are hard to unveil because both students and
instructors are using the same terms without being aware that they are not talking about the same meaning of those
terms. In this paper, we present examples of technical terms in engineering in different categories. We discuss how
instructors need to be aware of and respond to the possibility of students' associations in order to prevent and counteract
misunderstandings and false perceptions.
SCL3: Student-centric Learning, Beyond the Classroom
Chair: Jenni Rikala
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4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
LEARNING TO LEARN: THE CO-EVOLUTION OF AN INSTITUTION AND ITS STUDENTS
Sebastian Dziallas (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, United Kingdom)
Sally Fincher (University of Kent, United Kingdom)
In this study, we report on the student experience at Olin College, a small undergraduate university in the United States
with an explicit mission to transform engineering education. We employ a highly narrative approach to situate students'
individual experiences within their larger learning trajectories and use them as a lens through which we view the
accounts of their time at college. We highlight a series of themes that emerge: from often successful, but traditional high
school experiences to an academic dislocation in the first year in college that reinforces fundamentally different values of
what it means to be an engineer. The dissonance (and inherent wrestling) students experience as they adjust into an
environment that values interdisciplinary activities and student autonomy emerged as a central theme of this study. We
connect these experiences to shifts in motivation and accountable disciplinary knowledge to reveal what it means for
college students to 'learn beyond success'.
TRANSFORMING ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE EDUCATION THROUGH ACTIVE LEARNING
Massood Towhidnejad (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA)
Thomas Hilburn (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA)
Salamah Salamah (University of Texas El Paso, USA)
Advances in engineering and science methods and technology and the need to work across cultures and time zones have
influenced significant change in the practice of engineering and science. The same cannot be said of engineering
education: for over 100 years curricula have been packaged in a course-by-course, semester-by-semester framework;
material is mostly delivered by lecture and individual assignments; classrooms are characteristically arranged in rows
and columns of single-person desks; course grades are generally assigned on the basis of individual work; significant
team projects are typically reserved for senior level capstone courses; and many faculty lack experience as a
professional, in team building, and an appreciation of the role of general education in science and engineering education.
In the last twenty years there has been considerable interest and research in applying "active learning" techniques and
activities to improve student learning. This paper presents information about the development of a comprehensive lifecycle engineering case study, called Digital Home, which includes realistic scenarios and case study exercises that can be
used across a curriculum. in addition, the paper presents a discussion of project artifacts use across multiple courses in
computing field.
LONG TERM IMPACTS OF OFF-CAMPUS PROJECT WORK ON STUDENT LEARNING AND
DEVELOPMENT
Richard Vaz (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Paula Quinn (Quinn Evaluation Consulting, USA)
Experiential short-term study abroad programs can promote student development in cognitive and personal areas,
preparing students for global engagement. Still, financial and logistical barriers limit participation by engineering
students in study abroad, despite increasing calls for global engagement skills among engineers. Study away, defined as
off-campus experiential learning in either domestic or international settings, provides an alternative to study abroad, and
can be designed to promote many of the same global engagement outcomes as study abroad while overcoming some
barriers. This paper presents findings from an evaluation study of engineering alumni who experienced a project-based
undergraduate curriculum, examining differences in reported learning gains between alumni who completed projects on
campus and those who completed projects in off-campus locations, both domestic and international. Survey respondents
who had completed at least one project away from campus reported significantly greater positive impact not only in areas
in which it was anticipated—expansion of world views and personal development and enrichment—but in very specific
areas of professional development related to interpersonal relationships, communication skills, and understanding of
ethical responsibilities.
AUTHENTIC LEARNING IN CYBERSECURITY: LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES AND PEDAGOGICAL
CHALLENGES
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Hwee-Joo Kam (Ferris State University, USA)
Greg Gogolin (Ferris State University, USA)
Gerald Emerick (Ferris State University, USA)
This study focuses on introducing authentic learning experiences to students majoring in Information Security and
Intelligence (ISI) and presents learning opportunities and pedagogical challenges posed by authentic learning. Drawing
on the Situated Cognition Theory, authentic learning enables students to transfer knowledge to real-life scenario through
problem-solving related to real-life cases, role playing exercises, and participation in community practices. By
encouraging students to participate in authentic tasks in authentic context, instructors can nurture authentic learning
environment that naturally requires students to link their knowledge obtained in the classroom with the real-life scenario.
Subsequently, students learn the subtlety and complexity of a subject matter. In this regard, this study proposes that
authentic learning is important to Cybersecurity education that demands a high level of abstract thinking, strong
analytical skills, and the ability to solve problems through critical thinking and creativity. By designing multiple projects
(Cyber Hacking) in support of authentic learning, the preliminary findings of this study unfold the pedagogical
opportunities and challenges for authentic learning in Cybersecurity education.
ON THE EVALUATION OF AN OPEN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING COURSE
Eduardo Figueiredo (Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil)
Juliana Pereira (Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil)
Lucas Garcia (Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil)
Luciana Lourdes (Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil)
Open online courses are a method of online lecturing whose application in education is not bounded by space and
location constraints. The successful implementation of open courses requires conceptual changes in how instructors and
students behave in open unbounded education environment. There are some emerging open courses for teaching specific
topics of Software Engineering. However, it is still limited the knowledge about the best practices for learning Software
Engineering processes, methods, and tools in such an open environment. To address this limitation, this paper presents
and evaluates an open course for Introduction to Software Engineering. The presented open course has over 250 online
students registered and is based on a face-to-face equivalent. The online course is currently composed of 44 video
lectures, 160 questions in 16 quizzes, and several discussion topics. We evaluate this course by comparing the students'
performance in online vs. face-to-face equivalent courses. Our results indicated that students who had access to online
content achieve similar or better performance than students taking only the face-to-face course.
INDIVIDUAL CREATIVITY AND TEAM ENGINEERING DESIGN: A TAXONOMY FOR TEAM
COMPOSITION
Kylie Berger (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Andrea Surovek (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Dean Jensen (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
David Cropley (University of South Australia, Australia)
In 2012, the authors developed an all-day team design competition modeled on reality television. The purpose of the
competition was to test the student teams' abilities to develop creative solutions to an open ended problem given limited
time and unconventional resources. One question that arose while developing the competition was the impact that
individual creativity and team creative composition would have on the final product. Surprisingly, teams with the highest
average scores of individual creativity performed the worst in the creativity of the final product. Additionally, teams that
had a single dominant "creative" thinker also failed to score well in the creativity portion of the competition. The current
work in progress examines the composition of design teams to develop a taxonomy based on: a) team average of member
creativity scores; and b) divergence of individual creativity on a team. In the Innovation Phase Model (IPM), different
phases of innovation emphasize different dominant thinking processes. By categorizing team characteristics, we can
examine if specific team compositions are more likely to perform well in specific phases of the IPM. The current focus is
on the divergent stages of Invention as well as the convergent stage of illumination.
TLE: Improvisation as a Tool to Develop Creativity
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: El Jardin
IMPROVISATION AS A TOOL TO DEVELOP CREATIVITY
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Eti de Vries (Hanze University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands)
This workshop is meant for all lecturers and researchers of the conference, to experience the benefits of improvisation
for themselves or for their students. In educating the inventors of our future, it is important to address creativity as a
condition for innovation in Engineering courses of study. Part of the creative potential lies in the ability of divergent
thinking. This looking for not yet existing patterns is also one of the characteristics of improvisation. Breaking the
routine, staying positive, putting focus on others, staying in the present moment and daring to fail are the basic rules for
improvisation, with having fun as a bonus. As Albert Einstein said, no problem can be solved from the same level of
consciousness that created it. A disruption in the existing thinking and acting patterns has to be initiated. Giving
participants no time to prepare or think things through, in other words giving them the opportunity and obligation to
improvise is a mean to cause such a disruption. This way, participants get in the right mood, step out of their comfort
zone and focus on the things that are happening in the here-and-now, in essence the right conditions for enhancing
divergent thinking. The workshop in improvisation skills lasts 90 minutes and has the following structure: 00.00-00.20
hours: physical and concentration warming up 00.20-00.40 hours: exercises in pairs 00.40-01.10 hours: games 01.1001.20 hours: cooling down 01.20-01.30 hours: evaluation In all parts of the workshop, people are challenged to solve
problems with no more than their imagination. This way, they learn to take initiative, listen carefully, react
spontaneously and enjoy making mistakes. The essence of improvisation touches the heart of creativity: acting in the
here-and-now, accepting mistakes and learning to look for novel associations. The workshop can serve 30 participants
maximum. The workshop leader is a lecturer professional skills who recently started a Ph.D.-research on innovative
behavior in higher Engineering education. She teaches improvisation for almost six years now in an Engineering course
of study in the Netherlands. She is also the co-author of a book (in press) about improvisation and entrepreneurship.
After the workshop, participants will leave in a good mood, while thinking of ways how to stimulate creativity. A handout with more information will be provided.
TLE3: Enhancing the Teaching and Learning Experience
Chair: Wilhelm Friess
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: La Galería
SYNERGIES BETWEEN WRITING STORIES AND WRITING PROGRAMS IN PROBLEM-SOLVING
COURSES
Candido Cabo (New York City College of Technology/CUNY, USA)
Reneta D. Lansiquot (New York City College of Technology/CUNY, USA)
First-year problem-solving and computer programming courses are gateway courses with low passing rates, resulting in
student attrition and transfers out of computer science degrees. Our urban institution serves mostly underrepresented
minority students, typically an at-risk population given their minimal previous programming experience and weak
mathematical background. We offer a computer problem-solving course (PS) to prepare students in computing and
engineering majors for a rigorous first programming course (CS1). Given a change in programming learning context
from a programming language to the 3D programming environment Alice, the pass rate increased by 8% points (from
70% to 78%). The higher pass rate in the Alice PS course does not result in a weaker preparation of students for the
subsequent CS1 course. Moreover, teaching the Alice PS course as part of an interdisciplinary learning community
linked to a first course in English composition with strong narrative components further increases student performance
and retention. This intentional interdisciplinary approach to problem solving allows students to purposefully connect and
integrate knowledge and skills from across the disciplines, developing synergies between writing stories and writing
computer programs.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE: IT IS NOT ALL ABOUT
PROGRAMMING
Elena Prieto (The University of Newcastle, Australia)
Regina Berretta (The University of Newcastle, Australia)
A considerable body of research examines people's perceptions of the nature of science. There is also extensive research
about what those perceptions are for teachers, and what strategies can be used to change them. There is, however, very
little information about what these perceptions may be in the case of computer science. In fact, computer scientists
struggle to agree on a definition of their discipline, and perhaps the only term common term to all existing definitions is
that of computational thinking. This paper reports on an investigation into perceptions about computer science occurred
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during a series of professional development workshops for Australian Digital Technologies teachers. These workshops
aimed to promote the computer science discipline by providing skills and resources necessary to teach computer science
and computational thinking. The results of our investigation indicate that Digital Technologies teachers in our sample
(N=16) had one common misconception about the nature of computer science. We also found that the misconception
was changed after 3 days of intensive education about computational thinking, computer science and its applications.
A FIRST COURSE IN ENGINEERING DESIGN COMBINING JUST-IN-TIME CAD INSTRUCTION
WITHIN A HORIZONTALLY INTEGRATED DESIGN PROJECT
Wilhelm Friess (University of Maine, USA)
First year design courses in the Mechanical Engineering Curriculum typically intend to familiarize students with the use
of a CAD software package in preparation for future design or CAE coursework. Learning outcomes of these
introductory courses often focus on the mechanics of generating the models using the software of choice. While most
students find CAD modeling interesting, the focus on learning the software, as imparted in these traditional first or
second semester CAD courses, often does not allow experiencing the role of the software tools within the design process,
becoming an exercise in modeling rather than design. At the University of Maine's Brunswick Engineering Program
(BEP), an engineering studio course has been developed that shifts the focus from learning the software mechanics to
learning and experiencing the engineering design process; CAD software skills are conveyed "in passing", with just-intime instruction to support students in completing the design portion of a common integrated project. Survey results after
two iterations of the course indicate high levels of perceived learning and student satisfaction. This is supported by the
formative and summative course assessment, and initial results of a post-test Purdue Spatial Visualization Test Rotations.
LEARNING BY COMPETING AND COMPETING BY LEARNING: EXPERIENCE FROM THE E-YANTRA
ROBOTICS COMPETITION
Saraswathi Krithivasan (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Saurav Shandilya (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Kavi Arya (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Krishna Lala (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Piyush Manavar (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Sachin Patil (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Shailesh Jain (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
e-Yantra Robotics Competition (eYRC) is an initiative of the e-Yantra project to bring the experience of Project Based
Learning to engineering students by using a competition to deliver hands-on training on-line. Five hundred students
forming 131 teams were selected from across India to participate in the pilot run of the competition, eYRC-2012 that
consists of a set of tasks through which students are evaluated. We map the tasks such as theme analysis, implementation
analysis, and video demonstration to outcomes such as acquiring basic knowledge, application of knowledge, and critical
analysis. Results show that over 95% of the teams participated imbibed basic knowledge of embedded systems and
robotics, 60% of the teams applied their knowledge to develop a solution to a given problem, while over 30% of the
teams could critically analyze the problem and come up with an effective solution. These results are confirmed by
similar effectiveness studies of the eYRC-2013 competition. This competition was conducted completely on-line and
students did not incur any costs, ingredients essential for ensuring scalability and inclusiveness of the project. Students
transfer the Robotic kits to their respective colleges at the end of the competition enabling nurturing of future generations
of students at the colleges.
EMULATING A CORPORATE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT THROUGH COLLABORATION
BETWEEN STUDENT PROJECTS IN SIX COURSES
Laura Grabowski (University of Texas-Pan American, USA)
Christine F Reilly (University of Texas - Pan American, USA)
Wendy A LawrenceFowler (The University of Texas-Pan American, USA)
Corporate software development often takes place within a complex organizational structure, potentially encompassing
many individuals. With constant improvements in network and communication technologies, those organizations may be
widely distributed through time and space. In computer science and education, group projects are typically included as
part of an undergraduate and graduate engineering curriculum to help prepare students for the dynamics of the business
workplace. However, the groups tend to be much smaller than those typically found in the international corporate world
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where engineers are required to participate in large groups that are dispersed through geography and time zones. We
describe a collaboration between student projects in six courses that aims to emulate such an international corporate
software development environment. The collaboration brought together three faculty members and over 90
undergraduate and graduate students to work on a software project for a real client. Through this experience, we learned
valuable lessons regarding the importance of communication and coordination between the faculty and student
participants in a large--scale project.
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Friday, October 24
CBL4: Case Studies in Computer Based Learning
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Patio 3
DESKTOP VS. MOBILE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AUGMENTED REALITY SYSTEMS FOR
ENGINEERING VISUALIZATIONS IN EDUCATION
Jorge D. Camba (Texas A&M University, USA)
Manuel Contero (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Gustavo Salvador-Herranz (Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Spain)
This paper describes the results of a comparative pilot study of three different approaches to deliver three-dimensional
content in an Engineering Design Graphics textbook using Augmented Reality: Desktop Augmented Reality, Mobile
Augmented Reality, and an interactive 3D viewer. This work builds on a previous version of our augmented book, which
only implemented Desktop Augmented Reality. In this extended version, two new visualization mechanisms for mobiles
devices were incorporated with the purpose of improving the students' visualization skills. A small group of users was
selected to evaluate the usability of the technology and the effectiveness of the materials. In general, participants showed
mixed reactions in terms of their preferred method to interact with the content. Nevertheless, we observed a general
positive attitude, excitement, and a high level of user satisfaction, which suggests that augmented reality can be a
valuable method for self-directed learning and self-assessment. Usability study results will be used to improve the
mobile visualization app.
INTELLIGENT TUTORING INTERFACE FOR TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING IN A COURSE OF
COMPUTER NETWORK DESIGN
Elena Verdú Pérez (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain)
Luisa Regueras (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain)
María Jesús Verdú Pérez (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain)
Juan Pablo de Castro Fernández (University of Valladolid, Spain)
Dan Kohen-Vacs (Holon Institute of Technology, Israel)
Eran Gal (Holon Institute of Technology, Israel)
Michaela Ronen (Holon Institute of Technology, Israel)
This paper describes the user interface of an Intelligent Tutoring System that enables the customization of e-Learning
systems according to the needs of students requiring recommendation along pedagogical pathways. The interface has
been implemented for the Moodle e-learning platform by using a standard extension mechanism provided by this
Learning Management System (LMS) referred as "block". The designed interface allows the intelligent system to interact
with the LMS and the learner, whose learning is continuously monitored and supported by means of personalized
recommendations and messages. The system usability has been evaluated in the context of a course about Computer
Network Design. First, we conducted initial and small scale evaluation with the participation of 8 teachers. From their
opinions, the interface was improved and we realized a second small scale evaluation with the participation of 7 students.
Results show that the designed interface is well integrated into Moodle and generates a non-intrusive user interface.
PROGRAMMING WEB-COURSE ANALYSIS: HOW TO INTRODUCE COMPUTER PROGRAMMING?
Romenig Ribeiro (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Leônidas O Brandão (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Tulio Faria (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Anarosa A. F. Brandão (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Nowadays, computer programming and logical thinking skills have been proposed as a fundamental knowledge, even to
young learners. On one hand, in undergraduate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) courses, the first
contact of students with the logic of programming usually results in high failure rates. The literature and experiments
conducted by the authors point out that this occurs regardless the adopted programming language. On the other hand, the
literature presents some positive results when the paradigm used to introduce the subject is Visual Programming (VP),
where the learners use icons to build their programs. This approach is successful even with young learners. In this
context, a relevant question is whether, and how, the Visual Programming can help learners to understand a traditional
textual programming language. The proposal of this work is to study differences between visual and traditional
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programming by analyzing the mental workload of using both paradigms during the introduction of algorithms and basic
concepts of programming in the context of an online course of introductory programming. In order to perform such
analysis, we adopted the NASA TLX protocol.
LEARNING AND PRACTICING OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING USING A COLLABORATIVE WEBBASED IDE
Vu Nguyen (University of Science, VNU-HCMC, Vietnam)
Hai H Dang (University of Science, VNU-HCMC, Vietnam)
Kha N Do (University of Science, VNU-HCMC, Vietnam)
Tran Thu (University of Science, VNU-HCMC, Vietnam)
Collaborative programming is an effective approach to software development, improving software quality, programmer's
satisfaction and shortening delivery time. This study examines the application of a collaborative Web-based IDE named
IDEOL to execute a four-week multi-submission programming assignment in an introductory object-oriented
programming class. Forty eight students forming 24 two-member groups in class used the IDE to interact and write
source code required by the project. All collaborative and programming activities performed by students were recorded
by IDEOL. The results of the study shows that students tend to postpone their programming work until the submission
dates. This study also provides an approach to designing and executing an extended programming exercises, which
receives high student satisfaction. Our results imply that IDEOL is a useful environment for students to collaborate,
learn, and practice programming to improve their learning satisfaction. In addition, as students tend to procrastinate,
IDEOL is a useful tool to facilitate, monitor, and report student progress in extended programming exercises.
ADAPTIVE LEARNING IN COMPUTING FOR NON-NATIVE SPEAKERS
Yann Rimbaud (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Tom G McEwan (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Alistair Lawson (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Sandra Cairncross (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
A significant proportion of e-Learning resources for engineering and computing education appear to be exclusively in
English, requiring many learners to adapt themselves to these tools. This is contrary to aims of adaptive learning. This
work-in-progress describes the early stages of research to improve the effectiveness of adaptive learning tools in
multilingual contexts and we welcome insights into taxonomies of adaptive learning techniques, and mixed methods
approaches to evaluating learning effectiveness, for non-native English speakers learning in English. Intelligent and
adaptive learning systems aim to improve learning outcomes by individualizing the learning process for each student.
These systems diagnose what learners individually know and don't know (Intelligent), and generate learner specific
content and interfaces, including learning paths and features that match the learner's preferred approach (Adaptive).
Learners then can explore articles, ebooks, videos, quizzes and courses covering only unfamiliar topics, instead of
unnecessary repetition. The system does this in a way that the learner will like, and which saves them time and can be an
alternative, or a supplement, to individual tutoring. Adaptive learning has opportunity for improvement, as current
research and tools do not seem to consider students who use different languages in their everyday lives. Once our advice
to students was to immerse themselves in English while studying but, as multiculturalism increases, this strategy is no
longer feasible: we are each surrounded by multiple languages and cultures. Thus, rather than see the use of a foreign
language as a barrier in the learning process, we propose to use it as a springboard, both for learning specific content, but
also to learn or improve language proficiency, particularly in business and technology English. MOOCs are much in
vogue and attract a significant number of learners, yet, other than "chunking" content into smaller sections, we argue that
they essentially automate the traditional mass-instruction learning experience, with primitive understanding of individual
students' needs. Worse, without the social context, to maintain engagement during over- familiar content until the next
novel item arrives, the impatient learner can easily give up. Adding adaptive learning techniques to MOOCs might allow
learners to create their own paths through the learning material, and, via recommender systems, to relevant learning
suggestions for others. This would allow teachers to support learners' journey to higher levels of competency, but also
motivate learners to persevere. Data analysis of student achievements and learning profiles could further enhance the
quality of the adaptation and recommendation, or simply improve the relevant learning object. Despite this, adaptive
MOOC research (eg Sonwalkar, 2013) seems more to focus on technical feasibility and content structuring, rather than
learning efficacy. This research plans to understand learning needs and implement improved algorithms to meet these
needs with online learning experiences, adding novel mechanisms to help learners cope, develop their language
capabilities, and enhance their ability to learn in another language. Factors such as learning style, intensity and duration
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of a course, and the learner's capability with vocabulary, grammar and reading, will be taken into account to provide
personalized learning experiences.
ANALYSIS OF SELF-REGULATED LEARNING STRATEGIES ORIENTED TO THE DESIGN OF SOFTWARE
SUPPORT
Mario Manso Vazquez (University of Vigo, Spain)
Manuel Caeiro (U78-niversity of Vigo, Spain)
Martin Llamas-Nistal (University of Vigo, Spain)
In all the projects centered on the promotion of self-regulation, self-regulation strategies and learning strategies are
taught, to enable the students to use them in order to improve their learning and self-regulatory skills. When the students
use these strategies, they choose the tools that they want to use to implement the strategies, pen and paper in many cases,
and generic software tools in other cases, as the range of specialized tools is very poor or they do not enable the
implementation of the strategies more efficiently than the generic ones. The requirements of the support for selfregulated learning provided by a software tool are not clear. The goal of this paper is, on the one hand, to define the
design criteria for tools intended to support self-regulated learning, based on the study of self-regulated learning theory
and strategies, and on the other hand to discuss the evaluation of tools' capabilities for supporting self-regulated learning.
EER4: Creativity and Innovativeness in Engineering
Chair: Stuart Kellogg
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Aranjuez
EVALUATION OF A DISTRIBUTED COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACE AS A CREATIVITY TOOL IN THE
CONTEXT OF DESIGN EDUCATION
Gustavo Salvador-Herranz (Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Spain)
Manuel Bañó-Hernández (Universidad CEU Cardenal Herrera, Spain)
Manuel Contero (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Jorge D. Camba (Texas A&M University, USA)
In this paper, we have adapted a previous version of our distributed digital collaborative workspace to a new system that
we call "The Ideas Machine." This system is capable of suggesting new ideas and research tips to students based on
various methodologies of creativity and the initial input provided by the instructor. The system is designed for interactive
tabletop systems, which promote collaboration by supporting face-to-face communication around a large work area.
Since digital spaces facilitate the acquisition of a variety of data in real time, our system allows instructors to gather
extensive and up-to-date information from students that could not be obtained otherwise in a traditional environment
because of technical and time constraints. Leveraging this capability, we developed a mechanism that acts as an assistant
to the instructor by automatically evaluating students according to certain parameters. Finally, to assess the capabilities
of our system as a tool to support creativity, we conducted an experiment with Industrial Design students over the course
of an academic year. Information used to evaluate efficiency includes student qualifications, number of information
items provided and number and quality of new ideas generated.
CREATIVITY, INNOVATION, AND INGENUITY SUMMER ENRICHMENT PROGRAM - COLLABORATING
WITH A CULTURAL INSTITUTION AND PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT
Andrew L. Gerhart (Lawrence Technological University, USA)
Donald D. Carpenter (Lawrence Technological University, USA)
Lawrence Technological University has developed and administers a week-long summer enrichment program for
undergraduate engineering students focused on progressively building from the foundations of the creative
process/competencies to the application of innovative techniques coupled with engineering design and problem solving.
While this summer enrichment program is administered by the University, the program is facilitated in close partnership
with The Henry Ford, a nationally renowned cultural, historical, and educational destination. This paper will explain the
objectives and format of the program, summarize the benefits of collaborating with a local cultural institution, explain
how this program can be transferable to other universities, and present preliminary assessment results. Two different
assessments were performed: pre- and post-surveys determine the students' perceptions of creativity, problem solving,
teamwork, and leadership; and a curriculum survey evaluates the effectiveness, format and delivery techniques. A
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preliminary results for both assessments are positive. Further data will be obtained this year to allow for a more robust
analysis. Based on the assessment results, the program is undergoing continuous improvement.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CREATIVE SELF-CONCEPTS, PERCEPTIONS OF GLOBAL READINESS,
AND TRAVEL EXPERIENCES OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Sarah Zappe (Penn State University, USA)
Philip Reeves (Penn State University, USA)
Irene Mena (Penn State University, USA)
Thomas Litzinger (Penn State University, USA)
The purpose of this research paper is to examine the relationship between self-concepts relating to two attributes
necessary for successful engineers in today's society: creativity and global readiness. Some previous studies have shown
a positive relationship exists between multicultural exposure and later creative performance. However, no studies were
found that examine the relationship between students' self-concepts of these attributes. This paper seeks to examine
several hypotheses: 1) Students who have traveled internationally will have stronger global readiness and perceive global
readiness as being more valuable. 2) Students who have had more international experiences will have higher creative
self-efficacy, stronger creative identity, and perceive creativity as being more valuable to them. 3) Students who believe
they are more globally ready will have higher creative self-efficacy and stronger creative identity. 4) Students who value
global readiness will also value creativity. The results show that international experiences influence students' perceived
value of global readiness and other measures of global readiness. Measures of creative self-concepts are impacted if
students spend a significant length of time in an international setting.
CULTURES OF INNOVATION AMONG CHEMICAL, CIVIL, AND MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
STUDENTS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY
Nicholas D Fila (Purdue University, USA)
Senay Purzer (Purdue University, USA)
Rami Chakroun (Purdue University, USA)
Innovation has received particular emphasis in engineering education due to implications of global challenges, diverse
human needs, and economic competitiveness. As such, many instructors explore new methods to help engineering
students develop innovation-related competencies and researchers seek to understand how students connect with and
learn about innovation. This study adds to that growing knowledgebase by investigating the ways engineering students in
different disciplines view and approach engineering innovation. Nine students in chemical, civil, and mechanical
engineering participated in a two-hour laboratory protocol consisting of an idea generation task, a process mapping task,
and a semi-structured interview. This qualitative study used a multiple case analysis approach to compare student
perspectives in each discipline. Analysis revealed that students in each discipline demonstrated different perspectives
along nine aspects of innovation: context, criteria, stakeholder involvement, teamwork, design process, iteration,
knowledge, challenges, and personal motivation. These differences link to core aspects of each discipline. Since a
qualitative approach with a localized sample was used, this work does not explain all differences or the extent to which
they manifest, but this paper contributes to an emerging understanding of how work in different engineering disciplines
can connect with innovation from a student perspective.
CHARACTERIZING ENGINEERING INNOVATIVENESS THROUGH A MODIFIED DELPHI STUDY
Daniel Ferguson (Purdue University, USA)
Senay Purzer (Purdue University, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
Kathryn Jablokow (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Jessica Menold (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Innovation and the individual characteristics associated with innovative behavior are highly valued in today's
technologically advanced society. However, there are a limited number of empirical studies that describe key factors at
the core of engineering innovativeness and the relationships among those factors. We describe a study that uses a
modified Delphi technique to examine complex constructs associated with engineering innovativeness. Delphi technique
is a social-constructivist approach to achieving agreement among experts. Our Delphi study participants are a group of
over 100 engineers who are recognized as innovators by their peers and identified in academia, corporations, and
entrepreneurial ventures. These participants cover a variety of technical disciplines in engineering and industries that
employ engineers, and geographic diversity. At the conclusions of the Delphi study, the participants will have completed
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multiple anonymous rounds of online surveys asking them to clarify and rank order innovative characteristics. Their
responses will be analyzed for consensus and stability. Our presentation will include a discussion of our methodology,
with a focus on strategies and challenges associated with participant recruitment, survey instrument development, and
data analysis when using a Delphi technique. We will also present analysis results from initial phases of our Delphi
study.
ETH: Defining and Assessing Engineering Ethics in an International Context
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: El Escorial
DEFINING AND ASSESSING ENGINEERING ETHICS IN AN INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Patrice Buzzanell (Purdue University, USA)
Qin Zhu (Purdue University, USA)
Megan Kenny Feister (Purdue University, USA)
The motivation of the special session was to allow engineering educators and researchers to explore different cultural
perspectives of engineering ethics, and understand how that would affect both individual and team ethical decisionmaking. This will inform how we teach and assess engineering ethics, especially in diverse project teams, and equip
educators with tools for using these instruments as part of the student learning. The special session format will allow for
discussion and debate on the appropriateness for diverse student teams.
FYE2: First Year Engineering 2
Chair: Catherine E. Brawner
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Doblon
FIRST YEAR ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE AT FERDOWSI UNIVERSITY OF MASHHAD
Mohammad Molavi Kakhki (Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran)
Asad Azemi (Pennsylvania State University, Brandywine Campus, USA)
The main goal of this work is to describe the development of a first year seminar for electrical engineering students at
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. This course was recently added to the curriculum and will be taught, for the first
time, during spring 2014 semester. The main goal is to motivate electrical engineering freshmen students by exposing
them to an academic experience that combines fundamental concepts of engineering design, practical experience,
problem solving skills, management and communication skills, and teamwork. This course was developed through
collaborations with a colleague from Pennsylvania State University. The following summarizes our teaching and
learning objectives. Teaching Objectives: • To enhance students' understanding of electrical engineering fields and
associated jobs • To enhance students' ability to develop skills in the acquisition, evaluation and use of information • To
introduce students to the available department and university resources • To demonstrate the utility of the design process
in finding solutions to engineering problems • To enhance students' ability to develop oral, and written communication
skills • To enhance students' ability to work in teams in a collaborative context Learning Objectives • To understand
engineering and the role of an engineer in the society • To define engineering design and explain the basic design process
• To apply effectively problem solving and design processes in a project • To understand the importance of ethics in
engineering • To demonstrate professionalism in the interaction with other students, faculty and staff. • To summarize
and communicate effectively the results of the design project results by means of oral and written engineering
presentations • To develop teamwork and leadership skills by means of an active and positive participation as a team
member A more detailed description of the course including discussion and students' reaction will be provided in the
paper.
PROMOTING POSITIVE START OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING STUDIES - A TEACHER'S
PERSPECTIVE
Sami Kujala (Aalto University, Finland)
Anu Lehtovuori (Aalto University, Finland)
Mikko Honkala (Aalto University, Finland)
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The experiences from the first year of studies play a major role in determining the progress of later studies. Engaging
study culture, requiring active participation in classes and active support from the teaching staff, can facilitate
overcoming obstacles in the studies. In practice, the teacher has a key role in affecting the mindsets of the students.
Implementing assessment as a continuous process permits collecting real-time information on students' performance
during the course, which enables to monitor, and more importantly, to influence the students' behaviour and decrease the
number of students dropping out from their studies. The students' progress was monitored in two big first-year courses
(170-300 seats) on physics and circuit analysis starting from the first weeks of the studies. The goal was to recognise and
to affect the potential drop-out candidates and support them to continue working towards completing their courses with
the teacher's own actions and pedagogical decisions. Experiences gained during this project provide insight on
appropriate actions in planning of teaching to facilitate students' success in studies.
FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS' NANOTECHNOLOGY AWARENESS, EXPOSURE AND
MOTIVATION BEFORE AND AFTER EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTIONS
Oguz Hanoglu (Purdue University, USA)
Anna Douglas (Purdue University, USA)
Krishna Madhavan (Purdue University, USA)
Heidi Diefes-Dux (Purdue University, USA)
Educational interventions in first-year engineering programs can positively affect students' awareness of nanotechnology
by introducing students to basic nanotechnology concepts and motivating them to follow nanotechnology-related career
paths. The research question examined in this study is: What are the differences in exposure, awareness, and motivation
between students in classrooms where a mathematical modeling activity is implemented and where a mathematical
modeling activity and a simulation design project are implemented? In a pre/posttest quasi-experimental design, firstyear engineering course sections were split into experimental and control groups. The experimental course sections (6
sections n=496) implemented a mathematical modeling activity and a simulation design project related to
nanotechnology. The control course sections (8 sections n=703) implemented only the mathematical modeling activity.
Results show that when implemented together, the simulation design project and the mathematical modeling activity are
more effective than only the mathematical modeling activity in terms of increasing student awareness, exposure and
motivation related to nanotechnology. Although the change in motivation is statistically significant, the effect size is low.
Therefore, further research for uncovering factors linked to motivation is necessary.
ENHANCING AN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING COURSE WITH PHYSICAL COMPUTING MODULES
Miguel Rubio (University of Granada, Spain)
Rocio Romero-Zaliz (University of Granada, Spain)
Carolina Mañoso Hierro (UNED - Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
Ángel Pérez de Madrid y Pablo (UNED - Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain)
Learning to program can be very difficult for the students involved. Students must master language syntax, programming
theory and problem solving techniques in a short period of time. A non-traditional approach might help students to
overcome these difficulties. Several studies have proposed the use of the physical computing paradigm. This paradigm
takes the computational concepts "out of the screen" and into the real world so that the student can interact with them.
Following this paradigm we designed different learning modules -to be used in lectures and laboratory sessions- to teach
C/C++ and MATLAB. Lecturers explain a computational concept and, afterwards, reinforce it using the physical
computing modules. For example, conditional structures are illustrated using a photocell and several LEDs, arrays are
explained using musical melodies, etc. The effectiveness of the physical computing modules was assessed by means of
learning outcomes and students perceptions. Surveys conducted at the beginning and end of the course were analyzed
using the Technological Acceptance Model (TAM). Results indicate that the students were highly motivated and found
the modules very enjoyable. As a consequence we observed a significant increase in the retention rate of this course.
FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS' SELF-REPORTED KNOWLEDGE OF NANOTECHNOLOGY - THE
DEVELOPMENT OF A CODING SCHEME
Oguz Hanoglu (Purdue University, USA)
Kelsey J Rodgers (Purdue University, USA)
Yi Kong (Purdue University, USA)
Krishna Madhavan (Purdue University, USA)
Heidi Diefes-Dux (Purdue University, USA)
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Different types of instruction are used at the college-level for increasing students' knowledge of nanotechnology. Purdue
University introduced nanotechnology to first-year engineering students in an introductory engineering course through
two nanotechnology-related projects. The students were split into two groups. Group 1 students (8 sections, n=703)
implemented only a mathematical modeling project related to nanotechnology. Group 2 students (6 sections, n=496)
implemented both the mathematical modeling project and a simulation design project related to nanotechnology.
Students were asked to complete a nanotechnology assessment at the start and end of the semester. In this assessment,
one prompt asked students to describe five things they know about nanotechnology. This work-in-progress describes the
development of the coding scheme for categorizing the student responses. Researchers had ten meetings to revise the
coding scheme, the final meeting resulting in the inter-rater reliability (IRR) estimate of 82%. One of the researchers
applied the coding scheme to 2000 responses and initial results are reported here. The coding scheme will be used to
inform educators about the impact of their nanotechnology-related projects and attain their desired learning goals.
GBL3: Diverse Perspectives on Game Based Learning
Chair: Oscar Coltell
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: La Granja
PROPOSAL OF A COMPUTERIZED ENVIRONMENT TO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF GAME-BASED
LEARNING
Joao Coelho Neto (Northern Paraná Public University, Brazil)
Sheila Reinehr (Pontifical Catholic University, Brazil)
Andreia Malucelli (Pontifical Catholic University, Brazil)
Developing an educational game requires a great range of activities, which must be included in the system and structured
so that development teams may model and implement the game and, in such manner, provide support to the educational
process. In this manner, the objective of this research is to present a computerized environment to support teams in the
planning and development of educational electronic games, especially regarding educational activities. The environment
uses the Case-Based Reasoning technique for the recovery of similar games. It is a qualitative research, with the
environment´s assessment with contrasting groups (one team of game development used the environment, and the other
did not). Based on the evaluations, it was possible to observe that the environment increases the perception of several
documentary and cognitive activities, although the latter does not take place in many of the educational games developed
due to the lack of professionals in the area. The analysis of the environment allowed us to conclude that the use of the
environment as proposed in this paper may help teams in the structuring of activities and in the understanding of the
cognitive and psychomotor abilities, resulting in a final product with features that are truly educational.
DESIGNING SERIOUS GAMES FOR LEARNING SUPPORT IN MEDICINE STUDIES: A SPECIFIC METHOD
TO ELICIT AND FORMALIZE REQUIREMENTS
Oscar Coltell (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Ximo Granell (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Ricardo Tosca (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Pedro Latorre (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
José Sánchez (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Luis Vicente Lizán (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Francisco Ros-Bernal (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Conrado Martínez-Cadenas (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
In Spain, the new Medicine degrees of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) have incorporated Information
Technologies (IT) subjects to develop horizontal competences in their curriculum, and also as educational support
resources. Medicine Studies are costly for Higher Education institutions, hard to develop for faculties and lecturers, and
complicated to learn for students. Thus, every cost-effective educational innovation is welcomed. Since some years ago,
IT solutions have been applied to enhance students' learning in specific subjects, such as clinical simulators comprising
software-controlled dummies; or serious game applications to provide training in specific emergencies or surgery
medical protocols. There are different general approaches for designing and developing serious games in general, but
specific target disciplines as Medicine (educational and professional training), lack of tailor-made methodologies, even
in eliciting requirements under the Requirements Engineering framework, as a subfield of Software Engineering. In
medical higher education, the main objective of using games is to engage learners in complex problem spaces that
replicate real world situations, as it happens in hospital emergencies, surgery operations and so on, without the
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constraints and risks of the day to day practice (patient injuries, health complications and death). Therefore, the
development of serious higher education games is a complex, time consuming and costly process, especially for learning
medical skills. However, educational games are not always based on sound educational principles and theories, or do not
match the educational needs in Medicine accurately, potentially losing power as an educational tool. In this Work in
Progress, we address the abovementioned problem of lacking suitable methodologies in the design and development
processes of educational serious games for Higher Education medical environments. Our proposal is a semi-formal and
simple method to elicit and formalize the specific teaching needs identified in subjects or practices of Medicine degrees,
in order to design and develop serious games based on sound educational principles and theories and on Requirements
Engineering rules. This proposal is a convergence of Software Engineering principles, approaches and techniques; game
technology design and development processes; medical training issues; and educational principles and theories. From an
operational perspective, all the authors are teachers of the Medicine degree at Universitat Jaume I of Castellon, (Spain),
but they have different academic and professional profiles. We have divided the project team in three subgroups: G1 is
the subject specialist subgroup (medical doctors: CM-C, FR-B, RT and LVL) in charge of identifying teaching needs and
validating requirements; G2 is the design subgroup (multimedia and multilingual communication expert: XG) in charge
of implementing design and didactic approaches for internationalized multimedia environments; and G3 is the
requirements analysis group (computer and software engineering experts: JSS, PL and OC) in charge of transforming
educational and design requirements into formal and technical specifications. We opted for Rational Unified Process
using Unified Modeling Language (RUP-UML) as a reference methodology because it allows a comprehensive analysis
of virtually all types of requirements, game design techniques, and educational restrictions and preferences. In summary,
our proposed method is a RUP-UML-based gamification framework.
UPDATING ARISTOTLE, FREYTAG & CAMPBELL WITH LAKOFF AND FRAMES: DESIGNING
INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES IN GAMES
Gordon Goodman (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
David Simkins (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
This paper discusses approaches to teaching the foundations of interactive narrative for the design of interactive media
and games in a course offered to undergraduate New Media and Game Design students. The course is offered to upper
division students, most of whom are in the Game Design degree in the School of Interactive Games and Media at the
Rochester Institute of Technology. While traditional approaches to understanding narrative structure and analysis,
grounded in theories of drama, myth and cinema, such as Aristotle's Poetics and Campbell's Hero with a Thousand
Faces, are valuable and it is important for students to be familiar with this body of thought and practice, a growing body
of empirical research and theory can help us understand the neurological basis for cognition, interaction design and
narrative structure. Rather than viewing framing and metaphors as purely cinematic or poetic devices, for example, we
can understand how they represent the encoding and representation of knowledge and a mechanism for automaticity in
comprehension.
PHYSICAL RESPONSE TO FEEDBACK IN GAME-BASED LEARNING
Kelsey J Rodgers (Purdue University, USA)
Mariana Tafur (Purdue University, USA)
Farshid Marbouti (Purdue University, USA)
Justin Seipel (Purdue University, USA)
As we continue to reform science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, feedback is becoming
an even more crucial component of STEM education. Feedback is the primary method of scaffolding student
understanding in open-ended problem solving environments, including game-based learning. As game-based learning is
becoming more popularized and a promising direction for more interactive online learning, it is important to establish
effective methods to investigate learners' responses to game-based learning systems. This study investigates how people
physically respond to various forms of feedback and identifies differences in responses. This study recorded a single
students' physical response to feedback given from a gaming system. This paper describes the observed relationships
between the player's physical response (trunk posture and head movements) and feedback provided during the game on
the player's performance indicating whether performance is decreasing, constant, or increasing. We present a method for
collecting data that could potentially test a student's level of engagement, the simplicity or complexity of the task at hand
for the student, and how the student responds to the given feedback in a game-based learning systems.
ENGINEERING EDUCATION THROUGH AN INTERCONTINENTAL PLM COLLABORATIVE PROJECT:
THE GLOBAL FACTORY CASE STUDY
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Ricardo Mejía-Gutiérrez (Universidad EAFIT, Colombia)
Ricardo Carvajal-Arango (Universidad EAFIT, Colombia)
Julien Zins (Ecole Nationale d’Ingenieurs de Metz, France)
This article will present the experience in the development of an intercontinental collaborative project named "Global
Factory", being the first massive academic exploration of this new way of engineering work. The main goal of the
project, was to collaboratively design a virtual factory to produce vehicle combustion engines, by using the PLM
software CATIA V6. It was developed collaboratively by students from different universities around the world with
distributed work and a centralized database. Therefore, interdisciplinary work was encouraged, leading students to
collaborate with colleagues from different disciplines and countries. Students were subject to real conditions of
international work and the implied working conditions (e.g. cultural aspects, time-frames, communication limitations,
use of ICT, etc.). Furthermore, they had to deal with the natural complexity of the technical work as well as the global
interaction aspects, being a complicated task to be developed in a novel tool. Finally, the paper will describe the analysis
of the project and the educational aspects that students had to face. This project sets the basis for preparing engineers of
the future, who will work in a global environment.
GDI4: Overcoming Gender, Diversity, and Inclusivity as Barriers to Education
Chair: Oladipo Onipede
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Patio 1
THE EFFECT OF INSTITUTION MISSION DRIFT ON STEM FACULTY CAREER ADVANCEMENT AT A
STRIVING UNIVERSITY
DeLois Kijana Crawford (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Barriers women of color (WoC) (African American, Latina American, and Native American) faculty face in the pursuit
of their career in STEM disciplines at predominately white colleges and universities in the United States are well known.
However, heretofore, the challenge posed by mission drift [10] was never identified. The objective of this study is to
ascertain barriers to the career success of WoC STEM faculty at RIT. Two focus groups, consisting largely of tenuretrack WoC STEM faculty, were conducted at RIT during the spring of 2013. Analysis of the data collected, using the
constant-comparative method [12], reveals that institution mission drift presents a significant barrier to RIT WoC STEM
faculty's career advancement. Mission drift engenders a "striving" institutional culture where institutions emulate their
top-tier research counterparts. Striving is a desire of institutions to gain market advantage in order to enhance their
prestige [11]. Striving institutions are quite akin to gendered organizations [1, 2] in terms of the emphasis placed on
research. They are unwilling to embrace balancing work-life and family-life [50]. In addition, they are not supportive of
women and minority career advancement and they are likely to have tenure/promotion and retention issues [30].
EMPOWERING EARLY MASTERY OF SPATIAL VISUALIZATION SKILLS IN UNDERREPRESENTED
MINORITY ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Olufunmilayo Adebayo (Cornell University, USA)
Emily Farrar (Cornell University, USA)
Rick Evans (Cornell University, USA)
Tyi McCray (Cornell University, USA)
Traci Nathans-Kelly (Cornell University, USA)
Students entering university-level engineering programs must be adept at spatial visualization and reasoning. The
Cornell University Engineering Success (CUES) program used the NSF ENGAGE curriculum to introduce spatial
visualization basics through an innovative project-based course to a select group of first year students. Students in the
course were chosen to participate based on multiple background characteristics that place them at risk and may hinder
their persistence in engineering. Course results were strong, with an overall 13% improvement in tested skills.
Additionally, our teaching team believed that skills application in authentic spatial visualization projects would provide
deeper learning. Student teams worked with biomedical researchers who asked for professional-level visualizations. We
employed an action research methodology (observations, instructor journals, expert responses, and e-portfolios), tracking
their acquisition of spatial concepts, representations and critical stances. Our hope was to give students a competitive
edge, taking advanced visualization techniques and professional skills into future projects.
PROMOTING INCLUSIVE DESIGN PRACTICE AT THE GLOBAL GAME JAM: A PILOT EVALUATION
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Michael Scott (Brunel University, United Kingdom)
Gheorghita Ghinea (Brunel University, United Kingdom)
Ian Hamilton (Independent Accessibility Consultant, United Kingdom)
Games are a popular form of entertainment. However, many computer games present unnecessary barriers to players
with sensory, motor and cognitive impairments. In order to overcome such pitfalls, an awareness of their impact and a
willingness to apply inclusive design practice is often necessary. The Global Game Jam offers a potential avenue to
promote inclusive design practices to students of game development. As such, this paper evaluates the impact of an
initiative to promote inclusive design practices during the 2014 Global Game Jam. An attitude questionnaire was
distributed to both participants and non-participants at one event venue. The results indicate that, having enrolled in the
initiative, students' attitudes improved. Furthermore, all attendees reported they were likely to pursue further learning
opportunities and consider accessibility issues in their future games. This suggests that the Global Game Jam, and other
similar events, present an attractive avenue to promote inclusive design practice within the context of digital game
development. However, further analysis of submitted games, additional qualitative inquiry and a large-scale trial are
needed to determine impact on practice and to form recommendations for future events.
FINDING EFFECTIVE WAYS TO TEACH NON-TRADITIONAL STUDENTS: A DIFFERENT MODEL OF
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Sara Hooshangi (The George Washington University, USA)
As the education landscape continues to evolve, non-traditional students are becoming a growing number in the
demographics of college graduates. Many of these students, including working professionals, adult learners, and first
generation college goers, start their education at a community college and later transfer to a four-year institution to finish
their bachelor's degree. Juggling multiple commitments such as jobs and family obligations, lack of access to resources
and role models, and a K-12 education that often does not reflect a solid foundation, collectively result in a learning
experience that does not align or mirror the standard "college experience" of a traditional student. Yet teaching and
instruction techniques have remained the same for this population. In this paper, we will share our experience over the
past four years in running a bachelor's degree completion program for such non-traditional students. We will address
some of the challenges faced by this group and also some of the innovative ways that we have constructed a curriculum
that could connect, inspire, and motivate our students. Our long-term goal is to construct a pedagogical methodology that
would better be suited for non-traditional students and to provide a support system that ensures their success.
GETTING BETTER WITH AGE: OLDER STUDENTS ACHIEVE HIGHER GRADES AND GRADUATION
RATES
Jacqueline McNeil (Purdue University, USA)
Russell Long (Purdue University, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
This study uses longitudinal data from eleven public, research universities in the U.S. to compare grades in science,
math, and engineering courses; graduation rates; final cumulative grade point average; and time to graduation of
traditional (TRS) and nontraditional (NTS) students who ever declared engineering as a major. There have been national
calls for increasing the numbers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) degrees in the U.S., and
nontraditional students represent a large potential source of STEM majors. Engineering is studied specifically because it
has been found to be different than other STEM disciplines. The participating institutions are representative of large
public universities that offer a large majority of U.S. engineering degrees. Understanding the choices and outcomes of
nontraditional students can inform the process by which the students earn their degrees. Our results show that NTS and
TRS earn similar (but consistently higher) grades in Science, Mathematics, Engineering courses and have similar
cumulative final grade point averages. NTS graduate in six years at higher rates then TRS and NTS take fewer years to
graduate than TRS. By recruiting and matriculating more NTS, engineering programs can increase six-year graduation
rates and graduate more engineering students.
MINI WS: Mini-Workshop - Inquiry Based Learning Activities: Hands on Activities to Improve Conceptual
Understanding
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: El Jardin
MINI-WORKSHOP - INQUIRY BASED LEARNING ACTIVITIES: HANDS ON ACTIVITIES TO
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IMPROVE CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING
James Widmann (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
Brian Self (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
Michael Prince (Bucknell University, USA)
The primary goal of this mini-workshop is to assist participants in creating Inquiry Based Learning Activities (IBLAs)
that promote better conceptual understanding for their students. This is part of more general goal of transforming
engineering classrooms into more interactive formats that promote student engagement and lead to improved student
outcomes. Specifically the workshop will introduce participants to the theoretical basis of IBLAs, provide examples of
successful IBLAs and finally participants will develop their own IBLAs designed to repair common student
misconceptions in the courses they teach. Through a highly interactive hands- on environment, participants are expected
to leave this mini-workshop with: 1) Knowledge of the educational foundations of IBLAs, 2) A thorough understanding
of the elements of IBLAs, 3) Experience working with several research-tested and classroom-proven IBLAs and 4) A
preliminary design of an IBLA for one of their courses, reviewed by the workshop facilitators and participants. The
workshop is intended as a forum for educators to learn about and to create innovative and research-based best practices
to transform engineering education. Presenters: James Widmann (Professor of Mechanical Engineering) teaches
numerous engineering mechanics and design courses and has experience developing and accessing IBLAs in these
classes. He has presented teaching workshops at both Cal Poly as well as in Nepal as a Fulbright Scholar. Brian Self
(Professor of Mechanical Engineering) teaches engineering mechanics and is currently working on NSF sponsored
research to develop and assess IBLAs to improve conceptual understanding in Dynamics. He has presented workshops at
Cal Poly, Germany, and at FIE and ASEE. He was also on the team that developed the Dynamics Concept Inventory.
Michael Prince (Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bucknell University) is widely known for his expertise in activelearning teaching techniques, through both research and faculty development workshops. He is also the co-direction of
the National Effective Teaching Institute (NETI).
PRO4: Techniques and Tools to Teach Professional Skills
Chair: Karl O. Jones
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Comendador
DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL SKILLS AT TERTIARY LEVEL: A MODEL TO INTEGRATE
COMPETENCIES ACROSS THE CURRICULUM
Fermin Sanchez (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Antonia Soler (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
David Lopez (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Carme Martin (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Alicia Ageno (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Lluís Belanche Muñoz (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Jose Cabre (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Erik Cobo (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Rafel Farré (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jordi Garcia (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Pere Marès (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
In the context of the European Higher Education Area, curriculum design needs to be based on the defined competencies
of each degree programs, including both domain-specific and professional competencies. In this educational context,
developing students' professional skills poses a new challenge we need to face. The present work proposes a model to
globally develop professional skills in an Engineering degree program. Based on competency maps, this model allows
careful analysis, revision and iteration for an effective integration of professional skills. We define each competency in
terms of "dimensions" (or sub-skills), which are further defined according to three-level objectives. Competency maps
are built showing the specific graded objectives, which allows to integrate them most finely into degree subjects. A
global competency map is also designed including the objectives to be achieved throughout the degree. This global map
becomes a useful tool for curriculum designers and coordinators. It allows them to optimize the workload, and to make
adjustments most effectively, helping students develop the defined competencies as a global comprehensive experience.
To illustrate our model, we explain how it has been implemented to integrate "Communication skills" into subjects, and
how the model has been applied to assess "Appropriate attitude towards work" skills.
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INSTRUCTION IN SOFTWARE PROJECT COMMUNICATION THROUGH GUIDED INQUIRY AND
REFLECTION
Shreya Kumar (Michigan Technological University, USA)
Charles Wallace (Michigan Technological University, USA)
Software professionals routinely use sophisticated problem solving and design skills in their communication with one
another and other stakeholders in the software process. We wish to introduce our computer science and software
engineering students to the communication challenges of real software development and help them to develop skills to
meet these challenges. We describe our guided inquiry approach to addressing communication in a team software project
course. This course constitutes a crucial juncture in the academic journey of our students, where they learn and practice
the full responsibilities of a software engineer, including "soft skills" like communication. Early in the course, we expose
the students to real communication challenges that others have faced. Later, during their project development, we ask
them to reflect on the communication challenges they are facing. We describe the guided inquiry techniques that scaffold
the students' understanding of communication issues, and we outline our pattern approach to communication design. We
provide some initial results from the classroom, following teams as they explore the communication practices of others
and reflect on their own.
AN IMMERSIVE PLATFORM FOR COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
Lisa Dow (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Anne Campbell (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Alan H. D. Miller (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
John McCaffery (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Iain Oliver (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Sarah Kennedy (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Colin Allison (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
This paper reflects upon our experience in using the Apollo virtual world server to support collaborative projects, which
explore and use emergent immersive technologies. As the 3D capabilities of desktop computers and mobile devices
improve 3D applications expand out of the ghetto of games into areas such as training, advertising, education, tourism,
heritage and planning. This paper addresses the corresponding need for technology enhanced learning about how to
develop, engineer and use these systems. Virtual worlds like SecondLife enable the scope of experiential learning to be
expanded by supporting the creation of interactive 3D environments that simulate specific learning contexts. For
example the Virtual WiFi laboratory supports exploratory learning and experimentation with WiFi network protocols and
the LAVA virtual fieldwork resource supports archaeologists in learning how to manage archaeological excavations. The
Apollo Virtual World server is built around Open Virtual World technology and contains open content which is freely
available for sharing, reuse and refactoring. It extends the OpenSim server to provide web support for user management
and region management, connection of independently run servers, a measurement infrastructure, a rapid application
development environment, interfaces for mobile devices, support for the Kinect and Oculus Rift as well as for arbitrarily
positioned multiple displays. This paper draws on four years of experiences in using and developing the Apollo platform.
It considers more than 30 projects with the participation of over 100 students studying for accredited honours and
masters degrees. The projects range in scale from individual pieces of coursework, to an entire cohort of thirty students
collaborating together for a year to create a digital town complete with location aware applications, a theatre with virtual
plays, cross reality systems and an interactive Non Player Character population. Subjects include modelling
(Reconstruction of St Andrews cathedral), application development (Managing humanitarian emergencies), system
measurement (Quality of service in virtual worlds), system development (Mongoose a throughput redistributing virtual
world) and human computer interaction (Developing a new hyper-gate to improve search and navigation in opensim).
The contributions of this work lie in three areas: the development, use and evaluation of the Apollo server as a platform
for supporting project work; exploration of the interaction between technology and modes of learning and a
methodology, which combines exploratory and collaborative learning, with clearly defined individual goals is advocated
and supported by the technology. The number and spread subjects enables lessons about the relationship between
supporting technology and learning to be analysed with respect to the initial learning curve, support for collaboration,
software engineering, experimental design, data analysis, human computer interface design, and ethics. The paper
analyses the body of work from several perspectives. A quantitative analysis of system performance and functionality is
related to qualitative analysis of feedback from domain experts such as engineers, museum professionals, librarians,
teachers and disaster management professionals. Qualitative feedback from learners and supervisors is complemented by
quantitative analysis of normalised grades.
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TRANSVERSAL COMPETENCIES OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTING ENGINEERS CONSIDERING
MARKET DEMAND
Leandro Yanaze (Polytechnical School of University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Roseli Lopes (Polytechnical School of University of Sao Paulo, Brazil)
We present a method to identify and analyze the expectations of the current job market in electrical and computer
engineering for transversal competencies, also referred as soft skills, with a focus on innovation. We have used job ads
extracted from the IEEE Job Sites, identified and quantified the transversal competencies demanded by the market. The
key identified skills are communication, teamwork, leadership, problem-solving and analysis skills. We also present
reflections about the relations between the identified key transversal competencies with active learning approaches in
engineering education. Through analyzing the main soft skills demanded by the market in "innovation in engineering",
specifically in electrical and computer engineering, the authors reflect on some implications for the formation process of
engineers. With these outcomes, it is possible to reflect how the engineering schools can stimulate the development of
these competencies helping the student apply the technical knowledge and skills while also activating communication,
teamwork, multidisciplinary and analytical skills.
DEVELOPING ENGINEERING STUDENTS' LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL SKILLS FOR ACADEMIC AND
PROFESSIONAL SUCCESS
Laura Hahn (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
LuAnn Sorenson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
ASEE's profile of a global engineer includes attributes such as communication skills (across contexts and in more than
one language), teamwork skills, international perspectives, and self-confidence. These attributes are fostered in "3+2"
programs in Civil and Environmental Engineering. However, many of the international students in these programs face
obstacles that prevent them from fully realizing all of these qualities. It is well documented that language proficiency and
cultural adjustment are challenges facing many international students (e.g. Andrade and Evans, 2009). Issues such as
class participation, the amount of homework, plagiarism, and collaborative teamwork are specific areas of concern for
engineering students (Lord, Prism, 2013). Students participating in 3+2 programs are particularly challenged because of
the limited time they have to adjust. The Civil and Environmental Engineering department responded to concerns about
3+2 student success by collaborating with the campus Intensive English Institute to offer a three-week program before
the beginning of their studies. The course goals included synthesizing ideas from sources, providing proper source
documentation, honing classroom communication, producing collaborative writing and presentation projects, and
becoming familiar with diverse campus communities and resources. In this paper, we will (a) outline the collaborative
process of curriculum development, (b) share objectives and sample assignments, (c) describe the models for
understanding cultural and linguistic challenges that underpin the curriculum (intercultural competence: Deardorff, 2008;
communicative competence: Canale and Swain, 1980) (d) summarize the data we collected on the impact of the
program, and (e) propose changes engineering schools can make to prepare students for a new cultural and linguistic
environment. The following data were collected in order to understand the impact of this program: student feedback at
the end of the program, student feedback after two semesters or more of study, and faculty coordinator feedback.
Preliminary results indicate that participants perceived the program as having a positive effect on student attitudes,
cultural adjustment, and academic success. The paper will conclude by suggesting that engineering schools can foster
global engineering competence by explicitly preparing all students for the linguistic and cultural diversity of their peers
and instructors.
REM2: Exploring Learning Opportunities using Remote Laboratories
Chair: Hamadou Saliah-hassane
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Escudo
EDUCATIONAL WEB PLATFORM FOR PERFORMING THE ENGINEERING EXPERIMENTAL WORK
Itziar Martija (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
Francisco J. Maseda (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
Irene Martija (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
This paper proposes a new web platform for educational activities for helping in the experimental work and the
professional development of engineering students. The fundamental idea is to connect conventional theory study spaces,
such as the classroom and home, through the web platform proposed with experimental training tools in the hands-on
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laboratory. What is proposed is a new focus on classroom educational methodologies using the Web 2.0 technologies
which allow for the integration of theoretical materials and concepts with experimental devices, tools and applications in
a given industrial context expanding the experimental activities out of the campus constraint. This association increases
the motivation of the students with the theory lecture material through a better understanding of abstract and deep
theoretical concepts, such as physical consequences, which are difficult to explain in a theory study environment.
Acquiring experimental and practical laboratory skills is one of the most important aspects in engineering education.
MOBILE OPEN ONLINE LABORATORIES: A WAY TOWARDS CONNECTIONIST MASSIVE ONLINE
LABORATORIES WITH X-API (C-MOOLS)
Hamadou Saliah-hassane (TELUQ - University of Quebec, Canada)
Adrien Reuzeau (Université de Rennes 1, France)
In this paper, we will present, compare and discuss the typology of online labs now accepted in the various
standardization of online laboratory components working groups as well as software architectures used to develop them
and we will show how they evolved over time and become indispensable tools for teaching, training and learning in
science, engineering and technology. We will demonstrate why, among all other described below, mobile laboratories
constitute today the most appropriate to implement Massive Open Online Laboratories (MOOLs) or Mobile Open Online
Laboratories (MOOLs) using a lab@home or portable laboratory concepts thanks to miniaturized open source smart
electronic devices,cloud computing technologies and social networking open software. Research communities on
networked distributed systems know that online labs, an instance of it, or commonly called labs at distance are
distributed and flexible IT environments that enable a learner to perform laboratory work over computer networks, alone
or in collaboration with other participants in a distance learning context. Participants are actors playing each one a role
during an interactive session in synchronous or asynchronous mode through computer user interfaces. The online labs
allow the sharing of material resources and expertise. They combine the advantages of different types of laboratories.
SIMPLIFYING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF EDUCATIONAL ONLINE LABORATORIES
Danilo G. Zutin (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria)
Amir Mujkanovic (Carinthia University of Applied Science, Austria)
Michael Auer (Carinthia University of Applied Science, Austria)
This work in progress paper describes the implementation of software components that aim at facilitating the
development of online laboratories. We propose the creation an additional level of abstraction in the development
process of online laboratories that would allow teaching staff to plug existing equipment into a Remote Laboratory
Management System (RLMS) and share it with peers and students. Online laboratories provide pedagogical values in
some circumstances and many researchers encourage their use. It is however a challenge to develop and deploy such
laboratories for lecturing staff, as special software development skills are needed for such a task. In this research, we
propose a novel approach for the deployment of new experimentation equipment. To ease this deployment process we
developed a software prototype that can be used across a broad range of domains that provides an easy way to connect
laboratory equipment to the World Wide Web. Preliminary results show potential for this prototype to be used on large
scale.
AN AUTOMATIC ASSESSMENT MODEL FOR REMOTE LABORATORIES
Susana Romero (University of Deusto, Spain)
Mariluz Guenaga (Deusto Institute of Technology – DeustoTech, Spain)
Javier Garcia-Zubia (University of Deusto, Spain)
Pablo Orduña (Deusto Institute of Technology - DeustoTech, University of Deusto, Spain)
The University of Deusto's Learning Model is based on the development and assessment of students' competences. In
this scenario experimentation is essential to consolidate learning, even more in engineering studies. With that purpose
WebLab-Deusto research group has developed remote experiments to provide real laboratories through a web interface;
this approach also allows teachers collect data about students' interaction and their learning. These data, processed using
Learning Analytics techniques, allow teachers to obtain valuable information about students' behavior, their progression,
permit to personalize learning and predict results. In this paper we present how learning analytics techniques can adapt to
experimental learning that use remote laboratories, and we show the resulting automatic assessment model. This model is
based on two elements: 1) data provided automatically by the Visir experiment, runned over WebLab-Deusto platform,
and 2) a rubric designed by the teacher with information about expected results of the activity. The final goal of the
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proposed model is to provide teachers valuable information to assess students' knowledge and progress, as well as to
redesign their teaching process. On the other hand, students benefit from a tool to self-assess their knowledge and skills
REMOTE LABORATORIES FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY COURSES AT JORDAN UNIVERSITIES
A. Y. Al-Zoubi (Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Jordan)
Bashar Hammad (The Hashemite University, Jordan)
Salvador Ros (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Llanos Tobarra (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Roberto Hernandez (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Rafael Pastor Vargas (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
Manuel Castro (Spanish University for Distance Education - UNED, Spain)
The principal objective of the European TEMPUS project entitled "Modernizing Undergraduate Renewable Energy
Education: EU Experience for Jordan", MUREE, which supports this work, is the development, integration,
accreditation, and evaluation of a renewable energy course in the context of engineering degrees from several
universities in Jordan. This project follows the guidelines proposed in the Bologna process, and considers the previous
experimentation with low-cost renewable energy equipment in order to allow us to study the best approximation of
remote laboratories. This is a previous step before tackling this task with complex and expensive equipment. In
particular, this paper proposes the hardware and software implementation of remote laboratories using Lego Mindstorms
NXT v2.0 for solar and wind renewable energy. This robotic equipment has the flexibility to perform different types of
laboratories with a low-effort and low-cost, since the same pieces (like a construction toy) are used to build different
remote laboratories and, additionally, this robotic kit is quite cheap. These remote laboratories have been programmed
using RESTful web services with LabVIEW, an original approach that allows teachers to design multiplatform
laboratories. Those services offer the needed capabilities to run experiments for students.
SCL5: Student-centric Learning in Engineering
Chair: Jordi Fortuny-Santos
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Alcalá
TEACHING EFFECTIVE REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING FOR LARGE-SCALE SOFTWARE
DEVELOPMENT WITH SCAFFOLDING
Maria Feldgen (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Osvaldo Clua (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)
The hardest part of building a software system is deciding what to build. Errors in this part of the work are, overall, the
most serious in software development, and the hardest to repair. Therefore requirements elicitation is arguably the most
critical. The requirements that drive the decision towards building a distributed architecture for large-scale systems are
usually of a non-functional nature, such as scalability, openness, heterogeneity, availability, reliability and faulttolerance. Requirements are essential to understand concepts about software architectures and software patterns.
Therefore teaching large scale software systems design requires covering significant material while ensuring students
experience the wicked nature of complex systems. This paper describes a unified project experience with focus on
requirements engineering that addresses many of the areas required in a distributed systems development experience.
The most important lesson learned is that students benefit from being immersed in and reflecting upon carefully planned
activities of large-scale software design with emphasis on its inherent complexity. The planned experience is based on
the principles suggested by research related to learn about complex physical and social systems.
SEVERAL ISSUES AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS IN COMPULSORY PROJECT-BASED COURSE
Ya Zhou (Beijing Institute of Technology, P.R. China)
Yuejin Zhao (Beijing Institute of Technology, P.R. China)
Yao Hu (Beijing Institute of Technology, P.R. China)
Liquan Dong (Beijing Institute of Technology, P.R. China)
Ming Liu (Beijing Institute of Technology, P.R. China)
Dayuan Yan (Beijing Institute of Technology, P.R. China)
In 2009, a 12-week-long project-based course Optoelectronic Instrument Experiments (OIE) was launched at the School
of Opto-Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology. The main difference from the other project-based courses is that the
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OIE course is compulsory. Here comes the problem. Young students usually are rebellious somehow. They would be
enthusing about what they choose to do, while would be reluctant to even the same thing if they were arranged to do it.
Moreover, students from China are good at theoretical knowledge but lack of initiative. Most of them prefer working
alone to being a team member. Inactivity with repellent mood and initial resistance to team-based approaches became the
biggest barrier in obligatory project-based courses. Aiming to solve those issues, several approaches were tried out
during the OIE course design and the progresses, including the design of based projects, aptitude digging process and
teamwork pedagogy, which seemed promising and inspiring in both stimulating students' enthusiasm and encouraging
their team spirits. In this paper, we will give the detail of our tryout and analyses.
XPBL: A METHODOLOGY FOR MANAGING PBL WHEN TEACHING COMPUTING
Simone Santos (UFPE, Brazil)
Felipe Soares (CESAR, Brazil)
W. Lins (CESAR, Brazil)
In order to exploit the benefits of PBL and mitigate the risk of failure when implementing it, the NEXT (iNnovative
Educational eXperience in Technology) research group has been working on methods and tools focused on managing the
PBL approach as applied to Computing. In this context, this article proposes a teaching and learning methodology based
on PBL, called xPBL, consisting of elements that reinforce PBL principles, namely: real and relevant problems; a
practical environment; an innovative and flexible curriculum; an authentic assessment process; close monitoring by
technical tutors and process tutors, and finally, professional practitioners as teachers and tutors. Based on these elements,
the paper describes the design of a PBL approach for a Design course, grounded on acquired knowledge of Design
content and past PBL experiences in Software Engineering courses. This approach provides an insightful guide to
implementing PBL from xPBL methodology, and provides instruments based on management techniques such as 5W2H
(what, why, who, when, where, how and how much) and the production of artifacts to support the conception process of
courses based on PBL.
IMPROVING COMMUNICATION SKILLS: STUDENTS' VIEWPOINT ON A CONTENT & LANGUAGE
INTEGRATED LEARNING PROJECT
Montserrat Alsina (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jordi Fortuny-Santos (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Conxita Lao-Luque (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Francesc Xavier de las Heras- Cisa (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Spain)
The development of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) scheme in Spanish universities implies a greater
participation of the students in their own process of learning and competence-based teaching. Competences are the
ability to apply knowledge, skills and attitudes and one of such competences is communication. Students must be able to
communicate using their mother tongue, but they should be able to use a foreign language, especially English, too. This
paper presents strategies applied in the School of Engineering at Manresa (EPSEM) (Barcelona), in order to improve
students' communication skills in English. An experimental research has been conducted, focusing on the point of view
of engineering students, to check the efficacy of implementing content and language integrated learning (CLIL). First,
second and third year students have been surveyed to test hypotheses about English level and implications on language
and subject specific content learning. The data provide support to our hypotheses, showing an increasing positive attitude
of the students towards studying subjects in English.
AN INDUSTRY-MENTORED UNDERGRADUATE SOFTWARE ENGINEERING PROJECT
Azim Abdool (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Akash Pooransingh (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Software design lifecycle application to a real world project is a critical skill required by the undergraduate computer
engineer. Interaction with the local professional software development community is also an equally important
opportunity that should be provided. This fosters growth of both technical and soft skills, and exposes the student to
standards and working practices in providing quality software solutions for customers. This paper describes the structure
of a group-based software development project that integrates industry mentors in the learning and assessment processes.
Industry liaisons are given a forum to elucidate some of the industry's requirements of students in terms of knowledge of
software design and industrial standards; students gain better understanding of some of the processes which take place in
an actual industrial setting; and university curriculum gains industry relevance. The impact of this project is yet to be
fully assessed. Assessment can be determined from two aspects: (1) in terms of the benefit to the student (effectiveness
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of learning objectives achieved, and motivation gained from project based learning and group work) and (2) the impact
of providing industry led mentorship.
THE LEARNER EXPERIENCE OF STUDENT-LED INTERNATIONAL GROUP PROJECT WORK IN
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
Roger McDermott (Robert Gordon University, United Kingdom)
Julian Bass (Robert Gordon University, United Kingdom)
JayPrakash Lalchandani (International Institute for Information Technology, India)
Software development has become increasingly globalized because of technological innovation, the evolution of work
and business processes, as well as prevailing educational systems and national policies [1]. This paper addresses the
challenges faced when creating realistic opportunities for students to participate in team working on a globally
distributed software engineering project. We examine the experience of one set of students who undertook a single
semester software development project, the technical objective of which was to create a product using online
collaboration tools [2]. The students involved were studying at two widely-separated universities: Robert Gordon
University (RGU), UK, and the International Institute for Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B), India. A
classroom-based action research approach has been used to evolve and reflect on the project [3]. Detailed student
feedback was canvassed using an open-ended questionnaire. The students report favourably on acquisition of
employability, collaboration and professional skills. A number of challenges remain in areas of project management, the
use of collaborative technology and of scaling the project to larger classes, while retaining a manageable supervision
overhead.
TLE4: Developing Professional Competencies
Chair: Venky Shankararaman
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: La Galería
SUBJECT-LEVEL QUALITY ASSURANCE IN COMPUTING: EXPERIENCES FROM THREE NATIONAL
PERSPECTIVES
Roger McDermott (Robert Gordon University, United Kingdom)
Mats Daniels (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Marta Lárusdóttir (Reykjavik University, Iceland)
This paper examines some aspects of the Quality Assurance processes in Computing departments in three European
universities. We first examine the operation of a quality assurance activity in the School of Computer Science in Iceland.
The next case is an example from Sweden and finally we present a case from the United Kingdom. In each case, we
examine the motivation for the outcome-based assurance methodologies that predominate in countries that are engaged
in the Bologna Process in terms of the use of competence-based assessment. We compare the application of these
processes to departmental review, focusing on the aims and objectives, who controls the process, the areas covered, the
methodology and the use to which the information is put. We discuss some of the implications for teaching when
different quality assurance processes are used and finally, we make some observations about the relatively sparse
literature on Computing Education subject-specific quality assurance.
FROM EMPLOYABILITY ATTRIBUTES TO PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY: STUDENTS TRANSITIONING TO
THE WORKPLACE
Sally Smith (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Emilia Sobolewska (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Ian Smith (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
In order to realize the employment ambitions of graduates we can work with students to facilitate the construction of
their identity as members of a global engineering profession. Of particular interest is whether (and, if so, how) students
reconstruct their identity through the delivery of modules specifically designed to increase students' employability
attributes and widen their horizons. In preparing students for life beyond university, a new module has been developed,
Professional Identity through Portfolio Development, designed for final year creative computing students to support the
transition from university to employment. Findings suggest that while only 61% of students strongly identified
themselves with their chosen profession before undertaking the module, this increased to 73% of participants at the end
of the module. The module, in its examination of identity and next steps, appears to have also impacted on the strength of
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student identity with 65% expressing a strong student identity before the course, increasing to 88% after the course. This
paper explores the findings of the research and considers the possibility of generalisability.
USING MOBILE DEVICES AND INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES IN PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING: DESIGN
OF A SUITABLE ACTIVE AND COLLABORATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN ENGINEERING
EDUCATION
Carlos Efrén Mora Luis (La Laguna University, Spain)
Jorge Martin-Gutierrez (La Laguna University, Spain)
Antonio Manuel González Marrero (La Laguna University, Spain)
Learning process in any field of engineering requires theoretical cognition plus the acquisition of group-working and
problem-solving skills for a more efficient performance. In contrast, many universities still use a traditional and lecturecentered learning process, albeit there are some well-known examples related to the use of active learning environments
in engineering. We think that the use of mobile technologies and Web 2.0 within an active learning environment
provides a higher dynamic, a more collaborative, and more open environment for problem-solving learning processes.
Mobile devices are widely used to share information bidirectionally student-student and student-facilitator. Therefore,
we have developed one experience to test the students' motivation when using mobile devices with Problem Based
Learning to test these arguments. Regardless not being an exhaustive research, the comparison of the data collected
between different groups of students points to the suitability of this combination with Mobile Learning in the design of
an active learning environment for engineering students.
DESIGN OF A COMPETENCES BASED TEACHING MODEL SUPPORTED IN THE INTEGRATION OF
REPOSITORIES AND LMS PLATFORMS FOR THE AUTOMATIC CONTROL OF PROCESSES COURSE
Isabel Cristina Gómez Galvis (EAFIT University, Colombia)
Adalberto Gabriel Diaz Torres (EAFIT University, Colombia)
Claudia Maria Zea Restrepo (EAFIT University, Colombia)
Luis Felipe Zapata Rivera (EAFIT University, Colombia)
The subject of Automatic Control of Processes is an integral part of the undergraduate programs of Mechanical,
Production and Process Engineering, programs offered at the University EAFIT (Medellin, Colombia), said subject has
been modified in recent years, going from being a group of three subjects to just one that gathers the contents previously
seen and focuses on theory and practice. This transformation has obliged that the time and dedication to each of the
topics of study be reduced, which has caused learning problems for the students, this is why the university has raised a
new reform to the subject that includes the implementation of a model based in competencies backed with integration of
repositories and LMS platforms. One of the current problems regarding educating processes lies in the continuous use of
traditional teaching models which leaves out the individual interests of each student. The learning methodology through
competencies aims to mold students in the abilities established by each subject, thus it's quite important that the learning
process offers enough tools that allows validating the level of competencies of each student, taking into account that the
result of the validation should correspond directly to the capabilities acquired in the formation process. To support that
methodology there are technological tools like LMS platforms and learning objects repositories, that favor the teachinglearning processes online and support the use of standards generating interoperability, reusability, adaptability and
scalability of the contents. This paper presents the results of the research of the young researchers project 2013
Colciencias, regarding the design of a teaching model by competencies backed with ICTs for engineering programs,
applying the subject of Automatic Control of Processes, under the methodology of learning through competencies. The
proposed model includes the use of a learning objectives bank that allows professors and students alike to share
resources like: documents, videos, audios, articles, slides, etc. classified according to their respective typology in the
universities repository, and placed strategically according to the curricular structure of the subject. The results include
information regarding the design of the methodology planned for the subject and a description of the functional
prototype developed which shows the integrated use of a repository of learning objects created with the Dspace platform
and the course created in the LMS Moodle platform.
A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR NOVICE SUPERVISORS OF MASTER'S THESIS
Alicia Triviño (University of Malaga, Spain)
Sebastian Rivas (University of Malaga, Spain)
The objective of this work in progress is to present and to get feedback from the community on a guide for supervising
Master's Thesis. The target audience are the novice supervisors of Master Thesis, who demand a practical guide about
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how to proceed efficiently when assigning the tasks to the student and when performing his/her own tasks. The proposed
guide consists of a set of activities that are easy to implement. The proposed activities are oriented to the development of
the Master Thesis itself and the application of a quality assurance process on it. In addition to some modern learning
theories, the definition of the activities is supported by a review of the literature, the experience of the authors and a
survey performed on supervisors and students. The theoretical basis is implicitly included in the activities so that the
application of the modern learning theories is straightforward. Keywords: Teaching and learning experiences; learning
theories; experimental social psychology; motivation and persistence.
Pursuing the Frontiers: The History and Future of the Frontiers in Education Conference
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: El Jardin
PURSUING THE FRONTIERS: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF THE FRONTIERS IN EDUCATION
CONFERENCE
Larry Richards (University of Virginia, USA)
This panel will include Larry G Richards (as moderator) and panelists Jim Rowland, Susan Lord, Jeff Froyd, Cindy
Finelli, Russ Meier, Cindy Atman, Ed Jones, and Mary Anderson- Rowland. All have agreed to participate. The panel
includes a current member of the FIE Steering Committee, former general chairs, and the conference historian, and
active researchers in engineering education. From its earliest days, the Frontiers in Education conference has aimed to
enhance engineering education through the latest advances in learning theory, pedagogy, and technology. We have also
engaged in periodic reflection and self-examination to assess how well we have met the challenges of keeping up with
advances in other fields and incorporating technological and pedagogical innovations. Looking back this panel will
review previous frontiers and their influence on engineering education (Jones; Rowland), and how we have attracted a
diverse group of attendees and expanded our community from a few committed individuals to a large number of active
participants. The panel will examine recent trends in engineering education, including the five major shifts of the last 100
years (Froyd, Wankat, and Smith, 2012). We will review the predictions from FIE 2002 (The Future of Engineering
Education, Shuman, et al.) and determine what has come to pass and what is still needed. The development of
engineering education research as a formal discipline has been reflected in the creation of new departments at some
schools and programs at others. The major engineering education journals have become more focused on formal
research, and the National Science Foundation has funded research in this area. One NSF initiative, Mapping the Field
(Finelli), has developed a taxonomy for the field of engineering education, and involved the community in refining and
extending it. Another (Atman: Engineering Education Pioneers and Trajectories of Impact) will involve interviews with
major figures in the evolution of the field. The panelists will discuss what new frontiers are arising, what happened to the
previous frontiers, and whether FIE has properly addressed the real frontiers in recent Conferences. Building on the
history and accomplishments of Frontiers in Education, we will assess currently active research areas and predict
emerging topics relevant to FIE. (Note to Program Chairs: we could expand this panel to two sessions and include
additional panelists if there is room in the program).
CBL5: Models and Methods in Computer Based Learning
Chair: Pramod Abichandani
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Patio 3
ENHANCING WEB-BASED LEARNING RESOURCES WITH QUIZZES THROUGH AN AUTHORING
TOOL AND AN AUDIENCE RESPONSE SYSTEM
Aldo Gordillo (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Enrique Barra (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Juan Quemada Vives (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Quizzes are among the most widely used resources in web-based education due to their many benefits. However,
educators need suitable authoring tools that can be used to create reusable quizzes and to enhance existing materials with
them. On the other hand, if teachers use Audience Response Systems (ARSs) they can get instant feedback from their
students and thereby enhance their instruction. This paper presents an online authoring tool for creating reusable quizzes
and enhancing existing learning resources with them, and a web-based ARS that enables teachers to launch the created
quizzes and get instant feedback from the class. Both the authoring tool and the ARS were evaluated. The evaluation of
the authoring tool showed that educators can effectively enhance existing learning resources in an easy way by creating
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and adding quizzes using that tool. Besides, the different factors that assure the reusability of the created quizzes are also
exposed. Finally, the evaluation of the developed ARS showed an excellent acceptance of the system by teachers and
students, and also it indicated that teachers found the system easy to set up and use in their classrooms.
STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF INDEXED, SEARCHABLE VIDEOS OF FACULTY LECTURES
Lecia Barker (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Christopher L Hovey (Northeastern University, USA)
Jaspal Subhlok (University of Houston, USA)
Tayfun Tuna (University of Houston, USA)
This paper describes a large-scale study of student use and perceived value of videos of faculty lectures as an additional
learning resource. The survey-based study was conducted with ~2,300 college students in biology, chemistry, computer
science, geology, and mathematics. The study provides a nuanced understanding of the nature and frequency of students'
video usage; student perceptions of value of video use; and differences in use and value by students representing
different groups (field of study; student demographics; demands on students' time; students' goals, previous experience,
and commitment to education). Most students used the videos and a very strong majority valued them as a learning
resource. Students with longer commute times were more likely to use the videos. No evidence was found that videos are
used in place of going to class. On the contrary, students who used more videos also were more likely to attend class.
Students overwhelmingly valued the finding tools (index and search). The value that students place on video lectures as a
learning resource exceeds expectations. This study contributes to the growing body of evidence that making video
lectures available, especially when they have features that aid finding specific sections, is worth faculty time.
IPLAN: A MODEL OF LESSON PLANS TO HELP TEACHING PROCESS IN WEB LEARNING
ENVIRONMENT
Reginaldo do Prado (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Leônidas O Brandão (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Anarosa A. F. Brandão (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
This paper presents iPlan, a model to implement a system to support the creation of lesson plans. It was the result of a
systematic review about examining the issue of authoring courses that must be delivered through the World Wide Web
(Web). The iPlan system aims to simplify the teachers' work while preparing lessons that will be available online inside
Learning Management Systems (LMS) or the likes. It will provide authoring tools that enables teachers to create and edit
lesson plans based on Pedagogical Patterns. By Pedagogical Patterns we mean tested lesson plans and/or roadmap
lessons. The main feature that distinguishes this study from previous researches is the systematic search for a model to
automatically map pedagogical patterns into the IMS-LD specification. This system is being developed for Moodle
environment and will be distributed under the GNU Public License (GPL). In order to create new pedagogical patterns,
iPlan proposes the use of iRepository, a repository of educational digital content which is also integrated with Moodle.
PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF AN INTELLIGENT MULTIMEDIA LEARNING ASSISTANT PLATFORM
Chenn-Jung Huang (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan)
Shun-Chih Chang (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan)
Heng-Ming Chen (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan)
Chao-Yi Chen (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan)
Recent literatures reported that multimedia learning is more appealing and can increases learning effectiveness.
Furthermore, cued retrospective reports (CRRs) can enhance students' learning performance, especially for the novices
lacking prior knowledge. In this work, a multimedia learning assistant system is constructed by applying an eye-tracking
technique to record and evaluate learner's CRRs. First, each student takes the test after watching the multimedia teaching
animations. Those who cannot pass the test will be provided to watch the same video but with segmented video clips to
reduce possible high cognitive load. Notably, one-class SVM classifier was applied to automatically judge whether the
learners' concepts are correct. Experts' or high achievement peers' CRRs are provided to assist the low-achievement
learners. Then, those low-achievement learners accept the second test to verify the effectiveness of our proposed system.
31 students in a junior high school participated in the pre-test, and 16 students did not pass the first test after watching
the video. The experimental results revealed that these 16 students have increased their grades from 53.75 to 75. In
addition, the classification rate can reach up to 94.59%. The proposed learning assistant system can effectively assist
teachers in providing real-time assessment and feedback.
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A CLOUD ENABLED VIRTUAL REALITY BASED PEDAGOGICAL ECOSYSTEM FOR WIND ENERGY
EDUCATION
Pramod Abichandani (Drexel University, USA)
William Fligor (Drexel University, USA)
Eli Fromm (Drexel University, USA)
This paper describes a scalable and transferable cloud-based virtual reality pedagogical ecosystem that provides students
with the basics of wind turbines and associated wind farm design. The module uses mathematical models derived from
the experimental WKA- 60 turbine to incorporate realistic wind-turbine behavior. Students are able to design a virtual
wind-farm for optimal energy generation by modifying individual wind turbine parameters such as the blade length,
count, and angle as well as the spacing of the wind turbines in the wind farm. Live graphs showing how the design
parameters affect total power output from the virtual wind farm provide instant feedback to the students. An adaptive
methodology that assesses the application of students' independent thought processes, along with design and operational
skills in creating the wind farms is implemented. The ecosystem uses the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud
technology in the backend and Unity 3D gaming engine for the front- end rendering. As educational VR systems
continue to develop, we anticipate that cloud based implementations will be utilized for an increasing number of
educational needs and that the ecosystem and technical approach presented in this paper may serve as a guide for future
educational VR research.
FROM 2D TO 3D: TEACHING TERRAIN REPRESENTATION IN ENGINEERING STUDIES THROUGH
AUGMENTED REALITY: COMPARATIVE VERSUS 3D PDF
Francisco Javier Ayala Álvarez (I.E.S. Politécnico Jesús Marín, Spain)
Elidia Blázquez (Universidad de Málaga, Spain)
Francisco Montes Tubio (Universidad de Córdoba, Spain)
Engineering students have got great skills in the use of new technologies, but large deficiencies in terms of the ability to
visualize three-dimensional models shown in two dimensions. Also, the spatial capabilities are critical to them, to
achieve the further development and understanding of associated complex, linked contents and competencies. However,
it is difficult to illustrate the relationship between the 3D geometry and 2D projection using only drawings on
blackboard. A new way to show these concepts is needed. Since Augmented reality (AR) and 3D pdf are the low-cost
technologies that could easily display the relationship between two-dimensional displayed representations and the object
shown. This paper presents early results conducted through the education innovation project Pol+AR. This project aims
to determine the 3D-2D connection, using models, based on AR and 3D pdf, improving the spatial visualisation ability in
students, specifically in the study of surveying and its applications, knowledge of the contour lines, earthworks and
profiles. Studies have been developed in VET, at CFGS Proyectos de Edificación, (Building projects), at IES Politécnico
Jesús Marín of Málaga. Finally, the implementation of this research will be carried out at Universidad de Málaga,
Escuela Politécnica Superior.
CUR2: Computer Science and Software Engineering Curricula Design 2
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Doblon
CASE STUDIES IN COMPUTING EDUCATION: PRESENTATION, EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT OF
FOUR CASE STUDY-BASED COURSE DESIGN AND DELIVERY MODELS
Ilse Baumgartner (Singapore Management University, Singapore)
Venky Shankararaman (Singapore Management University, Singapore)
Case studies have been used in different fields of university-level education already for decades. Particularly medicine,
law or business education has been extensively using this teaching methodology to expose students to problem solving
approaches which cannot be meaningfully communicated using standard teaching methodologies. More recently, the
advantages of using case studies have been realised by computing educators, too. Despite the increasing popularity of
this teaching methodology there seems to be a deep lack in research attempting to establish potential frameworks or
models targeted at the use of case studies in computing education. This paper presents, evaluates, compares and assesses
four different course design and delivery models which are largely based on case studies and are extensively using this
teaching methodology throughout the entire course lifecycle. All four presented models have been extensively tested by
the author - and this paper reports on major experiences made and insights yielded when using those delivery models.
While this paper primarily focuses on experiences made within the field of computing education, the presented best
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practices are highly applicable to any engineering discipline requiring students' exposure to real-world settings, to
realistic problem-solving approaches and to different perspectives on the same phenomenon.
DUTCH-RUSSIAN DOUBLE DEGREE MASTER'S PROGRAM CURRICULA IN COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE
AND HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Anna Bilyatdinova (ITMO University, Russia)
Alexey Dukhanov (ITMO University, Russia)
Klavdiya Bochenina (ITMO University, Russia)
Valeria V. Krzhizhanovskaya (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Alexander Boukhanovsky (ITMO University, Russia)
Peter Sloot (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
From the moment of the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian higher education undergoes drastic changes in the way
to meet the requirements of international standards and to enter the European Higher Education Area on equal terms.
Joint efforts of Russian and Dutch peers and strong incentives from high-tech industries helped to launch new
educational programs in Computational Science. Our international team of educators attempts to pick the best from the
curricula and educational methods of post-Soviet programs and to adopt the world best practices in engineering
education. In this paper we describe the curricula of a double degree Master's program in Supercomputer Technologies
in Interdisciplinary Research of ITMO University and University of Amsterdam and newly developed programs in
BigData and Urban Supercomputing. We comment on the form and content of our programs and give some examples of
student research topics. The decision to combine efforts of ITMO University and leading European Universities on a
long and challenging road of integration of Russian educational system and European standards became a first step to
increase the competitiveness of engineering education in Russia.
RIT'S NEW MINOR IN FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE AND FREE CULTURE: A FIVE YEAR
JOURNEY DRIVEN BY STUDENT-CENTERED, APPLIED RESEARCH
Stephen Jacobs (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Amit Ray (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Jon Schull (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Since offering its first seminar in Developing Educational Games for the One Laptop per Child platforms RIT's School
of Interactive Games and Media and its FOSS@ MAGIC initiative have seen a steady rise in student and faculty interest
in Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software Development and Free Culture (FOSS & FC) This interest has come
not just from students across majors in the Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences but from the
colleges of Engineering, Liberal Arts and Fine Arts as well. Faculty who've participated in FOSS@MAGIC sponsored
sessions of the weeklong "Professors Open Source Summer Experience" have also come from a wide variety of
backgrounds including Math, Social Sciences and Liberal Arts. RIT students have taken additional courses, pursued
independent studies, completed Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship projects, and presented their work at
conferences across the country and the White House. Outside of academics and research they have also completed local,
regional and even international co-ops for Humanitarian organizations such as UNICEF and Sugar Labs, corporations
within the FOSS industry and/or using FOSS technology and participated in humanitarian hackathons as well. Over the
years, it became clear that there was enough student interest to support an interdisciplinary, five course minor around
FOSS&FC. The minor is intended to give students greater direct experience in the engineering, growth and management
of FOSS & FC projects but to provide a deeper understanding of the theoretical and practical underpinnings of the
process and its social, commercial and legal roots and impacts. Students who complete the minor should be able to join a
FOSS development community, either as a contributor or as a member of a project's team of leads. This paper will layout
and describe the path that led to the creation of the minor, how the Humanitarian aspects of FOSS@MAGIC acted as an
attractor to the program and the courses, and what it's goals and expected outcomes are, and how it's being implemented
in its first year.
DIVERSIFYING CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION: A NON-TECHNICAL APPROACH TO TECHNICAL
STUDIES
Hwee-Joo Kam (Ferris State University, USA)
Pairin Katerattanakul (Ferris State University, USA)
Cybersecurity education does not only confine to the technical studies embodying network security, malware analysis
and reverse reengineering, application security, and operating systems security. The increasing numbers of
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Cyberterrorism and incidents of hacktivism suggests that Cybersecurity pertains to politics, religion, and culture.
Drawing on globalization shaped by the economic, legal, political, religion, and social dimensions, extant literature
discloses that infusing social science, cultural and political studies into Cybersecurity education could better prepare
students to the job market by making students realize the complexity in the real world. This study presents the efforts of
integrating cultural, social, and political dimensions into the Cybersecurity curriculum in a public, regional university in
the Midwest of the United States. In particular, this study presents the approaches of introducing intelligence analysis
coursework that requires students to understand the analysis of competing hypotheses for drawing conclusion related to
the possible Cyberattack from a foreign nation, identify the cultural differences across nations for comprehending the
hacking motivation of a different nation, and recognize individual's cognitive and cultural biases during the process of
evaluating a cultural event.
EXPLORATIONS IN COMPUTING: COULD THIS BE THE KEY TO RETENTION?
Linda Ott (Michigan Technological University, USA)
Retention has traditionally been an issue in many introductory computing courses and major degree programs. In Fall
2013 we saw an anomaly with particularly high persistence and success rates among students in our majors-only
explorations course. A close examination revealed a similarly higher than usual success and persistence rate by our
majors in the first programing course they were taking simultaneously with the explorations course. These successes
were presumably related to the better than usual retention of first year students within our Department from the first to
second semester. This paper presents the curriculum changes and analyses the change in student performance. The
relationship between our curriculum changes and what other researchers have observed are examined in an effort to
identify the reasons for the increased student persistence. The potential for either a positive or negative interplay between
our two courses is also discussed. Insights from these findings that may be of use to others are presented.
EER5: Modeling and Predicting Student Behavior
Chair: Laura R. Hanlan
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Aranjuez
SETAP: SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TEAMWORK ASSESSMENT AND PREDICTION USING MACHINE
LEARNING
Dragutin Petkovic (San Francisco State University, USA)
Marc Sosnick-Pérez (San Francisco State University, USA)
Shihong Huang (Florida Atlantic University, USA)
Rainer Todtenhoefer (University of Applied Science, Fulda, Germany)
Kazunori Okada (San Francisco State University, USA)
Swati Arora (San Francisco State University, USA)
Ramasubramanian Sreenivasen (San Francisco State University, USA)
Lorenzo Flores (San Francisco State University, USA)
Sonal Dubey (San Francisco State University, USA)
Effective teaching of teamwork skills in local and globally distributed Software Engineering (SE) teams is recognized as
very important for education of current and future software engineers. Effective methods for assessment and early
prediction of learning effectiveness in SE teamwork are not only a critical part of effective teaching but also of value in
industrial training and project management. This paper presents a novel analytical approach to the assessment and, most
importantly, the prediction of learning outcomes in SE teamwork, based on data from our joint software engineering
class concurrently taught at San Francisco State University (SFSU), Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and Fulda
University, Germany (Fulda). Our approach differs from existing work in the following aspects: a) it develops and uses
only objective and quantitative measures of team activity from multiple sources such as statistics of student time use,
software engineering tool use, and instructor observations; b) it leverages powerful machine learning (ML) techniques
applied to team activity measurements to identify quantitative and objective factors which can assess and predict student
learning of software engineering teamwork skills. In this paper we build on our previous work and provide significant
new contributions as follows: a) we present in detail for the first time a full team activity measurement data set consisting
of over 40 objective and quantitative measures extracted from students working on class projects; b) we present a ML
framework which applies the Random Forest (RF) algorithm to team activity measurements, tailored to specifically deal
with the challenge of a small training data set, and focus on predicting teams that are likely to fail; c) we present
implementation details of our data processing pipeline, consisting of data collection methods from multiple sources,
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training database creation and ML analysis subsystems, which are now fully implemented and operational; and finally d)
we present the status and ML analysis results based on the data from our joint software engineering classes in Fall 2012,
Spring 2013 and Fall 2013 with the data from over 50 student teams.
PREDICTING STUDENTS' PERFORMANCE ON INTELLIGENT TUTORING SYSTEM PERSONALIZED CLUSTERED BKT (PC-BKT) MODEL
Prema Nedungadi (Amrita University, India)
Remya MS (Amrita University, India)
An Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) supplements traditional learning methods and is used for personalized learning
purposes that range from exploring simple examples to understanding intricate problems. The Bayesian Knowledge
Tracing (BKT) model is an established method for student modeling. A recent enhancement to the BKT model is the
BKT-PPS (Prior Per Student) which introduces a prior learnt for each student. Although this method demonstrates
improved prediction results compared to the others, there are several aspects that limit its usefulness; (a) for a student,
the prior learning is common for all skills, however in reality, it varies for each skill (b) Different students have varying
learning capabilities; therefore these students cannot be considered as a homogenous group. In this paper, we aim to
improve the prediction of student performance using an enhanced BKT model called the PC-BKT (Personalized &
Clustered) with individual priors for each student and skill, and dynamic clustering of students based on changing
learning ability. We evaluate the predictions in terms of future performance within ASSISTments intelligent tutoring
dataset using over 240,000 log data and show that our models increase the accuracy of student prediction in both the
general and the cold start problem.
STUDENT ATTITUDES AND MEASURES OF SUCCESS IN INFORMATION SEEKING IN AN
INTRODUCTORY MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DESIGN COURSE
Laura R. Hanlan (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Rebecca Ziino (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
Allen Hoffman (Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA)
This work in progress describes library research instruction and baseline assessment data in an undergraduate
introductory-level mechanical engineering design course. We investigate whether librarian-led information literacy
instruction enables students to develop confidence and more creative solutions to their engineering design challenges.
Our study will be a multi-term examination of instruction and outcomes. We review student design reports for works
cited and analyze them for quality and variety. In addition we use course end feedback responses to determine student
engagement in information seeking, and gather opinions of the research instruction provided. Instruction will be iterated
based on student feedback. Evidence from our first term of citation analysis indicates that students were successful in
finding a wide variety of sources, such as technical reports, standards, peer-reviewed literature, patents, and trade
literature. Feedback indicates that students understand the value of gathering a variety of sources of information, but that
there are opportunities to enhance student engagement in the research process. Our future work is to gather more data to
determine whether the quality and variety of information sources used by students, as well as their opinions of the
research process can be correlated to their success in their design projects.
ACADEMIC PREDICTORS OF COOPERATIVE EDUCATION PARTICIPATION
Nichole Ramirez (Purdue University, USA)
Joyce B. Main (Purdue University, USA)
Trina Fletcher (Purdue University, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
Cooperative education (co-op) programs in engineering provide students with relevant professional experience before
they finish their undergraduate degree. Most programs and employers have academic eligibility requirements that make
it difficult to infer whether successful employment outcomes are due to the selection of higher performing students or the
causal effect of co-op participation. The goal of this study is to determine factors that are associated with participation in
engineering cooperative education programs, controlling for eligibility. Longitudinal and multivariate data from six
different institutions, each with large engineering programs where co-op participation is not mandatory, were studied
with stepwise logistic regression. Results show that cumulative GPA at the end of the second semester is the strongest
predictor of co-op participation. While institutional differences, ethnicity, and high school variables are also significant,
gender is not related to co-op participation. Other phases of this work in progress include qualitative research to explain
the causes and factors that affect students' decisions to participate in a co-op experience. The results from this paper will
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provide useful information for colleges, co-op administrators, and employers about who participates in co-op programs
and the factors that influence students' decisions.
MEASURING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDY HABITS AND PREFERRED LEARNING STYLE IN
HIGHER EDUCATION
Elena Fitkov-Norris (Kingston University, United Kingdom)
Ara Yeghiazarian (Kingston University, United Kingdom)
This article proposes a new conceptual framework that describes the complex interactions between learners' environment
and the conscious information processing required to enable them to learn more effectively. The framework takes into
account recent developments from neuroscience, which suggest that to improve their comprehension, learners may have
to preprocess incoming information into a format (visual, auditory, read/write or kinaesthetic) which best suits their
individual needs. In addition, the framework reflects the dual pathway processing, reflective or reflexive, used by
learners when approaching a learning task. The relationship between the students study habits and strategies and their
inherent learning preference mode is examined and its impact on the students learning efficiency is postulated. Finally,
potential research questions and hypothesis that arise as a result of the suggested framework are identified. The proposed
research will further our understanding of students learning strategies and enable the building of more effective study
skills support programmes and recommendations in the future.
GBL4: Game Based Learning, Theory and Applications
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: La Granja
EVALUATING SOFTWARE ENGINEERING SIMULATION GAMES: THE UGALCO FRAMEWORK
Daniela Peixoto (Centro Federal de Educação Tecnológica, Brazil)
Rodolfo Resende (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Clarindo Pádua (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil)
The increasing interest in Software Engineering simulation games leads to the problem of how to assess these games in
order to measure their real benefits. Until the current days, few attempts were proposed in order to support practitioners
evaluating Software Engineering simulation games. This paper introduces UGALCO, a five-dimensional framework for
simulation games evaluation. Besides a detailed assessment of player's learning, usability, motivation, and user
experience, we also included a communicability evaluation from the Human Computer Interaction field. Since our
framework is not prescriptive, there are no restrictions regarding its attributes, evaluation perspectives or techniques.
Instead, we present how a set of tools and attributes can be used together, bringing more effective results for assessing
the game as a whole. We applied this framework for the evaluation of a specific simulation game. Results indicate that
this framework can be used to gain better and more understanding of simulation games aspects.
AN EXTENSIBLE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT FOR TEACHING DATA SCIENCE CONCEPTS THROUGH
GAMIFICATION
Paul Anderson (College of Charleston, USA)
Clayton Turner (College of Charleston, USA)
Jacob Dierksheide (College of Charleston, USA)
Renee McCauley (College of Charleston, USA)
Learn2Mine is a cloud-based environment developed to support the teaching of data science. This paper discusses the
architecture of Learn2Mine, the research that guided its development, and the pilot implementation and formative
assessment of its use in teaching data science. Learn2Mine was pilot-tested in Fall 2013 in an introductory data science
source. At the end of the term, a survey of students concerning their experiences with the environment was conducted.
Quantitative analysis of survey data showed that student opinion about the usefulness of the tool for learning course
content was positive. Through open-ended comments, students provided constructive feedback on how the system might
be improved. To collect expert opinion on both the didactic and usability aspects of the Learn2Mine system, a number of
experts were enlisted to try the system. Experts responded to a survey regarding criteria typically expected of
instructional software, such as system usability and flexibility, as well as accuracy and organization of content. Overall,
the responses from experts were extremely positive. A plan for further development of the system, based on these results,
is presented along with information on the developers' plans for making the environment available for use at other
institutions.
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A MOBILE-DEVICE BASED SERIOUS GAMING APPROACH FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING JAVA
PROGRAMMING
Tobias Jordine (Stuttgart Media University, Germany)
Ying Liang (University of the West of Scotland, United Kingdom)
Edmund Ihler (Stuttgart Media University, Germany)
Most first year computer science students would find that learning object-oriented programming is hard. Serious games
have ever been used as one approach to handle this problem. But most of them cannot be played with mobile devices.
This obviously does not suit the era of mobile computing that intends to allow students to learn programming skills in
anytime anywhere. To enhance mobile teaching and learning, a research project started over a year ago and aims to
create a mobile device based serious gaming approach along with a serious game for enhancing mobile teaching and
learning for Java programming. So far the project has completed a literature review for understanding existing work and
identifying problems in this area, conducted a survey for eliciting students' requirements for mobile gaming approach,
and then established a mobile-device based serious gaming approach with a developed prototype of the game. This paper
introduces the project, presents its details and discusses its current results. It is expected that the presented project will be
helpful and useful to bring more efficient approaches with new mobile games into teaching object-oriented programming
and to enhance students' learning experiences.
INTERACTIVE VISUALIZATIONS FOR TEACHING QUANTUM MECHANICS AND SEMICONDUCTOR
PHYSICS
Rose Peng (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
William Dorn (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Azad Naeemi (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Nassim JafariNaimi (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Work in Progress: The theory of Quantum Mechanics (QM) provides a foundation for many fields of science and
engineering; however, its abstract nature and technical difficulty make QM a challenging subject for students to
approach and grasp. This is partly because complex mathematical concepts involved in QM are difficult to visualize for
students and the existing visualization are minimal and limited. We propose that many of these concepts can be
communicated and experienced through interactive visualizations and games, drawing on the strengths and affordances
of digital media. A game environment can make QM concepts more accessible and understandable by immersing
students in nano-sized worlds governed by unique QM rules. Furthermore, replayability of games allows students to
experience the probabilistic nature of QM concepts. In this paper, we present a game and a series of interactive
visualizations that we are developing to provide students with an experiential environment to learn quantum mechanics.
We will discuss how these visualizations and games can enable students to experiment with QM concepts, compare QM
with classical physics, and get accustomed to the often counterintuitive laws of QM.
GDI: Special Session - "Stereotype Threat" and my Students: What can I do about it?
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: El Escorial
SPECIAL SESSION - "STEREOTYPE THREAT" AND MY STUDENTS: WHAT CAN I DO ABOUT IT?
Elizabeth A. Eschenbach (Humboldt State University, USA)
Mary Virnoche (Humboldt State University, USA)
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Michelle Madsen Camacho (University of San Diego, USA)
Stereotype threat occurs when one is at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about a social group that one belongs to.
In the academic setting, research has shown that stereotype threat contributes to the achievement gap noted in
underrepresented students in engineering classrooms. Participants in this FIE special session define and discuss
stereotype threat, explore interventions that research has found to successfully reduce stereotype threat, and identify one
strategy to try in the classroom. Key resources are identified including research literature, websites and videos, and
recommendations for intervention strategies. In addition to the literature, participants will have access to strategies
developed by other participants that can be used by instructors to mitigate stereotype threats.
HFC2: Flipped Classroom in Practice
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Chair: Luis M. Sanchez Ruiz
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Escudo
ENGINEERING TEACHING METHODS USING HYBRID TECHNOLOGIES BASED ON THE MOTIVATION
AND ASSESSMENT OF STUDENT'S PROFILES
David Fonseca (Ramon Llull University, Spain)
Sergi Villagrasa (Ramon Llull University, Spain)
Francesc Valls (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Ernest Redondo (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
August Climent (UOLS, Andorra)
Lluis Vicent (UOLS, Andorra)
This paper describes the evolution and integration of hybrid interfaces in the visualization of three-dimensional models,
and presents the results of a preliminary study based on the profile and the student motivation. The study is conducted
with first and second year Building Engineering degree students in order to incorporate the augmented reality technology
in different subjects and case studies. The resources developed combine traditional methods with interactive
visualization of complex virtual models and mobile systems to present this type of content with the purpose of enhancing
the student's visualization and spatial analysis skills and their motivation. We have used a mixed method research with
quantitative evaluations (using a pre and post-test), and personal qualitative assessment (using the Bipolar Laddering
technic) to further strengthen the results. In general, the student motivation to use this technology at classroom is positive
and the preliminary results show us an improvement of their academic results, a confirmation of the adequacy of the
method.
ENGAGING STUDENTS IN CREATIVE LEARNING TASKS WITH SOCIAL NETWORKS AND VIDEO-BASED
LEARNING
Jaime Urquiza-Fuentes (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Isidoro Hernán (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Estefanía Martín (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Students often encounter barriers to their understanding of complex concepts regarding to STEM subjects. The
comprehension of these concepts, called threshold concepts (TC), opens students' mind allowing them to understand and
establish connections with other concepts. Usually, TCs are abstract and students have difficulty seeing its relation to
real world. In this sense, it is required to provide methodologies and tools for supporting the teaching-learning process of
these TCs. New innovative practices in Engineering Education include the use of social networks or video-based
learning environments. Social networks facilitate engaging teenagers and young people based on sociocultural learning
theories. Video-based environments provoke the students' curiosity and increase their motivation. However, platforms
that combine both new methodologies have not been found. This paper presents an innovative educational platform,
called ClipIt, based on a social network approach that supports creative learning activities, especially video-making.
Three dimensions describe the aim of ClipIt: transmit, collaborate and receive information. Transmit dimension stands
for student's actions that have some impact on their peers, i.e. inform, educate, inspire, build peers' capacity or involve
them in activities. ClipIt supports this with video and file sharing together with commenting facility. Collaborate
dimension stands for what students do together, i.e. consider, create or decide something. It is supported by private group
facilities, i.e. forums, file sharing and comments. Finally, receive dimension stands for the effect of peers' actions on a
student, i.e. build one's own capacity or knowledge. This dimension is supported by viewing videos, files, comments and
ratings. The development of ClipIt has counted on both, teachers' and students' perspective. Thus, 15 teachers from
different institutions guided us to select the most useful tools to promote the discussion and understanding. Forty-three
students involved in an object oriented programing course working on the inheritance TC and they perspective has been
collected with an evaluation. Based on teachers' and students' feedback we can conclude that they will be easily involved
in these kind of learning activities. Both agree that: i) significant learning is achieved during the whole video creation
process because it allows students to understand better the concept that they have to explain with the video, and ii) the
discussion process, sharing both, ideas and their peers' suggestions, are really important because they help to improve the
video. Regarding the tools provided by the platform, again teachers and students agree that the most useful features are
the private group discussion forum, commenting their partners' videos and rating them. Additionally, we have found
some unexpected students' opinions such as they usually select the "Like" button in other social networks (e.g.
Facebook) but they prefer other tools in educational contexts (e.g. five star scale). This learning experience has been well
rated by students. They have suggested the application of this methodology to other STEM subjects (pre-university
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studies and degrees). Their general opinion is that the film-making process increases their engagement and watching
videos created by peers promotes their curiosity and helps them to understand the TCs.
B-LEARNING OF PHOTOVOLTAICS SYSTEMS USING ORCAD PSPICE
Juan Aguilar-Peña (University of Jaén, Spain)
Francisco Muñoz-Rodríguez (University of Jaén, Spain)
Catalina Rus-Casas (University of Jaén, Spain)
In this work-in-progress, an educational tool based on a PSpice photovoltaic (PV) module simulation model is presented.
An innovative practice relies on a monitoring system for PV applications that supports this didactic tool. The monitoring
system manages to provide real data about the performance of the PV module such as irradiance, ambient temperature
and the current, voltage and power of the PV module. Students can study and calculate the effect of irradiance and
ambient temperatures on these variables. Afterwards, they use the simulation models provided to observe the PV module
performance. Finally, both set of data (calculated and simulated) will be compared with the real data obtained from the
monitoring of the PV module mentioned above. The tool here developed not only shows the effect of a given
instantaneous solar irradiance and temperature upon photovoltaic cell and module performance but manages to show,
through a friendly and didactic graphic interface, their performance throughout a determined interval of time (e.g. days),
given real irradiance and ambient temperatures profiles obtained from the monitoring system. Moreover, this tool has a
high potential as it can be added more functionalities as energy estimation and the effect of shadows on a PV generator.
ENHANCING VIDEO LECTURES WITH DIGITAL FOOTNOTES
Viraj Kumar (PES University, India)
The last decade has witnessed several efforts to lessen inequities in education by making high-quality instructional
resources available to all learners with internet access. Mere access to content, however, may be insufficient. India's
National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) is one of the largest initiatives of this kind, and
despite providing free access to content created by educators at the country's premier academic institutions, concerns
have been raised that their efforts are "not getting full mileage". The causes including language barriers (NPTEL content
is in English, and India has 22 additional official languages), and perceived lack of relevance to curricula. This paper
describes an ongoing research project to assess whether video lectures can be enhanced with micro-notes to lessen such
impediments. While our focus is on enhancing NPTEL content, our approach is applicable to all kinds of instructional
videos. Micro-notes are digital footnotes associated with specific points in video lectures. Their key features are: (1) they
are created by a community of instructors and learners, (2) they can be shared, or used only within a sub-community, (3)
they are of several types (elaboration, correction, solved/unsolved questions, etc.), (4) they can be in regional languages
or dialects, (5) they can be individually selected by learners for viewing during playback of videos with which they are
associated, and (6) they are rated by the community for quality-control. By democratizing authorship of micro-notes, we
hope that "local" requirements (e.g., a need to translate a difficult segment into a regional language, or to relate it to a
particular institute's curriculum) receive local attention. Micro-notes are inspired by Microsoft Research's Rich
Interactive Narratives (RIN). This technology (which is not yet publicly available) can embed a variety content within
videos for interactive access during playback with popular browsers. Our approach is much simpler: we support only
limited kinds of additional content, and we develop a bespoke video playback application to access the additional
content. We believe that our lightweight approach is adequate for our purpose in enhancing video lectures. In this paper,
we present experimental results from a Theory of Computation course for undergraduates in Computer Science. The
course is currently being taught by the author over 13 weeks as follows: * Phase 1 (initial 5 weeks): Traditional lectures,
but making students aware of NPTEL resources. * Phase 2 (next 4 weeks): Blending lectures with NPTEL videos
containing instructor-created micro-notes; encouraging students to develop additional micro-notes for these videos. *
Phase 3 (final 4 weeks): Return to traditional lectures, but still encouraging students to develop micro-notes for
corresponding NPTEL videos. The paper will analyze data related to the number of micro-notes per lecture created by
students in each of the three Phases above, their quality (based on peer ratings), and their utility (as reported by students
via a questionnaire). This research is partly funded by NPTEL, and all micro-notes developed as part of this research will
be made publicly available on the NPTEL website: nptel.ac.in
TEACHING ELECTRIC CIRCUITS USING A FLIPPED CLASSROOM APPROACH
Asad Azemi (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
This paper describes our continuous effort to implement a flipped classroom approach to teach an Electric Circuits
course. The main motivation behind adopting this approach is to allow more time for in-class problem solving and,
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therefore, improving students' problem solving skills. Prior to each scheduled class meeting, students are asked to watch
a recorded short lecture, which covers the topics in detail and includes simple worked out problems. Students are also
encouraged to watch our narrated dynamically worked-out problems. These recorded worked-out problems are intended
to complement the recorded lectures and help students with their problem solving skills. A typical lecture consists of a
quick review of the concepts followed by solving more challenging problems related to the lecture material. A more
detailed discussion of this approach and the advantages and disadvantages of such a scheme are presented. The
preliminary evaluations of the proposed approach, during the past two years, have been encouraging.
PRE1: Research and Practice in Precollege Education
Chair: Mary M Capraro
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Comendador
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING AND MATHEMATICS (STEM) EDUCATION: A LONGITUDINAL
EXAMINATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL INTERVENTION
Sandra B Nite (Texas A&M University, USA)
Jim Morgan (Texas A&M University, USA)
Mary M Capraro (Texas A&M University, USA)
Robert M Capraro (Texas A&M University, USA)
Cheryl A Peterson (Texas A&M University, USA)
Learning experiences in informal Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) educational settings,
such as camps, provide significant benefits for secondary students such as awareness of STEM subjects and careers
along with increasing enthusiasm, self-efficacy, and content knowledge. To expand the number of students majoring in
STEM subjects and entering careers in STEM fields, a two-week summer STEM camp for secondary students (N=31)
was held at a Research I University. This qualitative case study followed students through matriculation into a
postsecondary STEM major. Camp participants were interviewed to address the following research questions: 1) How
did the camp fulfill its purpose and intended student outcomes? 2) Were the purpose and intended outcomes reflected in
student perceptions? 3) Did the camp experience influence a student's decision to attend the hosting university as well as
choice of major? This camp fulfilled its purpose and encouraged students to attend the host university and major in a
STEM field. The anticipated cognitive and social outcomes were reflected in the student's experiences at camp. Informal
learning environments, such as the one described in this study, can result in increased achievement, self-efficacy, and
interest in STEM along with encouraging students to pursue STEM careers.
A QUALITATIVE STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF PARTICIPATION IN PRE-COLLEGE ENGINEERING
PROGRAMS ON FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Noah Salzman (Purdue University, USA)
Monica Cardella (Purdue University, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
In recent years, pre-college engineering programs have expanded dramatically. Many states now include engineering
content in their academic standards, and the inclusion of significant engineering content in the Next Generation Science
Standards will encourage greater integration of engineering in primary and secondary school classrooms across the
United States. As a result of the growth of formal and informal pre-college engineering opportunities, many students are
enrolling in university engineering programs with significant prior exposure to engineering ideas and practices. This
study explores how participation in pre-college engineering programs and activities affects the experiences of students in
a first-year engineering program. Twenty-three students selected for maximum variation in their experiences were
interviewed and the resulting transcripts analyzed using a phenomenographic research framework. Preliminary results
suggest seven broad categories of description encompassing a broad range of both positive and negative effects resulting
from pre-college engineering experiences. Based on these results, recommendations for addressing engineering teaching
practices are presented.
STEM INTEGRATION: EVIDENCE OF STUDENT LEARNING IN DESIGN-BASED CURRICULA
Tamara J. Moore (Purdue University, USA)
Morgan Hynes (Purdue University, USA)
Senay Purzer (Purdue University, USA)
Aran Glancy (University of Minnesota, USA)
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Emilie Siverling (Purdue University, USA)
Kristina Tank (University of Minnesota, USA)
Corey A Mathis (Purdue University, USA)
Selcen Guzey (University of Minnesota, USA)
This study focuses on student learning of engineering design practices and the development of engineering thinking
skills during participation in design-based curricular activities and will seek to answer the question: What evidence is
present in students' engineering design project work of engineering learning? Student teams working in a STEM
integration curricular module implemented in a fifth grade science classroom were analyzed. This study employs case
study methods as a means to deeply analyze each team's work through content analysis of student classroom artifacts and
video analysis. We use the Framework for Quality K-12 Engineering Education, with a particular focus on process of
design, STEM content, engineering thinking, and communication, as a lens for analyzing the engineering thinking
involved in student learning. This research aims to develop an initial understanding of how to identify these engineering
learning outcomes in classrooms, with the overall goal of developing engineering assessment tools for classroom
teachers. Evidence of student learning outcomes for these key engineering components was found throughout student
work and student interactions, though varying levels of learning were shown by each group. This study demonstrates that
it is possible to identify student learning of engineering processes within a design-based curriculum.
WHAT MOTIVATES STEM TEACHERS TO ATTEND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT? A CASE STUDY IN
CHILIAN HIGH SCHOOLS
Gina C. Adam (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Vanessa Natalie Dominguez (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Danielle B. Harlow (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)
Science, technology and engineering are constantly changing in profound ways, so STEM teachers have to keep up with
providing not only the textbook basics, but also updated examples from current technologies, while using novel teaching
techniques based on scientific inquiry. Professional development activities are powerful tools to increase teacher
learning, and indirectly drive improved classroom practices and student learning. The literature regarding teacher
professional development has reached considerable consensus regarding the features of the PD activities that lead to
successful programs. However, the literature shows an insufficient analysis of the teacher motivation to attend
professional development activities. In order to attract teachers and maintain their sustained involvement in professional
activities, these activities need to be designed keeping in mind the teachers' background and motivation. This paper
examines the factors that contribute to the science and technology high school teachers in Chile participating in
professional development activities. These findings will fill in a gap in the literature and could inform the design of
professional development programs in Chile and abroad.
MIGHT YOUNG MAKERS BE THE ENGINEERS OF THE FUTURE?
Shawn Jordan (Arizona State University at the Polytechnic Campus, USA)
Micah Lande (Arizona State University at the Polytechnic Campus, USA)
Engineers participate in the Maker movement, but not all Makers pursue formal engineering education. We seek to
understand Young Makers in K-12 and how might their knowledge, skills, and attitudes prepare them to pursue advanced
STEM education and careers. From the Engineer of 2020 list of characteristics we highlight practical ingenuity,
creativity and lifelong learning for likely opportunities to leverage the Maker experience. The mission of this research is
to develop a theory illuminating the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of Young Makers related to pathways forward to
engineering and STEM-related majors and careers. By describing their pathways to or around formal engineering
education will better inform future innovations in order to improve the practical ingenuity and lifelong learning of our
future engineers. Results from the inductive and deductive analyses of interviews will be triangulated to generate a
preliminary theory of Young Maker knowledge, skills, attitudes, and pathways. This theory will describe aspects of
Young Makers, along with how their pathways forward may intersect with engineering and STEM-related majors and
careers. By describing their pathways to or around formal engineering education will better inform future innovations in
order to improve the practical ingenuity and lifelong learning of our future engineers.
SBM1: Student Retention and Persistence
Chair: Lisa Zidek
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Patio 1
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UNDERSTANDING THE USE OF PAPER AND ONLINE LOGBOOKS FOR FINAL YEAR UNDERGRADUATE
ENGINEERING PROJECTS
Manish Malik (University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom)
Work in Progress - In industry an engineer is often required to keep a logbook for recording developments within
projects. In higher education, logbooks are a commonly used tool thought to be one that encourages active independent
learning and reflective thinking. In School of Engineering, at University of Portsmouth, paper and more recently online
logbooks have been in use for recording work for final year projects and project based learning tasks. The work
presented here benefits from a unique opportunity within the School of Engineering, where online logbooks alongside
traditional paper based logbooks are being used within final year projects. A recent cohort of students (N=127) on
ENG600 project module was given the option, through their Supervisors, to use paper logbooks and or online logbooks
for recording their work. A mix of Qualitative Research methods and quantitative techniques will be used in this project.
The use of content analysis will provide an insight into student reflections and their motivations for using their logbook.
Furthermore focus groups, involving live editing of documents in an individual and collaborative fashion, will be used to
gather more data for analysis. Quantitative methods (questionnaire, analytics and quantitative content analysis) will be
used in this study.
BUILDING MOTIVATION BY STUDENT-TEACHING
John Pollard (British University in Egypt, Egypt)
Sara Al Menabawy (British University in Egypt, Egypt)
The structure and content of an Electrical Engineering (EE) First-Year interactive student learning aid for Java has been
generated by EE Third-Year students doing a software engineering module at the British University in Egypt. Third-Year
students expressed their initial "hatred" for Java programming due to their own >50% failure-rates when they first took
this "Introduction to Java" programming course. These students took an initial survey of First-Year students that
confirmed student antipathy and lack of understanding. A Third-year student-generated interactive Java course was
designed using AppInventor to help First-Year students create and build Java Applications for their own mobile
telephones. These students could determine their own learning outcomes by responding to a computer-automated quiz. A
exit survey of both sets of students showed the success in creating an enthusiasm for programming once the reason for its
study had been demonstrated. This student-centered responsibility for learning-by-teaching-successors motivates
students as well as being a cost-effective lecturing methodology. Evaluation of student-teaching methodology ThirdYear students asked First-Year students about their feedback about this teaching methodology. First-Year students
replied: (a) Students should be taught on small scale AppInventor applications before consideration of Java language
details. (b) Practical course work that was done in laboratories should require students to make an application using
AppInventor. They should convert it to Java code. (c) Students should submit reports explaining the basic functions that
they used. (d) Students will therefore learn how to develop programs from the start and make something relevant and
fun. Third-Year students commented: (a) We are thrilled by the feedback we received from First-Year students. (b) It is
rewarding for us to see that our work paid off. (c) We saw the younger generation participating in developing Apps,
while having fun: Theory, crafting and drafting their Java codes. (d) There is nothing to fear. A crucial part of being an
engineer is to fail and keep trying until you eventually overcome the problem. (e) "Failure should be our teacher, not our
undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end Failure is something we can avoid only
by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing" [8]
PREDICTION OF THE CHANGE OF LEARNERS' MOTIVATION IN PROGRAMMING EDUCATION FOR
NON-COMPUTING MAJORS
Hidekuni Tsukamoto (Osaka University of Arts, Japan)
Yasuhiro Takemura (Osaka University of Arts, Japan)
Hideo Nagumo (Niigata Seiryo University, Japan)
Akito Monden (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
Ken-ichi Matsumoto (Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
In the past, we had been analyzing learners' motivation in programming education for non-computing majors using the
ARCS assessment metric. In this metric, motivation is assessed in four factors, namely, Attention, Relevance,
Confidence, and Satisfaction separately. These four factors are based on the ARCS motivation model introduced by J. M.
Keller. In each factor in the model, there are three sub-level categories, and therefore, there are twelve sub-level
categories in total. The ARCS assessment metric is composed of twelve question items corresponding to these sub-level
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categories, and each of the question items asks if the commentary teams in the corresponding sub-level category are
fulfilled. This metric had been used in the application experiment in 13 programming courses, and about 1,700 sets of
data was collected. From these data, the learners' model, characteristics of the change of motivation, and the ways of
improving teaching materials had been clarified. However, these study results were obtained after the terms, when the
programming courses were over, and thus did not contribute much to the ongoing programming education. For this
reason, in this research, the methods for predicting the change of learners' motivation were studied so that the learners
who may need support could be identified. The idea came from our FIE 2011 paper (Analyzing the Motivation of the
Learners in the In-House Training for Computer Programming with the ARCS Motivation Model), in which the
motivation of learners was analyzed by plotting the motivation scores of each factor in the ARCS model as a 3D graph.
As a result, a decreasing tendency of motivation was observed when the distribution of the plot widened. After studying
the tendency in detail, it was thought to be due to the influence of the variance of sub-level category scores. In the
proposed method, the motivation of each learner is assessed in each lesson using the ARCS assessment metric. Those
learners whose variances of motivation scores in the nth lesson are above a certain threshold value are selected as the
candidates of learners who need support. The average value of the variances for each learner in a lesson is used as the
threshold value in the next lesson. In the application experiment, a programming course with 9 lessons was offered and 9
students took the course. From the assessment of the motivation of those learners, a cumulative total of 11 learners had
been identified as the candidates of learners who need support, and out of those 11 cases, a decrease of motivation was
observed in 5 cases. The rate of identifying true learners who may need support was therefore 45%. The maximum
number of candidates in a lesson was 3, which is about one third of the number of learners. If the number of candidates is
of this size, it is possible for the instructor to support them, and this method can be considered to be practical. In future
work, we plan to increase the rate of identifying true learners who need support by including other factors in the method.
MOTIVATIONS AND EXPERIENCES OF OLDER TRANSFER STUDENTS IN ENGINEERING
Catherine E. Brawner (Research Triangle Educational Consultants, USA)
Catherine Mobley (Clemson University, USA)
Non-traditional students older than traditional college age (18-24) face particular challenges in the demanding
engineering curriculum. In this qualitative study we explore the unique aspects of their motivation for studying
engineering, prior experiences, and impact of family life on these students. We find that job opportunities were the
primary motivation for most of the students to pursue an engineering degree and prior work experience in the field was a
factor in major selection for many who chose electrical or mechanical. Proximity and cost were primary reasons for
choosing the transfer pathway and the sending and receiving institutions, although reputation was more often cited as the
reason to choose the receiving institution. Students with families received significant motivation and support from them,
but also faced unique challenges, including commuting or living apart. These factors limited their ability to integrate into
campus life and develop a support network with other students. These students cited a number of advantages of returning
to school after years away, among them a laser focus on their goals, practical technical experience that their younger
classmates lack, and general maturity.
LEVERAGING STUDENT MOTIVATION IN ENGINEERING SKILLS ACQUISITION
Jeevan Persad (University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago)
Daniel Ringis (University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago)
Cathy-Ann Radix (The University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago)
This paper explores whether engaging embedded electronic systems students in the creation of, as opposed to simply the
use of, lab equipment improves their motivation to practice, and thereby their ability to acquire, discipline-specific skills.
The specific piece of laboratory equipment considered is the Microchip In Circuit Debugger (ICD), inclusive of header,
for PIC16F mid-range microcontrollers. A PCB-related teaching activity guided students through design of the ICD
header (both 2011/12 and 2013/14), and physical assembly of a pre-designed ICD unit (2011/12 only). Three student
cohorts subsequently used the in-house ICDs. Increased availability of units allowed each student to take the equipment
outside of the lab and conduct studies at their convenience. The impact of the intervention was measured through the use
of a survey; the survey instrument and response summaries are presented. Analysis of students' comments links increased
access to equipment to positive learning experiences, as well as observation of/participation in ICD assembly to
improved student motivation. Deliberate use of equipment construction as teaching activity could be an innovative way
to improve skills acquisition by leveraging student motivation. Follow-up work will establish whether such activities
yield reduction in time to minimal skill levels, and/or an improvement in final skill levels.
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF DIGITAL LITERACY... BUT WE NEED TO GO DEEPER
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Jon Bustillo (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
Pablo Garaizar (University of Deusto, Spain)
The popularization of digital educational devices has encouraged the development of many training activities oriented
towards the incorporation of technology in schools. In some cases, the introduction of technology has led to the
development of new educational practices that support the development of computational thinking. However, having
taught over 30 workshops with the Scratch programming tool to teachers, we found no evidence of subsequent
methodological changes in schools. This study tries to understand the dissonance between the alleged success of
initiatives around digital literacy and the lack of continuity in the use of Scratch. For this purpose, we analyzed the
evolution of the grades of Scratch programming achieved by the students of the School of Education of Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Then, we interviewed teachers from different schools who have participated in Scratch workshops with us. Moreover, we
organized discussion groups with students trained in Scratch inside their formal education to determine the extent to
which students valued incorporating Scratch in the classroom. Since we consider Scratch as a resource that allows the
development of new methodological approaches in the classroom as well as the acquisition of computational thinking
related skills, we propose a framework that will help to overcome the current status.
SCL4: Reflection and Student-centric Learning
Chair: Robert Craig
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Alcalá
IMPLEMENTING REFLECTION IN TECHNICAL COURSES
Luciana Barroso (Texas A&M University, USA)
Jim Morgan (Texas A&M University, USA)
There is a lot of emphasis in both undergraduate and continuing professional education on developing "reflective
professional". By what do we actually mean by this? In essence; a reflective professional is one that learns from their
experiences by critically reviewing their actions, considering the impact of those actions and planning what they would
do in similar situations in the future. There are many wide and varied definitions of reflection but Boud's definition is
reasonably simple and comprehensive: " a generic term for those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals
engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to a new understanding and appreciation" It is important for
professionals; and those training to be professionals; to reflect on their learning experiences. Just experiencing an event
is not enough, without taking time to review the experience and consider future implications we are likely to repeat our
actions in other future situations. This can mean that we are likely to repeat the same mistakes again! There has been
substantial research on the importance of reflection in the learning cycle. The foundation of this research can be traced to
the work of John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas, David Kolb, and Donald Schön. John Dewey has stated, "We do not learn
from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience." The Learning Cycle, developed by David Kolb, is based on
the belief that deep learning (learning for real comprehension) comes from a sequence of experience, reflection,
abstraction, and active testing. This paper presents the experiences of the authors in incorporating written reflections into
a range of technical engineering courses, from junior level to graduate level. These courses include structural analysis
and design, including capstone experiences. The reflections target specific activities as well as reflecting on the wholecourse experience. The quality of reflection was assessed utilizing a reflection depth rubric (Dalal et. al., Kember et. Al).
Additionally, qualitative assessment of the student reflections was performed by analyzing the responses and essays
using coding and then thematizing. A constant comparative method is used for analysis of the responses and emerging
themes selected, described, and analyzed simultaneously. The resulting assessment will present results addressing • What
"preparation" needs to be done to prep the students for the exercise - includes in-class discussion and • Which prompts
are best at eliciting meaningful responses.
EVALUATING EFFECTIVENESS OF ACTIVE LEARNING IN COMPUTER SCIENCE USING
METACOGNITION
Murali Mani (University of Michigan-Flint, USA)
Nuha Alkabour (University of Michigan-Flint, USA)
Damilola Alao (University of Michigan-Flint, USA)
Active learning refers to instruction where the learners play an active role in learning and has been found to increase
student retention, improve acquisition of higher order thinking and reasoning skills, and improve performance in STEM
courses. Two main active learning techniques: student response systems (aka. clickers) and flipped classroom
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assignments, were incorporated in University of Michigan- Flint computer science (CS) courses. This paper describes
how clickers have been incorporated in CS courses and their impact on student learning. There are several ways of
evaluating student learning, and tests have traditionally been considered an incomplete and limited reflection of the
students' knowledge. In our prior work [11], students' metacognitive knowledge has been used as an effective measure of
students' learning. Metacognitive knowledge can be considered to include knowledge of the person, the task, and the
available strategies. In this work, we want our students to be aware of their level of understanding of the topics in a
course. A student can use this knowledge along with knowledge of the task and available strategies to achieve the
cognitive goals. This paper studies how clickers participation impacts student learning as measured by metacognitive
knowledge.
WHICH HAT ARE YOU WEARING TODAY? ENABLING PERSPECTIVES WHILE LEARNING COMPUTER
SCIENCE
Abhay Doke (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, India)
Gaurav Kumar Singh (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, India)
Varun Kumar (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, India)
Savita Bhat (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, India)
Niranjan Pedanekar (Tata Consultancy Services Limited, India)
Computer science has a wide variety of applications in a wide variety of fields. Yet computer science education focuses
primarily on the theoretician's perspective. We believe that if a variety of perspectives are brought in during learning,
learners' intrinsic motivation can be increased, and learning computer science can be made more engaging and
personalized. In this work-in-progress paper, we propose the concept of 'hats' for augmenting computer science learning
material with different perspectives. Hats are different perspectives which can be donned by the learner while learning
computer science. We propose examples of hats such as Programmer, Historian, Job Seeker, Troubleshooter and
Visualizer. To enable the use of hats while learning, we propose a web-based interface to augment base learning content
such as textbooks with additional learning content classified under different hats. To provide scale in populating hats, we
propose algorithms to automatically find content from the internet that can be categorized under different hats. We also
present the results from a pilot study conducted using the hats interface.
TRANSFORMING CHALLENGES INTO REFLECTIONS: ENABLING METACOGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
Jordyn Burger (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Paige Cote (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Nitya Dhanushkodi (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Jonathan Stolk (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Yevgeniya V Zastavker (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
A capacity for self-directed learning (SDL) and lifelong learning is widely recognized as an important outcome for
today's engineering graduates. Key to SDL is the development of self-reflection abilities, which enable students to
critically evaluate learning tasks and contexts, to adjust and adapt their self-regulatory processes to new environments,
and to maintain motivation and persistence in the face of difficulties. The purpose of this study is to explore how
undergraduate engineering students engage with SDL during their first two years of college. Grounded theory is used to
analyze responses of 10 students to 12 surveys administered across two institutions over two years. Data reveal that
student reflection on SDL experiences is prompted by different factors. We find that one of the more important factors in
eliciting reflective practices is students' challenges in learning environments. Specifically, the three types of challenges
emerging from the data are those associated with lack of cognitive freedom in course content, perceived poor
performance on traditional assessment, and specific learning environments. Further analysis reveals that students reflect
at different cognitive/metacognitive levels in different learning contexts. We argue that with proper pedagogical support,
reflective practice can be encouraged in all educational contexts facilitating students' cognitive development.
CO-OPERATIVE LEARNING VERSUS SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING IN ENGINEERING: STUDENT
PREFERENCES AND IMPLICATIONS
Arthur Swart (Central University of Technology, South Africa)
Trudy Sutherland (Vaal University of Technology, South Africa)
Co-operative learning is defined as an approach that involves a small group of students working together as a team to
solve a problem, complete a task, or accomplish a common goal. A highly self-directed student is one who exhibits
initiative, independence, and persistence in learning and who enjoys learning and has a tendency to be goal oriented.
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Mixed research results about the effectiveness of both co-operative and self-directed learning lead to the following
research question: "What do African undergraduate engineering students prefer, co-operative learning or self-directed
learning, and how do these teaching styles influence their academic performance"? This paper attempts to contrast the
advantages of co-operative and self-directed learning within an electrical engineering context where students are required
to fuse theory (instruction within a classroom) and practice (instruction within a laboratory). The final grade marks
obtained by students enrolled for a telecommunications module are correlated to each of the pedagogical approaches.
This correlation reveals that co-operative learning does result in greater academic success to African undergraduate
students when compared to self-directed learning. Reasons for this positive correlation among African undergraduate
engineering students are presented in this paper.
TLE5: What do We Teach and How do Students Learn?
Chair: Diana Bairaktarova
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: La Galería
GENERATION OF CRITICAL MASS IN EDUCATION: AN APPROACH BASED ON MULTIPLE VORTEXES
Jose Reginaldo Hughes Carvalho (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Elaine H. T. de Oliveira (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Alessandra Silva (Samsung Eletrônica da Amazônia (SEDA), Brazil)
Brazil is experiencing economic growth, with a strong demand for highly qualified professionals. In the capital of the
Brazilian state of Amazonas, Manaus, the situation is critical. The lack of professionals is considered a major risk, and to
prepare students is a real challenge as there are few undergraduate courses, and the typical dropout rate is very high.
STEM education is intricately difficult and if the student is not well involved, supported and motivated, the chances of
success are very low. To address this scenario, a qualification program denominated "multiple vortexes of know-how"
was conceived to address three aspects: reduce student dropout, enlarge the reachable community, and offer different
levels of knowledge. Vortex is in essence an action, working interconnected and coordinated to other vortexes. Four
different actions were prepared: classroom disciplines; a talent development program; holding short-term events, and
enrolling in intensive training. This paper describes the first edition of the program, which was accomplished at the
Institute of Computing at Federal University of Amazonas. Up until now, the results are quite positive: over 600 students
were involved and motivated with these new possibilities. Moreover, the goal of this paper is also to present the lessons
learned so far.
COMBINING THERMODYNAMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY: EXPLORING THE BENEFITS OF THIS
ALTERNATIVE INSTRUCTIONAL METHOD
Ryan Muckel (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Margaret Bailey (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
The Rochester Institute of Technology has recently developed an Engineering and Public Policy master's program that is
modeled after the program instituted at Carnegie Mellon University in 1976. One of the key graduate-level courses in
this program, and the focus of this paper, is the Sustainable Energy Management (SEM) course offered within the
Mechanical Engineering Department. SEM is an upper level engineering class that combines advanced studies of
thermodynamics with public policy basics. The class is unique in the way that it takes thermodynamic analyses of
complex contemporary engineering issues a step further by incorporating government regulations into problems that
would otherwise be defined only by thermodynamic principles. The purposes of this paper are to explore the
development and implementation of this novel course and its implications in regards to whether the course accomplishes
its goal of developing an understanding of the interrelationship between engineering and public policy. Student courseend evaluations were analyzed and six student interviews were conducted in order to inform this investigation. From this
research, it is clear that most students view the class favorably, and several possible improvements are considered for
future iterations of the course.
DEVELOPMENT OF LOW-COST ROBOT MANIPULATORS FOR KINEMATIC CONTROL PRACTICES
José Alberto Naves Cocota, Jr. (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil)
Tiago Pinheiro dos Santos (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil)
Paulo Henrique Magalhaes (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil)
Thiago D'Angelo (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil)
Luciana Castanheira (Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Brazil)
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Nowadays, dropping out of engineering courses practically occurs in all universities of the world. Over the past few
years, active learning has been recognized by the educational community as the most effective learning method. The
teaching of engineering associated with hands-on practice has become an indispensable methodology for motivating
undergraduate students. One of the common areas in the formation of Control and Automation Engineering and
Mechanical Engineering is robotics, which is considered a relatively new area of modern technology that crosses
traditional boundaries of engineering. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of this field, teaching robotics is most effective
when theoretical concepts are associated with tangible experiments. However, the majority of the available experimental
platforms applicable to undergraduate or graduate levels are very expensive or have a closed hardware and software
architecture. Besides, the exclusive use of these platforms prevents the possibility of the students develop one of the most
important features of an engineering professional, which is the ability to design, manage and execute a project. Thus, was
suggested to students of Control and Automation Engineering and Mechanical Engineering courses the development of a
robot manipulator to explore the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methodology in 2013. The Mechanical Engineering
students were responsible for robot design, aided by CAE analysis as well as for assembling of the robot. During 2013,
three platforms of the robot were developed. Improvements along these mechanical design versions, allowed to reduce
the positioning error of the robot from 30.0 [mm] to 10.9 [mm]. The students of Control and Automation Engineering
were responsible for installing the actuators, aquisition of the joint variables, development of the graphical user interface
in MATLAB as well as for the implementation of control structures in the Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller board.
The result of this PBL experience was so positive, that in conjunction with other initiatives, it was possible to reduce
from 8% to 4% the vacancies from dropouts of the Control and Automation Engineering and Mechanical Engineering
courses in 2013.
BRAIN-BASED PROGRAMMING CONTINUED
Barbara Sabitzer (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)
Stefan Pasterk (Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria)
After the promising results of the pilot project "Brain-based Programming", a new teaching concept developed at our
university based on neurodidactical principles, the empirical study continues this year in three of seven practical courses
accompanying the lecture "Introduction to structured and object-based programming". The results obtained in the current
semester are promising, too: In the first exams the students of the experimental groups performed significantly better
than their colleagues in the traditional courses. This supports the hypothesis that we postulated at the beginning of the
pilot project in 2012: Considering the functioning of brain and memory as well as different neurodidactical principles for
lesson and task design enhances learning. This paper aims at describing the basics of the teaching concept "Brain-based
Programming", which is built on two pillars: (1) The teaching concept itself using methods, that can support the
functioning of the brain (e.g. discovery, social or collaborative learning) and facilitate the memory process by benefitting
from cognitive effects like primacy-recency, priming or modality; (2) The use of suitable and varied teaching material
that can be considered "brain-supporting" and integrates neurodidactical principles, e.g. video tutorials, step-by-step
instructions or sample solutions. Most of the material has been developed and tested already during the pilot project. As
female students seem to benefit even more from the new concept - in traditional courses they usually perform
significantly worse than their male colleagues - the paper takes a closer look to the observed gender differences from the
perspective of neurodidactics. Besides describing some neurobiological and psychological differences it discusses some
possible causes for the good achievement of female students in the experimental groups. Finally, the paper reports on the
promising empirical results of the current semester regarding learning outcomes as well as the students' and teachers'
feedback on the courses and the used material designed based on neurodidactical principles.
CRITICAL THINKING, PEER-WRITING, AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FEEDBACK
Åsa Cajander (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Mats Daniels (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Anne-Kathrin Peters (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Roger McDermott (Robert Gordon University, United Kingdom)
Critical thinking is one of the key competencies listed by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development), a central European Community organization, and is also mentioned as a learning outcome for higher
education by international organizations, such as ABET, ACM, and IEEE, as well as in numerous national and university
legislations regarding higher education degrees. The ability to communicate, not least in writing, is another important
competence our students are supposed to gain during their education. There is thus high agreement regarding the
importance of these competencies, but it is not clear how to achieve this. It is not uncommon to view competencies as
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something that develops as a side effect while learning the knowledge associated with a subject, e.g. computer science.
Our view is that it is vital to consciously set up learning environments where these competencies are addressed in terms
of knowledge, attitude, and skill. An example of a three stage writing assignment, in which feedback is a central
component, is presented and analyzed in this paper. The assignment is part of a semester-long Open-Ended Group
Project based course where students in an international collaboration write text for their joint report. The basics of the
assignment is that the students first write text for the report based on their work so far in the project and hand this in
together with a description how the text will fit into the overall structure of the report. This is commented on by another
student according to a rubric designed to help them give critical feedback in a constructive manner. The last stage is for
the students to write a reflection on the feedback given to them, especially insights into her/his writing skill. We also
provided guidance regarding how to reflect. Through analysis of the students writing our preliminary findings indicate
that the students had a clear awareness of what it takes to write a scientific report and saw the assignment as highly
valuable regarding their critical thinking and writing competencies. Comments to support this are: In the future, I would
like to do more peer reviewing. I see it very necessary for us as a group, and for each individual to improve even if their
focus attribute does not include writing. I am not simply learning for this course, but for life. The way the reviewer
provided the feedback was very easy to identify the points in which I should work upon, and as I mentioned in the
beginning, his comments includes critical thoughts that I make great use of. We argue that this assignment fits well with
our ambition to create an educational setting which promotes development of critical thinking. That this is important can
be illustrated by an episode from a lecture on competencies, where one student this year suddenly realized that the ability
to think creatively was not something one was born with, but that it actually was possible to learn how to improve this
competence.
ASM1: Novel Assessment Approaches
Chair: Jia-Ling Lin
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Patio 3
DESIGNING ASSESSMENTS THAT MIMIC EMPLOYMENT SCENARIOS, ENGAGE STUDENTS AND
EXPAND STUDENTS' SKILLS
Karl O. Jones (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
Kevin Johnston (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
Colin Robinson (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
Rebecca Bartlett (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
Marya Burgess (BBC, United Kingdom)
Graduates from our Media technology programmes (BSc in Audio and Music Production, and MSc in Broadcast and
Media Production) enter an extremely competitive employment market, driven by the challenge "what can you do". Thus
a competency-orientated syllabus was designed providing a breadth of knowledge and experience so students had wider
employment prospects through multi-skilling. It was recognised that this syllabus is valuable only if students graduate
with evidence of their skills, and have an appreciation of industry expectations. The paper describes the approach the
Programme Team have taken in creating assessments that simultaneously exposed students to employment relevant
skills, industrial processes and methods, and increased student engagement. Further, the paper provides qualitative
feedback from the students, highlighting how positive they feel about the approach, with feedback comments such as
"Not only did the module engage us, it gave us insight into the media world" and "I was shocked that my idea had
potential to go onto radio. I was extremely happy knowing someone in the BBC had actually taken time to review my
work!"
THE EVOLUTION OF A CRITERION REFERENCED SYSTEM OF GRADING FOR ENGINEERING SCIENCE
COURSEWORK
John Heywood (The University of Dublin, Ireland)
In a paper at FIE 2012 Carberry, Siniawski and Dionisio reported on a standards based grading exercise among
undergraduate engineering students in the United States. The study caused them to list a number of prinicples for the safe
functioning of standards based grading systems (SBG). These principles include: (1)the establishment of well-defined
course objectives, (2) the establishment of clear course grading policies, (3) the development of a detailed standards
achievement report and (4) the centering of the course lectures, assignments, and schedule on the standards achievement
report. Carberry, Siniawski and Dionisio (2012) did not find any other American evaluations of standards based grading
among engineering courses in their literature review. The purpose of this paper is to report a longitudinal study in course
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work in engineering science in a public examination in the United Kingdom. This longitudinal study supports standards
based grading systems and the principles outlined by Carberry and his colleagues. The development, implementation and
evaluation of this examination is described and supported by illustrative material. This paper, which is based on
published and unpublished material, begins with a review of changing patterns in terminological usage and explains the
different cultural circumstances in which the study was undertaken noting the differences between the United Kingdom
and United States systems of examinations and testing. It is followed by a description of the evolution of a semi-criterion
based (standards) referenced system and the effects of this on the regulations for the examination. It is noted in the paper,
that high levels of motivation were witnessed among students irrespective of levels of performance. In the evaluations,
observations of the project work showed the need to change the objectives related to creativity and to distinguish
between creativity and originality. The combination of grading of this kind and type of course work chosen certainly led
to the measurement of qualities that written examinations (tests) cannot assess and enhance the motivation of many
students.
DIGITAL INK FOR COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT OF COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
Ana Paula Ambrosio (Federal University of Goias, Brazil)
Cleon Pereira, Jr. (Federal University of Goias, Brazil)
Fouad Georges (University Salgado de Oliveira, Brazil)
Cognitive testing is concerned with quantitative and qualitative evaluation of an individual's intellectual functioning in
its broad sense. Tests for evaluating cognitive components are based on submitting the subject to a given task and then
assessing performance according to an established set of reference parameters. In order to analyze subject's behavior and
test results, a software tool was developed based upon digital ink technology, which permits the digitalization of the
assessment procedure, from the undertaking of the test to the production of the assessment results. By doing so, the test
procedure is computerized and its data is saved in InkML format and processed to analyze tasks previously defined by
evaluator. We have used this tool to develop a Computational Thinking test defined within the Cattell-Horn-Carroll CHC
framework of intelligence. Further investigating the relationship between fluid intelligence and computational thinking
allows a better understanding of the main set of cognitive skills which need to be developed by students and
professionals that aim to work in this area. Moreover, it is suggested that assessments, independent of their context, may
benefit from using the InkML tool, mainly due to the richer set of information that can be collected.
ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT USING AUGMENTED REALITY IN ENGINEERING DEGREE
COURSE
Albert Sánchez (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Barcelona Tech, Spain)
Ernest Redondo (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Barcelona Tech, Spain)
David Fonseca (Ramon Llull University, Spain)
Isidro Navarro (Ramon Llull University, Spain)
The main goal of this report is to address the implementation of Augmented Reality (AR) technology in a university
teaching context using different mobile devices. The specific contents and evaluation methodologies have been
developed in the field of building engineering degree, where this technology offers potential advantages in the spatial
training processes. The objective is to evaluate the system usability and measure academic performance improvement by
using Hand-Held AR (HHAR) in educational environments related with the field of architecture, civil and building
engineering. This method is validated through a case study where building engineering students were able to visualize a
virtual complex models process overlapped onto a real environment. The results obtained from the students' PRE and
POST tests as well as questionnaire responses show high qualification levels in effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.
In addition, a significant improvement was found in the overall performance of the students of the experimental group.
AN APPROACH TO ASSESSMENT OF KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION BY USING THREE-DIMENSIONAL
VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Eunice Nunes (Federal University of Mato Grosso, Brazil)
Romero Tori (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Fatima Nunes (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Licinio Roque (University of Coimbra, Portugal)
Virtual Reality (VR) systems are a trend in the educational field. We can observe in academic literature that VR
applications are widely adopted as Three-Dimensional Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLEs) in different fields of
knowledge. However, one of the discussions highlighted in this context refers to the contribution that these environments
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really offer for student knowledge acquisition. In this scenario, this paper presents the results obtained from an
experimental study conducted with high school students interested in learning Plane and Spatial Geometry. The
volunteers explored the 3D VLE applied in the experiment, in which it is possible to create and visualize spatial figures
from selected plane figures. The interactions in the virtual environment were registered for statistic analysis of the
interaction level of participants. To assess the level of knowledge acquisition, a Theoretical Model for Assessment of
Knowledge Acquisition was applied. The results of the experiment conducted in this research indicated that it is possible
to evaluate learning in 3D VLE by applying the Model abovementioned and showed that participants gained knowledge
about the object of study using 3D VLE learning method. Thus, it was possible to verify if the 3D VLEs are really
contributing to the learner's knowledge acquisition.
CUR3: Civil, Chemical, and Mechanical Engineering Curricula Design
Chair: Alicia Triviño
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Doblon
EVALUATION OF A NEW APPROACH TO LIFE-LONG LEARNING IN CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
ENGINEERING CURRICULA
Diane Bondehagen (Florida Gulf Coast University, USA)
Claude Villiers (Florida Gulf Coast University, USA)
Robert O'Neill (Florida Gulf Coast University, USA)
Lifelong learning (LLL) has been long recognized by educators as a valuable attribute that can be an impetus for
improved student learning. The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) criteria (2000) require that
engineering programs produce "graduates who pursue life-long learning through continuing education and/or advanced
degrees in engineering or related fields". Many colleges and universities have incorporated LLL into their program
outcomes. However, it remains a challenge to identify effective methods to integrate and assess LLL into the engineering
curriculum. Three years ago, two faculty (one Civil and one Environmental) at XXX, redesigned two of their courses.
They developed a new approach to respond to ABET LLL requirements. This year this new program has been
implemented by additional faculty from other institutions. Data and surveys from nearly 400 students and associated
faculty were collected. The faculty survey identifies LLL approaches that faculty have implemented in their classrooms.
Results obtained from the data analysis support the effectiveness of this approach; the students respond well to working
with real life challenges, incorporating more critical thinking and research in their work.
DEVELOPING COMPUTER BASED LABORATORY EXERCISES FOR AN MEP COURSE IN A
CONSTRUCTION SCIENCE AND MANAGEMENT PROGRAM
Rogelio Palomera-Arias (University of Texas at San Antonio, USA)
Mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems in buildings are becoming a greater proportion of construction costs and
building operating expenses. As such, MEP systems are required content in the curricula of construction programs. The
current paper describes the implementation of computer-based laboratory exercises covering plan reading, material
quantity take-off's, and basic material and labor estimating for MEP building systems using a commercially available
take-off software package. Students were surveyed to assess their understanding of the course subjects at the beginning
and the end of the term, and the survey results were used as an indicator of the effectiveness of the laboratory exercises
in supporting the learning objectives of the courses. Finally, the paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of
performing the computer-based exercises as opposed to traditional paper-based exercises, and discusses future
opportunities to incorporate other software packages, such as Building Information Modeling, into the practical exercises
of the MEP courses.
DATA-DRIVEN CURRICULUM REDESIGN IN CIVIL ENGINEERING
Debra Fowler (Texas A&M University, USA)
Whitney Anthony (Texas A&M University, USA)
Nathaniel Poling (Texas A&M University, USA)
Jim Morgan (Texas A&M University, USA)
Kelly Brumbelow (Texas A&M University, USA)
Fundamental concept gaps in math, science, and physics as well as other gaps students and faculty perceive in the
curriculum, can have crucial implications for faculty teaching courses and for students progressing through a civil
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engineering program. Faculty noted anecdotally that students were getting midway through the curriculum and having
extreme difficulty with concepts in certain courses. A data gathering process was designed to identify the perceived
concept gaps as well as the intentional redundancies and this paper presents the gathered data and explains their
influence on proposed changes to the curriculum. The data collection included: faculty and student surveys regarding
conceptual gaps, student helpdesk survey, student pre-requisite survey, student supplemental resource analysis, and
student focus groups as senior exit interviews. Survey format was both a qualitative and quantitative. Program learning
outcomes were clarified and performance criteria defined for each outcome at several developmental levels. Conclusions
and implications for civil engineering curriculum redesign and curriculum design in general are discussed.
ENGINEERING A DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC COMMUNICATION COURSE IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
Elif Eda Miskioglu (The Ohio State University, USA)
David Wood (The Ohio State University, USA)
The ability to communicate technical information is a critical engineering skill underemphasized in many programs. A
base for successful technical communication is often established through a required course early in engineering
curriculum. However, these courses are frequently taught by English/communication instructors, and the content is
neither integrated into subsequent curriculum nor applied in an engineering-specific context. While technical courses
may incorporate writing assignments, evaluation focuses on the technical content, not presentation. It is presentation,
however, that can distinguish young engineers professionally. We have developed a discipline-specific pilot elective
course that focuses on personal development of communication skills through writing exercises, presentations, and
professional material preparation. Emphasis is on being able to create appropriate communication materials with
thorough understanding of audience and purpose. While originally listed as a one-time offering, the course is now slated
for Spring 2015, ideally becoming an established component of our department and/or the college in time. The
perception that engineers are poor communicators continues to exist, suggesting that young engineers need better
developed communication skills. We believe this course is the start of a curriculum that better integrates an emphasis on
technical and professional communication for engineers, a topic of growing importance as communication methods
evolve.
IMPLEMENTING A COMPETITIVE LEARNING FRAMEWORK IN CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
DEGREE IN SPAIN AND ITS APPLICABILITY ON AN INTER-UNIVERSITY SCENARIO
Alicia Triviño (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
Ernesto De la Rubia (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
Francisco-Angel Moreno (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
Francisco Javier Lopez-Martinez (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
Juan José Sánchez-Martínez (Universidad de Malaga, Spain)
In the degree of Chemical Engineering at the University of M´alaga (Spain), some subjects that complete the curricula of
students are perceived by them as unnecessary for their future career. This is the case of the subject "Electronics and
Electrical Engineering". In order to motivate these students, we have implemented a competitive framework: Students
are gathered into teams and compete along several tasks. Those students completing the activities correctly obtain some
additional points that are added to the mark of their final exam. Moreover, there is a ranking for the teams and the
winners get some extra points. Our preliminary results shows that the students find this methodology both appealing and
motivating. However, the teams need to be carefully selected so that the students can participate even when their
colleagues have left the subject. In our work in progress, we are increasing the competition level by including students
from the University of Granada (Spain); hence, one of the key aspects is how to design the activities appropriately in an
inter-University scenario.
DIS2: Assessing Student Success Factors in Distance Learning
Chair: Anurima Chatterjee
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Escudo
RECOMMENDING LEARNING OBJECTS BASED ON UTILITY AND LEARNING STYLE
Grace Borges (UFABC, Brazil)
Itana Stiubiener (UFABC, Brazil)
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The information and communication technologies (ICT) have become increasingly present in education, either as support
for classroom learning, whether in distance learning (DL). Among these technologies, software known as Learning
Management Systems - LMS are used for better student-teacher communication and especially for providing
instructional materials, activities, assessments and other resources to provide collaborative activities. Despite the large
number of LMS' systems available nowadays, these environments and its tools are not always useful in the teachinglearning process. Moreover, every individual possesses a different personal learning style, or, in other words, absorbs,
processes, and transforms information into knowledge in different ways. When using these differences to recommend
learning objects, we allow students access to educational resources that are more adequate to their teaching-learning
processes. This article presents a system that utilizes a recommendation technique based on utility, or usefulness, to
recommend learning objects, stemming from three aspects: the subject the one wishes to learn, one's personal
preferences and one's learning style. At the end of this article the results of the experiment will be described, which
demonstrate the importance of this approach, as well as future projects.
WHAT IS LEARNING PRESENCE AND WHAT CAN IT TELL US ABOUT SUCCESS IN LEARNING ONLINE?
Ruth E H Wertz (Valparaiso University, USA)
The Community of Inquiry (COI) framework focused on the roles of course design and facilitation (Teaching Presence),
students' sense of community and belonging (Social Presence), and cognitive engagement with the course content
(Cognitive Presence) in developing valuable learning experiences in primarily text-based learning environments. The
role of students' self-regulatory processes (Learning Presence) along with the original constructs was proposed in recent
years. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to confirm the measurement and of TP, SP, LP, and CP. Hierarchical linear
regression was used to evaluate the relationship of LP to CP, controlling for variance already explained by TP and SP.
The two-step hierarchical linear regression showed that TP (alpha = .90) and SP (alpha = .91) predicted 52.0 percent of
the variance in CP (alpha = .87), R-square = 0.496, F(2, 248) = 121.82, p < .001 in the first model. In the second model,
LP (alpha = .79) predicted a significant portion of the variance in CP beyond what was explained by TP and SP, delta Rsquare = 0.090, F(1, 247) = 15.83, p < .001. Results from this study suggest that Learning Presence adds value to the
COI framework and warrants further investigation.
SOCIAL, COGNITIVE, TEACHING, AND METACOGNITIVE PRESENCE IN GENERAL AND FOCUS GROUP
DISCUSSION: CASE STUDY IN BLENDED E-LEARNING LINEAR ALGEBRA CLASS
Kasiyah Junus (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
Lia Sadita (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
Heru Suhartanto (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
Online discussion forum in mathematics teaching still needs to be investigated in order that educators can facilitate
effective students online learning experience. The challenges faced in teaching Linear Algebra at the Faculty of
Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia are that students are freshmen who are used to being dependent learners; and
there is a time restriction to face-to-face interaction, while this course requires high interaction between students and
instructor. To enhance communication beyond the classroom, we have implemented a blended-mode in the teachinglearning process (face-to-face and online learning). For the purpose of the study, two types of discussion were utilized:
general (class) discussion and focus group discussion forums. This study used message as the unit of analysis. We found
that students tend to exhibit teaching presence more intense in small focus-group discussion than in general forum. It is
also interesting to note that the students regulated their cognition more in focus-group forum than in the general one.
A LEARNER PROFILE ANALYSIS BASED ON COMPETENCES TO IMPROVE ONLINE TEACHING
STRATEGIES
Ana-Elena Guerrero-Roldán (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
Elena Rodriguez-Gonzalez (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
European Universities are developing Bachelor degrees according the European Higher Education Area which focuses
on the acquisition of a set of cross curricula and specific competences. The educational models are now centered on
activities as a means for learners to achieve new competences improving their performance and skills. The purpose of
this article is to analyze the online learner profile, through an initial assessment, in order to know if there is a gap
between the expected competences and the real ones. This study focuses on some online courses with a set of specific
Computer Engineering competences related to Math, Logic and Programming. Using a mixed methodology that
combines a qualitative and quantitative data, the online learner profile is analyzed. The paper provides a detailed
description about findings, seeking causes and providing guidelines, for improving the learning process based on
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competences. To conclude, it is introduced some recommendations and learning strategies to teachers in order to reduce
the gap.
BRIDGING ACHIEVEMENT GAPS AMONGST SCHOOL STUDENTS THROUGH A TECHNOLOGY-BASED
BLENDED LEARNING MODEL
Anurima Chatterjee (Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd., India)
Pranav Kothari (Educational Initiatives Pvt. Ltd., India)
Through international and national assessments, it has been found that there are huge learning gaps among elementary
school students in India. Technology-led initiatives can provide scalable channels of delivery of high quality educational
inputs. So far the research on technology in education has mostly focused on digitizing content, hardware (such as
electronic "Smart boards"), tablets, etc and has concluded mixed results. This paper evaluates the impact of using an
intelligent tutoring system in remedial centres of education for children living in the slums of India. This solution focuses
on how technology can bring change while centralizing quality and yet disseminating at scale at affordable costs with
high utilization - an approximate cost of US$10 per month per child with 80% utilization of capacity. This can also be
replicated in other parts of the world, once program is converted into the mother tongue language. This has huge
implications from a policy perspective. With the positive evidence emerging on the impact of technology-based adaptive
learning systems, the government can complement their efforts to support schools with computers and Internet with the
provision of proven adaptive learning systems to have a real impact on the learning of the children.
EER/SCL: Designing and Refining Reflection Activities for Engineering Education
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: El Escorial
DESIGNING AND REFINING REFLECTION ACTIVITIES FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Jennifer Turns (University of Washington, USA)
Brook Sattler (University of Washington, USA)
Anette Kolmos (Aalborg University, Denmark)
This special session will provide participants with the opportunity to: (1) gain a deeper understanding of the nature,
significance, and complexities associated with the use of reflection in engineering education, (2) engage with other
engineering educators around the issues and challenges of reflection, (3) become familiar with a framework for
characterizing reflection and identifying reflection activities, and (4) work with other engineering educators to
design/develop reflection activities that may be appropriate to specific educational contexts.
EER6: Engineering Education Research Methods and Methodologies
Chair: Adam R Carberry
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Aranjuez
USING REALTIME TRANSCRIPTION TO DO MEMBER-CHECKING DURING INTERVIEWS
Mel Chua (Purdue University, USA)
Robin Adams (Purdue University, USA)
Member-checking is a perennial problem for qualitative researchers, who struggle to get busy subjects to review
conversations that have already faded in their memories. With a technology-savvy subject pool, such as those found in
many engineering education studies, another option appears: realtime transcription. Trained stenographers can produce
verbatim or near-verbatim full-text captures of even rapid technical conversations, giving interviewers and their subjects
the opportunity to see and review a transcript of their conversation that is 5-10 seconds behind the actual conversation.
By making the physical common artifact of a transcript available in the fieldwork location and during the fieldwork time,
the option of "grounded indigenous coding" opens up: all participants can engage in grounded (based on exact transcript
wording) coding in an indigenous (during-the-time-of-the-fieldwork) setting. As a bonus, the need for a separate
member-check transcript review is eliminated. This paper explains the procedures and considerations behind employing
grounded indigenous coding in a study, including the setup details of realtime transcription and the
tradeoffs/disadvantages of pursuing such an approach. Questions of researcher/subject positionality, the role of
transcription as a research method, and subject reactions to the process are among the topics explored.
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WELL, THAT DIDN'T WORK A TROUBLED ATTEMPT TO QUANTITATIVELY MEASURE ENGINEERING
STUDENTS' LIFELONG LEARNING DEVELOPMENT OVER TWO YEARS OF COLLEGE
Jonathan Stolk (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Robert Martello (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Kathleen Koehler (LASPAU Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas, USA)
Katherine Chen (California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, USA)
Roberta Herter (California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, USA)
Despite the recognized importance of self-directed and lifelong learning for today's engineering graduates, the processes
by which learners become self-directed, and the roles that pedagogy and learning climate play in these processes, remain
unclear. To better understand students' growth as lifelong learners, we conducted a two-year pilot study of engineering
students at two institutions. The study approach was based on established motivation theory, as well as social-cognitive
frameworks for self-regulated learning. Quantitative results revealed that students at both institutions reported
autonomous motivations and an emphasis on learning over grades - encouraging indicators of lifelong learning. Students
showed positive beliefs about learning, with both groups endorsing constructive over reproducible knowledge, dynamic
over fixed learner ability, social over individual learning, and relatively high comfort with ambiguity. Unfortunately, the
quantitative portion of the study did not reveal many significant temporal changes in students' self-directed learning
development. In this paper, we explore possible reasons for the lack of significant quantitative temporal shifts, from both
theoretical and methodological perspectives. We examine questions of survey construct relevance, time scales for
change, situational versus contextual level data, and group size. Insights gained from this pilot-scale study may serve to
inform future investigations of lifelong learning.
FROM METHODS TO METHODOLOGY: REFLECTION ON KEEPING THE PHILOSOPHICAL
COMMITMENTS OF INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS
James Huff (Harding University, USA)
Jonathan Smith (Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom)
Brent Jesiek (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
William Graziano (Purdue University, USA)
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
This paper details the transition of one researcher in his journey from attending to the methods of research to identifying
and enacting the methodology of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). In the backdrop of this paper is a larger
qualitative study that is employing IPA to understand a rich picture of how engineering student become engineers,
particularly by attending to the fuzzy boundaries between technical and social features of this identity. To ground the
discussion of the paper, we draw on a transcript from a single interview in this study conducted with Kevin, a graduating
mechanical engineer. We transparently share a reflexive account of conducting IPA research in order to introduce IPA as
an excellent research tool for open areas of engineering education research. Further, our goals are to instill confidence in
novice qualitative researchers as they embark on the arduous but rewarding path of conducting engineering education
research using qualitative methods.
APPLICATION OF DESIGN RESEARCH METHODOLOGY TO A CONTEX-SENSITIVE STUDY IN
ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Rémy Crepon (Universidad Complutense Madrid (UCM), Spain)
In this paper, we describe and analyze how design research methodology has been implemented in one research project
in engineering education. In a first part, we describe the research project in engineering education, we explain why we
decided to apply the design-based methodology and how we did it. In a second part, we consider the methodology itself,
and in the particular context of the study. First, we analyze the interactions between the instructors, the teachers, the
students, the researcher, the designer and the object of design. We argue that a theoretical framework is necessary to
inform the logic of the study. Second, we discuss how design research can be used to generate instructional design
methods that are sensitive to the context. Third, whereas design methodology is dealing with purposive and small scale
sampling, we consider phenomenography research to be an appropriate continuation of the design research, rather than
statistical generalization.
EVALUATION OF A SIMULATION PLATFORM FOR INTERACTION TRAINING: A MULTI-PHASED
METHODOLOGY
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Miguel Monasor (Lero, University of Limerick, Ireland)
Aurora Vizcaíno (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain)
Mario Piattini (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain)
John Noll (University of Limerick, Ireland)
Sarah Beecham (University of Limerick, Ireland)
The evaluation of educational approaches is frequently challenging as it involves humans and requires the consideration
of several angles depending on the educational objectives. On occasions, these objectives involve academic and
industrial environments, thus implying additional challenges. Education in Global Software Development (GSD) has
recently became important for companies that offer GSD training in specific GSD areas such as cultural, linguistic,
leadership, negotiation or communication skills. We have developed a training framework based on simulation with the
aim of providing GSD interaction training. This framework addresses various kinds of problems related to
communication barriers. However, discovering the needs and requirements of both academia and industry is a key
success factor when seeking an effective educational solution. This paper presents a multi-phased methodology that has
been employed to: 1) research the training requirements in the field; 2) design the training framework based on these
findings; 3) evaluate the adequacy of the framework using an Expert Feedback study and a subsequent Heuristic
Evaluation; 4) prove that the framework can actually generate learning; 5) conduct a market-focused study to evaluate
the commercial options of the framework and 6) define future work to fulfil commercial requirements and improve
effectiveness.
FAC3: Faculty Development: Initiatives and Research
Chair: Uma Garimella
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: La Granja
MOVING TOWARDS OUTCOME-BASED EDUCATION - FACULTY DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES
Uma Garimella (Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College, India)
Divya Nalla (Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College, India)
The National Accreditation Board in India has recently adopted the Washington Accord Graduate Attributes and has
mandated all colleges offering the Bachelor's program in Engineering to prepare accreditation based on Outcome-based
Education (OBE). Given that the Indian school education, by and large, is not outcome-based, it is quite challenging to
implement OBE at college level. Both the students and faculty do not have a frame of reference for this type of learning.
The college whose case study we are presenting does not have autonomy in curriculum and in student admission process.
We present in this paper our challenges, particularly in preparing the faculty to teach using OBE, as we believe they are
the key elements. We have evolved a system by trying well researched best practices and customizing them to our
situational factors. Some components of the system are in a nascent stage. We present the basis of the OBE in section I.
The Indian engineering education system is briefly described in section II to prepare the ground for our situational
factors in section III. We outline the initiatives at our college and some conclusions from these initiatives later in the
paper.
FOSTERING TEACHER MOTIVATION FOR TRAINING USING MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES
Zoraida Callejas (University of Granada, Spain)
Belen Prados-Suarez (University of Granada, Spain)
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are receiving increased attention as a resource for informal educational
experiences; however their possibilities for teacher training have still not been studied in detail. This paper
contextualizes our work in progress to identify several guidelines to design MOOCs that help to motivate teachers for
pre-service and in-service training. In our ongoing research we are conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis of
the data available from several of these courses, from which we intend to identify the relevant strategies. In particular,
we discuss how due to their social nature and versatility, MOOCs have the potential to become a driver that facilitates
teacher social training and autonomous professional advancement, offering a flexible and adaptive environment for
learning and innovation that can be of great help to foster a sense of belonging to a community where teachers can
collaborate and share the perspectives of other professionals with common interests.
WHAT ARE THE SIGNIFICANT FACTORS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED THE ADOPTION OF MOODLE BY
STAFF IN A MĀORI TERTIARY INSTITUTION?
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Tane R Kaka (Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, New Zealand)
This study addresses the question, "What are the significant factors that have influenced the adoption of Moodle by staff
in a Māori tertiary institution?" To help answer this principal question an additional six sub-questions were used to
provide a deeper understanding and clarity for the adoption. A mixed research methodology was used comprising of an
online survey and a series of interviews. Specific factors were identified that were influencing the adoption of Moodle as
well as identifying some limitations that lend further opportunity for building on to the research. Such limitations meant
that all staff except for teaching was not included in the research but in time may include a student's perspective along
with allied or administrative staff. This study concludes that though Moodle has been used by the organization since
2005 there is still some way to go in providing solutions for training, encouragement from management, innovative use
of Moodle, traditional verses non-traditional and maintenance of online resources.
THE LIGHTHOUSE PROJECT: RESEARCHING EDUCATOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR
DIVERSITY IN COMPUTING
Kathryn Cooke (University of Virginia, USA)
Joanne Cohoon (University of Virginia, USA)
James Cohoon (University of Virginia, USA)
The Lighthouse Project provides educators with critical professional development that promotes diversity through active
recruiting and retention through a MOOC (massive open online course). This course concentrates on delivering both
pedagogical skills as well as recruiting and retention through its course content. The learning content is specifically
designed using the Keller ARCS Model of Motivation, which focuses on increasing motivation in four specific areas
(Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) and thereby increasing learning outcomes. The project employs a
unique and innovative MOOC design also employing the ARCS Model of Motivation, utilizing both individualized and
cohort driven instruction, synchronous and asynchronous communication, and building communities of practice through
social media, a rarity in online instruction. By examining the participant data using the motivational theory, this project
seeks to discover best practices to increase learning outcomes and retention for MOOCs and, by extension, increasing the
numbers of women and under-represented minorities in STEM fields.
THE QUEST FOR THE MYTHICAL PHOENIX: ATTENDEE NARRATIVES AT AN ENGINEERING
EDUCATION FACULTY WORKSHOP
Mel Chua (Purdue University, USA)
Emily Dringenberg (Purdue University, USA)
This work-in-progress paper summarizes the first year of a multi-year project on conceptual change in faculty
development. Faculty development workshops are often designed to share best practices that participants can implement
at their home institutions. However, the influence of these workshops on participants is rarely studied beyond the use of
short exit surveys, often with highly targeted and quantitative questions that leave little room for responses on faculty
experiences that may fall outside the workshop's explicit learning objectives. This paper depicts an exploratory
qualitative study focused on participant experiences at a week-long faculty workshop on innovation in engineering
education. External researchers utilized individual and group interviews and ethnographic observations to collect data
about how participants' perceptions of workshop themes changed throughout the week. Data was analyzed using open
and iterative coding in real time throughout the workshop. Analysis was shared and member-checked by workshop
participants and facilitators, and further data collection and analysis is ongoing as part of a 6-to-12 month follow-up
study. Grounded in over 20 hours of interviews and observations, this paper utilizes graphic novel and fable formats
alongside more traditional scholarly writing to illustrate its study findings. Preliminary analysis indicates that attendees
enter the workshop identifying as good teachers on a quest to find the "Mythical Phoenix," a legendary way of educating
engineers with a reputation for being "new" and "innovative, even if they are not entirely clear on what that may look
like. Participants enter with expectations of harnessing the "Mythical Phoenix" to take home, but must adjust their
thinking when they come to see the phoenix as the painted turkey it actually is. Alternating between the perspective of a
student (in the workshop) and a teacher (at their home institution) contributes to the changes faculty articulate in their
thinking throughout the workshop experience. They eventually realize their job is not to take home someone else's
phoenix, but rather to focus on adapting general concepts to improve their existing home environment.
INT: Special Session: Potential Futures for Engineering Education through Scenario Planning
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: El Jardin
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SPECIAL SESSION: POTENTIAL FUTURES FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION THROUGH SCENARIO
PLANNING
Jeffrey E Froyd (Texas A&M University, USA)
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
Kishore Prahallad (International Institute of Information Technology, India)
Euan Lindsay (Charles Sturt University, Australia)
Burton Dicht (IEEE, USA)
Various technological, economic, and social developments may radically reshape engineering and computer science
education in the next 20 to 30 years. Leaders in engineering education, such as IEEE, that play key roles must decide
how they will innovate and support initiatives to improve engineering education. Decisions must be guided by both
historical trends and potential future evolutions of engineering education. Since the future cannot be predicted, the
organizations may be interested in methodologies to help make decisions. IEEE's Curriculum and Pedagogical
Committee (CPC), which is charged with helping IEEE make solid decisions, engaged in a scenario planning exercise to
help understand how various influences and trajectories could influence engineering education. Scenario planning
methodology has been used by many organizations making long-term investments, to understand how future
developments could be taken into account when making key decisions. The purpose of the workshop is to allow
participants to experience some aspects of the scenario planning methodology and to compare their results with the
results generated by the CPC.
PRE2: Programs and Activities in Precollege Education
Chair: Rosa Maria Vasconcelos
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Comendador
DISSECT: AN EXPERIMENT IN INFUSING COMPUTATIONAL THINKING IN K-12 SCIENCE CURRICULA
Kenza Arraki (New Mexico State University, USA)
Kasha Blair (New Mexico State University, USA)
Taylor Burgett (New Mexico State University, USA)
Jessica Greenling (New Mexico State University, USA)
Jessica Haebe (New Mexico State University, USA)
G. Lee (New Mexico State University, USA)
Amanda Peel (New Mexico State University, USA)
Victor Szczepanski (New Mexico State University, USA)
Enrico Pontelli (New Mexico State University, USA)
Sarah Hug (University of Colorado at Boulder, USA)
This paper summarizes the design and preliminary outcomes from the deployment of the DISSECT (DIScovering
SciencE through Computational Thinking) project. The project has two primary objectives. On one hand, it aims at
revitalizing the teaching of traditional K-12 science concepts through the introduction of tools and concepts drawn from
the field of computing, enabling the use of interactive and constructive methods to exemplify and explore scientific
materials. On the other hand, the project explores how the teaching of sciences could become a vehicle to engage
students in the learning of computational thinking, stimulating their interest towards this discipline and providing them
with a baseline preparation to facilitate access and success in more formal computer science courses. The core approach
followed by DISSECT is to establish teams of graduate students and K-12 instructors, to jointly develop new materials
that combine computational thinking with traditional scientific content. The paper reports the design of the project, the
overall structure of its implementation, along with a preliminary evaluation of the outcomes. Pointers to future work is
also provided.
CLASSROOM MAKERSPACES: IDENTIFYING THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES
Avneet Hira (Purdue University, USA)
Cole Joslyn (Purdue University, USA)
Morgan Hynes (Purdue University, USA)
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This paper aims at introducing, identifying opportunities, presenting a vision and stakeholder driven challenges regarding
the concept of classroom makerspaces. With the engineering design process at its core, the discussions are in the purview
of K-college engineering classrooms. So as to provide a background and elucidate upon accomplishments till date, we
first shed light on the history, elements and evolution of makerspaces. Then we present the motivation for this work
rooted in educational theory and also put forth our vision for classroom makerspaces. The present day opportunities
arising from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and expectations from science and engineering classrooms
are then identified which serve as further motivation for this practice. The subsequent section on challenges is the result
of a brainstorm by our team of engineering education researchers, who are well acquainted with the concept of classroom
makerspaces and bring to the table a diverse set of experiences and knowhow from academia, education and engineering.
This paper is aimed at aiding the academic community to understand these challenges and subsequently address them
with future studies and practices, so as to be in a better position for inclusion of classroom makerspaces in educational
institutions.
SM4T: SCRATCH MOOC FOR TEENS A PIONEER PILOT EXPERIENCE IN URUGUAY
Inés Friss de Kereki (Universidad ORT Uruguay, Uruguay)
Víctor Paulós (Universidad ORT Uruguay, Uruguay)
SM4T: Scratch MOOC for Teens" represents a novel joint initiative developed by Universidad ORT Uruguay and Plan
CEIBAL. CEIBAL is a governmental project of Uruguay which includes, among other projects, the distribution of free
laptops and free access to Internet to students and teachers of primary and secondary public schools. We designed and
implemented a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), oriented to 1000+ teenagers students. This MOOC aims to
promote the development of procedural thinking and problem-solving skills through learning the basics of computer
programming building applications (videogames) using Scratch, a programming language designed for young people,
developed by MIT's Media Lab. To be able to attend this course, no previous knowledge or background on computer
programming, or use of the Scratch tool is required. The course is entirely implemented using Plan CEIBAL's CREA
platform, offered to students through CEIBAL's computers via Internet. The first trial was conducted from October to
November, 2013. In this article we present the characteristics of our MOOC in their context, the detailed course
description, initial results, good practices, lessons learned, and some conclusions.
INCREASING 11TH GRADER'S INTEREST IN STEM MAJORS VIA A NAE GRAND CHALLENGE:
SECURING CYBERSPACE-THEMED PROJECT
Donald Fehlinger, Jr. (Drexel University, USA)
Jessica Ward (Drexel University, USA)
Adam Fontecchio (Drexel University, USA)
This paper will explore a project associated with the National Science Foundation STEM GK-12 Program at Drexel
University titled "Catalyzing STEM Education via the NAE Grand Challenges (http://www.engineeringchallenges.org)
that serves to address the need of more STEM workers in the United States. Specifically, the Drexel NSF STEM GK-12
program pairs ten College of Engineering graduate students (Fellows) with ten School District of Philadelphia high
school teachers to help introduce engineering concepts to high school students through the context of the National
Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges. This work in progress explores a high school project facilitated by a
fellow/teacher partnership at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, an all-girls urban school. There are about 80 general
education 11th grade students in environmental science classes participating in this project. The goal of the project is to
increase awareness and interest for STEM fields in the students as well as increase awareness of privacy issues relating
to electronic media/devices.
EMBEDDING ANDROID SIGNAL PROCESSING APPS IN A HIGH SCHOOL MATH CLASS - AN RET
PROJECT
Mahesh Banavar (Arizona State University, USA)
Deepta Rajan (Arizona State University, USA)
Andrew Strom (Corona Del Sol High School, USA)
Photini Spanias (Arizona State University, USA)
Xue Zhang (Arizona State University, USA)
Henry Braun (Arizona State University, USA)
Andreas Spanias (Arizona State University, USA)
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This work in progress paper describes activities as part of a collaborative NSF RET (Research Experiences for Teachers)
project with ASU and Corona Del Sol (CDS) High School in Tempe. The participant from CDS High School is Mr.
Andrew Strom, from the Department of Mathematics. The objective of this project is to develop and design mobile
content for introducing engineering technology to high school students. More specifically, we intend to work on a
sequence of modules that will establish connections between high school mathematics and physics to modern
technologies associated with smart phones, iPods and other high-tech products. The participants of the project will use
the previously developed AJDSP (for Android devices) and iJDSP (for iPhones and iPads) apps to facilitate this process.
This software will be accompanied by modules that will be adapted for dissemination in high school math and physics
classes, and will include demonstration of applications such as noise removal, the photoplethysmogram (PPG), and a
step-counter, using modules from AJDSP. Additionally, modules have been developed that have been embedded in math
classes. We now describe the sequence of events at one of the sessions where a new AJDSP module was deployed. The
theme of this session was graphical interpretation of mathematical expressions. At the beginning of the session, the high
school students were given an overview of the activities, and what they were to expect from the session. Students were
given a pre-quiz to provide us with a baseline. Following that, the students were presented with concepts such as
sinusoids, piece-wise signals, and how to visualize them. The class was then divided into two groups: One group was
presented with a post-quiz first and then the hands-on activities; the other group of students worked on the hands-on
activities first, and then responded to the post-quiz. This allowed us to evaluate the effectiveness of the app-based handson activities, and discount the effects of the presentation. The team will continue to work with Mr. Strom to develop
other similar modules. The project also has also provided an opportunity for Mr. Strom to be exposed to research in this
area. This project will give him an opportunity to study our research, and distill it in such a way that it is suitable for high
school students. Such an approach will bring signal processing concepts to a high school environment, as well as
disseminate research results in DSP to a broader community. Anticipated benefits of the project include creating positive
attitudes towards STEM areas that will help recruit high school students and minorities in engineering, math and science
fields. After an initial pilot study and assessments at CDS High School, these activities will be disseminated to other high
schools. In order to obtain feedback from high school students and teachers, we will hold workshops and collect
assessment results. These results will also provide us assessments about the effectiveness of the project, and allow us to
make modifications to the project as necessary.
SBM2: Student Motivation
Chair: Margaret D. Sullivan
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Patio 1
RESULTS OF A LARGE-SCALE, MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL STUDY OF UNDERGRADUATE RETENTION IN
COMPUTING
Lecia Barker (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Christopher L Hovey (Northeastern University, USA)
Leisa Thompson (University of Virginia, USA)
The recent upsurge in enrollments in computing means that student attrition has a substantial opportunity cost. Admitting
a student who leaves both reduces graduation yield and prevents another equally qualified student from enrolling.
Professors cannot change the background of students, but they can control many aspects of student experience in the
computing major. This paper presents the results of a study to understand strongest predictors of retention in
undergraduate computing based on a large-scale survey administered in 14 U.S. institutions. Although some factors have
more influence for certain demographic groups, findings from this data set suggest that some teaching practices have
more power for predicting retention in computing including: relevant and meaningful assignments, examples, and
curriculum; faculty interaction with students; student collaboration on programming assignments; and for male students,
pace and workload expectations relative to existing experience. Other interactions such as those that a student has with
teaching assistants or peers in extracurricular activities seem to have less value for predicting retention. Faculty would be
wise to protect their enrollment investments by inspecting course themes, assignments, and examples for student interest
and ensuring that students have many opportunities to interact with faculty both in and outside of class.
FIRST GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENTS' ACCESS TO ENGINEERING SOCIAL CAPITAL: TOWARDS
DEVELOPING A RICHER UNDERSTANDING OF IMPORTANT ALTERS
Aubrie L Pfirman (Clemson University, USA)
Matthew Miller (Clemson University, USA)
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Gerardo Santana Alvarez (Clemson University, USA)
Julie Martin (Clemson University, USA)
The overarching goal of our collective body of work is to develop a conceptual model of engineering students'
development and utilization of social capital based on mixed-methods research. This paper makes a significant
contribution to this long-term goal by utilizing qualitative methods to achieve a deeper understanding of first generation
college students' engineering-related academic and career choices. This paper presents results from interviews with
eleven first generation college students attending five institutions in the United States. The interviews focused on
important individuals (alters) in the students' social networks who provided resources and information pertinent to
participants' decisions to enter and persist in engineering. Additionally, our findings describe the types of resources
provided by the alters. Our current findings from this qualitative analysis identify additional important alters that were
previously unexplored by our quantitative results. The results of this work are applicable to engineering educators and
administration for the recruitment and retention of first generation college students.
USING REFLECTIVE PRACTICES TO REDUCE DROPOUT RATES AMONG FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT A
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, A SOUTH AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE
Rangith Kuriakose (Central University of Technology, South Africa)
Hermanus Vermaak (Central University of Technology, South Africa)
One of the major challenges facing the growth of South Africa is unemployment. While there are other factors
influencing unemployment, high dropout rates in universities are seen as a definite contributor to this challenge.
Reflection and reflective practices have been extensively researched over the years by Richert, Moon and Green to name
a few. The research question that arises that this paper attempts to address is "What can academics do to reduce the high
dropout rates of students in tertiary institution". The paper presents an effective teaching technique using the centric
reflection model and the Greenaway's model. The paper firstly looks at the actual causes behind the failures at first year
level such as high student volume, language barrier and poor motivation. Secondly it details how a model was created
using centric reflection model which addresses these causes and a method for addressing them. The third part of the
paper looks at how the methodology described in the second part is implemented using the Greenaway's model. The
paper finally looks at the results that were obtained over a period of time and correlates the data with a control group.
BLACK ENGINEERING TRANSFER STUDENTS: WHAT EXPLAINS THEIR SUCCESS?
Clemencia Cosentino (Mathematica Policy Research, USA)
Margaret D Sullivan (Mathematica Policy Research, USA)
Nikhil Gahlawat (Mathematica Policy Research, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
Russell Long (Purdue University, USA)
The transfer pathway, particularly from two- to four-year colleges, is often seen as a vehicle to expand the science and
engineering workforce by increasing college participation of underrepresented groups including blacks or African
Americans. In this paper, we study outcomes for black engineering transfer students, distinguishing those who transfer
from two- versus four-year institutions. We find that (1) black students in engineering are more likely to transfer from
other four-year institutions than from two-year institutions, and (2) transfers from two- versus four-year institutions
differ on several key characteristics, including gender, full- versus part-time enrollment status, and education outcomes.
When we model outcomes for two-year black engineering transfers, we find that gender and academic performance—not
transfer status—are driving graduation outcomes. Black women are 28 percent less likely to drop out and 25 percent
more likely to graduate in engineering in six years than black men. In terms of performance, for every tenth of a grade
point increase in engineering GPA, the odds of a black student graduating with an engineering degree in six years
improves by 13.7 percent. These results should inform debates regarding the effectiveness of the two-year transfer
pathway in engineering for black and other minority students
DEVELOPING A CULTURE OF SUPPORT FOR RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION OF AMERICAN INDIAN
STUDENTS
Carter Kerk (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Stuart Kellogg (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
American Indian demographics in the United States are at about 1% of the population and at about 0.5% of the
engineering enrollment. In South Dakota, American Indians are about 10% of the general population and are at 3.5% of
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the enrollment at SDSMT in 2011. South Dakota has nine American Indian tribes within its borders. All of these 9 tribes
can trace their roots to the Seven Council Fires and this alliance consisted of the Santee, Yankton, and Teton tribes. Each
of these tribes had a different dialect of the same language: Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota. These cultural traditions
influence these students and how they look at the world. This influences how these students are learning. In this paper,
we discuss how some of these cultural traditions influence these students as well strategies for the recruitment and
retention by capitalizing on these traditions. Following best practices developed by American Indian educators and tribal
colleges, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology has developed a new program, Tiospaye, a Lakota word for
extended family, which offers a new paradigm for recruitment and support for American Indian students. The program
centers on four primary support areas which include financial support, academic support, mentoring and positive
intervention, research opportunities, and social networking. In this paper we include a discussion of the types of support
offered in each of the support areas as well as lessons learned and steps for improvement. We then follow with an
extended discussion of program assessment and evaluation which includes attitudinal measures, a typological
assessment, persistence through longitudinal cohort grouping, and focus groups. The assessment section concludes with
a short discussion of assessment lessons learned and new assessment alternatives to develop more meaningful metrics of
success for students engaged in the program. We conclude the paper with a discussion of the necessary conditions
needed to promote sustainability of the program.
SCL6: Impact of Student-centric Learning
Chair: James Widmann
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
THE IMPACT OF ACTIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES IN SECOND CYCLE STUDENTS OF AN ENGINEER
COURSE: A CASE STUDY
Cristina Gaspar Oliveira (Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
Paulo André (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Educational Research, in the last years, advocates the use of new approaches to teaching and learning, particularly in
Higher Education. At the same time, the challenges of society requires that Higher Education institutions develop in their
students other competencies beyond the academic knowledge. It seems to be consensual that the purpose of Higher
Education courses is the development among its students of scientific attitude and rigor of reasoning skills, creativity and
analysis. Having this in mind, we used in the course of optoelectronics at the University of Aveiro, several strategies that
seek to develop transversal competences in future physical engineers. Some of the strategies used were: minute paper,
writing a chapter of an eBook, brainstorming session followed by report writing, group work, development of a miniproject and feedback to all of these strategies. This paper describes how the strategies were implemented in the course
and students' opinion about them. Analyzing the results we can say that the strategies had different levels of acceptance
in students and we believe that these levels of acceptance have direct impact on student learning.
DEVELOPING A SMART GRID CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION PLATFORM AND A PRELIMINARY
ASSESSMENT OF ITS FIRST APPLICATION
Timothy Yardley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Suleyman Uludag (The University of Michigan - Flint, USA)
Klara Nahrstedt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Peter Sauer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
The energy sector worldwide has embarked on a transformational process to modernize the over-a-century-old power
grid under an umbrella term of the Smart Grid. This brings new capabilities, but also necessitates a re-education of the
aging workforce and training of the emerging workforce. While training does exist, the training approach and the
accessibility of that training is often at odds with the needs of the utilities. To support this education and training need, in
this paper we introduce the beginning of a modular, hands-on and open Smart Grid cybersecurity educational training
platform and supporting materials together with an assessment of a preliminary version leveraged at the Trustworthy
Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) Summer School held in 2013. We base pedagogical pillars onto: (1)
Active Learning that promotes analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the content from Bloom's taxonomy, (2) The theory
of project-based learning, (3) Piaget's learn-by-doing posture, and (4) Constructivist perspec- tive of education. The main
goal of this effort is to develop a complete, phased, and modular learning platform to provide the essential base
knowledge and hands-on training exercises for understanding and demonstrating competency in Smart Grid
cybersecurity.
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CONTENT RECOMMENDATION IN AN INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Otavio Acosta (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Patricia Behar (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Eliseo Reategui (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil)
Inquiry-based learning is defined as an educational approach guided by the process of question making. It is seen as an
active learning scheme in which knowledge is built through the development of experimental and analytical activities.
This paper presents the expansion of the SMILE project (Stanford Mobile Inquiry Based Learning Environment), whose
goal is to allow students to create and share questions and answers using mobile devices. A variation of the original
SMILE project is presented here, in which teachers propose a research topic based on a triggering text. A text mining
tool is then used to extract relevant terms and keywords from the students' writings in order to search the web for related
contents. The items returned are then filtered to be recommended to the students, making them aware of the availability
of different material that may complement their investigation. Experiment results involving 34 graduate and
undergraduate students showed that they had a positive perception of their use of the tool in the development of the
activity. Students gave the tool an average score of 8.24 in a scale of 0 to 10, and a score of 8.03 to the inquiry-based
learning activity.
INITIAL MOTIVATION AND PROGRESS WITH DOCTORAL STUDIES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE - A CASE
STUDY FROM A FINNISH UNIVERSITY
Sami Kollanus (Univ. of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Success in doctoral education has been studied from many theoretical and practical perspectives, but very few studies
focus specifically on student motivation. In practice, graduate schools usually try to evaluate applicants' motivation in
the admission process, assuming they are able to identify the initial motivation that would predict a successful doctoral
path. The aim of this study is to bring new understanding to this field by studying the relationship between the students'
initial motivation in enrolling doctoral studies and their actual progress with the studies. This is a case study conducted
in a Finnish research university with full-time doctoral students in computing. The research data includes interviews
(n=30) and follow-up data of the participants' actual progress three years later. First, the participants were categorized
according to their initial motivation for doctoral studies, based on the interview data. Second, they were divided into two
groups based on their progress during the follow-up period. The participants who emphasized career goals as their main
reason to apply for doctoral studies were more likely progress well with their studies than the students who emphasized
intrinsic motivational factors. More generally, it seems to be extremely difficult to predict students' progress based on
their initial motivation.
LEARNING FUNDAMENTAL MECHANICS RELATIONSHIPS USING INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING
ACTIVITIES
Brian Self (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
James Widmann (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
It is well documented that students enter the classroom with deep rooted misconceptions. This is especially true in STEM
disciplines, were the literature contains thousands of studies of students' lack of conceptual understanding. The
importance of conceptual understanding for deeper learning has been documented in the National Research Council's
How People Learn1 indicating that a greater emphasis must be placed on repairing student misconceptions.
Unfortunately, identifying and repairing deep-rooted misconceptions is no easy task. One example of Active Learning,
Inquiry Based Learning Activities (IBLA), are emerging as effective techniques to increase conceptual understanding in
Physics, Heat Transfer; we are now developing and implementing IBLAs in our Dynamics course. IBLA's consist of
presenting teams of students with a physical situation and asking them to predict what will happen. The students
collaboratively investigate the situation by experimenting with physical hardware that becomes the "authority", thus
forcing students to confront any misconceptions. Several variations of the activity are presented, forcing students to
confront and reformulate their thinking on the mechanics concepts covered. Students are then asked to fully explain the
physical results, and often given reinforcing homework problems to fully solve using mechanics principles and equations
of motion. Although IBLAs have been used in the physics educational community, there is little evidence of widespread
use in the engineering education community. Our research team has developed four different IBLAs to date, focused on
the principles of mass and acceleration relationships, work energy, and gyroscopic motion. In order to improve upon
subsequent iterations, including when to intervene with explanations, best prompts for the students, and different followon activities, we have also begun to have talk-alouds with individual students. Although this precludes the substantial
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learning (and affective benefits) that come with collaborative learning process, for now our goal is to try to determine
when the "aha" moment occurs and how to guide students towards conceptual understanding. After exploring this, our
plan is to revise the IBLA and then record teams of students conducting the activities. Initial results have been very
promising for the IBLAs, with increased performance on problems on the Dynamics Concept Inventory and on transfer
questions asked on tests and final exams. On a Likert-scale questionnaire (1= strongly disagree, 5= strongly agree),
students (n=224) thought the activities helped them learn the material (avg=4.23), that they were interesting and
motivating (avg= 3.99), and thought the IBLA should be done in subsequent section of the course (avg=4.1). Talk-alouds
from the first IBLA, which involves hanging different masses on pulleys and predicting accelerations, have indicated that
students can often predict and explain the first two iterations of the activity, but struggle when presented with a slightly
different version of the concept. The predict-discuss-observe-explain cycle utilized in our IBLA mirrors the scientific
process, and is applicable to any engineering course. Our future work involves measuring engagement and motivation
during the IBLAs, determine when and why the "aha" moment occurs, and developing best practices for developing,
implementing, and assessing IBLAs.
A SYSTEMATIC MAPPING STUDY ON PRACTICAL APPROACHES TO TEACHING SOFTWARE
ENGINEERING
Maíra Marques Samary (Universidad de Chile, Chile)
Alcides Quispe (Universidad de Chile, Chile)
Sergio Ochoa (Universidad de Chile, Chile)
Background: There is no consensus on universities around the world on how to teach software engineering. Each
university uses their own methods and approaches based on the experiences of their instructors. It is worth knowing
where each one own university stands and what are other universities doing. Aim: The research questions are: What are
the main approaches used to teach software engineering? The way universities teach software engineering changed over
the years? Is there a tendency on the approaches universities uses to teach software engineering? Method: A systematic
mapping study was conducted. Results:236 papers were selected and classified. The main results found were: the
majority of the reports are worried that students have a "practical experience" but authors do not mention clearly any
pedagogical approach, there are studies reporting the use of gaming, cases studies, simulation, maintenance and open
source projects as teaching approaches. Conclusion: There is a concern that the universities have to try to teach software
engineering in a practical and real way, there are a lot of initiatives being used trying to do that. The map shows us an
overview of what is being done and what was done and shows where further information is needed.
TLE6: Technologies and Practices for Teaching and Learning Engineering
Chair: Adrian Rusu
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: La Galería
DEVELOPING NOVEL PRACTICES OF SOMATIC LEARNING TO ENHANCE EMPATHIC PERSPECTIVETAKING FOR ETHICAL REASONING AND ENGINEERING DESIGN
Holly Jaycox (Purdue University, USA)
Justin Hess (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Andrew O. Brightman (Purdue University, USA)
Empathic perspective-taking is central to human-centered, universal, user-centered, and participatory design approaches,
as well as ethical reasoning. Designers and users have significant somatic (sensory, proprioceptive, and kinesthetic)
knowledge about problems of technology utilization. However, engineering students are not currently taught to access,
understand, or value this somatic knowledge in problem-solving processes such as design and ethics. To address this
need, we are incorporating a series of developmentally-oriented experiences in enhanced somatosensory awareness
adapted from somatics and performing arts into two short courses in the Summer of 2014. Both courses involve assistive
technology design projects with community partners of differently-abled clients, but one is located internationally and
the other domestically. We will utilize multiple measures of empathic perspective-taking in the context of engineering
design and ethical reasoning before and after the courses to assess change. We believe this novel application of practices
of somatic learning in the technical field of engineering design and ethical analysis will yield new insights into empathic
perspective-taking. This work in progress paper describes our design, application, and testing of these somatosensory
awareness practices in both an international and local context. At the conference we will present results from the
completed study.
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A SERVICE-ORIENTED REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE FOR MOBILE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Nemesio Duarte Filho (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Ellen Barbosa (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Even providing several benefits and facilities with regard to teaching and learning, the development of mobile learning
environments present problems and challenges that must be investigated, especially with respect to the definition and
adoption of architectural patterns. Indeed, most of these environments are built in an isolated way, having their own
architectures and structures, which can negatively affect the capacity to standardization and support of architectural
definition. Motivated by this scenario, in this paper we propose a service-oriented reference architecture for mobile
learning environments. This architecture, named Ref-mLearning, aims at contributing to the development, reuse and
interoperability of such environments, also allowing an increase in quality and cost reduction during their development.
Ref-mLearning was developed according to a systematic process for the definition of reference architectures, and has
been evaluated by means of a reference model for reference architectures. The preliminary results obtained suggest that
Ref-mLearning is complete, presenting most of the relevant elements with respect to a reference architecture.
IS A MAC "PC" IN ENGINEERING?
Cory Brozina (Virginia Tech, USA)
Courtney Smith (Virginia Tech, USA)
Suzanne Nicewonder (Virginia Tech, USA)
Ben Lutz (Virginia Tech, USA)
This study explores the opinions and experiences of five Mac-using students in a first-year engineering program where
Windows-based personal computers (PCs) are requisite. These students have circumvented the restrictive departmental
policies which solely support Windows-based PC systems and which (as of this writing) clearly identify the lack of
technical support for Mac users. Tablet PCs were the only machines that fully met departmental requirements for several
years, and were the "machine of choice" in the university's engineering community. This requirement has been
unwavering until 2012 when a change was made: the first-year engineering program modified the computer
specifications to allow Macintosh computers, with certain stated limitations and precautions. Although still highly
discouraged and with no provision for Apple technical support, the change has allowed a greater range of options for
incoming cohorts. Whether the use of a Mac in this engineering program is politically correct (PC) or not remains to be
discovered; this study intends to shed light on this subject.
DEPLOYMENT AND ANALYSIS OF LECTURE RECORDING IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Carlos Turro (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Ignacio Despujol (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Aristóteles Cañero (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
Jaime Busquets (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain)
In this paper we will present a case study and an analysis conducted to evaluate the use of lecture learning as a helpful
companion to the classical teaching. This effort is done around the Opencast Matterhorn software, a system that is able to
record classroom presentations and publish them on a LMS automatically, without the intervention of a technician
dedicated to it. So we delivered a university-wide call asking for teachers to be recorded and then the teachers opted in to
have they lectures published in the university's LMS. As a result of this call we installed 36 lecture halls though the
different faculties, and we record the lectures of 53 teachers, with a result of 1400 lectures recorded during the 20122013 academic year, and the first semester of the 2013-2014 year, with a peak of 150 hours/week. Using this data we
have made an analysis aimed to find if there is any positive influence on grading by the use of this technology and we
have found an increment up to a 9% in students marks.
INTERDISCIPLINARY FACULTY-FACULTY COLLABORATIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEARNING
TECHNOLOGIES
Adrian Rusu (Rowan University, USA)
Matthew Bealor (Rowan University, USA)
Hector Lopez (Rowan University, USA)
Given the ever-increasing use of technology in the teaching of various disciplines, one question that arises is who will
develop and make technological teaching tools available to educators? In this paper we make the case for a model where
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non-computer science faculty provide project ideas to software engineering students and spend time in the role of
"customers." In return, faculty members receive tailor-made software products that can be used to enhance teaching
effectiveness and to engage students in active learning. Software engineering students benefit by having customers to
interact with, a real project to exercise their skills on, and they also gain exposure to the types of software being used in
the teaching of various disciplines. We present two case studies in which students enrolled in a semester-long software
engineering course collaborated with faculty from the Department of Biomedical Sciences or the Department of
Biological Sciences to develop software that is being used by faculty to enhance learning experiences of medical
students and undergraduate biology majors.
ASM2: Uses of Assessment to Promote Learning
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Patio 3
THE EFFECTS OF TEST-ENHANCED LEARNING ON STUDENT LEARNING IN AN ELECTRIC CIRCUITS
COURSE
Archie Holmes (University of Virginia, USA)
Large enrollment, core courses in engineering provide students the foundational knowledge they will need for success in
future courses and in their careers. One of the main challenges in these courses is providing students the support they
need to learn course concepts. These courses generally use problem solving via homework (i.e., problems from a
textbook) to provide this support. In this study, homework was replaced with frequent, online quizzes. Initial results
show that (i) student perceive that these quizzes are better for learning than traditional homework, (ii) performance on
these quizzes is correlated with stronger performance on other measures of learning, and (iii) students who perform
better on these quizzes are better able to transfer course concepts to different contexts. Students who took Introductory
Circuit Analysis at the University of Virginia were part of this exploratory study (n = 119). The quizzes provided
students with a random set of problems to complete in a fixed amount of time. To encourage learning, students were
given six attempts with the highest score being recorded. The problems and/or numbers changed between attempts and
students could consult with fellow classmates or the instructor between attempts. A Likert-style survey was used to
determine student perceptions of these quizzes compared to homework. While students felt that these quizzes took more
time (53% vs. 47%), they felt that they were better for their learning (78% vs. 22%) and preferred them over traditional
homework assignments (those with a strong or slight preference were 44% and 28% respectively). To determine the
effect of quiz performance on learning, students were categorized based on the number of perfect quizzes they achieve
throughout the semester. These categories were perfect (100%), mostly (> 80%), often (>50%), and sometimes (< 50%).
Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were seen between groups on midterm exam performance. To understand
whether these differences were based on conceptual understanding or problem-solving ability, performance on the final
exam of the course was also evaluated since it contained thirty (30) conceptual multiple choice questions and nine (9)
circuit problems which are similar to problems that appear in textbooks on circuit analysis. As was the case with the
midterms, statistically significant results were seen between groups. Most notably, the perfect and mostly groups differ
on both conceptual and problem-solving measures when compared to the other two groups. The perfect and mostly
groups only differed on the problem solving problems. Another important differences is that students in the perfect and
mostly groups were more likely to do a calculations on a midterm and final the same (durable learning) and correct an
incorrect calculation on the midterm when a similar question is asked on the final exam. This study shows that testenhanced learning can provide instructors and students important information on their learning. In the paper, a
replication study will also be reported that shows the same general trends and includes information on how other factors
(academic preparation, self-efficacy, etc.) might be used to explain the results.
INCLUDING PEER AND SELF-ASSESSMENT IN A CONTINUOUS ASSESSMENT SCHEME IN
ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING COURSES
Juan Carlos Gonzalez de Sande (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain)
Adarsh Murthy (National Institute of Technology Karnataka-Surathkal, Mangalore, India)
During the last decades different assessment approaches have been implemented in many higher education institutions in
order to complement or even substitute the final exams. Here, an analysis of the implementation of a mixed assessment
method (continuous assessment plus a final exam) in a "Signals and Systems" course is presented. The continuous
assessment part includes several assessed activities and ways to assess a given activity: peer assessed homework,
automatically assessed online tests, instructor assessed laboratory practices and self-assessed classroom written
exercises. A voluntary survey that includes items about the course contents, about the weights assigned to each activity
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and about the influence of the assessment type in their achievement of the course goals is delivered at the end of
semester. There is a high correlation between the continuous assessment marks and final exam marks. Survey responses
show that the objectives of the course can be reasonably achieved, most of the students were in agreement with the
weights assigned to each assessed activity, most of the students considered that conducting peer assessment was helpful
for them, and most of the students considered that their self-assessment was more useful than being instructor assessed.
PROMOTING STUDENT COMMITMENT AND RESPONSIBILITY THROUGH SELF- AND PEERASSESSMENT
Carlos Serra-Toro (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
V. Javier Traver (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
Juan C Amengual (Universitat Jaume I, Spain)
While continuous assessment is regularly used in higher education, some of its limitations are often ignored. In
particular, the importance of the delivered product tends to be emphasised over that of the actual learning process, which
may result in some academic misconducts. To address this situation, and to promote students' honesty and awareness of
their learning process, a framework involving self-assessment and peer-assessment is proposed. The two main and novel
ingredients of the proposed approach are as follows. On the one hand, an emphasis is paid on the reflective nature of
self-assessment, which clearly redirects student focus on the process and learning outcome (the end) rather than the
product (the means). For instance, students are asked questions such as "do you know how to do X?" rather than "does
the deliverable do X?" On the other hand, self/peer-assessment are followed by a validation in-lab test, and the grading
policy takes into account the respective grades in a coupled manner, so that honesty is encouraged through consistent
grades. A two-year experience in a first-year introductory course to Computer Engineering is reported. Some strong and
weak points of the approach have been identified and will inform its subsequent redesign.
REDESIGN THE ENGINEERING TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT METHODS TO PROVIDE MORE
INFORMATION TO IMPROVE STUDENTS' LEARNING
Omar M. Ashour (Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College, USA)
Shraddha Sangelkar (Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College, USA)
Russell L. Warley (Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College, USA)
Oladipo Onipede (Pennsylvania State University, The Behrend College, USA)
We present a synopsis of instructor experience on the mastery learning approach as implemented in our school for key
fundamental engineering courses. The mastery learning approach revolves around the idea of dividing the course into
modules, each module culminates in an exam comprised of 2 or 3 problems where each problem tests one important
concept. For each exam, a student can make up to 3 attempts, however the maximum possible score and time allotted on
subsequent attempts is reduced. Grading of the problems is based on a scale where no points are awarded unless the
solution contains only a small error at most. Thus, mastery learning requires the students to go back and study the
material if they get it wrong on the first attempt. We interviewed six instructors who use or have used the mastery
learning approach in their classes. In general, instructors have a positive experience with mastery learning approach.
However some challenges were noted that are also discussed in the paper. This paper aims to provide a context for the
audience who are interested in implementing mastery learning approach in their curriculum.
PREDICTION OF STUDENTS' ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: ADAPT A METHODOLOGY OF PREDICTIVE
MODELING FOR A SMALL SAMPLE SIZE
John Mativo (University Of Georgia, USA)
Shaobo Huang (University of Southern California, USA)
Many fundamental engineering courses, such as Engineering Dynamics, are not only important but also challenging for
engineering students to understand. Valid predictive models allow instructors to make reasonable estimations of how
well or how poorly students will perform in the classes, and take proactive measures to improve teaching and student
learning. However, predicting student performance is primarily used as a reference for admission purpose only. Few
studies have been conducted on predicting student academic performance in a specific engineering course. One of the
authors developed and compared four types of mathematical models to predict student academic performance in
engineering dynamics using multiple linear regression models. The models predicted students' dynamics final exam
scores using their cumulative GPA and grades earned in four pre-requisite courses (statics, calculus I, calculus II and
physics). The present study applies the methodology developed in the previous study mentioned above at a different
educational institution to predict student academic performance in an Engineering Dynamics course. A total of 50
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students who registered the course Engineering Dynamics in and between Fall 2011 and Spring 2013 semesters were
invited to participate in this study. Guided by the methodology developed in previous study, a total of three predictive
mathematical models were developed and compared with previous study. Two criteria are used to evaluate and compare
the prediction accuracy of the models. The criteria are average prediction accuracy (APA, which indicates on average
how well a model predicts the final exam scores of all students in the dynamics course) and the percentage of accurate
predictions (PAP, which is calculated as the number of accurate predictions divided by the total number of predictions).
The results verify whether the methodology for developing the predictive models can be employed to another institution
of higher education and how the features of students at that institution influence the accuracy of the predictive models.
CUR4: Using Learning Theories to Guide Curriculum Design
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Doblon
100% PBL CURRICULUM STARTUP PHASE COMPLETE
Ron Ulseth (Itasca Community College, USA)
Bart Johnson (Itasca Community College, USA)
In 2010, a new 100% PBL curriculum was started as the result of an economic development initiative and the
dissatisfaction with the traditional engineering education model, The program was adapted from the Aalborg University
model of PBL. The curriculum attributes include industry sponsored design projects, self-directed learning, emphasis on
continuous development of professional skills. There are no lectures. Students acquire technical knowledge in the
context of the project. This program is now in its 10th semester. It has achieved accreditation through ABET-EAC. Data
has been collected on the satisfaction of both the graduates and their supervisors with regard to their abilities to perform
across the spectrum of expectations in engineering practice. The paper will address the current structure of the
curriculum, the trajectory it followed from startup to present, and evaluate the model using data collected on student
development and attitudes. The authors will connect the curriculum design to learning theory and curriculum theory.
They will address implementation and evolution with regards to change theory. A complete description of the continuous
improvement model will be discussed.
UPGRADING THE ENGINEERING CURRICULUM THROUGH THEMATIC LEARNING MODULES
Fazeel Khan (Miami University, USA)
Kumar Singh (Miami University, USA)
A National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored project was initiated in 2011 at the Department of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering (MME), Miami University, with the aim of creating online learning modules to increase the
efficacy of the coursework. The modules were designed to instil proficiency in computational and experimental analysis,
and were grouped along five thematic lines in the form of subject studios. The modules contain multimedia content and
are designed for use as supplementary course material, or independently by students in preparation for research or review
of specific concepts from prior courses. When used to augment existing courses, a salient feature of the modules is the
ability to introduce lab/experiment derived content to lecture-only course formats. This has been found to be particularly
effective in engaging students and enabling the introduction of new topics with minimal disruption to the existing daily
syllabus of a course. The project's development and implementation phase will end mid-year. Since assessment and
continuous improvement were integral parts of the project, this paper presents data from the two year assessment process
and describes the changes to the project. The paper also includes a discussion of plans for expansion of modules and
practices for keeping content current.
USING A CYCLIC MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF
TRANSDISCIPLINARY LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Klavdiya Bochenina (ITMO University, Russia)
Irina Boukhanovskaya (ITMO University, Russia)
Anna Bilyatdinova (ITMO University, Russia)
Alexey Dukhanov (ITMO University, Russia)
Anna Lutsenko (ITMO University, Russia)
The requirements for a knowledge economy raised new challenges for higher engineering education. Modern learning
processes are characterized by the continuous growth of both diversity and the amount of data that should be understood
by the student. Taking into account the rapid obsolescence of information, the focus of knowledge-intensive educational
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activities shifts toward the formation of competencies for life-long learning. In this paper we propose a methodological
basis for the development of computer-aided transdisciplinary learning environments to induce a student's intrinsic
motivation for education and research. A cyclic model of knowledge transfer is invariant for all subjects of the joint
scientific and educational processes and can be implemented in academic centers of excellence to acquire and create
knowledge through the partnership of students, teachers, and researchers. Furthermore we describe our experience with
the deployment of a transdisciplinary environment based on the knowledge transfer cycle in the annual scientific course
'Technologies of High Performance Computing and Computer Simulation' (ITMO University, Russia).
A PRACTICE-THEN-APPLY SCAFFOLDING APPROACH TO ENGINEERING DESIGN EDUCATION
Adam R Carberry (Arizona State University, USA)
Nathan Johnson (Arizona State University, USA)
Mark Henderson (Arizona State University, USA)
Engineering students in a project-based curriculum are expected to learn and apply the engineering design process to
their course embedded projects. Practice of embedded skills typically occurs through embarking on a new project context
provided by an instructor. It is a rare occurrence for students to participate in experiences that break-up the process into
smaller chunks providing low-pressure instances to practice. The following work-in-progress describes a practice-thenapply scaffolding approach to teaching engineering design. The engineering design process was broken down into three
phases: (1) discovery and ideation, (2) concept development and selection, and (3) realization and experimentation. Each
phase was presented to students via a mini-project that inserted students into the design process at various stages of the
design. The mini-projects afforded students with opportunities to practice and expand their understanding without always
having to start at the beginning. A final project embedded throughout the course provided students with the opportunity
to apply what they had learned in the mini-projects. This scaffolded approach methodically slowed the process providing
a unique design learning experience with explicit design activities.
DESIGNING A BLENDED LEARNING CURRICULUM IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF VIDEO GAMES
Angela Restrepo (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
Pablo Figueroa (Universidad de los Andes, Colombia)
Recent studies from the Bogota Chamber of Commerce (Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá) in the field of digital
animation and video games in Colombia show an accelerated growth of this industry in the last decade, positioning it as
one of the most important for years to come. However, this strategic sector has very few adequate specialized academic
training in the country, as identified in the study of Animation and Video Games Education (Restrepo, Cruz & Rolon,
2012). This explains why a study by Universidad de los Andes in 2012, in collaboration with the Ministry of ICT and
PROEXPORT, on the domestic supply of digital content, in Colombia people dedicated to this work are mostly
professionals in design and systems engineers, programs that currently have no specific training for this industry. This
makes harder the process of production and game development for the companies, and increases investment costs and
time needed to train professionals in the workplace. So, it is necessary to provide specialized education in video games.
We designed a postgraduate program in Game Development that aims to the needs expressed by this contemporary
productive sector. Its aim is to prepare professionals to achieve the creation of high-impact video games for different
platforms and devices. The goal is training leaders that will contribute to the development of projects that promote
interdisciplinary and team work, who are skilled in production and understand the design process and development of
video games. In order to reach a wider audience in different regions of the country and responding to the needs of
industry, this program will be offered in blended learning model, which will promote flexibility and autonomous
learning. The program aims to prepare professionals from various branches to direct own projects game industry, able to
coordinate and lead interdisciplinary working groups. Throughout the post graduate program, students will develop
specific skills in the area of their choice, which can be programming, graphic art or audio.
DIS3: Distance Education in Multiple Disciplines
Chair: Bridget Benson
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Escudo
EXPERIENCE WITH TEACHING DIGITAL DESIGN ONLINE
Bridget Benson (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
Bryan Mealy (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
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Advances in technology have created unique opportunities for teaching digital design courses. Students in such courses
no longer need to be present in the laboratory in order to obtain practical hands on experience and master the course
material as students can complete laboratory assignments at home using relatively inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf
development platforms and free software design tools. In addition, eLearning tools such as Moodle, YouTube, chat
rooms, and forums make providing and submitting course materials, questions, and obtaining feedback efficient and
simple. This paper describes an experience with porting and teaching a hardware-based digital design course to a 100%
online course. Assessment data indicate that students who took the course online performed at least as well students in
the traditional face-to-face course. We conclude that a fully-online hardware digital design course creates new and
effective opportunities for students around the globe to obtain access to a hands-on engineering education.
EFFICACY OF AN ONLINE WRITING PROGRAM ON URM STUDENTS IN ENGINEERING
Patricia R Backer (San Jose State University, USA)
Recently, universities have explored using online technologies to increase instructor efficiency and improve student
performance. One such technology is the Educational Testing Service (ETS) web-based service, Criterion. Criterion is an
online writing service whose purpose is to help students improve their grasp of the English language through offering
critical, detailed feedback in the areas of: grammar, spelling, mechanics, usage and organization, and development. With
Criterion, students get the benefit of additional writing practice without adding to the instructor's workload, allowing
instructors to focus on the content and style of students' work. To assess the effectiveness of the Criterion writing
program, the author used the program's analytics to gauge student proficiency, use, and the effectiveness of the program.
Criterion provides the instructor with each student's progress from the moment of assignment submission. This allows
researchers to track the number of submissions each student needs to submit an acceptable writing assignment. In this
study we compiled all of the data from Criterion and tracked the number of submissions and types of errors and sorted
them by major and ethnicity.
ONLINE RESOURCE PLATFORM FOR MATHEMATICS EDUCATION
Edmund Nevin (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Marisa Llorens (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Eileen Mageean (Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Engineering education is facing many challenges: a decline in core mathematical skills; lowering entry requirements; and
the diversity of the student cohort. One approach to confronting these challenges is to make subject content appropriate
to the communication styles of today's student. To achieve this, a pedagogical shift from the traditional hierarchical
approach to learning to one that embraces the use of technology as a tool to enhance the student learning experience is
required. By including the student as co-creator of course content, a greater sense of engagement is achieved and a
change to one where students' become agents of their own learning is realized. This active learning constructivist
approach shifts the focus from content delivery by the lecturer to active engagement with content by the student and in
doing so provides an environment of achievement and ownership which empowers the student and increases selfefficacy. The online platform comprises of a set of multiple choice questions focused on core mathematical concepts.
The quizzes are constructed to adapt to student responses with custom video feedback created by their peers. This paper
outlines the methodology followed and provides results of its evaluation in terms of student's perceptions.
THE USE OF SELF-MONITORING TOOLS FOR LINEAR ALGEBRA COURSE IN STUDENT CENTERED ELEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Kasiyah Junus (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
Harry Santoso (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
Lia Sadita (Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia)
The challenge faced in teaching Linear Algebra at the Faculty of Computer Science Universitas Indonesia is students are
forced to accommodate their past understanding about vector with the new knowledge. Our past experiences show that
self-monitoring and knowledge-sharing with other students are two effective strategies for enabling students'
accommodation process. An approach proposed in the current study will apply intervention in a form of instructional
method into Linear Algebra course facilitated with online collaborative and self-monitoring tools. Online collaborative
tool used in the course is a discussion forum at a Moodle-based learning management system customized and maintained
by the faculty. Self-regulated learning is used as framework and experimental research design is used to measure
intervention effects on students' learning performance. The study will also use a metacognition questionnaire to analyze
online forum discussion capturing students' self- and co-regulation. In addition to that, a correlation test will be
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conducted to investigate connections between self- and co-regulation with students' learning outcome. The preliminary
findings show positive relationship with accommodation process.
COMPARISON OF THE IMPACT OF TWO RESEARCH EXPERIENCES FOR
UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS ON PREPARING STUDENTS FOR GLOBAL WORKFORCES
Gisele Ragusa (University of Southern California, USA)
Cheryl Matherly (University of Tulsa, USA)
Sarah R. Phillips (Rice University, USA)
The impacts of globalization, changing socio-demographics, and technological advances are uniquely changing the role
of engineering in society, identifying significant challenges in the way colleges and universities address the engineering
profession, engineering education, and associated engineering student assessment processes and practices. Schools of
engineering have been challenged to reconsider how they prepare their graduates to bring high level skills and strategies
including team focused innovation, a comprehensive engineering problem-solving approach, cultural competence,
globally focused ethics, and leadership in the workplace. Numerous prominent organizations including the National
Academy of Engineering, the National Science Foundation, and the National Research Council have charged engineering
schools to task on preparing engineers for global workforces. In response, many engineering programs are experimenting
with strategies and programs designed to prepare students to solve important engineering problems that stretch far
beyond national boundaries geographically, technologically, culturally and socio-politically. Sparse research exists,
however, that comprehensively assesses globally focused outcomes associated with such engineering efforts, and the
simple question remains: Are international efforts effective? The researchers compare the experiences of students
participating in two Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) programs funded by the National Science
Foundation; the NanoJapan International REU Program in Japan and the domestic Rice Quantum Institute REU at Rice
University. NanoJapan is a twelve-week summer program through which twelve freshman and sophomore physics and
engineering students from U.S. universities complete research internships in Japanese nanotechnology laboratories. The
RQI is a ten-week undergraduate REU in which sophomore and junior students from U.S. universities complete research
in atomic, molecular, optical, surface, materials, chemical and biophysical sciences with faculty at Rice University. At
the end of the summer, both NanoJapan and RQI students present topical research posters on their summer projects at the
Rice Quantum Institute Summer Research Symposium. The students completed the Engineering Global Preparedness
Index (EGPI), a multi-dimensional engineering global preparedness index that measures students' preparedness for
global workforces. The four subscales in the EGPI directly align to important "soft skills" needed by both engineers and
other globally prepared professionals. By comparing EGPI data among participants in a domestic and international
research experience, the researchers sought to gain insight into what global workforce competencies were developed in
an international setting in comparison with the experience of conducting research in a domestic lab setting. Results
indicate that the students in the NanoJapan program demonstrated greater increases in engineering global preparedness
than the RQI students, and that the RQI students, who did not go abroad, actually declined on most measure of global
preparedness at the end of the summer. The researchers posit that this may be attributed to NanoJapan curriculum that
encourage participants to actively reflect on cultural aspects of research and to the nature of the international experience
itself. Moreover, the NanoJapan experience may more closely mirror the typical global workforce/team experience
students will encounter upon graduation. The researchers will discuss implications for the design of international
research and internship experiences.
EER7: Reflection and Metacognition
Chair: Chris Venters
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Aranjuez
"I JUST GOOGLE IT": A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF INFORMATION STRATEGIES IN PROBLEM SOLVING
USED BY UPPER AND LOWER LEVEL ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Anna Douglas (Purdue University, USA)
Connor Rohan (Purdue University, USA)
Michael Fosmire (Purdue University, USA)
Casey Smith (Purdue University, USA)
Amy S Van Epps (Purdue University, USA)
Senay Purzer (Purdue University, USA)
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Engineers must be adept in finding, evaluating, and using information in order to create quality designs. Previous
research has found first year engineering students frequently do not use sufficient sources to support their design
decisions. To further understand what strategies engineering students use in seeking, evaluating, and using information,
we interviewed 21 engineering students at a large research university. Results show that while there is variation between
students in each group, higher level engineering students reported use of broader and more complex search strategies to
assist in finding information for completing projects. In addition, higher level students discussed applying information
they found to better understand their design problem, whereas lower level students discussed the application of
information less frequently. These results provide insight into how students conceive of the role of information in
solving problems at different stages of their educational careers, and can be used to inform teaching and learning in
engineering classrooms. These research findings will be used to help inform the development of assessment tools to
provide more quantitative evidence of actual skill levels and students' perception of their skills.
USING THE ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS AS A METACOGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGY TO
IMPROVE STUDENT PERFORMANCE
Peter Shull (Penn State University, USA)
At the college level, there is a tacit assumption that students have a well-developed and mature understanding of how to
learn effectively and efficiently. Given the clearly documented very low retention and graduation rates (often less than
50%), perhaps this assumption needs to be revisited? The question often posed in the literature is whether these students,
who do not remain in engineering, are not capable of or not interested in doing the required level of work to succeed? Or
have they simply not developed effective learning methods? This work is based on the assumption that students are
interested in doing the required level of and most are capable. This leaves the developmental question. We pose two
research questions: "Are students' learning skills developmentally on par with those required to be effective in an
engineering program?" and "Can student learning effectiveness be improved through application of our metacognitive
learning strategies?" Our mythology uses a new metacognitive learning strategy to improve student learning
methodologies/skills using a basic engineering tool—a modified version of the engineering design process (EDP). This
approach, in part, differs from other efforts through it use of EDP—a standard engineering tool which is taught in the
first months of the curriculum, is ubiquitous throughout the engineering program, and will not be considered external to
the student's education in engineering. This use of a common engineering tool increases buy-in from both students and
faculty. The approach inverts the typical use of the EDP, which is a cognitive process, to a metacognitive one. Engineers
use the EDP as a systematic method of problem solving (a cognitive process). In this work, students apply the EDP to
gain insight into the effectiveness of their individual learning methods (i.e., they are using EDP to learn about their
learning practice). We combine this metacognitive process with a 4 step method for change: reflected awareness, mindset
of change, practice, and reflection. We will present the foundation and methodology behind this metacognitive learning
strategy and results of its application in our first year engineering design seminar course.
REFLECTING ON ENGINEERING CONCEPTS: EFFECTS ON CRITICAL THINKING
Polly Piergiovanni (Lafayette College, USA)
Reflective writing helps improve critical thinking skills, such as questioning and reasoning, recognizing assumptions,
presenting and evaluating data, and drawing conclusions: all important abilities for engineering students. Thus, to
encourage engineering students to reflect on material taught in a technical course, fifteen journal prompts were
developed based on Bloom's Taxonomy. Once or twice a week, the prompts were delivered to students through an online
classroom management system, and the students wrote short responses online. When students understood that a
contemplative response to the prompts would increase both understanding and technical competency, nearly 90%
completed the assignments. A coding method was developed to analyze the written responses, to determine which
critical thinking skills the students were applying. The initial analysis shows that the students who understood the
purpose of the journal responses applied all four types of critical thinking skills as they wrote. Results from the current
data will be presented at the conference, and a discussion for a more in-depth analysis will be initiated.
USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING TO ENHANCE CRITICAL REFLECTION
Meriel Huggard (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Frank Boland (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Ciaran Mc Goldrick (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland)
Over the past two decades, one of the key changes in Engineering curricula has been in the emphasis placed on the
development of personal transferable skills. Employers also profess to seek these competencies when making recruiting
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decisions. Such skills include the ability to learn through collaboration and through meaningful critical reflection on
one's own performance, both as an individual and in a group setting. However, there is still much debate on the most
effective mechanisms for acquiring such skills. Engineering students can be extremely resistant to the notion of
individual or collective reflection and often find it difficult to function successfully in a group setting. This paper reports
on how cooperative learning has been integrated into a large-scale, practical freshman Engineering laboratory module,
and explores the student experiences of being encouraged to engage in meaningful reflection. In particular, it details the
presentation modalities and phenomena that influence the engineering students' attitudes toward cooperative learning and
reflection.
WRITING AND CONCEPTUAL KNOWLEDGE IN STATICS: DOES LEARNING APPROACH MATTER?
Chris Venters (East Carolina University, USA)
Lisa McNair (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA)
Marie Paretti (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA)
Learning of threshold concepts in courses such as statics has traditionally been a difficult and critical juncture for
students in engineering. Research and other systematic efforts to improve the teaching of statics in recent years range
widely, from development of courseware and assessment tools to experiential and other "hands-on" learning techniques.
This paper reports a portion of the findings emerging from a multi-year, multi-institution study investigating possible
links between short writing assignments and conceptual knowledge development in statics courses. The theoretical
framework of the study combines elements from cognitive learning theory that have largely been studied in different
disciplinary contexts: expertise (cognitive science), procedural/conceptual knowledge development (mathematics
education), and conceptual change (physics education). Interview data are analyzed using predetermined codes and open
coding, then explored for common themes. The results build on our previous findings that students approach learning in
statics with varying emphasis placed on procedural and conceptual knowledge development and that a student's learning
approach influences their perception of the written problems and the ways that they utilize them in learning. Thus, we
provide evidence that the learning approach of students may be an important factor in the success of interventions
designed to improve conceptual knowledge in statics.
FAC2: Supporting and Empowering Faculty
Chair: Luis Amaral
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: La Granja
POTENTIAL MINIMUM VIABLE VALUE PROPOSITIONS FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION
SCHOLARSHIP
Jeffrey E Froyd (Texas A&M University, USA)
R Cheville (Bucknell University, USA)
Thomas Siller (Colorado State University, USA)
While scholarship in engineering education is growing in quality and quantity the extent to which engineering education
scholarship influences practice is hotly debated. To influence practice, scholarly efforts must be synthesized into concise,
accessible forms for engineering faculty members who have limited time and are not familiar with engineering education
terminology. However, even if concise, accessible resources were available for engineering faculty members to consult,
why would engineering faculty members use these resources? While many highlight the reward system as the pivotal
factor, changing the reward structure is difficult and assumes extrinsic motivators are effective for faculty. Therefore,
this change alone is unlikely to affect faculty priorities vis-a-vis scholarship and teaching. The paper assumes two
premises that provide necessary but not sufficient conditions for engineering education scholarship to influence practice.
First, the authors assume that the reward system is at worst neutral and may at best reward faculty members who
demonstrate they improve student's attainment of learning outcomes. Unfortunately, these rewards are typically of less
value than those associated with original research. Second, the authors assume that there are effective channels that
provide engineering faculty members with concise, accessible, and effective information that they can use to make
informed decisions about their teaching. The degree of truth of these premises is open to debate. Taking, for argument's
sake, the truth of these two premises, the authors claim another reason research is not influencing practice sufficiently is
that, in the language of entrepreneurship, the engineering education community has not provided sufficiently compelling
value propositions for engineering faculty members to adopt research based instructional strategies. While the value
proposition of engineering education research is clear to researchers, it is not clear for the majority of engineering faculty
members who do not engage in these knowledge-creation activities. An untested claim of this paper is that research
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advances in engineering education need to be paired with minimum viable value propositions (MVVPs) in order to
influence practice in engineering classrooms, e.g., deemphasize lecture and emphasize research based instructional
strategies more. Herein the authors offer a set of preliminary adoption-based value propositions intended to stimulate
active, substantive conversations. One MVVP is using concise, accessible, effective resources (if they existed) would
save faculty members some of the time that they currently invest in teaching. Another MVVP is that engineering faculty
members would find their teaching more energizing. That is, by applying these resources and redesigning their teaching,
students would be more engaged; if students were more engaged, faculty would find interaction with students more
rewarding; and with greater reward, faculty members would have more energy for their lives, their research. A third
MVVP is one of transferable perspective. By applying available resources that were well-grounded in the scholarship of
learning, faculty members would gain new perspectives that could transfer to social and human problems within their
own discipline. These and other value propositions will be explored in the paper.
NEW FACULTY DEVELOPMENT: CREATING A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Mary Lynn Brannon (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Sarah Zappe (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)
When new faculty arrive for a new position at a college or university, they are typically flooded with information on all
the "things to know and do" before the start of their first semester. They often participate in orientation sessions that give
them snapshots on human resources, research protocol, departmental requirements, getting a computer account, using the
library, using the course management system, ordering textbooks, getting a parking permit and, if time permits,
participating in a teaching and learning workshop. This paper will discuss how an instructional support specialist with
expertise in faculty development created a semester-long program for new faculty based upon requests from department
heads and new faculty hires. This paper will also discuss how this program evolved into a regular component of new
faculty development, forming a community of practice among the participants. This paper will describe the New Faculty
Development Tips Program, how and why it was established, the topics of the sessions, and the assessment data
collected from the cohorts.
A PROGRAM DESIGNED TO EMPOWER ENGINEERING EDUCATORS
Melany M Ciampi (Safety, Health and Environment Research Organization, Brazil)
Claudio R Brito (Science and Education Research Council, Brazil)
Luis Amaral (University of Minho, Portugal)
Rosa Maria Vasconcelos (University of Minho, Portugal)
Victor F. A. Barros (Science and Education Research Council, Portugal)
Utilizing emerging technologies to provide expanded learning opportunities is critical to the success of future
generations. So teachers have to be prepared to motivate and entice the students about getting knowledge pertinent for
their formation as engineers. The use of new technologies in classroom is also an important requirement for teachers in
High Education principally in Engineering. It is part of teaching environment and so necessary to understand the
environment of a young pupil. It is clear that it is life long learning environment not only for future engineers but also for
the teachers. Besides the knowledge of engineering the new educator has to learn to develop the some competencies as
any professional in order to be competitive and achieve success in the career. One important aspect is also that presently
many institutions have developed programs to prepare the engineering professor to perform in order to be competitive as
professional and to enhance education to form the citizen for this century of uncertainty and challenges. It helps indeed
the engineers educators to look at new styles of teaching as well as to pursue quality classes based on pertinent
knowledge developing two ways flow of information. This paper describes the "International Engineering Educator"
developed by the engineering education research team of COPEC - Science and Education Research Council. It is
offered by the International Institute of Education of COPEC that is an organization that certifies in according to the
Ministry of education of the Country in according to the National Law of High Education. It also offers a professional
register as "International Engineering Educator" of the International Society for Engineering Pedagogy for those who are
interested in such certification as something else. The target attendees for this program are the engineering community of
CPLP - Community of Portuguese Language Countries. It has been very successful and many interested professionals
are attending the program. This program is an adventure toward the discovery of new skills and the acquisition of new
tools that will provide the opportunity to develop the capability of performing as educator always following the new
trends in education. Besides this is a program of international certification, which is also a new trend in global education.
It is important to point out that the program has been designed in order to fit the necessities of professionals interested in
the improvement of career and quality performance. It is a great achievement for academic community once it can
provide for engineers and the opportunity to update the knowledge, as it is lifelong education.
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AN EXAMINATION OF THE CLIMATE FOR QUALITY TEACHING IN ENGINEERING
Jacqueline McNeil (Purdue University, USA)
Catherine E. Brawner (Research Triangle Educational Consultants, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
There have been numerous calls to improve undergraduate teaching in engineering to attract and retain a larger and more
diverse engineering student body. This work-in-progress paper will describe research that will explore the perceptions of
engineering professors over the past 17 years to gain a better understanding of the climate for quality teaching in
engineering. This study builds on surveys of faculty teaching practices that were collected from 1997, 1999, and 2002 in
the Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED). Faculty at the SUCCEED
partner institutions were solicited to be surveyed in 2014. From the survey results, researchers will be able to analyze
how engineering faculty perceive the climate for quality teaching at their institution and how this related to their
individual teaching methods. The research considers a theoretical model proposed by Henderson and Dancy, 2007,
which shows the relationship between the departmental climate and an individual's teaching methods. The model
requires validation and possibly refinement.
A HIGHER EDUCATION SOCIAL NETWORK TO SHARE AND PROMOTE TEACHING INNOVATION
EXPERIENCES
Lina García-Cabrera (University of Jaén, Spain)
José Ramón Balsas Almagro (University of Jaén, Spain)
Ildefonso Ruano Ruano (University of Jaén, Spain)
This paper presents a social network specializing in higher education teaching innovation, InEdUn (Innovación
Educativa Universitaria, http://inedun.campusandaluzvirtual.es). InEdUn is the result of two inter-university teaching
innovation projects (TIPs). InEdUn site allows faculty to spread and share achievements emerging from TIP such as
Open Educational Resources, OER; teaching and learning experiences in engineering; new supporting services for
improving learning, etc. Furthermore, it provides the creation of learning communities that foster collaboration and
exchange of ideas among high education faculty. Both services can be integrated into existing web sites such as high
education teaching innovation portals. The website not only encourages contacts between active innovation researches to
promote the creation of inter-university projects, but also incorporates valuable design features such as: federated login
for using same login credentials from Higher Education Institutions or Research Centers, web searching and navigation
facilities to locate contents, a recommendation system, sharing TIPs or collaboration proposals on social networks,
adding comments about projects or collaboration proposals by innovation community. At the present moment, the
project has received positive comments and reviews, and we stay on a previous state to spread the system among several
Andalusian Higher Education Institutions.
MINI WS: Special Session on Design & Failure: How Philosophy and Belief Impact Design Education
5:00 PM - 6:30 AM
Room: El Jardin
SPECIAL SESSION ON DESIGN & FAILURE: HOW PHILOSOPHY AND BELIEF IMPACT DESIGN
EDUCATION
Stephen Frezza (Gannon University, USA)
Mani Mina (Iowa State University, USA)
With recent and growing international developments on Design Thinking there seems to be a broad interest to have new
approaches for interdisciplinary and collaborative design activities in many institutions. These activities include students
and faculty collaborating in design across colleges of engineering, sciences, business, and arts. These integrating, crossdisciplinary, cross-cultural (and occasionally cross-continent) activities significantly help to push on the nature of
engineering as a discipline, differentiated from science, art, and business. To most engineering educators, design is one
of the essential elements of engineering education. Many of us who have tried to engage in interdisciplinary design
activities within the college of engineering have seen different perspectives, approaches to, and cultures of design both
within engineering sub-disciplines, and across disciplines. This session will focus on the shared values and perspectives
of engineering design across disciplines. Comparing and contrasting the common perspectives and differences and
examining them with an overall engineering philosophy approach would help all educators have a better understanding
of what constitutes design from engineering and engineering educators' perspective. Critical examination of design,
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design approaches, and design perspectives within the engineering frame work can help a more effective and synergistic
connection with other design approaches that are not engineering based. The reality of invention and design mandates
many engineers and other designer to work together. Consequently, a careful analysis of the meaning and essence of
engineering design is necessary. In this effort critical examination of different points of views from engineers,
engineering educators, technologist, industrial designers, product designer, and other perspectives are of great interest.
This session will include pointed conversations and collaborative group activities to identify, discuss, lead critical
reviews, reflections, and developments on the issues of engineering design and the role of philosophy of engineering in
developing, integrating, and expanding engineering design perspectives. This session will include pointed conversations
and collaborative group activities to identify, discuss, lead critical reviews, reflections, and developments on the issues of
engineering design and the role of philosophy of engineering in developing, integrating, and expanding engineering
design perspectives. The goal is to spur collaborative, cross-disciplinary work in Design and Philosophy of Engineering.
Projects and summary work of this session are expected to be presented at FIE15 or other engineering education venues.
PHI: Special Session: Agents for STEM Change - Articulating the Goals of Our Community
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: El Jardin
SPECIAL SESSION: AGENTS FOR STEM CHANGE - ARTICULATING THE GOALS OF OUR COMMUNITY
Rebecca Bates (Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA)
R Cheville (Bucknell University, USA)
Jennifer Karlin (SD School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Lisa Benson (Clemson University, USA)
Cynthia Finelli (University of Michigan, USA)
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Engineering and Computer Science (E&CS) Education is an emerging discipline with a brief history and the unfortunate
particularity that many folks outside our discipline are confused as to our purpose. In this special session, we will use
two case studies to frame the larger questions around E&CS Education goals and help draw the conversation from
practice to philosophy while creating a safe space for open conversation.
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PRE3: Measuring the Outcomes of Precollege Education
Chair: David Reeping
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Comendador
INITIAL FINDINGS OF HIGH SCHOOL PRE-ENGINEERING AND NON-ENGINEERING STUDENTS'
DESIGN COGNITION
Matthew Lammi (NC State University, USA)
John Wells (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA)
Cameron Denson (NC State University, USA)
Marie Paretti (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA)
Christopher Williams (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, USA)
John Gero (George Mason University, USA)
This paper presents the initial findings of a design cognition study involving two groups of high school juniors: those
who have taken pre-engineering courses and those who have not. Equal numbers of dyad teams from both groups
engaged in design-only sessions in which they generated solutions in response to the same design challenge. The design
sessions were video and audio recorded. The recordings were transcribed and then segmented and coded using the
Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) ontologically-based design issues and design processes coding scheme. The students'
design cognition was measured from the distributions of the design issues and design processes. Both the design issues
and design processes were compared between the two high school student groups. Additionally, the results of the
analyses were compared to baseline undergraduate engineering students. The results of this study did not reveal
significant differences in either design issues or processes between the two high school student groups. However, when
compared with the baseline undergraduate engineering students, there were significant differences between these groups
with respect both to issues and processes and to the cognitive effort in their problem/solutions spaces.
"STEM ACADEMIES" AND THEIR EFFECT ON STUDENT PERCEPTIONS OF ENGINEERING
David Reeping (Ohio Northern University, USA)
Kenneth Reid (Virginia Tech, USA)
For the past 3 years, engineering students from Ohio Northern University have spent a full day running STEM activities
at a public middle school, which has been called a STEM Academy. The academy begins with a guest speaker who gives
a presentation on a topic under the STEM umbrella, then students participate in multiple activities that typically involve
science or engineering. While the reception of these academies is positive, the effectiveness of communicating
engineering to the students was uncertain. A post survey was administered where students were asked questions in a
similar fashion to the "Draw an Engineer Test." These responses from the survey provided insight as to how effective a
STEM Academy is at informing students about engineering with its current model, particularly concerning giving
students misinformed perceptions. Suggestions based on this study can lead to improvements in how such an outreach is
conducted to properly introduce students to STEM, particularly engineering. This paper will present the results of the
first survey and provide discussion on student responses. Also, comparisons between other outreaches will be made to
establish the nature of a STEM Academy in contrast to other K-12 programs designed to promote student interest in
science and engineering.
MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS' UNDERSTANDING AND APPLICATION OF THE ENGINEERING DESIGN
PROCESS
Linda S. Hirsch (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Suzanne Berliner Heyman (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
John Carpinelli (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Howard Kimmel (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Recent research indicates that a majority of college students in STEM became interested when they were in high school
or even earlier, in middle school. But the absence of engineering in K-12 science curricula means most potential college
students are not prepared academically to study engineering or pursue careers in engineering. To address this problem
the Next Generation Science Standards integrate engineering design into science education. The engineering design
process teaches students about scientific inquiry and helps make connections between the science used in engineering
applications in the real world and their classroom science lessons. The current paper describes a summer program for
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middle school students that focuses on the engineering design process as a means to develop solutions to real-world
problems. Students completed a pre-post test, including questions about the engineering design process and were
required to make a presentation about their solutions. A rubric was developed to evaluate students' understanding and
application of the engineering design process. Analyses of the pre-post tests indicate that most of students had no prior
knowledge of the engineering design process but learned the steps during the course of the program. Results include a
preliminary examination of the psychometric properties of the rubric.
STEM INTEGRATION IN THE MIDDLE GRADES: A CASE STUDY OF TEACHER IMPLEMENTATION
Tamara J. Moore (Purdue University, USA)
Corey A Mathis (Purdue University, USA)
Selcen Guzey (University of Minnesota, USA)
Aran Glancy (University of Minnesota, USA)
Emilie Siverling (Purdue University, USA)
Currently, there is a movement in precollege education to include engineering in the science curriculum. In the
classroom, one manner of adding engineering to the precollege curricula is through STEM integration in science
classrooms. This research project builds on the STEM integration research paradigm through a careful merging of the
disciplines of STEM. There are two main types of STEM integration: content integration and context integration. This
multiple-case study used content analysis to assess the type of integration used, if any, in the development of curricula
for individual lessons and the unit as a whole. The findings demonstrated that, the overall STEM integrated curricula
used content integration, but lessons within were either content integration, context integration, or single disciplined.
Cases highlighted show these strategies, but cases that deviated significantly from this model are also highlighted. This
research advances our understanding about how teachers develop STEM curricula in an interdisciplinary manner with
the intent of implementing in precollege classrooms. It provides models of context and content integration across STEM
and models of teachers' curriculum development in context-rich interdisciplinary problem spaces. By researching
curriculum development, this project provides professional development designers models for quality programs that
support interdisciplinary classroom environments.
DEVELOPMENT OF NON-COGNITIVE SKILLS IN MINORITY ENGINEERING OUTREACH PROGRAMS
Tasha Zephirin (Purdue University, USA)
DeLean Tolbert (Purdue University, USA)
Darryl Dickerson (Purdue University, USA)
Freddy Solis (Purdue University, USA)
A broad array of efforts have focused on multiplying student pathways to engineering, particularly for groups that have
been historically underrepresented such as ethnic minorities in the United States. Among such efforts, summer programs
have been a widely used mechanism to stimulate and nurture engineering identity and agency in students from a
relatively young age. At a large Midwestern University in the US, summer engineering workshops (SEWs) are executed
for grades 6-12 to create awareness, increase student interest in engineering careers, enhance student preparation, and
improve student access to resources required to pursue an engineering career. This paper presents an overview of the
efforts of the aforementioned university to embed non-cognitive skills into the targeted learning outcomes of SEWs for
secondary school students. These workshops range in duration from one to five weeks and the majority of instructors and
staff are undergraduate and graduate students. Specifically, the paper outlines targeted non-cognitive learning outcomes
and the elements designed to address them in 1) instructor/staff training and 2) workshop curriculum. Initial efforts will
include the integration of active engagement strategies with the use of formative assessments and effective feedback
tools as well as exposure to self-theories such as growth and fixed mindsets.
SBM3: Student Beliefs, Motivation, and Persistence Through the College Years
Chair: Rodany A. Merida
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Patio 1
ATTITUDE TOWARDS CAPSTONE PROJECT: LOOKING FROM GENDER AND STAGE PERSPECTIVES
Rex Bringula (University of the East, Philippines)
Rodany A Merida (University of the East, Philippines)
John Benedic Enriquez (University of the East, Philippines)
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Gil Francis Abinal (University of the East, Philippines)
Jose Mari Ramos (University of the East, Philippines)
This descriptive study investigated whether significant differences existed in the attitudes of the Capstone Project
students when grouped according to gender and the stage of the course they were enrolled in. The study utilized valid
(i.e., items >= 0.50 factor loading) and reliable (i.e., alpha values >= 0.70) Capstone Project Attitude Questionnaire.
Usefulness of the course, Confidence towards the course, and Gender views relating to the course were the dimensions of
the questionnaire. Respondents (n = 508) perceived that the Capstone Project was useful and they showed confidence
towards the course. They also perceived that the course was also fit for female students. It was shown that the students in
the final stage of the course had a higher perception than those in the proposal stage concerning the usefulness of the
course and they had higher confidence towards the course. Female students had a higher perception than the male
students on the suitability of the course for the women. Furthermore, the female students in the final stage had a higher
perception than the female students in the proposal stage regarding the suitability of the course for the women. The null
hypotheses of the study were both partially rejected.
THE USE OF PHYSIOLOGICAL TOOLS TO IDENTIFY CHANGES IN AFFECTIVE RESPONSES FOR
GRADUATE STUDENTS RECENTLY ADMITTED INTO A SCIENTIFIC DISCIPLINE
Idalis Villanueva (Utah State University, USA)
Adam Raikes (Utah State University, USA)
Nathan Ruben (Utah State University, USA)
Sydney Schaefer (Utah State University, USA)
Jake Gunther (Utah State University, USA)
The objective of this work-in-progress study is to investigate relationships between affective states (emotions) and the
academic decisions and experiences of recently admitted graduate students in a scientific discipline. In science,
technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, events experienced by students in and outside the classroom can
impact their beliefs about persisting in their degree or continuing towards graduate school. This case study highlights the
impact that affective experiences have in a student's selected career path. The information from this work-in-progress can
help guide future development of diagnostic and intervention strategies for STEM students. This work presents the
results from a case study for two graduate students enrolled in the Health and Physical Education and Recreation (HPER)
department in Utah State University (one female and one male). The research design used a mixed methods approach
that included educational questions and interviews based on validated instruments for affective states in students:
Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, Socio-Emotional Well-Being Survey, the Cognitive Interview
Theoretical Model, and Self-Determination Theory as well as physiological tools (Q-sensor and pulse oximeter).
Participants were informed of the study before signing an Institutional Review Board-approved consent form. Each
participant was asked to sit down and stare at a designated point in the interview room to allow for all physiological
instrumentation to calibrate and attain a baseline data. The physiological instrumentation used included: 1) Q Sensors 2.0
(Affectiva, Inc) that are wireless non-invasive wrist sensors measuring skin electrical conductance (sweat) during an
event of great stress or workload whose change is reflected in the sympathetic neural drive (i.e. "fight-or-flight"response)
of the human body. Thus, changes in skin conductance indirectly measures changes in stress levels. 2) Pulse oximeters
non-invasively monitor an individual's pulse and heart rate, which are also known to change with stress level. After
calibration, participants were videoed as they responded to several standardized questions related to past and current
academic experiences. Questions were designed to assess recollections of academic experiences and its connected
emotions (e.g., happiness, anger), involvement with after school activities, and career decisions. For the male participant,
questions about shame and anger elicited different skin conductance responses (2 microSiemens and 3microSiemens
respectively) and heart rate responses (97 bpm and 116 bpm respectively). For the female participant, these questions did
not elicit any skin conductance response nor a heart rate reaction for shame; however when asked about anger, her heart
rate decreased to near baseline levels (approximately 60bpm). Furthermore, discussions about academic status and intent
elicited an increase in heart rate for the female participant whereas this response was not present in the male participant.
These early results suggests that there may be gender differences in affective responses for college students, each of
which are guided by individual experiences and backgrounds. Future work will elucidate additional constructs of
affective states (e.g., cognitive load) to strengthen its relationship to academic decisions for a wider pool of college
students (undergraduate and graduate) in different STEM disciplines.
THAT'S NOT MY STYLE: UNDERSTANDING THE CORRELATION OF LEARNING STYLE PREFERENCES,
SELF-EFFICACY, AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN AN INTRODUCTORY CHEMICAL ENGINEERING
COURSE
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Elif Eda Miskioglu (The Ohio State University, USA)
David Wood (The Ohio State University, USA)
The popular American children's story, The Little Engine that Could, is renowned for the engine saying "I think I can, I
think I can," instilling the power of self-belief in the young. The importance of this self-belief, otherwise termed selfefficacy, has been studied by many researchers at the university level. Correlations between (i) self-efficacy and learning
style, (ii) learning style and performance, and (iii) self-efficacy and performance have been independently investigated
by others in numerous contexts. We are studying the link between student learning style preferences, self-efficacy, and
performance in an introductory chemical engineering course. Using the Felder-Silverman model of learning styles
developed for engineering, and the subsequent Felder-Soloman Index of Learning Styles indicator, we are analyzing
each learning style dimension separately to better understand the subtleties of learning style effects. We believe this
integrated study in a traditional lecture-based engineering classroom context will provide valuable information for
engineering education. Results will provide evidence regarding whether learning styles may affect student performance
or self-efficacy, as well as identify natural biases in chemical engineering problems translatable to other fields. A better
understanding of student background and learning preferences is invaluable in developing improved curriculum,
especially in the ever-changing modern classroom.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A VIRTUAL SOCIALIZER-BASED INTERVENTION TARGETING LOWACHIEVING SECOND-YEAR ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Kevin Sevilla (The University of Queensland, Australia)
Marie Paretti (Virginia Tech, USA)
Engineering education has a retention problem resulting in the largest proportion of students leaving the major during
their second year. Most frequently citing poor academic performance stemming from a combination of course difficulty,
poor teaching, and a lack of a sense of belonging, the second year has shown itself to be an important focal point for
intervention efforts aimed at addressing these concerns. While university sponsored support efforts have been developed,
the fact remains that oftentimes students elect not to attend, thus posing the question of whether or not the onus is on the
students or the programs to engage the other. In an effort to connect these two parties regardless of circumstance, a
video-based virtual mentoring intervention was developed and tested as a means to offer the benefits of in-person
mentoring without the social inhibitors that prevent students from attending. This paper discusses both the development
of a virtual mentoring tool as well as some initial findings regarding students' viewing preferences and outcomes of this
type of interaction.
DEVELOPMENT OF AN INSTRUMENT TO MEASURE THE SELF-EFFICACY OF TEACHING
ENGINEERING DESIGN (SETED)
Erik Ward (NC State University, USA)
Matthew Lammi (NC State University, USA)
This work-in-progress paper describes the initial efforts and findings from the development of an instrument to measure
the self-efficacy of teaching engineering design. As engineering design is becoming more prevalent in pre-engineering
settings, it was determined that there was a need for an instrument that would examine engineering design teaching.
Although there are various measures of teaching effectiveness, the construct of self-efficacy was chosen. Self-efficacy is
the belief in one's ability to persist and succeed in a task or pursuit. This study started by indentifying a need for the
instrument, developing the engineering design construct, creating items based on this construct, refining the items, and
testing the items. The items were tested with a sample population of pre-service teachers in Technology, Engineering and
Design Education at a large university in southeastern US. The researchers started by first defining the construct of selfefficacy and the engineering design process. The construct of self-efficacy within social cognitive theory was well
established within the literature. However, engineering design did not enjoy a strong literature-based definition.
Nevertheless, literature in engineering, design, and the learning sciences pointed to facets, key concepts, and practices
that comprise the engineering design process. These key features became the foundation for the instrument's individual
items. These items were then sent to subject matter experts (SME) from engineering education, engineering, and
technology engineering and design teacher education. The SMEs participated in a multi-round item refinement process to
ensure valid aspects of teaching engineering design. When the initial refinement was completed the items were
administered to a sample population for further validity and reliability testing. The results underwent statistical analyses.
The results indicated a strong case for reliability and validity. The subject matter experts all agreed that the items
represented the concept of teaching engineering design. Rotated factor analysis showed all items loading onto at least
one factor, with only a few loading onto more than one. Cronbach's α testing revealed a high internal reliability. While
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these tests did indicate a case for reliability and validity, they did not establish it. This study provides recommendations
for further work that should be conducted before reliability and validity can be more fully established.
SER1: Explorations in Service Learning
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: Alcalá
THE IMPACTS OF SERVICE LEARNING ON STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS:
LESSONS FROM DESIGN PROJECTS FOR OLDER ADULTS
Caitrin Lynch (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Lynn Andrea Stein (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Sharon Grimshaw (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Elizabeth Doyle (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Lois Camberg (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Ela Ben-Ur (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Engineering for Humanity, an interdisciplinary engineering design and anthropology course at Olin College of
Engineering, is a semester-long service-learning partnership between the college and nearby Councils on Aging. This
paper examines the effects of this service learning on our students and their partners. Our research suggests that this
experience has positively impacted students' and elder partners' behavior and attitudes. We collected data from student
and partner surveys, from interviews with the community partners, and from student reflections. By comparing student
behavior and attitudes before and after this course, we have observed the following behavioral and attitudinal changes: 1)
development of empathetic knowledge and understanding, 2) increased appreciation for user-centered design, 3)
redefinition of career trajectories. We also saw transformations in the lives of the community partners. Outcomes for
elders were related to quality of life and wellbeing, including 1) decreases in isolation, 2) increased purpose and
meaning, and 3) improved feelings of wellbeing. Lasting effects included continuation of decreased isolation through a
sustained increase in social engagement, as well as positive thoughts about and mechanisms for aging in place. This
paper briefly describes the curriculum and reports on these trends over three years of coursework.
ENGINEERING FOR DEVELOPMENT: AN INTERNATIONAL SERVICE LEARNING COLLABORATION
Miguel A. Pando (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
Brett Tempest (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
Marcial Blondet (Catholic University of Peru (PUCP), Peru)
Sandra Dika (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
This paper describes a collaboration between two universities (one in Peru, one in the United States) in which
engineering students from the United States travelled to Peru to participate in collaborative engineering projects with
rural communities. Two projects completed in the Cusco region of Peru, in July 2012 and July 2013 are described. The
first project, developed in July 2012, was developed through the Peruvian university's field school program. The students
traveled to Peru, attended theoretical and practical sessions on the campus, and traveled to the community site, where
they designed a concrete reinforced bridge which was then constructed in collaboration with community members. The
second project was similar, however it included the collaboration of the municipality. Table beams for a vehicular bridge
were designed and constructed in the municipality by two of the students, and then were transported to the community to
replace the tile of an existing bridge which is part of the access route to the community. Students' responses to pre- and
post-questionnaire items on attitudes toward engineering and engineering learning outcomes suggest that students had a
positive impression of engineering which was not notably changed by the study abroad experience. A similar pattern was
noted for engineering outcomes. However, student comments related to the post-questionnaire items suggested that the
activities at the host institution and the on-site service project definitely contributed to the enhancement of engineering
learning outcomes. Focus groups were carried out to understand how international service learning experiences can
enhance student learning and social awareness. The pre-trip focus group conversation indicated that students had
developed some social awareness and sense of engineering's role in society prior to the study abroad, including the need
for cultural awareness in implementing engineering solutions. In discussing their on-site experience in implementing the
bridge project in the village during the post-trip focus group, students noted that while they were able to incorporate
community needs into the project, they noted the need for multidisciplinary involvement and further training and
preparation to adequately address the issues in an international project. The findings from this project illustrate the value
of a study abroad experience, and emphasize the importance of community service learning projects as essential
elements for the integral formation of engineering students.
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ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF MEMBER'S DEFINING
CHARACTERISTICS
Daniel Knight (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
Kaitlin Litchfield (University of Colorado at Boulder, USA)
Amy Javernick-Will (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
Engineers Without Borders (EWB) is an organization that has grown rapidly across many nations. While EWB members
have gained a reputation as a unique type of organization with a gender balance and international service orientation, few
studies have empirically investigated the characteristics associated with EWB members. The present study is an
investigation of EWB-USA members, a branch located in the United States. For this study, all students were surveyed
from a large state university in the American West. 566 responses were received. The survey was developed through
literature review and qualitative research with EWB-USA members. Validated scales were selected for the instrument
and supplemented with scales developed to fill gaps in existing research. Data mining statistical procedures known as
CHAID Analysis were used for analyzing the data. These procedures mined all variables in the dataset to determine
those most associated with the target variable, EWB membership. Results were returned in decision trees which help to
determine clusters of characteristics around subpopulations in the data. Results revealed that 9% of respondents indicated
EWB membership. These EWB members were best described in the CHAID by an item from the motivational scale
targeting interest in EWB or similar activities as a reason for studying engineering. The analysis identified two "trees" or
subpopulations in the data, the larger tree branching out around members who are possibly motivated to study
engineering because of EWB affiliation and another tree including those in EWB without these motivations. For those
members in the larger tree, the CHAID selected the most defining characteristic as their major, with people who were
studying engineering because of EWB coming from environmental, civil, mechanical, and chemical engineering with no
EWB members from aerospace engineering, computer science/engineering and materials engineering. For those
members in majors more closely associated with EWB, an additional motivational variable was again most definitive,
that being the lack of family influence behind their reasons for studying engineering. For the other smaller tree, the most
descriptive characteristic was emotional stability from the personality scale with about 10% of EWB members rating
themselves low on this scale. While the scale is a measure of normal personality, this suggests implications for selecting
EWB team members for a stressful international experience. The more emotionally stable members of this subpopulation
were best defined by their age, students who are exploring EWB at the beginning of college, but who do not have EWB
as the central motivator for their studies. In sum, these exploratory data mining results provide initial empirical evidence
describing EWB members as a smaller group of engineering students belonging to two subgroups that can be defined by
different characteristics. There is one group who is motivated to study engineering because of EWB interest and who
have chosen a specific major to support their pathway. The other group consists of young students who are exploring
their options in engineering. Further implications and results from the larger dataset will be discussed in the paper.
CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS IN SERVICE LEARNING WITH AMERICAN INDIAN RESERVATION
COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDERS
Jennifer Benning (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Andrea Surovek (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Daniel Dolan (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Lyle Wilson (Oglala Lakota College, USA)
Andrew Thompson (Oglala Lakota College, USA)
Rob Pyatt (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)
In the process of designing engineered systems, it is not uncommon for engineers to underestimate or altogether ignore
the societal and cultural context of the problem. This is particularly true when designs are developed to solve world
problems; a lack of societal consideration leads to implementation failures when engineers from developed countries
attempt to design solutions "for" people in developing countries rather than working with them. It has been increasingly
recognized in literature that stakeholder participation is critical for designing sustainable solutions. However, translating
social and cultural values and stakeholder participation into engineering education remains an elusive challenge for
educators. A similar challenge exists with engineering design for American Indian Reservations; however, this challenge
is amplified due to a long history of racial tensions, biases, and political oppression that leads to American Indian distrust
of mainstream engineers. This work in progress describes an ongoing engineering design project that is designed to meet
the needs of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (PRIR) while: a) challenging students at a mainstream university to
design within an appropriate cultural context, b) incorporating stakeholder participation and 3) increasing opportunities
and interest in Native American participation in engineering. Dialogue between community members of the Pine Ridge
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Indian Reservation (PRIR, where OLC is located), faculty and students of the Oglala Lakota College (OLC) Tribal
College, and faculty and students at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) have identified that
the PRIR community is interested in collaborating on the design, research, and testing of a sustainable, renewable-energy
based food production system. The system should not only to meet the community needs for safe and healthy foods, but
also serve as a potential source of economic development for the community. This project includes an extensive
partnership and has a strong focus on achieving sustainable design and business development through a multidisciplinary advisory team. Students from South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT) have partnered with
faculty and students from the Oglala Lakota College (OLC) on the functional design of a renewable-energy based
structure for economic development. The design team is advised by faculty at both institutions, as well faculty and
experts representing other synergistic projects on PRIR, including an on-going NSF engineering educational effort, the
Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative (NASHI), based at University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), to
share climate station data and energy monitoring expertise, and Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, a
sustainable community grant holder located at Sharp's Corner, South Dakota, just 8 miles from the OLC campus, to share
cultural knowledge and values and business development strategies. The paper describes the lessons learned by students
and educators when consideration of culture and stakeholder investment become significant components in an
engineering design.
PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A FRESHMEN CAPSTONE PROJECT TO DESIGN EDUCATIONAL MODULES
FOR TEACHERS IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
David Reeping (Ohio Northern University, USA)
John K. Estell (Ohio Northern University, USA)
Kenneth Reid (Virginia Tech, USA)
A group of students from Ohio Northern University has traveled to the Dominican Republic for the past two years and
ran engineering workshops in the schools, public and private. While the workshops did generate significant teacher
interest in engineering, the students who devoted one week each summer to develop, run and assist with the workshops
were largely required to pay their own way. After the initial enthusiasm of performing such outreach wore off, it was
determined that this model is financially unsustainable. Given the great desire on the part of the Dominican teachers to
have access to continuing education, it was determined that methods of bringing content to the teachers through online
modules would be investigated, as it has a great potential to make a large impact without incurring considerable
expenditures. The proposed methodology involved modifying an existing Programming 2 assignment (where a team of
students develop an educational game) to become a freshmen capstone project which primarily incorporates the lesson
plans designed by an elective course. This paper will present the "first generation" of modules and student work. Possible
alterations to this capstone and methods of implementing successful modules will also be discussed.
TLE7: Improving Academic Experiences
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
Room: La Galería
MAKING EXAMINATIONS 'MORE ENJOYABLE'
Karl O. Jones (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
John Skiffington (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
Rebecca Bartlett (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom)
The paper specifies the alterations made to the assessment methods utilized on two modules delivered on six MSc
programmes in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. The assessment altered from an all coursework approach to a
combination of a single coursework and an examination to meet Professional Body requirements. The two affected
modules, "Project Management" and "Finance Management", suffered from a couple of issues in the minds of students:
firstly students find the content rather challenging, mainly because it takes them out of their comfort zone; secondly the
modules have never really been given a high priority in the minds of students whose career ambitions lie in the direction
of engineering design rather than the management area that these modules are perceived to be in. The changes have had
no detrimental effect on results rather they have been positive, and student feedback has been wholly positive, with one
student saying "Relaxed environment, less pressure".
IMPROVING THE STUDENT ACADEMIC EXPERIENCE THROUGH LEAN ENGINEERING PRINCIPLES
Denise R. Simmons (Virginia Tech, USA)
Glenda Young (Virginia Tech, USA)
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Higher education institutions often describe goals for the student experience as a whole as well as define and guide the
academic meaning of the degree. This paper seeks to ignite discussions on how lean engineering principles can improve
the collegiate student's academic or educational experience. We explain how the principles that drive lean engineering
can be operationalized in the context of engineering student success centers (ESSC) to obtain data driven evidence on
aspects of its program, improve retention focused initiatives of the center, and reduce waste which allows for a more
efficient use of resources. In this paper, the term 'engineering student success centers' includes both minority and women
in engineering programs as well as similar programs that provide academic services to undergraduate students, often
underrepresented, in engineering. Recognizing that each of these programs offer a diverse and unique set of services, the
conceptual approach described in this paper can be applied either directly or with minor modifications to their
operations. We consider the student as the customer of these programs who seeks true value from his/her college
experience. Therefore, lean engineering principles are advocated with the goals of improving student (customer) value,
minimizing waste, and promoting efficiency and productivity.
HOW TO MAKE A DISTRIBUTED PROGRAMMING COURSE A BIG FUN
Evgeny Osipov (Lulea University of Technology, Sweden)
Arash Mousavi (Lulea University of Technology, Sweden)
This article describes experiences gained during teaching a Master-level course "Network Programming and Distributed
Applications" at Lulea University of Technology. As a matter of fact teaching this discipline has many cornerstones.
Without an accesses to the proper computing and networking infrastructure the risk for a course instructor is to remain
too verbal, resorting to presenting students with toy practical assignments only remotely resembling the reality. For the
fall of 2013 edition of the course we have married two software technologies: Software Agents and the Infrastructure-asa-Service Cloud computing. Software agents appears to be an excellent playground for demonstrating fundamental
operations of distributed applications. IaaS on the other hand serves not only as a platform for creating truly large scale
distributed networking systems but also provides with a natural capability for demonstrating trade-offs between the
front-end and the back-end parts of a distributed application. While recognizing the overall importance of the cloud
technologies for educating computer science students, we conjecture that more usable management tools should be
developed for instructors in order to decrease the cost of education per student.
ENHANCED LEARNING BY PROMOTING ENGINEERING COMPETENCIES
Sofia Cassel (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Aletta Nylén (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Björn Victor (Uppsala University, Sweden)
An engineering graduate needs to master a number of important skills: problem solving, critical thinking,
communication, collaboration, etc. In this paper we describe how a course in computer security, taught in the Computer
and Information Engineering programme at Uppsala University, has been developed over a period of three years. The
aim is to better develop the engineering competencies of students, improving their understanding of course contents,
training their ability to reflect on it, and to apply their knowledge when facing realistic problems. The course is designed
to activate students, based on practical labs and theoretical tasks which are solved in groups. The student reports are
assessed at seminars, where the solutions are presented orally, peer-reviewed and discussed. The seminars encourage and
reward activities at the higher levels of taxonomies such as Bloom's. The results of the development, based on a CEQbased course evaluation, indicate that students take a deeper approach to learning. They develop their problem-solving
skills to a high degree, appreciate the practical solving of open-ended problems, and take responsibility for collaborative
learning. Their overall satisfaction with the course is quite high, despite indications that they find the workload high.
A RECOMMENDATION SYSTEM TO SUPPORT THE STUDENTS PERFORMANCE IN PROGRAMMING
CONTESTS
Lilian Paula (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Aracele Fassbinder (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
Ellen Barbosa (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Learning to program computers and other devices are becoming an essential skill for students of high school and college.
With this knowledge, young people can master the tools and technology that are part of everyday life. However, the
traditional teaching, even in computer science courses, needs to break the barrier and use new approaches to motivate
students to learn programming in an effective way. Participation in programming contests can promote student
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engagement. Although there are systems that support training for programming contests, they don´t still promote student
engagement and neither personalized and effective learning. This article aims to propose a recommendation system to
support the student's performance in programming contests, with the goal of providing personalized learning. Problems
are recommended according to the profile and student's skills. Therefore, we used ephemeral personalization, pulldelivery recommendation and content-based filtering approaches. Usability tests were conducted to validate the system.
Finally, we present an application scenario where this system can be used how a pedagogical strategy for teaching
programming.
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Saturday, October 25
ASM3: Evaluation of Assessment Approaches and Instruments
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Patio 3
ASSESSING THE ASSESSMENT - INSIGHTS INTO CS1 EXAMS
Ela Zur (The Open University of Israel, Israel)
Tamar Vilner (The Open University of Israel, Israel)
The Open University of Israel (OUI) is an institution of higher education which has an open admissions policy and is
based primarily on distance learning. The CS1 course at the OUI is similar to introductory computing courses at other
universities in Israel and worldwide. Over the years, we have composed some tens of CS1 final exams and collected data
related to the exams. Since there is a high dropout rate for this introductory course, we decided, among other things, to
analyze the data examining the different types of questions and the different topics the questions deal with, trying to find
out whether the situation can be improved. We examined 3,646 individual exams, collected from 25 final exams
administered between 2008 and 2012. The objective was to attempt to identify the difficulties the students faced and to
provide us with guidelines for writing final exams in CS1 which reflect better the material covered, becoming a fairer
assessment instrument and decreasing the failure rate.
A MULTI-PERSPECTIVE FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATING SOFTWARE ENGINEERING EDUCATION BY
ASSESSING STUDENTS' COMPETENCIES
Yvonne Sedelmaier (Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany)
Dieter Landes (Coburg University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Germany)
Education invariably aims at developing competencies, technical as well as non-technical ones. As a consequence, there
is also a need for methods that can be used to assess the quality of education faithfully. One possible approach is an
assessment of whether intended learning outcomes are achieved, i.e. an investigation if the target audience possesses the
desired competencies. Assessment of competencies, however, is tricky since competencies are often only vaguely
defined. This paper presents SECAT, an approach to assess competencies, and particularly those needed for proper
software engineering. To that end, SECAT builds on Rauner's approach for competency assessment in vocational
education. Rauner's approach uses nine competency criteria, which are further refined by suitable issues that indicate to
which extent a competency is, or should be, present. The main contribution of this paper lies in the adaptation and
enhancement of this framework in order to make it useable in software engineering education. Adaptation and
enhancements encompass issues such as team and individual assessments, integration of multiple perspectives from
various groups of stakeholders, and product- and process-orientation. The paper also presents first insights from using
SECAT in a pilot university course in software engineering.
DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A NANO SIZE AND SCALE INSTRUMENT (NSSI)
Yi Kong (Purdue University, USA)
Heidi Diefes-Dux (Purdue University, USA)
Kelsey J Rodgers (Purdue University, USA)
Anna Douglas (Purdue University, USA)
Krishna Madhavan (Purdue University, USA)
The concepts of size and scale are fundamental to nanotechnology education but can be difficult for beginning
undergraduate students to grasp. It is important to develop curricular interventions to increase students' conceptual
understanding of size and scale, before moving on to more advanced subject matter. The purpose of this paper is to
present the initial steps in the development of the Nano Size and Scale Instrument (NSSI), an assessment of students'
understanding of size and scale. Ten items were developed for the NSSI. The NSSI was administered to 118 first year
engineering students and studied using Classical Test Theory. Results suggest that six of the ten items show appropriate
difficulty and discrimination. Five of the items were of moderate difficulty and students' mean scores overall were low
(4.97 out of 10), indicating that students in this study found size and scale concepts difficult. Potential modifications to
the NSSI are discussed.
A CASE STUDY OF USING MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS, SUPPORTED BY ICT, IN AN INTRODUCTORY
PHYSICS COURSE FOR ENGINEERS
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Diana Urbano (Universidade do Porto, Portugal)
Cristina Gaspar Oliveira (Universidade de Aveiro, Portugal)
Paulo Coelho Oliveira (Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Portugal)
We study the impact of the strategy of using Multiple Choice Questions, MCQ, in reading tests, self-evaluation tests and
Peer Instruction (PI) classes, supported by ICT, on the motivation of first year engineer students to study and learn
physics. We analyze the answers to conceptual MCQ given pre and after discussion in PI classes, and the students'
responses to similar MCQ in grading tests. We compare the gain in the Force Concept Inventory, FCI, with that of the
previous year. The strategies implemented in this course were new for the students and are still not common practice in
our faculty. Our results show that they had a very positive impact on students' motivation and that there is some gain in
the academic results, when we compare with the previous year ones. However, they fall short to what can be achieved
and we give suggestions on how to improve and add more learning value to our methods.
ITEMS' DIFFICULTY LEVEL DETERMINATION BASED ON A STATICS TEST WITH PARAMETERS
VARIATION
Andrés Restrepo (EAFIT University, Colombia)
Jorge L. Restrepo (EAFIT University, Colombia)
Jaime Barbosa (EAFIT University, Colombia)
Looking for the improvement of the students' learning, the engineering school of EAFIT University is currently
developing an evaluation and training system. In this system, each student has the option of doing "dynamic" exercises in
a specific field of a subject. Whenever a student uses the system, an exercise is generated with different parameters and
values. The mentioned system (Evaluation System) has been used in the last semesters, achieving the improvement in the
students' comprehension and learning level of the Statics subject. The system under development, allows the students to
train themselves in different topics of the subject and, at the same time, it allows the teachers to evaluate the learning
process. Based on the fact that in the course assessments, an exam with different parameters and values is presented
every time a student accesses the system, it is possible that some students present tests with different complexity levels.
Therefore, the test could be considered inequitable for some people. This paper presents an analysis of the difficulty level
of a test generated with the system. The test was applied to two different groups of students which are taking the course
in the 2014-1 semester. The first group took a test where the items' values and parameters were not changed; and the
second one, took a test where the items' values and parameters change for each student. Based on the obtained results, a
statistical study is made which intends to determine the difficulty and discrimination level of each of the test items, both
for the dynamics parameters test and the fixed parameters test in order to finally determine how much varies the items'
difficulty due to the parameters variation. This will help to generate more equitable tests in the future for the assessment
of a group of students that are taking the course.
CSC1: Computer Science Teaching
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Doblon
OPEN HARDWARE PLATFORMS IN A FIRST COURSE OF THE COMPUTER ENGINEERING
UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAM
Ricardo Santos (Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil)
This paper presents a new methodology proposal and hands-on activities in the Introduction to Computer Engineering
(ICE) course, based on open hardware platforms. The proposal has been adopted in the Computer Engineering
undergraduate program at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS) - Brazil. Most of the ICE courses from
computer engineering programs around the world have put focus on teaching initial basic theoretical concepts of
algorithms, logic, and digital systems. The ICE course at UFMS has been organized to encompass from initial basic
concepts up to a practical and motivating set of experimental activities in order to clarify the program focus and to
connect the concepts to practical applications. To evaluate the impacts of this new curriculum and methodology, an
online anonymous survey has been carried out with students from 2011, 2012, and 2013 classes. After a statistical
analysis and validation of the answers, 28% of the students have pointed that the activities have been determinant to
increase their motivation to study computer engineering. The impacts on students motivation, since the first semester,
have been observed in the students evasion rate. The percentage of evasions in the computer engineering is less than
other engineering programs at UFMS.
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USING CYBERSECURITY AS AN ENGINEERING EDUCATION APPROACH ON COMPUTER ENGINEERING
TO LEARN ABOUT SMART GRID TECHNOLOGIES AND THE NEXT GENERATION OF ELECTRIC POWER
SYSTEMS
Daniel Navarro (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Jean Mendez (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Kidany Berrios (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Eduardo Ortiz-Rivera (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Emmanuel Arzuaga (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, USA)
The main purpose of this publication is to encourage the study of cybersecurity by an engineering education approach for
the physical and virtual protection of the electric power grid with the intention to attract computer engineering students
to the area of energy systems. This paper will focus on how to integrate engineering education, energy systems, and
computer engineering to attract computer engineering students to the areas of cybersecurity and power systems at the
University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. As part of the students learning skills, the students will learn how computer
engineering techniques could be applied to the cybersecurity area to protect the electric power grid. Finally, the computer
engineering students learn non-traditional knowledge for the area of computer engineering like power systems, smart
grid, SCADA, etc. This interdisciplinary knowledge will make the computer engineering student more valuable to the
present job market given the potential to solve the current problems related to the smart grid and the next generation of
electric power systems.
AUGMENTED LEARNING ROADS FOR INTERNET ROUTING
John McCaffery (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Alan H. D. Miller (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Iain Oliver (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
Colin Allison (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom)
As the Internet continues to establish itself as a utility like power, transport or water, it becomes increasingly important
to provide an engaging educational experience about its operation for students in related STEM disciplines such as
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. Internet routing algorithms and protocols are topics that can be used in
multiple STEM education contexts. By reference to the Internet they can be used as an example of where theory meets
practice, where algorithms meet protocols and where science meets engineering. They can be included in the Computer
Science curriculum in modules on distributed systems, computer networking, algorithms, data structures, and graph
theory. While there is a plethora of computer networking textbooks, and copious information spread across the Web,
there is still an essential need for exploratory learning facilities of the type that support group work, experimentation and
experiential learning. This paper reports on work using open virtual worlds to provide a multi-user interactive learning
environment for Internet routing which exemplifies the capabilities of emerging immersive education technologies to
augment conventional practice. The functionality of the learning environment is illustrated through examples and the
underlying system which was built to support the routing simulations is explained.
SCAM, A FLEXIBLE, SCHEME-LIKE LANGUAGE FOR TEACHING PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
CONCEPTS
John Lusth (The University of Alabama, USA)
Scam is a Scheme-like programming language designed for teaching a wide variety of programming language concepts.
Scam, at its heart, is an impure functional language, designed to be modified and extended. There are no keywords in the
language and every special form, including function definition, is a true function that can be overridden. Consequently,
Scam is ideal for introducing concepts such as object encapsulation and inheritance, aspects, and language subsetting.
Implementations of these concepts can be added to S CAM via student programming projects. Scam has been
successfully used in a programming languages course for the past few years. Scam also provides an imperative interface
called Sway, which resembles a dynamically-typed C; this interface is suitable for lower division courses and has been
used as a first language for at- risk students in the CS major. This paper introduces Scam and gives a series of projects
and solutions that are appropriate for a Programming Languages course.
ACTIVE LEARNING METHOD IN "SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND CONTROL" AREA
Dmitry Nikolaevich Bazylev (ITMO University, Russia)
Alexey Margun (ITMO University, Russia)
Konstantin Zimenko (ITMO University, Russia)
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Alexandr Shchukin (ITMO University, Russia)
Artem Kremlev (ITMO University, Russia)
Present situation allows us to construct lesson so as to develop students' thinking, attention and other cognitive functions.
However, productive lesson should form not only deep knowledge but also the ability to acquire knowledges
independently, to use it in different situations, to accumulate the experience of solving problems. In this regard the
application of active learning methods is gaining attention. It is caused by the fact that active learning methods stimulate
to rapid adaptation and the comprehensive development of students. In accordance with this in the article the active
learning method in studying of the course "Integrated Systems Design and Control" for the masters program "System
Analysis and Control" is described. For this purpose the laboratory bench for control home automation was created and
special lerning program with assesment criteria were developed. Designed bench allows students to solve tasks during
laboratory classes or at home through the Internet. Designed program is successfully used in ITMO University. The
course is based on the involving of students in the acquisition of new knowledge during the learning process, finding the
optimal solution supported by practical activities. This approach contributes to the growth of the students' level of
adaptation to the educational process.
DIS4: Computer Tools for Distance Education 1
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Escudo
THE USEFULNESS OF USABILITY AND USER EXPERIENCE EVALUATION METHODS
ON AN E-LEARNING PLATFORM DEVELOPMENT FROM A DEVELOPER'S PERSPECTIVE: A CASE
STUDY
Aldo Gordillo (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Enrique Barra (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Sandra Aguirre Herrera (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Juan Quemada Vives (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
The development of a web platform is a complex and interdisciplinary task, where people with different roles such as
project manager, designer or developer participate. Different usability and User Experience evaluation methods can be
used in each stage of the development life cycle, but not all of them have the same influence in the software development
and in the final product or system. This article presents the study of the impact of these methods applied in the context of
an e-Learning platform development. The results show that the impact has been strong from a developer's perspective.
Developer team members considered that usability and User Experience evaluation allowed them mainly to identify
design mistakes, improve the platform's usability and understand the end users and their needs in a better way.
Interviews with potential users, clickmaps and scrollmaps were rated as the most useful methods. Finally, these methods
were considered unanimously very useful in the context of the entire software development, only comparable to SCRUM
meetings and overcoming the rest of involved factors.
MOBIMONITOR: A MOBILE APP FOR MONITORING DISTANCE COURSES IN THE AMAZON REGION
Ketlen K. Teles Lucena (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Jath da Silva e Silva (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Vitor Bremgartner (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Elaine H. T. de Oliveira (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Bruno Gadelha (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Offering upper-level courses for the population that lives in remote areas, like the Amazon, is a huge challenge due to the
difficulties of access and the low development level. To address this challenge, the Center for Distance Education (CDE)
in Federal University of Amazonas, implemented an educational project that provides distance courses in graduate and
undergraduate degree in these places using a Learning Management System (LMS). However, evasion, failure and
dropout rates in the disciplines are still worrying. In order to face this problem, MobiMonitor, a mobile application
integrated with multi-agent system was developed. This app allows instrumenting course mediators with tools for
monitoring students' behavior and performance in a LMS, especially monitoring student participation in specific
academic activities (assignments and forums) and provides support in advance to identify students who need a direct
pedagogical intervention in order to avoid possible course evasion, failure or dropout. MobiMonitor enables mediators to
check these data on the fly, classifying students' participation into four levels (excellent, good, low and very low). The
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mediators access this report by monitoring through mobile application and send alert messages to students according to
their attendance status. Experiments conducted in two poles show the feasibility of the proposal.
AN AGENT-BASED TUTORING SYSTEM FOR LEARNING PROPOSITIONAL LOGIC USING MULTIPLE
LINKED REPRESENTATIONS
Evandro Costa (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Emanuele Tuane Silva (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Anderson Santos (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Alexandre Carlos Santos Azevedo (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Priscylla Silva (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Marlos Silva (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, Brazil)
Hemilis Rocha, HJ (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Caroline Lima (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
The field of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) has become a well-established study interdisciplinary field through its
purpose of adaptiveness and individualized learning. At the same time, this field is continuously growing with regard to
its research efforts to address the complexity involved, for instance, in the knowledge dimensions that must be taken into
account by the ITS designers and developers. This includes issues on knowledge modeling aspects concerning domain
expertise, student, and pedagogy, as well as, problems associated with the implementation of the generated models. An
important question in ITS research is on how to support multiple viewpoints or even multiple representations on a given
domain knowledge. A small number of studies concerning these aspects have been reported in literature, presenting
arguments in favor of the use multiple representations. To mitigate the above issue, the research work presented here is
focused on building a better and more effective ITS for classical logic, particularly with focus on the task of checking the
validation of a given argument in Propositional Logic (PL), including proof construction. It takes into account the
general mentioned questions about knowledge modeling in Logic domain. The main purpose is to help computer science
undergraduate students to explore the two mentioned viewpoints, here assumed as important for them. The other aim is
to use some know-how obtained from one viewpoint to help understanding some resources and advance in the other one.
One motivation for this integration comes from the importance to involve students in two complementary viewpoints:
syntactic and semantic. For instance, it allows students to find ways (or to receive assisted suggestions from the system)
to move from one to another viewpoint, developing adequate understanding of multiple ways to see problems and their
solutions. Then, the main aim of our proposal is to enhance students learning by providing problem solving in two ways:
from the ITS to student and vice-versa, as well as, permitting students to make connections between the two viewpoints.
In this way, we describe details of requirements, architecture and its implementation and an illustrative scenario to show
the value of the proposed system. Furthermore, a case study has been carried out to evaluate the feasibility and
usefulness of our system, mainly helping students to understand the processes of proof construction problem solving.
The first results indicate the main advantages of our proposed system over other closely related approaches.
COMPUTER NETWORKS VIRTUALIZATION WITH GNS3:
EVALUATION A SOLUTION TO OPTIMIZE RESOURCES AND ACHIEVE A DISTANCE LEARNING
Pablo Gil (University of Alicante, Spain)
Gabriel Jesus Garcia (University of Alicante, Spain)
Angel Delgado (University of Alicante, Spain)
Rosa Medina (University of Alicante, Spain)
Antonio Calderon (University of Alicante, Spain)
Patricia Marti (University of Alicante, Spain)
On-line and downloadable educational resources (OER) have been successfully used in engineering education the last
years. Traditional, teaching methodology of a subject like Computer Networks is done a face to face using OER. Thus,
students develop practical experiments in a laboratory in the university. They use a real computer network based on
TCP/IP architecture where computers are connected with physical network devices such as routers, switches, hubs,
bridges, etc. This way, the teachers show the network behavior analyzing the packets traffic. Sometimes the students use
several free applications for simulating the behavior of computer networks and TCP/IP routing. Generally, the online
simulators are based on programming languages and they usually are not intuitive and easy to be used by any student.
For this reason, initially the teachers implemented a new simulator called KivaNS and some interactive and portable Java
applets from KivaNS using EJS. They are easy to be used and do not require to be programmed in order to simulate how
protocols of the TCP/IP architecture work. But, the applets have a very limited re-configurability and the kind of network
topology is limited by programming. Moreover, the traffic generated by these virtual networks is not real and the quality
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of information is also depending on the low-level programming. Consequently, we have used GNS3 to simulate how
complex networks work from the virtualization of real network devices without dedicating specific hardware and where
the students can analyze traffic as if it was being generated in a real network. GNS3 is a tool that can help us to achieve
these requirements replicating the configuration of interfaces and routers of our real computer network installed in a
physical laboratory in our University. Therefore, in this work-in-progress, some activities based on the virtualization of a
computer network are proposed. The activities are based on the existing network topology implemented on a laboratory
of our University. Thus, our real devices are virtualized using the free library GNS3. The computer network
virtualization provides to students some advantages such as: a) the student can analyze the real traffic without using real
physical devices. The configuration and connectivity problems are reduced or eliminated. b) They can work from other
places outside the classroom/laboratory. The distance learning can be performed. c) The routing techniques can be
changed by students. They do not require special user authorization to avoid machine damages or change the
configurations. In real laboratory, some changes are not allowed because multiple users interact on the same devices and
the changes can affect all users. The new virtual computer networks topologies will be evaluated in a subject of
communication and industrial networks of a postgrade course at our University. The teachers will propose a pair students
work over the real laboratory that can be developed already with the virtual environment using GNS3. A survey to the
students will evaluate the proposal, and the students' marks will demonstrate if the new on-line tool is better for the
improvement of the learning process of this subject.
KEYWORD EXTRACTION FOR MINING MEANINGFUL LEARNING-CONTENTS ON THE WEB USING
WIKIPEDIA
Tetsuya Toyota (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
Yuan Sun (National Institute of Informatics, Japan)
The purpose of this paper is to provide a solution of extracting appropriate keywords to identify meaningful learningcontents on the Web. There are some issues in identifying documents that have learning content. Firstly, the documents
need to be identified according to the learning area of a student's school year. Secondly, the documents need to be
identified according to the learning area that the student is now studying or studied. In this paper, we present a method of
extracting keywords for mining meaningful learning-contents using Wikipedia. At first, we select the articles in
Wikipedia with the arbitrary input keyword of learning items. Then, we select other Wikipedia's articles related to the
articles selected by the first process, using links and categories of Wikipedia. Furthermore, we calculate degrees of
association between the articles and the keywords using PF-IBF, and put the degree on each keyword. Finally, we screen
the keywords using his/her curriculum guideline to adjust the keywords to the learning area of the student's school year.
In the next step, we are planning to develop a method of screening keywords according to each student's ability, so that
we can select more appropriate keywords for each student.
EER8: Problem Solving, Mathematics and Design
Chair: Robert M Capraro
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Aranjuez
"PROBLEM SOLVING" IN ENGINEERING RESEARCH ON STUDENTS'
ENGINEERING DESIGN PRACTICES AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING PRACTICES
Monica Cardella (Purdue University, USA)
DeLean Tolbert (Purdue University, USA)
Engineers encounter a variety of problems in professional practice, ranging from well-defined to ill-defined; closedended to open-ended; and context-independent to context-dependent. Preparing engineering students to be able to
address these different types of problems means that we must provide educational experiences that provide students with
opportunities to develop a variety of skills, strategies and "ways of thinking." A current research project exploring
students' uses of mathematical thinking and design thinking while attending to a three-hour design task (and thinking
aloud in the process) builds on previous studies of students' and practitioners' design practices and processes as well as
students' mathematical modeling practices. Previous studies of engineering design behavior suggest that a design process
can be characterized by iterations of converging and diverging behavior, and that "problem solving" in design involves
not only solving the problem but also framing and defining the problem. Previous research on how students engage in
mathematical thinking suggests that in their pre-college experiences students develop a sense that mathematics problems
have a single correct answer, and the goal is to arrive at this precise answer as quickly as possible. Within undergraduate
engineering curricula, however, educators work to help students recognize mathematical modeling as a process where
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there are many valid approaches, with different rationales for choosing a particular approach. In the current study, 90
students ranging from entering (first-year) engineering students to graduating engineering students, as well as graduating
mathematics and graduating design students, will participate in this verbal protocol analysis study where they are asked
to attend to a design task while thinking aloud, and then participate in a semi-structured interview. Data collection is still
underway, but preliminary findings suggest that the students draw on different design and mathematics strategies, and
that their processes vary based on their previous design and mathematics experiences as well as their standing (first-year
vs. graduating senior). As data analysis continues, we look for instances of diverging and converging behavior as well as
students responses to ambiguity. As we prepare students for professional practice, we must consider how we will prepare
students to draw on both their mathematical ways of thinking and their design ways of thinking in order to address the
array of problems they will encounter. Educational implications include integrating a variety of types of problems in
engineering curricula as well as specific courses, and providing opportunities for students to reflect on the differences
between engineering science and engineering design.
COGNITIVE STRATEGIES AND MISCONCEPTIONS IN INTRODUCTORY STATICS PROBLEMS
Wade Goodridge (Utah State University, USA)
Idalis Villanueva (Utah State University, USA)
Benjamin Call (Utah State University, USA)
Maria Valladares (Utah State University, USA)
Nicholas J. A. Wan (Utah State University, USA)
Christopher Green (Utah State University, USA)
Introductory engineering problems set foundational knowledge required by students. While statics is a course that is
typically offered during the start of an engineering student's sophomore year, it is one of the first pre-professional
engineering courses students are exposed to and is important to their persistence in engineering. An understanding of the
strategies and misconceptions that students employ to solve 2-D and 3-D force problems in statics is warranted due to its
ties to their success and thus persistence. This study hopes to reveal some of the misconceptions engineering students
encounter when introduced to 2-D and 3-D concepts in Statics. The research design will focus on a qualitative approach
where participants will engage in a Talk Aloud protocol implemented during problem solving activities. Data will be
collected, segmented, and coded to determine misconception themes, strategies, and procedural understanding associated
with solving equilibrium problems. A pilot study focusing on the experiences of 6 participants (3 female and 3 male) will
be discussed in this paper. The study aims to identify areas where interventions may be strategically instituted facilitating
students' success in solving Statics problems. Results will foster future research and refine the qualitative methods that
will be applicable to such research.
IDENTIFYING THE VARIATION OF EXPERIENCES WHEN DEALING WITH PROBLEMS IN COMPLEX
SYSTEMS
John Mendoza-Garcia (Purdue University / Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, USA)
Monica Cardella (Purdue University, USA)
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Engineering professional societies, engineering education thought leaders, and academics in engineering education have
established the need to promote systems thinking in engineering students so they can deal effectively with the future
complexity of engineering practice. Universities and schools have taught systems thinking, but currently there are
limitations in measuring the effectiveness of these instructional interventions. Current research on assessment states that
it is necessary to align modern theories of learning, the task and the interpretation of the outcomes from the task.
Theories about the development of systems thinking are still scarce and are not based in modern theories of learning.
This work intends to contribute to close this gap by identifying the variation of experiences people have when dealing
with problems in complex systems. The research approach followed to answer this question is phenomenography
(Marton's approach. Participants will be asked to perform a task, and each common way of dealing with the task will be
identify as a category. These categories will be hierarchically arranged, getting a developmental path. A developmental
path explaining the development of systems thinking will facilitate the development of tools to assess the level of
systems thinking which impacts academy and industry.
PATHWAYS TO ENGINEERING: MATHEMATICS AS A MEDIATOR OF ENGINEERING SUCCESS
Sandra B Nite (Texas A&M University, USA)
Jim Morgan (Texas A&M University, USA)
Mary M Capraro (Texas A&M University, USA)
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Robert M Capraro (Texas A&M University, USA)
Cheryl A Peterson (Texas A&M University, USA)
The path to engineering is through mathematics. In particular, students need to successfully complete an engineering
calculus sequence to fulfill their requirements for an engineering degree. With the goal of increasing success in
Engineering Calculus I, and consequently retaining engineering majors, the Department of Mathematics at Texas A&M
University, through a grant from the National Science Foundation, established a summer program to bridge high school
mathematics knowledge to requisite mathematics knowledge for Engineering Calculus I. Of the students who
participated in the summer program, 81% raised their scores on the mathematics placement exam (MPE) sufficiently to
be cleared to register for Engineering Calculus in the fall. Students who did not raise their score above 21 out of 33,
whether or not they participated in the summer program, had to take Precalculus before enrolling in Engineering
Calculus I. Because Precalculus is primarily taken as a prerequisite for Engineering Calculus I, the purpose of the course
is to remediate mathematics skills needed for the calculus course.
AN EXAMINATION OF MATHEMATICS PREPARATION FOR AND PROGRESS THROUGH THREE
INTRODUCTORY COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSES
Christine F Reilly (University of Texas - Pan American, USA)
Emmett Tomai (University of Texas - Pan American, USA)
The pipeline of three introductory computer science courses at our university have low pass rates. As part of our efforts
to improve the pass rates in these courses, we examine the students' mathematics preparation and their progress from one
course to the next. We find that the minority of students who enter the university with good mathematics preparation are
likely to succeed in our introductory computer science courses. For the majority of students, we suggest a series of
interventions throughout the pipeline. Prior to taking Computer Science 1, students could gain more experience with
problem solving during the Introduction to Computer Science and Introduction to Computer Engineering courses. We
suggest adding precalculus as a prerequisite for Computer Science 2. For students who do not earn an A in Computer
Science 2, we plan to examine whether taking a class in a second programming language before taking Computer
Science 3 will improve performance in Computer Science 3. Our goal is to improve student learning and retention
through these efforts, combined with continual innovation in the classroom.
FAC1: Faculty Roles
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: La Granja
EPISTEMOLOGICAL FRAMES OF GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANTS AND INSTRUCTORS IN STUDIOBASED ENGINEERING CLASSES
Christina Smith (Oregon State University, USA)
Debra Gilbuena (Oregon State University, USA)
Devlin Montfort (Oregon State University, USA)
Milo Koretsky (Oregon State University, USA)
Many engineering programs have recently seen a significant increase in enrollment. We studied a chemical engineering
department that has implemented a studio approach to help cope with the increasing course sizes. These small studios
compliment large lecture courses and provide students interactive learning environments. In this exploratory qualitative
study we interview Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and instructors to investigate their perceptions of the
implementation of studios relative to the designers objective and their teaching experiences. From the latter, we infer
epistemological frames based on their responses to: how they prepare for class as a student, how they prepare for class as
a teacher, and how they deliver the studio content. We captured glimpses of how instructors and GTAs approach
different aspects of their school experiences. The most interesting findings that warrant further study are the inconsistent
epistemological frames across contexts and inconsistent teaching practices even when epistemological frame appears to
be unchanged.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION: WHO IS SUPPOSED TO DO WHAT?
Jennifer Turns (University of Washington, USA)
Drew Paine (University of Washington, USA)
Brook Sattler (University of Washington, USA)
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This work is motivated by the increasing urgency to understand how research can be used to transform educational
practice. In recent years, the engineering education community has invested significant energy and resources in the
creation of a rigorous empirical knowledge base to support the transformation of engineering education practice. We ask,
how can we as a community accelerate the use of research in support of educational transformation? This is a
challenging issue to study because of the complexity of the research landscape (e.g., many studies, multiple methods,
varied underlying epistemologies) and the complexity of educational practice (e.g., multiple sites of learning, multiple
actors engaged in different roles). There is a need for approaches to investigating this issue that (a) are inclusive of the
range of research activities currently being emphasized in engineering education and (b) provide a way to reflect back to
the community what is currently being done in order to start a conversation, engender reflection, and help generate ideas.
In this work, we address the specific question: When researchers identify practical implications in their research
publications, what specific actions are they suggesting be done, and who is expected to take these actions? While such an
approach is clearly only a limited view into the relationship of research to practice in engineering education, this
approach has significant potential value. For example, scholarly writing (such as conference papers and journal articles)
represents one place where researchers articulate ideas about how their research can be used (i.e., educational
implications). Pragmatically speaking, journal articles are readily available for analysis, and the analysis of journal
articles can provide data for reflection and insights upon which to base further study. To address our research question,
we are using an analysis procedure that we have developed over a multi-year period. Our procedure involves (1)
sentence-level analyses of journal articles to identify sentences that leverage specific rhetorical strategies in order
suggest some type of action based on the study's findings, and then (2) unpacking the sentence to identify the specific
action that is suggested and the actor who is supposed to take the action. To date, we have applied this analysis
procedure to 59 journal articles published in the Journal of Engineering Education (the April 2011 issue through the
January 2013). In our proposed FIE paper, we will focus on characterizing the actions that are the focus of these
sentences, as well as the actors (when stated) who are supposed to take the actions. Our preliminary analysis suggests it
will be valuable to describe the sites of educational practice associated with the actions (e.g., are the actions to be taken
in a classroom, in advising sessions) and also the extent to which the actions are behavioral (something an actor is
supposed to do) or cognitive (something that needs to be thought about or considered in decision making). In our
manuscript, we will pay particular attention to identifying the implications of our own results.
ON THE ROLE OF A "CARING" PROFESSOR IN DEVELOPING A PROPER LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
Waddah Akili (Geotechnical Engineering, USA)
The quality of teaching can be improved by having faculty become more sensitive to students' needs even if the faculty
member is not fully committed to modern teaching/learning methods. A caring faculty understands, encourages and
supports students' individuality and is willing to listen and provide advice. A caring faculty understands that individuality
is manifested in- among other things- different learning styles, visions, and interests. In addition, a caring college faculty
realizes that intelligence is not always the most significant factor in students' performance; and some other factors -such
as willingness and ability to focus, concentrate and communicate- may be even more important, and are a function of
students' emotional well-being. A caring faculty supports individuality not only with encouragement and understanding,
but also by not trying to mold students to an image of what they "should be" and how they "should behave". Instead,
students should be encouraged to realize their own visions and expectations, rather than the expectations of others. A
caring college faculty fosters curiosity which is essential for gaining knowledge. Thus, faculty members have to realize
and acknowledge that they are humans themselves, and it is all right to make mistakes. Also, caring faculty should
acknowledge that in many situations there is no "right" or "wrong" way, but ought to show better approaches or
solutions, rather than emphasizing what the student has done "wrong". In essence, the faculty should provide guidance
and feedback instead of criticism. The paper focuses on the role of the professor in creating a positive environment
where students feel comfortable being themselves and enjoying and appreciating the total experience of learning. In this
type of environment students feel that they are important, that their needs can be met, and that others (faculty members,
graduate assistants, lab technicians, staff members, etc.) experience joy and satisfaction in helping them get their needs
met. It is also argued that when the teacher is able to focus on assisting the students in meeting their needs, the teacher's
own needs get met. In concluding, the author presents his own reflections based on his experience as an engineering
student and a faculty member. The author has a firm conviction that the only professor who belongs in a classroom is a
caring professor.
A SELF-ASSESSMENT OF THE USE OF EVIDENCE-BASED INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES IN
ENGINEERING
Sarah Zappe (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Daniel Merson (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
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Kirsten Hochstedt (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Lindsey Schrott (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Thomas Litzinger (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
The purpose of this paper is to describe the methodology and preliminary results used in a National Science Foundation
(NSF) funded project whose purpose is to conduct a self-assessment of the instructional practices used in the College of
Engineering at Pennsylvania State University. The project was funded in the fall of 2012 by the NSF WIDER (Widening
Implementation and Demonstration of Evidence-based Reforms). The overall goals of the study are to 1) characterize the
use of evidence-based practices in engineering undergraduate programs, 2) understand the major barriers that faculty and
administrators see to wider use of evidence-based practices, and 3) identify faculty who are making exemplary use of
evidence-based practices so that these practices can be celebrated and used to encourage others to adopt them. The multifaceted study used a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures to answer research questions relating to the
above project goals. This paper discusses the methodology used during each of four study stages (syllabi analysis,
student survey, faculty survey, and interviews with faculty and administrators), provides preliminary results, and
discusses next steps. Suggestions for others conducting similar studies at their institutions are provided, in terms of both
methodology and study administration.
MAKING TEACHERS FROM STUDENTS: HOW LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS MAY FOSTER AN INTEREST
IN TEACHING
Adam Coppola (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Yevgeniya V Zastavker (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Jeremy M Goodman (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Rebecca Christianson (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Anne LoVerso (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Cecelia Auerswald (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Doyung Lee (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
This paper presents an exploratory case study of the interest and participation in teaching, teaching related activities, and
research on education among students and alumni at Celadon College, a small engineering school focused on education
reform. Prompted by a lack of qualified STEM educators in the United States, this study investigates how to increase
interest in education as a career path among STEM undergraduates. A mixed methods analysis of survey responses from
231 students and alumni reveals that, compared to the national average among engineering graduates, subjects at
Celadon College are more than twice as likely to indicate interest in becoming K-12 teachers. Analysis indicates that two
major factors influence students' position towards teaching and the desire to teach: the development of pedagogical
awareness and participation in informal peer teaching. Our analysis suggests a link between institutional academic and
non-academic cultures and students' interest in K-12 teaching. We conclude by sharing a set of questions for further
investigation and discussion with engineering education community.
INT1: International Dimensions of Engineering Education
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: La Galería
PARALLEL VIRTUAL URBAN WORKSHOP: A "REASONABLE-COST" METHODOLOGY FOR ACADEMIC
INTERNATIONALIZATION IN PROBLEM-SOLVING ORIENTED POSTGRADUATE SUBJECTS
Ester Higueras (Technical University of Madrid, Spain)
Jose Fernández-Güell (Technical University of Madrid, Spain)
Francisco Lamíquiz (Technical University of Madrid, Spain)
Marcela Riva Monti (Technical University of Madrid, Spain)
New information and communication technologies (ICTs) are offering unprecedented opportunities and challenges for
innovating in a collaborative way at the academic and research realm. With the purpose of taking advantage of these
opportunities, a project called "Parallel Virtual Workshop (PVW)" has been set in a Master's Program to pursue
academic internationalization, to provide professional exposure to students and to develop a multidisciplinary planning
methodology. Within PVW, ICTs are used to assemble these goals, while cutting down costs. Simple tools were used
such as free video call and instant message (Skype), a virtual platform to download working papers and to provide a
friendly communication channel (Dropbox), and a blog for the discussions. PVW proposal is described, outcomes are
presented, and strengths and weaknesses are discussed. Finally, and since it is an ongoing project, future work is
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presented. Overall assessment indicates that PVW may become an integrated, efficient and innovative approach to
respond to present challenges faced by postgraduate programs that intend to attract an international audience at a
reasonable cost.
ENGINEERING INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS AT THE PUBLIC UNIVERSITY OF NAVARRE:
A SATISFACTORY ON-GOING EXPERIENCE IN A CONTEXT OF INDUSTRIAL GLOBALIZATION
Pablo Sanchis (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Antonio J López-Martín (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Jesús López-Taberna (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Gurutze Pérez-Artieda (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Eugenio Gubía (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Edurne Barrenechea (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
David Astrain (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Daniel Morato (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
Ignacio R. Matias (Public University of Navarre, Spain)
In a context of global industrialization, the engineers have to be not only competent and technically well-prepared but
also show effective communication in other languages, preferably English, and intercultural skills. For an engineering
degree to be competitive, their academic curriculum has to be designed taking into account this fact. This paper describes
the Engineering International Programs at the School of Industrial and Telecommunications Engineering of the Public
University of Navarre, and particularly how they are organized into two programs, namely the International Curriculum
Program and the Student Mobility Program. Both Programs are described in terms of organization, management and
admission requirements. Preliminary results of this work-in-progress experience, including number of students enrolled
in the Programs and results of the students' satisfaction surveys, are very satisfactory and show the growing interest of
students and teachers in the Programs and, more generally, in the internationalization of the academic curricula of the
Engineering Degrees of the School.
OPENING UP AN INTERUNIVERSITY COLLABORATION AMONG CATALAN UNIVERSITY ACADEMIC
STAFF THE CASE OF CIRAX PILOT EXPERIENCE
Teresa Sancho-Vinuesa (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain)
M. Rosa Estela (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Joana Villalonga Pons (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Sweden)
Clàudia Sànchez-Bonvehí (Consorci de Serveis Universitaris de Catalunya, Spain)
The openness movement supported by the development of IT, the empowerment of knowledge-sharing communities of
practice across the network, as the need to ensure higher quality education, provide the framework for the "Col·laboratori
interuniversitari de recursos d'aprenentatge en xarxa" (CIRAX) program. The CIRAX project aims to promote and
consolidate a teaching community which should be active in the creation, updating and sharing resources, and learning
practices. The tool for achieving it is a repository-in-collaboration where resources could be shared, well-catalogued and
well-managed. We have identified the factors that influence sharing and reusing resources and which have been tested on
university teaching staff of introductory math courses. Among these factors, we have observed a high degree of sharing
practice but constraints on reusing, due to prioritization of time and a lack of information regarding open licenses. The
first year results allow us to establish essential lines of action in order to consolidate and enhance this experience within
the mathematical teaching community at the Catalan university system: simplify the prototype and its workflows;
articulate the shared resources in a normalized and clear way; develop strategies for consolidating the community and
dissemination of information; and enhance the institutional recognition of teaching practice.
THINKING OUT OF THE BOX: C-PROJECTORS AND MORPHOLOGICAL OVERVIEW
Wim Zeiler (University of Technology Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
The need for more sustainable solutions makes product design an increasing complex task. In order to support team
design in the conceptual design phase, a design approach is proposed: Integral Design. Integral Design uses
morphological charts, which are made by the individual designers from different disciplines, and which are than
transformed into a morphological overview. This morphological overview represents the interpretation of the design
brief and the connected relevant knowledge of the whole design team. The mechanism in this design approach can be
explained with the help of the Concept-Knowledge [C-K] theory of Hatchuel and Weil. Applications derived from this
theory enable designers to expand their solution space from the known into the unknown world of concepts.After testing
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through workshops and trainings in the industry the method was used by students in the course of a Multi-disciplinary
master project integral design. The workshop was used to examine the effects of different interventions; in this case
introducing a professional to the student teams at the last session of the workshop and the use of so called C-projectors
from C-K theory. It showed that it is possible to stimulate creativity as it led to a significant increase of the number of
solutions.
PRE4: Delivery Techniques for Precollege Education
Chair: Ann Kaiser
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Comendador
COREPAL: A STANDARDS-BASED CONTENT HUB FOR STEM FIELDS
Smitesh Bakrania (Rowan University, USA)
Krishan Bhatia (Rowan University, USA)
Kauser Jahan (Rowan University, USA)
In an effort to generate and retain student interest in STEM fields, this work focused on providing middle school teachers
with resources to engage students using hands-on activities and demonstrations directly related to the state science
standards. The project involved generating a library of content for 8th grade physical science standards. The
demonstrations and activities were specifically selected to promote interest and engage students, while being easy-toimplement for the teachers. The resources were packaged as a mobile app, called CorePal, to make the content highly
accessible. CorePal was designed to allow teachers to track their progress and more importantly serve as a powerful
guide to integrate science and engineering activities within their curriculum. Since the project was inspired by feedback
from middle school teacher workshops for incorporating hands-on activities in classrooms, local science teachers
participated in focus group discussions, workshops and surveys to inform CorePal's development. This paper introduces
this standards-based hub for middle-school teachers to engage students within the STEM fields. The paper details
CorePal's design philosophy and development. Initial feedback from teachers is included to provide context for these
efforts. The success of CorePal rests on its ability to build a collaborative community around it.
A MOBILE PROGRAM FOR ENHANCING ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Kauser Jahan (Rowan University, USA)
Nancy K DeJarnette (Rowan University, USA)
This paper focuses on a mobile K-12 outreach program titled "Engineers on Wheels". Funding from the Martinson
Foundation was acquired to retrofit two vans with modern technology and engineering activities. Travel is conducted in
colorful vehicles that represent the institution name and bring engineering alive for the select audience. The idea for a
mobile program was developed as many school districts do not have resources for field trips. These vans are driven to
area schools to promote all engineering disciplines to K-12 students and educators. Engineering activities are also
demonstrated outside the vehicles at scheduled school locations. The goal of the EW project is to deliver engineering
concepts into K-12 classrooms using simple cost effective hands on activities. This project is unique in that the activities
are developed or selected entirely by engineering students and delivered to school districts by students/faculty.
Engineering students develop and pilot the activities, lesson plans, and handouts, for the Engineers on Wheels project
through a course called the Engineering Clinic. All engineering disciplines are represented via these activities to give
students a well-rounded idea of what different engineering involves. Samples of activities include Solar, Wind and Water
Power, Biodiesel and Lip Gloss Processing, Bridge Building, Strength of Materials etc. The goal of the project is to use
these activities to mitigate some of the issues that prevent girls and boys from understanding engineering and its
specialty areas, thus preventing consideration of engineering as a career choice. Students travel to select school districts
throughout the academic year to expose the challenges and excitement of engineering to K-12 students and educators.
Surveys are conducted to assess the impact of the program. This successful program is in it's seventh year and just
received national recognition as the 2013 WEPAN Outstanding Women in Engineering Program Initiative. The program
has impacted over 250 area schools.
PATHWAYS TO EFFECTIVE K-12 STEM PROGRAMS
Howard Kimmel (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Levelle Burr-Alexander (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Linda S. Hirsch (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Ronald Rockland (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
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John Carpinelli (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA)
Marie Aloia (Bayonne High School, USA)
Numerous inquiries from K-12 educators across the state of xx have indicated that defining and implementing Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has become a challenge to the K-12 education sector.
Many of these K-12 educators approach STEM disciplines as if each one exists in isolation from the others and they do
not integrate the content and skills of the disciplines that can engage students on many levels. Alternately, they may
believe that an engineering experience and/or robotics, i.e. an isolated project, can be considered a STEM program. Our
responses have focused on STEM education as an interdisciplinary area of study that integrates the four disciplines rather
than achieving skills and knowledge independently in each subject area. A STEM program should also provide students
experiences in problem-solving, analytical, critical thinking, teamwork, and communication skills. As a result, a student
should possess the ability to apply, synthesize, and evaluate their knowledge of how the world works within and across
the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This paper describes our approaches with these
educators that can lead to effective implementation of a STEM program to make connections between the STEM
disciplines. Examples of program implementations will illustrate two pathways: 1) Development of an "engineering
track" that begins with an introduction to engineering and engineering design as a problem solving method applied to
different engineering problems. This course is then followed by a sequence of modules/courses focusing on different
areas of engineering of interest to the educators and their students. This program may be developed as a three- or fouryear high school track with the senior year culminating in the University freshman college engineering course for which
students can earn dual credit. The content of all courses in the sequence are aligned with the content of science and
mathematics courses students are taking or have taken in their high school curriculum. 2) Integration of engineering
principles and appropriate applications into the science and mathematics courses offered by the school. Here, students
can see the parallel nature of the engineering design process, the scientific inquiry process, and mathematical problem
solving. Regardless of the chosen pathway, our approach also focuses on the three distinct, but interrelated components
of teaching and learning: Instruction, Curriculum, and Assessment of student learning. All interrelated activities are
described in lesson plans designed to be aligned with these three components into a coherent process and learning
experience aligned with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
USING K-12 STEM EDUCATION AND OUTREACH TO INSPIRE STUDENT-DRIVEN LEADERSHIP
INITIATIVES IN SINGAPORE
Dara R Fisher (Harvard University, USA)
Aikaterini Bagiati (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
John Brisson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)
In 2010, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) began a collaboration with the Singapore Ministry of
Education to develop the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), a new engineering-oriented
university in Singapore with programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. As a component of this
collaboration, MIT staff members sought to "transfuse" MIT's cultural norms of student leadership, creativity,
innovation, and entrepreneurship to the new university in Singapore. To this end, MIT-SUTD Collaboration staff
initiated two exchange programs to introduce and promote student leadership within the SUTD community. In
conjunction with MIT's efforts, SUTD launched the Design Opportunity Program (DOP) in 2013. Through this program,
SUTD students had the opportunity to initiate, design, and execute the first student-run science, technology, engineering
and mathematics (STEM) outreach workshop at SUTD, forge relationships with local high school students, and support
the Singapore Ministry of Education's broader goals to reform and enhance pre-college STEM education. This paper
presents an overview of the theory tying K-12 outreach with student leadership, the design and implementation of the
inaugural student-run component of the DOP initiative, and the challenges SUTD students and staff faced in developing
and implementing this project.
CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS TO BRIDGE THE GAP FROM HIGH SCHOOL TO
ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY DEGREES
Inmaculada Calet (University of Granada, Spain)
Belen Prados-Suarez (University of Granada, Spain)
Zoraida Callejas (University of Granada, Spain)
The academic difficulties of the students starting Engineering and Architecture University degrees are usually related to
the lack of autonomy at work, lack of experience in planning, teamwork and speaking in public, or preconceived ideas
about the degree, that are distant from the reality of the discipline. There is a variety of proposals to face these problems,
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but most of them focus on one of the problems and are implemented in the university courses, which makes them less
effective. In this paper we propose an approach to face these problems in an integrated way and to build a pathway to
Engineering Degrees by implementing it as Pre-University Initiatives in the last years of high school. Our approach is
based on the use of Constructivist Learning Environments (CLEs) for the subject of Technology during the last years of
high school. CLEs are specifically designed to challenge the students with real problems that must be solved in several
steps involving stages of autonomous work, teamwork, and guided work. Furthermore, CLEs facilitate the use of
technologies, from widespread resources to specialized tools. In the paper we illustrate the benefits of our approach
presenting an example that implements the proposal.
SBM4: Student Beliefs, Motivation, and Persistence in Precollege and the First Year of University Study
Chair: Eugenia Fernandez
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Patio 1
AN AWARD WINNING PROGRAM FOR INCREASING PARTICIPATION IN STEM
Peggy Doerschuk (Lamar University, USA)
Cristian Bahrim (Lamar University, USA)
Jennifer Daniel (Lamar University, USA)
Joseph Kruger (Lamar University, USA)
Judith Mann (Lamar University, USA)
Christopher Martin (Lamar University, USA)
Lamar University's Students Advancing through Involvement in Research Student Talent Expansion Program
(STAIRSTEP) received a 2013 Star Award from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for making
exceptional contributions towards closing the gaps in higher education in Texas. The project is funded by a National
Science Foundation (NSF) grant. STAIRSTEP's goals are to recruit students, retain them, and transition them within six
months of graduation to careers or advanced study in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). It
targets talented "at risk" students who are low income, first generation, and/or underrepresented in STEM, and focuses
on five disciplines: Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth and Space Sciences, Mathematics and Physics. STAIRSTEP is
innovative in its implementation of best practices. We know of no other program that includes five distinct STEM
disciplines, engages students in research, outreach, and transitioning activities, and has targets for recruiting, retaining
and transitioning students. This paper provides a five-year perspective on the program's activities and achievements. It
discusses the strengths and weaknesses of this multi-disciplinary implementation, what worked and what did not, how it
can be improved, and factors that can affect the success of the program. Finally, it discusses sustainability of the program
without NSF support.
CHANGES IN STUDENT GOAL ORIENTATION ACROSS THE SEMESTER IN UNDERGRADUATE
COMPUTER SCIENCE COURSES
Melissa Patterson Hazley (University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA)
Duane F Shell (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA)
Leen-Kiat Soh (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA)
Lee Miller (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA)
Vlad Chiriacescu (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA)
Elizabeth Ingraham (University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA)
Students' goal orientations impact their self-regulation, engagement, and achievement in post-secondary STEM courses.
But, how students' goal orientations change across a semester and the impacts of these changes have not been extensively
studied. Study purposes were to investigate goal orientation change across the semester, associations of goal change with
achievement and self-regulation, and associations of classroom climate with goal change. Participants were 175 students
from college introductory computer science courses. MANOVA identified significant during semester decreases for all
goal orientations except task-avoid (Wilks' λ = .724, F (6, 169.00) = 10.71, p <.001, partial Eta2 = .276). No differences
in goal orientation change were found for gender, year in college, or course. Goal orientation change significantly
predicted students' course grades, retention of CS content, and strategic self-regulation. Classroom climate significantly
predicted goal orientation change. Results indicate that students began the semester with positive goal orientations, but
shifted in negative directions over the semester. In college STEM classes, the primary motivational issue may not be
motivating students' to initially set learning-and task-approach goals, but rather motivating them to maintain their initial
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positive goals. Perceptions of course affect and teacher directedness predicted students' goal shifts, suggesting potential
avenues for intervention by educators.
EARLY COURSE AND GRADE PREDICTORS OF PERSISTENCE IN UNDERGRADUATE ENGINEERING
MAJORS
James Middleton (Arizona State University, USA)
Stephen Krause (Arizona State University, USA)
Sean Maass (Arizona State University, USA)
Kendra Beeley (Arizona State University, USA)
James Collofello (Arizona State University, USA)
Robert Culbertson (Arizona State University, USA)
An examination of the mathematics courses undergraduate engineering majors take in their first two years was conducted
to determine the impact of course level and grades on student persistence in engineering. Participants included 655 fulltime freshmen. Participants were grouped into 9 categories representing 3 levels of course grade (A or B; C; and D, F, or
W), crossed with 3 levels of course (Below Calculus I, Calculus I, and Above Calculus I). A binary logistic regression
for Course and Grade was performed, with 5-year persistence as the outcome variable. Results show that if a student's
first course was above Calculus I, they were 2.3 times more likely to be retained in Engineering than a student who took
Calculus I. If a student took Pre-calculus or another course below Calculus I they were less than half as likely to persist
as those who took Calculus I. Likewise, if a student received an A or B for their first mathematics course regardless of
which course they took, they were 6.5 times more likely to persist than someone who received a D, F, or W. The special
role of Calculus as a gatekeeper, preventing engineering-intending students from obtaining an engineering degree, is
discussed.
STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN FIRST YEAR, MATHEMATICS, AND PHYSICS COURSES: IMPLICATIONS
FOR SUCCESS IN THE STUDY OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
Jane Simpson (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA)
Eugenia Fernandez (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA)
Mathematics and physics courses are recognized as a crucial foundation for the study of engineering, and often are
prerequisite courses for the basic engineering curriculum. But how does performance in these prerequisite courses affect
student performance in engineering courses? This study evaluated the relationship between grades in prerequisite math
and physics courses and grades in subsequent electrical engineering courses. Where significant relationships were found,
additional analysis was conducted to determine minimum grade goals for the prerequisite courses. Relationships were
found between five course pairs: calculus II and differential equations; calculus II and physics I (mechanics); physics II
(electricity and optics) and circuits analysis II; physics II (electricity and optics) and signals and systems; and circuits
analysis II and signals and systems. The results indicate that a grade of C+ or higher in calculus II, and a grade of B- or
higher in physics II and circuits analysis II will lead to higher grades in subsequent mathematics, circuits, and signals and
systems courses. This information will be used to aid faculty in making decisions about future minimum grade
requirements.
SER2: Service Learning Challenges
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM
Room: Alcalá
GENDER AND VOLUNTEER COMPUTING
Feng Raoking (University of Virginia, USA)
Joanne Cohoon (University of Virginia, USA)
Kathryn Cooke (University of Virginia, USA)
Michela Taufer (University of Delaware, USA)
Trilce Estrada (University of New Mexico, USA)
Volunteer computing is a form of distributed computing that enables citizen science. In this computing paradigm, people
volunteer, or donate, their processing power and storage to work on small pieces of massive, often altruistic, projects.
Despite these worthy goals and low barriers to entry, volunteer computing has a significant gender imbalance. Far fewer
women than men participate; women are typically less than 10% of a project's participants. All volunteer computing
projects lack women volunteers. The most popular volunteer computing project, SETI@home, reports that 7% of their
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total participants were female. Folding@home has roughly 2% women respondents. IBM's 2013 study of World
Community Grid project yielded 10% women. No projects report more balanced gender representation, but given the
general status of women in computing, it is unsurprising that the volunteer computing community is also homogeneous.
To better understand the experience of women in volunteer computing, we analyze participant survey data from a project
that seeks to engage new communities and build an infrastructure for interaction with professional scientists. This
project, ExSciTech, intends to educate volunteers on basic scientific concepts through interactive discovery and to
develop their interest in computing. ExSciTech's scientific goal is to advance research in drug discovery through the use
of human intuition and donated computer cycles. ExSciTech designed and administered an anonymous survey on its
website from 2011 to 2014. Survey questions addressed issues such as: self-evaluations of capability to contribute to
volunteer computing, obstacles experienced in the volunteer computing environment, reasons for being interested in
volunteer computing, and demographic characteristics. A large number of participants (n=1276) responded to the survey,
but given the very large size of the population, our response rate was approximately 2% of the total. A strong majority of
the respondents (1089) were registered users of the ExSciTech home project - Docking@Home. Each of the three study
years, women comprised 5% of the respondents. There were very few gender differences among the men and women
respondents. We found no statistically significant differences in participants' self-rated ability to contribute to volunteer
computing projects. Of the women, 74% and of the men 81% rated themselves as better able than average to contribute.
The majority of both sexes also reported experiencing no obstacles to their participation. Among the small portion of
respondents reporting obstacles, the most common were technical difficulties and the lack of feedback on research
outcomes. Finally, men and women exhibited no measurable differences in their reasons for being interested in volunteer
computing. The top three reasons were to help advance science in general, interest in Docking@Home goals, and fun.
These three reasons together account for 83% of participants, with the same percentage for men and women. The "other"
category respondents wrote in includes: helping society, benefiting humanity, curiosity or interest, and "personal
reasons". These findings add to evidence that men and women engaged in computing activities are overwhelmingly
similar. The challenge for gender balance seems to be informing and engaging larger networks of women to promote
volunteer computing and contribute to achieving its goals.
IMPACT OF TEAM-BASED LEARNING ON PROMOTING CREATIVE THINKING IN UNDERGRADUATE
ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Homero Murzi (National University of Tachira (UNET), USA)
Omar Perez (University of the Andes (ULA), Venezuela)
The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) and industry, are demanding that engineering schools
produce engineers who are problem solvers and creative thinkers. According to Terenzini et al. (2001) traditional
teaching methods like lecture, in engineering education do not produce necessary creative thinking; collaborative
learning, however, has been shown to promote those skills. The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of teambased learning as pedagogy to develop creative thinking in engineering students. This investigation will uncover
information regarding the process of implementation of TBL in engineering education. The research is framed in a postpositivist inquiry paradigm since this study tries to determine whether there is a relationship between team-based
learning and creative thinking in undergraduate engineering students. The research design is quantitative; an experiment
was designed to determine if TBL promotes creative thinking, this impact will be defined deductively by the
implementation of different measurements. In order to answer the research questions, the study will test the team-based
learning theory of Michaelsen et al. (2002) to identify the impact of TBL as an independent variable, and determine if it
causes the development of creative thinking as a dependent variable. The sample of the experiment is 64 students from a
southwest University in Venezuela during the 2014 - I semester. The university was selected for accessibility and faculty
disposition to implement TBL settings and enroll random students in the experimental group. There are 30 students in
the experimental group corresponding to one section of a production engineering class. Students in the experimental
group are randomly assigned to teams of five participants. In the control group there are 34 students corresponding to
one section. They are receiving the traditional weekly lecture and no team activities are assigned. Both groups receive
the same midterm and final in order to be assessed in similar conditions. Both groups also have the same course
objectives and outcomes expectations in order to ensure similar conditions. In order to measure creativity the Creative
Engineering Design Assessment (CEDA) instrument developed by Charyton, Jagacinski, and Merrill (2008) will be
used. The instrument will be administered as a post-test at the end of the semester in both the control and experimental
groups in order to identify the impact that TBL has in creativity. CEDA was developed and validated to measure
creativity specifically in engineering students. The survey will be also tested on a pilot version between students, faculty
and peers, and follow the Shadish et al. (2002) framework to establish construct validity. Inferential statistics will be
used to analyze the data collected. A t-test will be implemented to analyze if there are significant differences in creativity
outcomes between the control and the experimental groups after the post-tests are administered (Krathwohl, 1993).
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DISSEMINATION OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN ENGINEERING AND COMPUTING
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Maeve Drummond (Purdue University, USA)
Community engagement is a pedagogy that integrates engagement with a community, local or global, with academic
content. In engineering and computer science the engagement is often the design, delivery and support of projects for
NGO's, human service agencies, educational institutions and governmental agencies. Community engagement has been
supported in the literature for enhancing learning and motivation. It has been shown to influence retention and interest in
engineering and computing, in particular among underrepresented population. Community engagement has been
classified in the U.S. under a broader umbrella as "Learning Through Service" (LTS) experiences, which encompass a
broad set of engagement activities with a goal of achieving academic learning outcomes that range from volunteerism to
service-learning. While there is strong evidence for the benefits of integration of community engagement into the
engineering and computing curricula, these fields have lagged other disciplines in many countries. This is particularly
evident as the majority of the LTS efforts remain outside the undergraduate curriculum and are localized and nonsustainable in their current forms. This paper is a reflection of 15 years of experiences with one of the most successful
curricular-based programs in LTS as it has facilitated dissemination of the model to other campuses. The paper describes
how the program has been institutionalized at the original university and the approaches used to disseminate the model to
other institutions including workshops, visits to campus, faculty mentoring and distribution of curricular materials. The
experiences with 50 universities will be summarized and presented in a de-identified manner. They are mostly in the
U.S. but include institutions in South America, Europe, Canada and New Zealand. The experiences fall into five broad
categories. The first are schools that have adopted the model into a thriving program. The second have implemented the
approach but on a smaller level or are struggling with implementation and sustainability. The third are schools that
adopted the model for a time but it has disappeared. The fourth group examined the model and had interactions with the
program, such as attending or hosting workshops, and adopted another variation of community engagement of LTS. The
final group are institutions that have engaged with the program, through presentations, visits or workshops, but have not
adopted community engagement into their curriculum. The approach is not a large formal research project but is an
analysis and synthesis of 15 years of experience working across campuses trying to affect curricular change and promote
community engagement to identify which factors have had the most influence. The analysis will be compared to the
academic change models identified by Knoster et al. (1991, 2000) to manage complex change. They include: vision,
consensus, skills, incentives, resources, and action plan. Attributes and activities that have been most effective will be
identified and discussed.
VOLUNTEERISM IN ENGINEERING OUTREACH: MOTIVATIONS AND SURPRISING OUTCOMES FOR
UNDERGRADUATE MENTORS
Leslie (To-Nhu) Nguyen (Rice University, USA)
Luz M. Rocha (Rice University, USA)
Chloe (Boi-Chau) Nguyen (Rice University, USA)
Brent C Houchens (Rice University, USA)
Angie M. Bautista-Chavez (Harvard University, USA)
The motivations for volunteering of former DREAM Head Mentors is investigated. DREAM is an engineering outreach
program at Rice University in collaboration with underserved Houston, Texas high schools. The existing Volunteer
Functions Inventory and Volunteer Motivation Inventory have been adapted for this study. The internally developed
Mentors Self-Assessment Survey has been improved with new qualitative items, and scale items from another out¬reach
program (TEAMS). Results indicate that volunteer undergraduate Head Mentors were overwhelmingly motivated by the
Values function or category, related to humanitarian concern for others. There is no volunteer requirement at Rice
University and no mentors have ever requested certification of volunteer hours to maintain scholarships or fellowships,
supporting the findings of highly altruistic motivations. Among former Head Mentors, 47% have pursed STEM graduate
degrees - approximately twice the rate of Rice alumni. Half of these are women and half are Hispanic. Head Mentors are
leaders at the schools and often participate in research and publication of findings. This study suggests that leadership
development and introduction to research through engineering outreach may be an untapped pathway to diversify the
undergraduate engineering pipeline and simultaneously encourage the pursuit of graduate degrees in engineering,
particularly among women and underrepresented students.
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DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF ENGINEERING MODULES INTO A 9TH GRADE
BIOCHEMISTRY CLASS BASED ON THE NAE GRAND CHALLENGES
Kamau Wright (Drexel University, USA)
Stephanie Dunda (Science Leadership Academy, USA)
Jessica Ward (Drexel University, USA)
Mary Jo Grdina (Drexel University, USA)
Timothy Kurzweg (Drexel University, USA)
This study reports the progress and impact of STEM education through innovative learning by having students answer
curriculum based questions and participate in inquiry-based activities. This practice is based on the Drexel University
National Science Foundation STEM K-12 program titled "Catalyzing STEM Education via the National Academy of
Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges." In this program, collaboration between an engineering graduate fellow and a 9th
grade high school biochemistry teacher results in engineering modules that include brief lessons, and hands-on activities
to teach students about the NAE Grand Challenges. Students are asked open-ended questions in reference to proposing
solutions to Grand Challenges, while also being encouraged to sketch quickly-made schematics to further illustrate their
ideas. At the end of each module, students are tasked to complete brief surveys, for which the data are used to assess the
effect of the modules on student perspectives of engineering, the Grand Challenges, and the fellow. This study reports on
three dimensions of this initiative: the collaborative process between the high school teacher and the fellow when
generating lessons; the descriptive details of several lesson modules and relation to the Next Generation Science
Standards (NGSS); and an analysis of data collected through student survey.
ASM4: Assessment in Engineering and Computer Science
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Patio 3
WORK INTEGRATED LEARNING AT A UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY: ASSESSMENT AND
MANAGEMENT
Rangith Kuriakose (Central University of Technology, South Africa)
Arthur Swart (Central University of Technology, South Africa)
Many universities of technology offer undergraduate diplomas in engineering that includes a Work Integrated Learning
component. Many academic staff members may be involved in the assessment of this component due to student numbers
and field expertise. The research question which arises is "What guidelines should academics follow in assessing Work
Integrated Learning to ensure a quality assessment"? The purpose of this paper is to present a structured rubric which
was designed at a university of technology to effectively assess Work Integrated Learning of senior engineering students,
while at the same time ensuring consistency of quality. The rubric incorporates a report, an interview, an Industry
evaluation and syllabus coverage section. The final grade marks obtained by students for the Work Integrated Learning
component is correlated to each of the main sections within the rubric to establish its reliability. 100% of students
enrolled for these modules have successfully completed their Work Integrated Learning over the past two years and have
thereby finally obtained their National Diploma, having become qualified technicians in Industry.
TOWARDS THE USE OF AN AUTOMATIC ASSESSMENT SYSTEM IN THE TEACHING OF SOFTWARE
TESTING
Draylson Souza (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Bruno Oliveira (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
José Maldonado (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Simone Souza (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Ellen Barbosa (University of São Paulo, Brazil)
Both software testing and programming foundations are difficult subjects to be taught. In case of programming,
experiences have suggested that the mastering of testing can contribute to enhance the students' skills of comprehension
and analysis. So, automatic test-based assessment systems have been developed and adopted in programming courses.
Aiming at investigating the adoption of assessment systems also in the teaching of software testing, in this paper we
discuss the use of PROGTEST - a tool for the submission and automatic evaluation of programming assignments based
on testing activities. As most of the automatic assessment systems, PROGTEST offers benefits such as immediate
feedback, objectivity and consistency of the evaluation, and a substantial time saving in the evaluation of the
programming assignments. Additionally, since it performs the assessments based on testing activities, PROGTEST also
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offers benefits for the teaching of software testing. Results from two experiments involving the use of PROGTEST in
testing courses are presented, providing evidences on the feasibility of its adoption to support the teaching of testing
concepts and criteria.
TEST ANXIETY AND ONLINE TESTING: A STUDY
Amruth N. Kumar (Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA)
Test anxiety is known to negatively affect test performance. Having students write about their testing worries before
taking a test was recently shown to improve test performance by reducing test anxiety. We conducted a controlled study
to replicate this result in the context of students using online Computer Science tutors unsupervised and on their own
time. Instead of using open-ended expressive writing exercise, we used a multiple-choice questionnaire that addressed
student anxiety. During the study, we collected data from two tutors on advanced programming concepts over three
semesters. We did ANOVA analysis of the number of problems solved, score per problem and time spent per problem
with treatment as the between-subjects factor. The test group solved significantly more problems and scored more points
per problem than the control group on one of the two tutors, but not the other. We discuss a possible explanation for the
result and the significance of addressing test anxiety for broadening participation in Computer Science.
MOTIVATION-PARTICIPATION CONFLATION:
INVESTIGATING RESPONSE BIAS IN INTRA-SEMESTER LONGITUDINAL CLASS SURVEYS
Alex Dillon (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Jonathan Stolk (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
To gain insight into the near-term motivations of students in a specific course, we designed a quantitative study in which
undergraduate engineering students complete the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) survey every week to document
their experience. The weekly survey records magnitudes of various types of motivation (e.g., intrinsic or extrinsic). The
explanatory power of this approach, however, relies on what data is available; one must be mindful of self-selection and
other latent biases. our data collection approach could fail to yield information from disenfranchised students whose
motivation is not well supported by the course environment or activities. Upon reviewing data gathered from seven
courses across four institutions - a total of 1941 survey responses - we found that, counter to our assumptions, the data do
not support the positive motivation bias we anticipated. We measured no correlation between the number of surveys a
student was willing to submit and the level of motivation reflected within surveys. This is a positive sign for the
practicability of motivation-based education research, indicating that it is possible to use simple, weekly surveys to
collect data on a student group's responses to course experiences, even with a limited or changing number of student
respondents.
CAP1: The Capstone Experience
Chair: Vasiliki Ikonomidou
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Alcalá
EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT OF PROFESSIONAL SKILLS IN THE FINAL YEAR PROJECT
Fermin Sanchez (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Juan Climent (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Julita Corbalan (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Pau Fonseca i Casas (Universitat Politècnia de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jordi Garcia (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
José R. Herrero (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Xavier Llinàs (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Horacio Rodríguez (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Maria-Ribera Sancho (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Marc Alier (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jose Cabre (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
David Lopez (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
In this paper, we present a methodology for Final Year Project (FYP) monitoring and assessment that considers the
inclusion of the professional skills required in the particular engineering degree. This proper monitoring and clear
evaluation framework provides the student with valuable support for the project implementation as well as for improving
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the quality of the projects, thereby reducing the academic drop-out rate. The proposed methodology has been
implemented at the Barcelona School of Informatics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech. The
FYP is structured around three milestones: project definition, project monitoring and project completion. Skills are
assigned to each milestone according to the tasks required in that phase, and a list of indicators is defined for each phase.
The evaluation criteria for each indicator at each phase are specified in a rubric, and are made public both to students and
teachers. The methodology for the FYP organization, assessment and evaluation was launched and piloted over two
semesters. We believe the experience to be general in the sense that it has been conducted as part of an ICT engineering
degree, but may easily be extended to any other engineering degree.
A METHODOLOGY TO INTRODUCE SUSTAINABILITY INTO THE FINAL YEAR PROJECT TO FOSTER
SUSTAINABLE ENGINEERING PROJECTS
David Lopez (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Fermin Sanchez (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Eva Vidal (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Josep Pegueroles (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Marc Alier (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jose Cabre (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Jordi Garcia (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
Helena García (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech, Spain)
The introduction of sustainability skills into higher education curricula is a natural effect of the increasing importance of
sustainability in our daily lives. Topics like green computing, sustainable design or environmental engineering have
become part of the knowledge required by today's engineers. Furthermore, we strongly believe that the introduction of
this skill will eventually enable future engineers to develop sustainable products, services and projects. The Final Year
Project is the last academic stage facing students and a step towards their future professional engineering projects. As
such, it constitutes a rehearsal for their professional future and an ideal opportunity for reflecting on whether their Final
Year Project is sustainable or not, and to what extent. It also provides a good tool for reviewing the lessons learned about
sustainability during the degree course and for applying them in a holistic and integrated way. In this paper, we present a
guide that allows both students and advisors to think carefully about the sustainability of engineering projects, in
particular the Final Year Project.
ADVANTAGES OF AGILE METHODOLOGIES FOR SOFTWARE AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT IN A
CAPSTONE DESIGN PROJECT
Diane Rover (Iowa State University, USA)
Curtis Ullerich (Google, USA)
Ryan Scheel (Garmin, USA)
Julie Wegter (Epic Systems, USA)
Cameron Whipple (The Boeing Company, USA)
Professional skills are often emphasized in a capstone engineering design course, especially in relation to addressing
ABET Engineering Criteria. Learning of these skills is typically a product of the project management approach followed
by design teams. The principles behind agile development and the features of the Scrum methodology match up well
with the expected outcomes of a major engineering design experience and preparation needed by students for
engineering practice. This paper presents a case study on design team use of an agile process for the successful
development and release on the Google Play store of an Android app for a client during the span of a two-semester
senior design course in electrical and computer engineering. The agile project management used in the case study was
found to be beneficial to all involved (students, mentors, and clients). It emphasizes behaviors that lead to greater
satisfaction and higher quality results with the senior design experience. Student learning opportunities related to
professional skills are examined. This work adds to emerging literature promoting agile development as a model for
capstone projects.
AN EFFECTIVE STRUCTURE FOR A SENIOR-LEVEL CAPSTONE DESIGN COURSE
Karl Cox (Virginia Tech, USA)
Paul Plassmann (Virginia Tech, USA)
This paper presents a framework for a senior-level capstone design course. This structure is currently used in a onesemester course for Computer Engineering undergraduates at Virginia Tech entitled "Embedded Systems Design." The
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course has been taught in its current form over the past fourteen semesters. The course structure has been continually
refined and tested, providing a solid framework upon which to develop a capstone design course. It has allowed for the
preservation of the underlying course organization, while allowing the project description and course details to change
each semester. Students work in teams, and each team works within a common framework of tools, support, and base
project description. Teams, however, must come up with their own solutions to satisfy the project goals. The common
framework allows us to provide effective student support, yet the open-endedness of solutions allows students to be
creative and employ critical thinking. The role of the instructor and graduate teaching assistant is to act more as
facilitators than lecturers. Students are evaluated as individuals and teams with regular milestones, required
documentation, and weekly meetings. Milestones work toward, and culminate, in a final project demonstration. Lastly
we present student feedback on the perceived effectiveness of this framework.
PROJECT OWNERSHIP AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN USER-CENTERED SENIOR DESIGN
PROJECTS
Vasiliki Ikonomidou (George Mason University, USA)
Caitlin Laurence (George Mason University, USA)
Nathalia Peixoto (George Mason University, USA)
User-centered design describes the product development process that seeks to include input from the final users or their
representatives throughout the cycle of specification, development and testing. This involvement of the immediate
stakeholders is thought to result in usable systems, fine-tuned to address users' needs, ultimately leading to improved
acceptance of the product by the target population. However, the process is not without its own challenges. The design
team will need to adapt their own vision of the product based on the often changing user demands, communicate
technical limitations and establish effective lines of communication with the user. With exposure to larger design
projects in engineering curricula oftentimes being limited to senior capstone projects, this aspect of them can easily be
missed. In order to address the challenges of teaching user-centered design, we evaluated this process in the context of
engineering student teams performing their senior capstone project. We collected data from a total of 14 senior electrical
and computer engineering students, divided in four teams that spent their two-semester long senior design class
developing assistive technology devices for a local user, which in our case were other students or faculty members with
disabilities. One of the concerns that arose during the study was the sense of ownership of the project, given the presence
of three different stakeholders: the student design team, the user who was expecting to receive and use the final product,
and the faculty advisors. In order to monitor this, we administered questionnaires two months prior to the final project
presentation to the students that included the question: "In terms of your design specifications/goals, what percentage
would you say is directed by the user, what by project facilitators (professors, GMU assistive technology experts), and
what by your team?" Student-reported scores were 36% (±12%) for team contribution, 41% (±24%) for user
contribution, and 22% (±14%) for faculty contribution; evaluations of user contribution tended to cluster by team,
possibly reflecting different user personalities and levels of involvement. Interestingly, in the follow-up question: "What
knowledge do you think you need to take larger ownership of project specification? Note any physical, technical and
cultural aspects of it." 10/14 students identified lack of specific technical knowledge as the main hindrance to them
assuming a larger stake of project specification, while 3/14 indicated that they considered their degree of ownership as
satisfactory with no more knowledge needed. Only 1 out of 14 identified soft skills as a major factor in their ability to
assume ownership of project specification. No correlation was observed between perceived degree of ownership and
overall performance in the class. Our preliminary results indicate that introducing a user/customer in the senior design
class forces the teams to attribute significant attention to their demands, possibly limiting the influence of the faculty on
the process. Technical competence, apart from being a major determinant of overall project success, seems to strongly
influence student's ability to take ownership of the project.
HOW TO PRODUCE QUALITY THESES AT UNIVERSITIES IN A LARGE SCALE SCIPRO IT SYSTEM SUPPORTING THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS
Henrik Hansson (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Problem: To manage and supervise large number of theses at bachelor, master and PhD level, with increased quality of
both processes and product. Based on 995 publications, Jones (2013) identified four main problems in PhD thesis
production; attrition, supervisor relationship, supervisor quality, social isolation. These issues also apply to theses at
bachelor and master level. In theses applied research methods are used in order to solve a problem. Theses end an
education level and constitute a bridge into work or further studies and even an academic career. This core activity at
universities requires a lot of resources and is very time consuming. The thesis quality varies and topic relevance to
societal needs is often weak. Another problem is the high dropout and inefficient administrative procedures. Furthermore
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the digital resources for autonomous learning of research methods aren't optimally provided. The European Union's
approximately 4000 Higher Education Institutions and about 20 million students need better support in this area. The
demand for better mass scale support systems in higher education is also a global need with 1200 Higher Education
Institutions worldwide (listed by ARWU). The number of higher education students is about 178 million (2010) and are
forecasted to increase to 262 million by 2025.The online IT-support system, SciPro (Supporting the Scientific Process),
has been developed during five years at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University.
During the period 2012-2013 706 bachelor and master theses was managed through the SciPro system. In 2014 91 PhD
students are included as well. This study summaries the experience and results during five years, including and going
beyond our previous studies (17 publications). The focus of the SciPro project is technical implementation of
pedagogical processes leading to quality learning and quality theses. The SciPro online system is modular and unique,
consisting of: 1) Idea bank; with students, supervisors and business organisation's thesis topic ideas, 2) Matching;
students paired with supervisors based on ideas and research area, 3) Objective (Milestones) and subjective (Project
state) progress indicators, 4) Meta-supervision; instructions and cues for all students and supervisors, 5) Real-time
statistics; for monitoring, quality assurance and evaluation, 6) Communication module; forum, notifications, shared files,
checklists, 7) Peer Portal; peer review process and peer interaction 8) Multimedia resources for autonomous learning of
research methods, and 9) Anti-plagiarism control; integrated and automatic. The SciPro system works on all devices
connected to Internet. It significantly reduces administration of all thesis related tasks for all involved. SciPro can
manage theses at a whole University fulfilling administrators', supervisors' and student's needs. With minor adaptations
and development SciPro can be useful at most universities. The presentation will include live demonstrations and
evaluations from all stakeholders' points of view.
CUR5: Global Experiences in Curriculum Design
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Doblon
IN SEARCH OF HIGH QUALITY IN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION IN COLOMBIA
Jesus Alfonso Perez Gama (Fundación de Educación Superior San José, Colombia)
Andrey Ali Alvarez Gaitan (Fundación de Educación Superior San José, Colombia)
Guillermo Hoyos Gomez (Fundación de Educación Superior San José, Colombia)
Claudia Lucia Caro Gomez (Fundación de Educación Superior San José, Colombia)
Martha Isabel Rozo Arteaga (Fundación de Educación Superior San José, Colombia)
Alexis Mena Mena (Fundación de Educación Superior San José, Colombia)
The pathway to high quality (HQ) is paved with significant achievements and of overcoming obstacles. The information
is presented en Section II and III. The main informational components integrate the architecture as follows: The related
to business enterprise model whose functions are peculiar to it, and are related to the functions that are typical of the
university mission. (1) The related to the management component. (2) The ICT architecture. (3) The SIFES (MIS,
Management Information Systems for Higher Education). (4) The documentation. (5) Infrastructure. (6) The quality and
self evaluation. Understanding the self evaluation as a process or management tool through which the FESSANJOSE,
with a critical review and reflection made into its university formation system, considering its relationship to the external
sector. In Section IV and V we present our mature intelligent enterprise architecture, with space vision 360°, on the road
of HQ We retrieved the best practices for HQ that we have designed and implemented for the purpose mentioned. Also
we have developed the architecture based on knowledge and models for the competitiveness, productivity and high
quality supported in our experiences. These architectures allow us to follow up the progressive enhancement in search of
the academic excellence.
PREPARING GLOBAL ENGINEERS: USA-INDIA ACADEMIA & INDUSTRY LED APPROACH
Manoj Pokkiyarath (Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, India)
Raghu Raman (Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, India)
Krishnashree Achuthan (Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University, India)
Bharat Jayaraman (University at Buffalo, USA)
A major challenge in engineering education today in India is preparing students with the skill set needed for a global
industry. This paper describes an innovative partnership between two institutions of higher education in India and USA
and a multinational corporation to address this challenge. The collaborative manner in which the industry and institutions
internationalized the curriculum is a key feature of this program. This unique approach has resulted in the employees of a
multinational company in India being able to get two high quality Masters-level degrees in engineering, customized to
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their current and future requirements at a very affordable price point. This paper looks at cost savings, collaborative
course development between industry and international academia, using technology to deliver courses and on-the-job
professional development program for employees while keeping the employees motivated. But there are also interesting
lessons learnt regarding teaching in English, adjusting to the local cultural context and the overall integration into the
Indian academic setting. The process innovation described here would be of great interest to academia, industry and
education policy makers and has the potential to be replicated in the entire field of non-engineering and interdisciplinary
academic programs.
AN INNOVATION MODEL IN CURRICULUM DESIGN FOR TEACHING ENGINEERING AT UNIVERSIDAD
EAFIT
Claudia Maria Zea Restrepo (Universidad EAFIT, Colombia)
Alberto Rodriguez (Universidad EAFIT, Colombia)
Natalia Andrea Bueno Pizarro (Universidad EAFIT, Colombia)
Constant changes in technology pose continuing challenges for higher education institutions who are training the
engineers of the future. These changes are making it necessary to adapt the curriculum in order to develop the skills
needed by the XXI century engineer. Moreover, instead of thinking in a large curriculum reform at a specific moment, it
is necessary to define curriculum management processes that include change as a natural component of the process. In
addition to these global trends, each institution has a particular context. Due to this reason, the analysis in each institution
has unique characteristics, but a common methodological approach and reference model can be built as long as it is
flexible enough to include that context. This paper describes a model developed for curriculum management in the
School of Engineering at Universidad EAFIT- Colombia. This model includes the institutional context and is based on a
process approach defined by the Business Process Management (BPM) methodology. The model uses the Burlton
Hexagon as a theoretical framework to identify organizational structure, strategies, policies, infrastructure, technology
tools and human capital. It is a mechanism for specifying curricular macro processes including the global and
institutional context. The proposed model is based on three pillars: (a) scientific research in education, which promotes
the use of the scientific method as a strategy to ensure an approach to problems based on evidence, allowing the
construction of educational innovation projects, (b) education engineering focused on engineering education, which
transforms the learning by developing basic, professional, and transversal skills as well as those specific for an engineer
of the XXI century, and (c) interactive educational communities, both face to face and virtual, as spaces for knowledge
management that support collaborative working and experiences-sharing, managed by its members working together and
that promote initiatives to develop educational innovation projects, focused on specific topics, that answer questions
related to teaching and learning needs. The formulation and development of educational innovation projects are the
responses to different needs identified on specific courses that are transformed into research questions. These projects
aim to renew the curriculum so that it dynamically evolves based on classroom experiences. Thus, the curriculum
renewal is based on critical thinking about the problems found in engineering education. The use of the scientific method
and the collaborative approach enables drawing solid conclusions based on the experimental results. The model proposes
the formulation and development of innovative educational projects in which scientific research applied in education
aims to transform teaching, academic and administrative practices. As consequence, curricular innovations that integrate
learning objects and educational, methodological and assessment strategies, are developed by an interactive learning
community composed by teachers. Finally, the results obtained by applying the model in some courses in the School of
Engineering of the Universidad EAFIT are presented. These results include reducing the drop-out rate of students,
redefining admition and graduation profiles, and micro-curricular redesign based on competences using projects, among
others.
MERGING PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES: UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW-UESTC JOINT EDUCATION
PROGRAMME IN ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
Kathleen Meehan (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
John H. Davies (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
Scott Roy (University of Glasgow, European Union)
John Marsh (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
Yun Li (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom)
Shiquan Gao (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, P.R. China)
Dillon Zhou (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, P.R. China)
Zhiqin Zhao (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, P.R. China)
Xingang Liu (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, P.R. China)
Fengwu Luo (University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, P.R. China)
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There are over 1900 jointly run Sino-foreign educational institutions operating in China according to a recent article in
the Global Times (1), which encompass everything from elementary schools to programmes offering graduate degrees. A
recent addition is the University of Glasgow-University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UoG-UESTC)
joint educational programme (JEP). The UoG-UESTC Joint School was founded in January 5th 2013, officially launched
in May 2013, and opened its doors for its first cohort of students in September of the same year (2). The mission of the
UoG-UESTC JEP is to educate the undergraduate students at a standard commensurate with the highest quality
education available internationally, providing students with the scholarship and skills that will equip them for lifetime
careers as leaders in industry and academia. The School is located on the UESTC Qingshuihe campus in Chengdu,
Sichuan Province. The School currently offers a degree in Electronics and Electrical Engineering. Half of the courses in
the programme are taught by staff from UESTC and the other half are taught by UoG staff, which enables the School to
take advantage of the strengthens in core disciplines available within each institution. All assessments and formal
teaching are in English. Students who complete the undergraduate programme in Electronic and Electrical Engineering
will receive bachelor's degrees from both institutions. The schedule that was devised to establish the joint school was
demanding and much time and effort was spend to insure that the curriculum met the educational needs of the students
and fulfilled the requirements at both institutions. Lecture space was allocated to the School in the existing teaching
buildings at UESTC. However, experimental and computer laboratory classrooms were constructed from administrative
offices during 2013. Members of staff at UoG and UESTC were hired over the summer of 2013, leaving little time to
discuss the differences in pedagogical approaches between UoG and UESTC. As the first semester of classes has
concluded, it is time to document the differences in teaching styles and expectations of students in the UK and the
Chinese higher educational systems and then to consider how to combine the two pedagogical approaches in a manner
that facilitates independent student learning with a deep understanding of engineering principles and design in all
students. The instructional methodologies employed by the UoG and UESTC staff will be examined. The modifications
that were implemented in the second semester and planned for the third semester will be described. The staff, graduate
assistant, and student feedback will be summarised. Best practices that have been identified to date will be reviewed and
proposed further improvements to the curriculum and instructional process will be discussed. Bibliography 1. Stricter
scrutiny for Sino-foreign joint education. The Global Times . [Online] September 3, 2013. [Cited: February 6, 2014.]
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/808914.shtml#.UvOfu_l_uXw. 2. Glasgow launches joint engineering programme
with UESTC, China. University of Glasgow. [Online] May 2013. [Cited: February 6, 2014.]
http://www.gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2013/may/headline_277570_en.html.
SUPPORTING THE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PROJECT BASED LEARNING COURSES
Javier García Martín (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Carlos López López (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
Jorge E. Perez-Martinez (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain)
The use of Project Based Learning has spread widely over the last decades, not only throughout countries but also among
disciplines. One the most significant characteristics of this methodology is the use of ill-structured problems as central
activity during the course, which represents an important difficulty for both, teachers and students. This work presents a
model, supported by a tool, focused on helping teachers and students in Project Based Learning, overcoming these
difficulties. Firstly, teachers are guided in designing the project following the main principles of this methodology.
Teachers are free to achieve the level of depth that they desire about the specification. In this way they can choose
between an open-ended and ill-structured problem or a problem more specified. Once the project has been specified at
the desired level of depth, the same tool helps students to finish the project specification and organize the
implementation. Collaborative work among different users is allowed in both phases. This tool has been satisfactorily
tested designing two real projects used in Computer Engineering and Software Engineering degrees.
DIS5: Computer Tools for Distance Education 2
Chair: Hector R. Amado-Salvatierra
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Escudo
NO UNIVERSITY CREDIT, NO PROBLEM? EXPLORING RECOGNITION OF NON-FORMAL LEARNING
William Jobe (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are disrupting traditional, higher education and redefining how learning takes
place online. These open courses typically offer some form of recognition, such as a certificate of completion and/or
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digital badge, to recognize, validate, and in some cases even accredit learning. A general problem with MOOCs is the
uncertainty regarding the use and goals of recognition, validation, and accreditation (RVA), and participants' acceptance
and perception of such techniques. This research effort addresses this problem by exploring course participants' attitudes
and levels of acceptance of non-formal learning recognition compared to traditional university credit in both developed
and developing countries. The actual study uses both certificates of completion and digital badges to recognize and
validate learning in an introductory, university level course in web programming using HTML5/CSS. The course is
available to anyone, but was specifically marketed to participants from Sweden and Kenya. Empirical data was gathered
using interviews and online surveys in the course. The preliminary results are that participants from developing countries
value digital recognition to a greater extent than their counterparts in Europe. However, both Swedes and Kenyans see
open courses with digital recognition as a complement to traditional learning to individually construct an education.
OVERCOMING LMS INTERNET DEPENDENCY
Alberto Castro, Jr. (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Rallyson Ferreira (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
The Internet has been considered an omnipresent resource, available to anybody in a high quality service, turning it the
main platform for development of software tools to several purposes, including Education. But reality is far more
complex - difficulties on Internet access, from low quality or unstable connections, have became a main obstacle to LMS
use in remote places, specially in geographical challenged regions as is the case of the Amazon. Distance Learning has
been considered an important asset to improve formal education of people living in remote places and Brazilian
government has been maintaining several programs in the state of Amazonas upon this perspective. However, several of
those programs involve the use of LMS available at central servers and therefore highly sensible to conditions of Internet
access. Motivated by this scenario, in this paper we present a scheme for overcoming these problems that is based on: (i)
the use of a local server that (1) bypass all tasks among users and the main server when in normal access conditions to
the Internet, and (2) mirrors databases in both local e main servers, indicating through interface clues, recent
modifications made on the environment; (ii) the use of a synchronism technique based on 'rsync' tool that makes possible
access to main server in normal conditions, keeping local resources when Internet connection is broken and updating
modifications when connection is reestablished. The proposed scheme was developed and tested with typical scenarios
using real-world settings based on Moodle platform where "Recent Activity" module was adapted and evaluated with
respect to user perception through Semiotics Engineering resources. Results have shown the feasibility of this scheme
and its suitability under unfavorable conditions of Internet connection. The resulting prototype has been used by an offcampus location of a Brazilian university situated in the state of Amazonas, supporting both distance learning and on-site
educational activities.
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES FOR DOCTORAL DIALOGUES AT A DISTANCE
Marian Petre (The Open University, United Kingdom)
Shailey Minocha (The Open University, United Kingdom)
Leonor Barroca (The Open University, United Kingdom)
The part-time PhD is attracting increasing interest in the face of modern economic pressures, particularly in the
engineering and computing disciplines. This paper considers how we can ensure that part-time PhD students studying at
a distance engage fully with the research discourse, when distance presents obstacles to communication and interaction.
Focusing on the use of social software to support research discourse and dialogues, the paper identifies a framework of
key communication functions. It reports on a repeated survey (2010 and 2014) of part-time Computing PhD students' use
of digital technologies to support them in engaging in formal and informal doctoral dialogues, documenting and
reflecting on their research, engaging with the community, and keeping themselves informed. This longitudinal study
highlights both changes in technology use (e.g., the increasing use of tools in the public domain) and persistent
phenomena (e.g., that despite the widespread adoption of social media technologies, email remains the most important
tool for both researchers and supervisors). The paper reports on both what technologies are adopted, and how they are
used. The real key to successful application of technology in research dialogues is fitness-for-purpose; this paper
provides evidence of 'what works' in students' deployment of technologies.
TEACHING AND PROMOTING WEB ACCESSIBILITY IN VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS A STAFF
TRAINING EXPERIENCE IN LATIN-AMERICA
Hector R. Amado-Salvatierra (Galileo University, Guatemala)
Rocael Hernandez-Rizzardini (Galileo University, Guatemala)
Jose Ramon Hilera (University of Alcala, Spain)
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Constant evolution of technology triggers a large myriad of research related to accessibility in Virtual Learning
Environments (VLE). In the same way, international initiatives provide guidelines to create accessible web content, but
educational institutions, especially in Latin-America (LA), are not aware of the VLE barriers that could affect students
with disabilities. The fulfillment of accessibility standards in a virtual campus provides benefits for all the academic
community that in some cases could face difficulties to learn through the VLE. This work proposes an innovative
practice to implement, promote and include accessibility features in a VLE through an intensive training workshop based
on best practices. This approach is addressed to technical staff involved in the installation, maintenance and support of eLearning solutions in academic institutions, with a special focus on software and web engineering. A first staff training
experience was implemented in seven countries in LA, with more than 180 participants from 52 different Higher
Education Institutions (HEI). Results from the experience manifest a growing interest from HEIs in accessibility topics
and encourage improving the workshop materials for new editions. The design of Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOC) based on the workshop will allow the initiative to reach a broader audience.
EER10: Out-of-School Time Learning Communities
Chair: Archie Holmes
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Aranjuez
MAKING IT TOGETHER, LOCALLY: A MAKING COMMUNITY LEARNING ECOLOGY IN THE SOUTHWEST
USA
Micah Lande (Arizona State University at the Polytechnic campus, USA)
Shawn Jordan (Arizona State University at the Polytechnic campus, USA)
This paper focuses on the spaces and tribes in which makers assemble and do their work. A Maker is an emerging
colloquial term we use to describe a group of do-it-yourself-minded individuals participating in formal and informal
communities (doing-it-together and doing-it-with-others) that support and celebrate building and prototyping technical
proof-of-concept exploration and ad-hoc product development. A Maker is a modern-day tinkerer and hands-on doer and
fashioner of stuff. Through an ongoing research project, we are exploring the educational pathways of makers. This
paper extends our understanding to include and identify the resources and people Makers may interact with. Through a
theoretical framework of learning ecologies and communities of practice, we will describe the range of affiliations and
congregations. Building on that, we will present a taxonomy for the spaces and groups within the broader Maker
Community. Examples of experiences, reflections of those experiences and example maker activities will be used to
illustrate and highlight the categories shared in the maker community learning ecologies.
A KIT-BASED APPROACH TO PREPARING UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS FOR RESEARCH
Micaela Aguilar (The University of Alabama, USA)
John Lusth (The University of Alabama, USA)
Sarah Dunlap (The University of Alabama, USA)
Debra McCallum (The University of Alabama, USA)
Susan Burkett (The University of Alabama, USA)
In the context of a research skills class, we find that providing students a background on research topics leaves little time
for exposing students to actual research. One assignment involved students brainstorming before conducting an
experiment. Examples included: counting cars of a particular color to estimate an entire population, characterizing the
skittish behavior of squirrels, monitoring coffee preferences at Starbucks, and estimating the chance of receiving a ticket
while parked illegally. While the students enjoyed this activity, we felt the experience did not reflect the rigor that
research demands. For this reason, we supplemented the assignment with a new project; a kit was used to provide a
systematic procedure for fabricating a dye-sensitized solar cell. Our target audience consists of lower level STEM
students. The kit allows them to acquire basic skills rapidly. After providing the students with a synopsis of the technical
details for fabricating and testing, peer mentors brainstorm ideas with students. The fabrication and testing takes place on
a Saturday in the laboratory. We use a "boot camp" style as a way to address their limited free time. We compare this
experience with the aforementioned data collection activity.
HACKERSPACES AND ENGINEERING EDUCATION
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Cindy Harnett (University of Louisville, USA)
Thomas Tretter (University of Louisville, USA)
Stephanie Philipp (Miami University, USA)
During the past two years, we investigated the Louisville, Kentucky hackerspace as a venue for hosting undergraduate
engineering student projects. The projects took place at LVL1.org, a collaborative workshop in downtown Louisville.
There are such "makerspaces" or "hackerspaces" in most medium to large-sized US and European cities. Our nine
participants developed a strong sense of project ownership during their semester, learned skills from hackerspace
members, and were interviewed about the effect of the experience on their attitudes toward engineering. Most reported
increased confidence in their problem-solving and project-planning abilities. Project-based learning is an important
element in an engineer's education, because it gives opportunities for students to encounter the unexpected and exercise
their creativity. The students were able to spend one semester working on their projects full time through the University
of Louisville's co-operative education (Co-op) program. Co-ops proposed their own projects, and came from five
different engineering departments: electrical, civil, industrial, mechanical, and bioengineering. We describe common
themes found among our participants, including the "start-over" pattern and the pattern of activities when students
encountered a new technical problem. We discuss how these experiences equipped the students with new skills and
attitudes for tackling ill-structured problems.
ASSESSING THE FUNCTIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE FUNCTIONS OF AN UNDERGRADUATE
RESEARCH MENTOR
Courtney Smith (Virginia Tech, USA)
Marie Paretti (Virginia Tech, USA)
William Hession (Virginia Tech, USA)
Leigh Ann Krometis (Virginia Tech, USA)
As undergraduate research has become increasingly prominent in engineering education, researchers are beginning to
explore this environment in more detail to better understand both what and how students learn. While multiple factors
shape student experiences, the role of mentors has emerged as a critical facet. Previous mentoring research identifies
functions such as role modeling, psychosocial support and career support, but little work has been done to understand
how these functions are operationalized in undergraduate research experiences within engineering or how students
perceive these practices. Summer research experiences, represent a unique environment because they are short-term
(typically 8-10 weeks), highly intense (20-40 hours/week), and typically take students out of their home institution
making the formation of mentor/mentee relationships challenging. To begin addressing this gap, this study explores
student perceptions of mentoring in an interdisciplinary summer research program in water sustainability through
qualitative interview data. The data set includes interviews with 20 students, gathered over two separate summers. Using
a framework developed by prior researchers, the results indicate that these identified functions are valued by students,
and they recognize when these functions are not adequately supplied, this encourages that exit interviews are an adequate
way to assess the functions of research mentors.
HACKER SCHOOL BEGINS TO WRITE A BOOK: A MASSIVE COLLABORATIVE AUTOETHNOGRAPHY BY
A MAKER COMMUNITY
Mel Chua (Hacker School, USA)
Hacker School is a Manhattan-based organization that runs tuition-free, gender-balanced, self-directed "writers' retreats
for programmers." Batches of 50-80 students commit to 3 months of self-directed, in-person, collaborative work on
"becoming a better programmer," however they define (and continuously redefine) that term. The student body is
diverse, representing 24 countries and a wide range of ages, genders, and programming experience levels. The Hacker
School community is in the early stages of a massive, community-run, collaborative autoethnography to explore and
articulate their unique learning environment. With facilitation from a Hacker School guest faculty who works full-time
as an engineering education researcher, community members are developing and testing assessment instruments,
interview protocols, and analysis frameworks for the study in the same collective, self-directed, stigmergic way we learn
programming. All members of the Hacker School community have equal data access to the study data and can choose to
contribute to analysis and authorship of research outputs. This work-in-progress paper describes the preparation process
and preliminary results of the study. Themes of the paper include the struggle to develop a shared language to describe
and improve our own learning practices and the impact of bringing theoretical frameworks from engineering education
into an informal learning environment.
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NEW TEACHING APPROACHES AND STUDENT MOTIVATION LEAD TO DOCUMENTED GAINS IN
ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Aljoscha Reinert (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Nils Vollmann (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Marco Heyder (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
Wolfgang Krautschneider (Hamburg University of Technology, Germany)
The paper presents an integrated design for the undergraduate course Semiconductor Circuit Design. This course lays the
foundations for understanding new technologies which are increasingly present in everyday life. To ensure that graduates
of electrical engineering are well trained in this area, it is particularly important to understand the concepts and
relationships introduced in this course. A novel aspect of the course design has been the integration of lecture and tutorial
sessions. Homework assignments have been designed to support continuous learning using two components: A review of
previous tutorial sessions and a part preparing the forthcoming lectures. The goals of the innovation are: • Students are
learning continuously throughout the semester • Students obtain a deep and sustained understanding of the concepts of
the course • Students can explain the working principles of various MOS devices in different circuits However, only
some of the students reached the last goal in written exams. A study of the exam results identified basic mathematical
problems as hindering student performance. In the spirit of constructive alignment the course learning objectives were
reviewed and teaching methods were selected to address these deficiencies, to which end different didactic concepts have
been introduced in lecture and exercises. Lectures were expanded by the introduction of concept questions using an
audience response systems (ARS) in combination with "Peer Instruction" periods. This way students and teachers
engaged in a feedback loop providing both, students and instructors alike, about the learning status of the students. In
addition the attention span of students during the lectures increased. Furthermore video recordings of the lecture, student
discussion forums and additional exercises and tests are made available. The new teaching methods were evaluated by
monitoring results of the written examination and student satisfaction. Both have improved significantly. The
examination results improved in particular for problems probing concept understanding. Participation in some of the
optional offers made to students was very high.
LAN1: Assessing Student Performance Using Learning Analytics
Chair: Cory Brozina
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: La Granja
PREDICTING STUDENTS' GRADES BASED ON FREE STYLE COMMENTS DATA BY ARTIFICIAL NEURAL
NETWORK
Shaymaa Sorour (Kafr Elsheik University, Egypt & Kyushu University, Japan)
Tsunenori Mine (Kyushu University, Japan)
Kazumasa Goda (Kyushu Institute of Information Science, Japan)
Sachio Hirokawa (Kyushu University, Japan)
Predicting students' academic achievement with high accuracy has an important vital role in many academic disciplines.
Most recent studies indicate the important role of the data type selection. They also attempt to understand individual
students more deeply by analyzing questionnaire for a particular purpose. The present study uses free-style comments
written by students after each lesson, to predict their performance. These comments reflect their learning attitudes to the
lesson, understanding of subjects, difficulties to learn, and learning activities in the classroom. To reveal the high
accuracy of predicting student's grade, we employ (LSA) latent semantic analysis technique to extract semantic
information from students' comments by using statistically derived conceptual indices instead of individual words, then
apply (ANN) artificial neural network model to the analyzed comments for predicting students' performance. We chose
five grades instead of the mark itself to predict student's final result. Our proposed method averagely achieves 82.6% and
76.1% prediction accuracy and F-measure of students' grades,respectively
USING A LEARNING ANALYTICS TOOL FOR EVALUATION IN SELF-REGULATED LEARNING
Ana Rodriguez Grobas (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Borja Vazquez Barreiros (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Manuel Lama (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Adriana Gewerc (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Manuel Mucientes (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
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In self-regulated learning, evaluation is a complex task of the teaching process, but even more if students have social
media that allow them to build their personal learning environment in different ways. In these kind of virtual
environments a large amount of data that needs to be assessed by teachers is generated, and therefore they require tools
that facilitate the assessment task. In this paper, we present an experiment with a process mining-based learning analytics
tool, called SoftLearn, that helps teachers to assess the student's activity in self-regulated learning. The subject of this
experiment is taught in blended learning mode with weekly classroom sessions, and the students use a social network
software, called ELGG, as an e-portfolio in which they reflect their individual knowledge process construction. The
results show that the use of this tool reduces significantly the assessment time and helps teachers to understand the
learning process of the students.
MONITORING STUDENT PERFORMANCE USING DATA CLUSTERING AND PREDICTIVE MODELLING
Alana Morais (Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil)
Joseana Araújo (Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Brazil)
Evandro Costa (Universidade Federal de Alagoas, Brazil)
The present research is situated on context of teacher support in Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), specifically
related to decision making process. The knowledge about the student is fundamental to solve pedagogical challenges and
to define different ways to the teaching-learning. The learning environments provide extra information by reports, graphs
and interface's alerts. However, the most of VLE does not include statistical tools in order to help the teacher in this task.
Consequently, the learning analysis restricts to simple frequency analysis. The current paper discusses an approach to
deal with the analysis of learning data. Our focus is the definition about groups of learners based on his answers.
Therefore, this paper pointed out some main objectives: understand the profiles of answers in order to guide the students
to next learning activities, and identify which criteria is most relevant on tutor's help for each group. Several techniques
are useful to deal with e-learning issues. However, we focus in Educational Data Mining (EDM) methodology. Our
paper selected data of an English e-learning course from PSLC repository for case study in validation step. Preprocessing
techniques of EDM was applied on the selected dataset. We need to remove incomplete, noisy and inconsistent data of
sample. After the preprocessing, we can execute two steps: clustering and prediction. Firstly, the clustering is executed
by researchers, because we need identify the groups according our research question. After understood the groups, we
predict specific behaviors of student on each cluster, which defined in the last step. The algorithms or tools used on each
step can change according to the issue's scope. In our research, it defines that the prediction will use regression
methodology, and the clustering will execute K-means algorithm. The study identified five groups of the learners based
on their answer, such as: expert, good, regular, bad and criticism answer. The prediction analysis defined that the score
of tutor's help ("Avg Assistance Score") is the most interesting factor for our investigation. The approach executed the
Stepwise backward regression, which is a semi-automated process of building a model by successively adding or
removing variables based solely on the t-statistics of their estimated coefficients. Thus, other result is the presence of the
variables "Incorrect" and "Correct First Attempts" belong to three regression models. This work advances present
knowledge about answers profiles of VLE students in two main perspectives. First, it analyzes the usage Open Learning
Data to characterize behavioral profiles of answers using multivariate analysis techniques. Second, our analysis
contributes to expand present knowledge about how student performance changes the teacher decisions in VLE. This
approach tend to be a useful tool in analytic process when the VLE system do not provide statistical tools.
LEARNING ANALYTICS FOR THE PREDICTION OF THE EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES ACHIEVEMENT
Manuel Fernández-Delgado (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Manuel Mucientes (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Borja Vazquez Barreiros (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Manuel Lama (University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Prediction of students' performance is one of the most explored issues in educational data mining. To predict if students
will achieve the outcomes of the subject based on the previous results enables teachers to adapt the learning design of the
subject to the teaching-learning process. However, this adaptation is even more relevant if we could predict the level in
which the educational objectives of a subject are achieved, since teachers should focus the adaptation on the learning
resources and activities related to those educational objectives. In this paper, we present an experiment where a support
vector machine is applied as a classifier that predicts if the different educational objectives of a subject are achieved or
not (binary problem). The inputs of the problem are the marks obtained by the students in the questionnaires related to
the learning activities that students must undertake during the course. The results are very good, since the classifiers
predict the achievement of the educational objectives with precision over 80%.
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MINI WS: A Student-Centered Approach to Designing Teaming Experiences
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: El Jardin
A STUDENT-CENTERED APPROACH TO DESIGNING TEAMING EXPERIENCES
Jessica Townsend (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Lynn Andrea Stein (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Mark Somerville (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
In this workshop, we will explore the design of teaming experiences, and the tensions that arise as we try to address
different student outcomes. We often approach teaming in course design with a very simple philosophy: if students are
put on teams, they will learn teamwork skills and get the educational benefits of teaming. But the benefits of teamwork
in an educational setting are multi-faceted. For example, team projects can be used to facilitate collaborative learning to
develop a set of outcomes for all students. Alternately, team projects may be more performance-oriented to develop
students' ability to work professionally on teams. In the former case, students may have the opportunity to develop new
skills and strengths, and in the latter students must play to their strengths to meet performance goals. In this workshop,
we will explore the design of teaming experiences, and the tensions that arise, as we try to address different outcomes.
What happens after the team project has been assigned and the team has been formed? What challenges do students (as
individuals) and student teams face when faced with a group they are supposed to work with, and a set of milestones and
final deliverables? And how do we do this in a thoughtful way responds to students' needs, interests, and constraints, as
well as a particular set of outcomes? We will consider how to design teaming experiences in thoughtful ways that
respond to students' needs, interests, and constraints, as well as a particular set of outcomes. Participants will employ
design thinking tools (student personas, interaction narratives) in order to explore what a team, and the individual
students on the team, might experience within a given teaming framework. We'll identify the team pitfalls, and share a
broader set of insights about student engineering teams. Finally, we'll discuss specific approaches to scaffolding the
development of teaming skills that responds specifically to the needs of your students and your institution.
PRE5: Teachers in Precollege Education
Chair: Nancy K. DeJarnette
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Comendador
INVESTIGATION OF PRE-UNIVERSITY PATHWAYS INTO ENGINEERING
Marisa Exter (Purdue University, USA)
Ji Hyun Yu (Purdue University, USA)
Todd P Shuba (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Monica Cardella (Purdue University, USA)
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Mindy Hart (Purdue University, USA)
Jean Trusedell (Purdue University, USA)
Meeting the global challenges of this century requires a technical workforce that is both diverse and highly trained. A
significant effort has aimed at increasing the number of practicing engineers, as well as increasing student interest in
engineering among both women and underrepresented populations. Most of these initiatives have been implemented at
the university level. Within the U.S., cultural diversity is improving but women and certain ethnic groups continue to
have disproportionally low numbers in engineering compared to the overall population. New approaches are needed to
expand the pathways into engineering for all students. One such approach engages students in engineering projects that
meet needs within their individual community as part of course-work or after school programs at the middle-school and
high-school level (ages 12 through 18). The program model described in this paper has been implemented in 11 states
within the U.S. and includes more than 30 programs abroad in collaboration with a large professional society.
Preliminary data from this program are promising. Demographic data indicate that program participation is nearly gender
balanced and culturally diverse. Additionally, early data appears to indicate an increase in participants' interest in STEM
fields. However, students' academic and career choices are influenced by a number of factors in addition to personal
interest in a particular field. These include individual factors such as self-efficacy and outcome expectations, and
contextual factors such as supports and barriers. Understanding these factors is important, and there is a need for a more
comprehensive study of the impact of engineering service learning programs on pathways into engineering, and the
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characteristics and mechanisms that contribute to the factors. Building on a number of studies that have investigated
pathways both into and through engineering, we have designed and are currently piloting a mixed-methods study
grounded in Social Cognitive Career Theory that explores pre-university students' experiences in our program and how
they impact pathways into engineering. As an initial step, we have developed a survey instrument, which can be given to
students before and after they participate in the program, in order to determine changes in their self-efficacy, outcome
expectations, and personal interest. We have included items adapted from other validated instruments to explore these
three factors. In addition, we have included items to explore context (i.e., supports and barriers) through the areas of
parent supportiveness (e.g., parent education level, parent involvement in college planning, and parent career hope),
school supportiveness (e.g., school involvement in college planning), general knowledge about college, and role models.
Pre-participation data has already been collected in five pilot schools for the Spring term. A post-survey will be
conducted in May or early June, 2014. In this paper, we will briefly describe the development and pilot of the pre-/postinstrument. At the conference, we will present preliminary analyses of the pre-/post- pilot test.
EXAMINING AND MAPPING CS TEACHERS' TECHNOLOGICAL, PEDAGOGICAL AND CONTENT
KNOWLEDGE (TPACK) IN K-12 SCHOOLS
Michail Giannakos (Norwegian University of Science and Technology & Old Dominion University, Norway)
Spyros Doukakis (The American College of Greece – Pierce, Greece)
Helen Crompton (Old Dominion University, USA)
Nikos Chrisochoides (The Hellenic Ministry of Education, USA)
Nikos Adamopoulos (High School of Pyrgos, Greece)
Panagiota Giannopoulou (The Lycée Léonin Educational Institution, Greece)
Computer Science (CS) teachers' training and profile is crucial to ensure students have access to quality Computer
Science Education (CSE). The aim of this study is to examine the profile of CS teachers in Greece and map it using the
technique of persona. This study examines a national sample of 1127 CS teachers who teach algorithms and
programming in upper secondary education. The building of the persona is based on teachers' abilities and needs
regarding the central aspects of their knowledge with respect to three key domains as described by the Technological,
Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework. According to the results in the TPACK subscales, teachers'
state that their Content Knowledge scales is sufficient and Pedagogical, Content Knowledge needs to be improved on. In
addition, teachers feel that they need further training in how to incorporate technology in their teaching as well as how to
teach algorithms; which are two areas that relate to Pedagogical Content Knowledge and TPACK. By mapping the
knowledge, abilities and needs of CS teachers, we will be able to recognize the challenges they face during teaching and
consider strategies and policies for addressing these challenges.
INTRODUCING COMPUTATIONAL THINKING THROUGH STEALTH TEACHING
Massood Towhidnejad (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA)
Christopher Kestler (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA)
Shafagh Jafer (Embry-Riddle Aeronautcial University, USA)
Victor Nicholas (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, USA)
The demand for additional engineering and computing degree graduates continue to increase; however, interest in
pursuing these degrees is not matching the predicated demand. More specifically, attracting US students in engineering
and computing field has always been a challenge; this is particularly true for female and minority students. Factors such
as the "geek image", a demanding mathematical foundation, lack of "gee whiz" element early in the curriculum, and
overall misconception about the career in these areas are all contributors to this problem. This paper describes the result
of our NSF project, which introduces computing and engineering topics through series of games developed using
MineCraft gaming engine. The central tenet of the project is to entice students in grade 6-12 to learn some fundamental
and advance topics in engineering and computing field, thereby recognizing their own ability to understand the
computing and engineering topics, and potentially recognizing their interest in such topics and potential further education
and career in these fields. The approach takes advantage of pattern-matching abilities that are naturally wired in our brain
to improve understanding and make the obtained knowledge persist in memory.
TEACHERS' ATTITUDES, COMPETENCIES, AND READINESS TO ADOPT MOBILE LEARNING
APPROACHES
Jenni Rikala (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Leena Hiltunen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
Mikko Vesisenaho (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)
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This study explores how teachers' attitudes and competencies influence their willingness to adopt mobile learning
approaches. By mobile learning we mean teaching approaches that use mobile devices to enliven and extend traditional
teaching. Of particular interest is exploring how first-order (e.g. lack of adequate access, time, training and support) and
second-order (e.g. teacher's pedagogical and technological beliefs and willingness to change) barriers affect teachers'
beliefs and attitudes. In the autumn of 2012, we conducted three mobile learning case studies in Central Finland. We
used semi-structured interviews to collect data. The study indicated that positive experiences raised teachers' willingness
to use the mobile technologies again. Observations also highlighted the need for adequate support (i.e. technological and
pedagogical support), and teachers' professional development. In particular, the teachers should have the confidence to
embrace mobile technology in their teaching practices. Lack of confidence heightened other barriers and reduced the
willingness to adopt mobile learning approaches.
PWI1: Challenges and Opportunities in Partnering with Industry
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: La Galería
A PROFESSIONAL PROJECT BASED LEARNING METHOD IN MOBILE ROBOTICS
Annemarie Kokosy (Institut Supérieur d'Electronique et du Numérique (ISEN), France)
Mihai V. Micea (Politehnica University of Timisoara, Romania)
Philippe Saey (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Due to its high potential and encouraging results, project-based learning emerges as a highly interesting paradigm in the
education systems worldwide. Moreover, robotics is an interdisciplinary field where students could learn and apply their
skills in mechanics, electronics, computer science, mathematics and control engineering. This paper presents a robotics
project-based learning methodology which focuses on collaborating with the industry to design, develop, evaluate,
integrate and manage projects designated to be used in real-life applications. This learning method emphasizes and
enables the students to apprehend the importance of fulfilling client requirements and the interactions with the client, the
suppliers and with the other members of the team. The students, coached by a partner from industry, have the
opportunity to apply and to improve their technical and project management skills under a large-scale, highly complex
project. This method is being applied since 2008 at ISEN Lille, France, with good results and significant impact.
ON INDUSTRY ACADEMIA RELATIONS IN THE ARAB GULF STATES: CHALLENGES AND POTENTIAL
SOLUTIONS
Waddah Akili (Geotechnical Engineering, USA)
The paper focuses on the current stance of industry-academia relationships in the Arab Gulf States( Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates), and argues that meaningful, long-lasting relations have not been
properly cultivated. The paper calls for increased "relevancy" of engineering education, with greater industry-academia
collaboration on many fronts. It was inspired by a round table discussion, where engineering graduates of Region's
colleges have suggested ways to start developing viable and enduring connections between local industries and the
academic institutions of the Arab Gulf States. Strategies to help promote the collaboration effort are outlined. In
particular, activities (plans, and scenarios) perceived as effective in closing the gap between academia and industries are
described. Training, capstone courses, consulting by faculty and joint research projects, aimed at serving the interest of
both parties (academia & the industrial partners) are also addressed. The paper sheds light on: the mission, the nature,
and relevant benchmarks of this collaborative effort. Slanting curricula and programs toward industrial relevance and the
"practice", regarded by many as a step in the right direction, will help equip graduates with the "tools of the trade", thus
lessening the burden on the industry in the locale, in having to spend time and effort preparing and training employees at
the start of their career. If engineering faculty and program planners, would slant curricula and programs more in the
direction of "industrial relevance" and the "practice", it would help a great deal in equipping engineering graduates with
the "tools of the trade" thus lessening the burden on the industries. In this endeavor, the author draws on his own
experience as a faculty member in the Arab Gulf States (recently in Qatar and earlier in Saudi Arabia); in addition to
views and suggestions of: colleagues, students, graduates, and business leaders in the Region.
VIRTUAL PLACEMENTS FOR INFORMATICS STUDENTS IN OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS ACROSS EUROPE
Francisco J. García-Peñalvo (University of Salamanca, Spain)
Juan Cruz-Benito (University of Salamanca, Spain)
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Miguel Á. Conde (University of León, Spain)
Dai Griffiths (Bolton University, United Kingdom)
VALS (Virtual Alliances for Learning Society) European Project has the aim of establishing sustainable processes to
build knowledge partnerships between Higher Education and companies to collaborate on resolving authentic business
problems through open innovation mediated by the use of Open Source Software. To achieve this, VALS builds
knowledge partnerships between Higher Education and companies who work together on resolving authentic business
problems through open innovation. The innovative approach is to leverage virtual placements of informatics students in
companies in order to foster entrepreneurial skills and attitudes, and to make use of the results to establish new learning
and teaching methods. This results in the Semester of Code initiative, a set of methods and processes for creating and
managing a real virtual placement, and for integrating this into innovative teaching and learning strategy. To show these
methods and processes, this paper describes the general methodology designed to perform the Semester of Code, as well
as several guidelines on how to develop the software that will support this process. Also describes a real adaptation of
theoretical approach of this whole process in the case of an Academic Institution, including comprehensively all the
issues affecting the process implementation in a real context.
THE ROLE OF UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY LIAISONS TO ENHANCE ENGINEERING CURRICULAR
DEVELOPMENT
Francisco Falcone (Universidad Pública de Navarra, Spain)
Pablo Sanchis (Universidad Pública de Navarra, Spain)
Antonio J López-Martín (Universidad Pública de Navarra, Spain)
Ana Alejos (Universidad de Vigo, Spain)
One of the main challenges in developing new engineering curricula is to satisfy industrial needs by the newly graduated
students, increasing competiveness as well as adapting to social and economic demands, a fundamental aspect
considered in European Higher Education Area, as well as by professional accreditation and engineering associations.
Among the factors that reduce this necessary feedback is low exposure of academic staff to industrial environments and
company strategies which are not directly focused in the role of academia within their organizations. However, it is an
established fact that increasing University-Industry relations has mutual positive effects. In this work, the benefit of
University-Industry interaction will be analyzed in terms of several initiatives which are currently being adopted in the
framework of Engineering Degree curricula at the Public University of Navarra. Interaction by means of the
development of final degree projects, master thesis and doctoral thesis will be described, which have the goal to increase
synergies among students, academia and members of the industry. The results reveal high degree of satisfaction among
all participants. This on-going experience serves as a reference point in order to analyze future interaction methods in
order to adapt future course planning in Engineering degrees at UPNA.
INNOVATIVE INCORPORATION OF INDUSTRY CERTIFICATIONS TO ENHANCE RECRUITING AND
RETENTION IN CIVIL ENGINEERING
Luis Mata (Lawrence Technological University, USA)
Donald D. Carpenter (Lawrence Technological University, USA)
Recruiting and retention are common challenges that engineering programs deal with on a regular basis. To address these
challenges, universities seek innovative ways to market their programs while simultaneously improving their curricula to
align with industry standards. With this in mind, the Department of Civil Engineering at Lawrence Technological
University is incorporating standard industry certifications in its undergraduate curriculum to enhance students'
educational experience and increase the value proposition of the curriculum. The certifications provide students with an
advantage when searching for internships and are offered through the regular curriculum saving students time and
money. In addition, incorporating industry recognized certifications as part of the standard curriculum establishes the
relevance of their coursework and demonstrates the Department is responsive to industry needs. The goal of this Workin-Progress study is to collect data from certified students to determine the impact the certifications have on retention and
how they can be used to recruit new students.
SBM5: Pathways into Engineering and Computer Science Education
Chair: Tom G McEwan
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: Patio 1
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A DISCIPLINARY COMPARISON OF TRAJECTORIES OF U.S.A. ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Susan M. Lord (University of San Diego, USA)
Richard Layton (Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
We are conducting a longitudinal, multi-institutional, and multivariate study of the trajectories of students in specific
engineering disciplines in the U.S.A. to an extent never before possible. Focusing on the eleven partner institutions of the
Multiple-Institution Database for Investigating Engineering Longitudinal Development (MIDFIELD), we examine
trajectories of engineering students in five engineering disciplines by race/ethnicity and gender. This work-in-progress
focuses on the largest fields: chemical (ChE), civil (CVE), electrical (EE), industrial (IE), and mechanical (ME)
engineering. Our results show that all disciplines lose about half of their starters. However, when transfer students and
others who switch into the majors are included, the results vary by race/ethnicity, gender, and engineering discipline. The
metrics used are trajectories and stickiness in the major and in engineering. This work can inform educators,
administrators, and policy makers about how engineering disciplines are racialized and gendered in different ways.
Sharing this information can help engineering disciplines learn from each other.
FROM INTEREST TO DECISION IN COOPERATIVE EDUCATION PROGRAMS
Trina Fletcher (Purdue University, USA)
Joyce B. Main (Purdue University, USA)
Nichole Ramirez (Purdue University, USA)
Matthew W Ohland (Purdue University, USA)
Cooperative education programs (co-op), also referred to as Work-Integrated Learning (WIL), provide students with
relevant professional experiences in industry. This industry-focused environment presents an opportunity for students to
clarify academic and career objectives prior to finishing their undergraduate study. As the first stage of a four phase
research project, this work explores undergraduate engineering student's interest and decision-making process related to
participation in cooperative education at large mid-western university. Students who showed initial interest in co-op by
attending an information session in 2013-2014, but did not participate in a co-op experience are interviewed. This paper
provides an overview of the methodologies used to accomplish this objective as well as discusses the future directions
and implications of the work. Social Cognitive theory will provide a framework for students' reasons for nonparticipation in the context of factors, such as campus environments, pre-collegiate work experiences, academic course
selections, peer interactions and career trajectories. Through the use of phenomenological inquiry, information obtained
directly from the students who have expressed interest, but chosen not to pursue co-op allows co-op administrators to
consider how the program and its recruiting processes may be improved.
STUDENT BELIEFS AS BARRIERS TO ARTICULATION
Debbie Meharg (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Stephanie Craighill (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Eccles et al.'s 'Expectancy-Value Model of Achievement Motivation' (2000) states that 'an individual's choice,
persistence, and performance can be explained by their beliefs about how well they will do on the activity and the extent
to which they value the activity' [1]. This paper employs Eccles et al.'s theoretical framework to identify performance
barriers and facilitators for Scottish college students who have just opted to articulate to Higher Education (HE). Using
this model to understand student ability beliefs and motivations at the beginning of the articulation process identifies
potential performance challenges and informs strategies to improve the transition experience from Further to Higher
Education. At three Scottish colleges focus groups were conducted with students who have selected an articulation route
to HE. Discussion focused around a number of theoretical strands inherent to the Expectancy-Value Model, such as
ability beliefs and motivation components. These components were used to determine student potential to perform and
persist with HE. Research conclusions suggest that the sample of college students has largely positive ability beliefs and
possesses an optimistic perception of success in HE but identify a number of challenges. Research outcomes inform
approaches to enhance the transition experience of college students to Higher Education.
LOOKING UPSTREAM: IDENTIFYING AND DESCRIBING THE ENTRY POINTS INTO ENGINEERING
TRANSFER PATHWAYS
Catherine Mobley (Clemson University, USA)
Catherine E. Brawner (Research Triangle Educational Consultants, USA)
Russell Long (Purdue University, USA)
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Research on transfer students identifies the specific reasons why students embark on the transfer pathway. Our study
adds to this literature with its focus on understanding the broader context of transfer pathways and the relative timing of
the decisions to transfer and to major in engineering. Our goal is to identify the entry points into the transfer pathways
and how the decision to transfer interacts with the decision to major in engineering. We focus on student intentions and
the alterations to their planned pathways. To achieve our goal we analyzed 47 in-depth interviws of traditional-age
engineering transfer students from three research universities. The results reveal four distinct transfer pathways
characterized by different levels of intentionality and diverse decision making sequences. The findings have important
implications for broadening the transfer pathway into engineering.
FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE CONFIDENCE: UNTANGLING THE INFLUENCES OF GENDER,
ACHIEVEMENT, AND HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES
Marisa K. Orr (Louisiana Tech University, USA)
Christa Swafford (Louisiana Tech University, USA)
Sara Hahler (Louisiana Tech University, USA)
David Hall (Louisiana Tech University, USA)
Many studies have shown the importance of student self-efficacy in engineering retention. This work intends to
contribute to the engineering education literature by exploring which student learning experiences are most likely to
increase student confidence in engineering skills and if there are differences in these relationships among students of
different gender, and achievement level, as measured by high school GPA and ACT Math scores. The study takes place
at Louisiana Tech University through the Living WITH the Lab (LWTL) first-year engineering curriculum that serves
over 500 students each year. Results indicate that frequency of hands-on activities is important for males and females in
building confidence in their engineering skills. For females, however, the relationship is more complex. This study finds
that in the Living WITH the Lab Program, frequency of hands-on activities is related to confidence in completing
engineering tasks for both males and females. Female confidence is additionally related to math achievement. It was
noted that several shared laboratory tools were reported to be used less frequently by females than males. This suggests
that student ownership of lab equipment can help level the playing field because students don't have to compete for the
opportunity to use it.
SS3: Building dispositions towards models and model-based reasoning in engineering education
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Room: El Escorial
BUILDING DISPOSITIONS TOWARDS MODELS AND MODEL-BASED REASONING IN ENGINEERING
EDUCATION
Alexandra E Coso (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Joseph Le Doux (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Wendy Newstetter (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Alisha A. Waller (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Milo Koretsky (Oregon State University, USA)
Audrey Champagne (University at Albany, SUNY, USA)
This panel will address the challenge of promoting dispositions towards and mastery of model-based reasoning and
modeling practices. Free-body, circuit, and multi-unit process diagrams are fundamental engineering tools for
transforming poorly articulated and ill-constrained problems into manageable, solvable problems. For engineers in
industry or research, free-form sketches commonly inform back-of-the-envelope estimations and calculations, while
more formal diagrams and computational models are essential to design decision-making. The panel will present
research on student modeling across the spectrum of first year courses to capstone design and across three subdisciplines: biomedical, chemical and aerospace engineering. The talk titles are: 1) Representational Transformations in
Engineering Problem Solving 2) Drawing it out: Categorizations of Students' attempts to model a coffee roasting
process; 3) Collaborative problem solving towards the development of modeling practices 4) Modeling Complex Design
Solutions in Excel: How Pedagogical Strategies may Impact Students' Model-Based Reasoning in Aerospace
Engineering 5) Modeling Toward Completion of a Complex Chemical Engineering Project. After the short talks, forty
minutes will be allotted to discussion among panel members and with the audience. The topic of this panel has
significance for all engineering educators who encounter student resistance to and difficulty with models and modeling.
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CSE1: Learning to Program
Chair: Juan M Montero
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
MEANINGFUL CATEGORISATION OF NOVICE PROGRAMMER ERRORS
Davin McCall (University of Kent, United Kingdom)
Michael Kölling (University of Kent, United Kingdom)
The frequency of different kinds of error made by students learning to write computer programs has long been of interest
to researchers and educators. In the past, various studies investigated this topic, usually by recording and analysing
compiler error messages, and producing tables of relative frequencies of specific errors diagnostics produced by the
compiler. In this paper, we improve on such prior studies by investigating actual logical errors in student code, as
opposed to diagnostic messages produced by the compiler. The actual errors reported here are more precise, more
detailed and more accurate than the diagnostic produced automatically. In order to present frequencies of actual errors,
error categories were developed and validated, and student code captured at time of compilation failure was manually
analysed by multiple researchers. The results show that error causes can be manually analysed by independent
researchers with good reliability. The resulting table of error frequencies shows that prior work using diagnostic
messages tended to group some distinct errors together in single categories, which can now be listed more accurately.
RETHINKING TASK TYPES FOR NOVICE PROGRAMMERS
Matthias Laengrich (TU Dresden, Germany)
Joerg Schulze (University of Applied Sciences Zittau / Goerlitz, Germany)
The ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula published the Computer Science Curricula 2013. They
express recommended contents of an introductory programming course as competencies. As didactical research
demonstrates competencies are latent properties that cannot be observed and measured directly. However, in order to
make them observable and measurable tasks have to be executed. The Computer Science Curricula 2013 mentions the
competencies needed but doesn't go so far to mention the corresponding tasks as well. This job is left to each individual
lecturer. The needed tasks cannot be derived directly from a competence since they contain a lot of very detailed
information. We developed a construct that closes the gap between a competence and a task: the task type. On the basis
of one of our programming courses for students of Mechanical Engineering we (a) describe the process of developing
valid task types from given competencies and (b) valid tasks, which can be used in our computer-based training
environment as well.
REPLICATION IN ECUADOR OF A MULTINATIONAL STUDY ON PERFORMANCE OF PROGRAMMING
STUDENTS
J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Jorge Menéndez (Escuela Politécnica Superior de Chimborazo, Ecuador)
Julio Santillán (Escuela Politécnica Superior de Chimborazo, Ecuador)
Germania Veloz-Remache (Escuela Politécnica Superior de Chimborazo, Ecuador)
Eduardo Villa-Villa (Escuela Politécnica Superior de Chimborazo, Ecuador)
We present a replication at an Ecuadorian university of the well-known multinational, multiinstitutional study conducted
by a working group at the ITiCSE 2004 conference, known as the Leeds group. The paper has three main contributions.
Firstly, we found that most of the results are in common with the Leeds group ten years after. Secondly, we found some
interesting differences, specific of the Ecuadorian context. Students performed worse than students evaluated by the
Leeds group. They also had more problems than expected with some predictive questions, as well as with some
constructs of the C language. These problems may be explained by lower intrinsic motivation, by their reluctance to
analyze code, and by some pedagogical decisions that could be changed in their curricula. Thirdly, we did not found
significant differences between male and female students, although w detected some tendencies. From the research point
of view, we refined the analysis methodology used by the Leeds group. From a practical point of view, these findings
can be used at the university to enhance the quality of their programming education.
PROTOTYPING: A KEY SKILL FOR INNOVATION AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING
Vimal Viswanathan (Tuskegee University, USA)
Olufunmilola Atilola (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
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Joseph Goodman (Georgia Tech Research Institute, USA)
Julie Linsey (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Physical prototypes play a crucial role in any design project, but all the critical effects that physical prototypes have need
to be further studied. More needs to be understood about what students need to learn and the benefits of hands-on
learning. Existing literature shows the importance of prototyping in design projects, while some researchers are
concerned with design fixation caused by prototyping. In order to maximize the benefits of prototyping, it is essential to
study the design thinking involved in it. Through interviews with the designers and direct observations on the
prototyping and testing cycle, the following hypotheses are investigated on an ongoing industry project: (1) Building and
testing prototypes helps to supplement designers' erroneous mental models leading them to better ideas and (2)
Prototyping leads designers to design fixation. The results strongly support the hypotheses. Data from the current study
is also compared to prior research on semester-long graduate student teams. Many unintentional tests occur when
prototypes are built and this leads to a significant number of improvements to the product, indicating that the engineering
design curriculum needs to adapt to better teach students to have building skills in order to leverage this advantage.
FAILURE RATES IN INTRODUCTORY PROGRAMMING: A 2006-2012 STUDY AT A BRAZILIAN
UNIVERSITY
Marlos Silva (Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, Brazil)
Evandro Costa (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Emanuele Tuane Silva (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Paulo Barbosa (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
Juliana Cavalcanti (Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil)
The literature reports that experiences in introductory programming usually are frustrating, resulting in high failure rates
and, consequently, bad performance in subjects which have programming skills as a requirement. In spite of that, few
works present studies at characterizing failure rates in introductory programming courses. Hence, there is only a few
quantitative evidences for supporting these facts. The goal of this work is to characterize the pass and, consequently,
failure rates in introductory programming courses. For that, we use data from two subjects at Federal University of
Alagoas in Brazil: data from period of 2006 to 2012 in the Programming I subject on Computer Science course; and data
from period of 2008 to 2011 in the Algorithms I subject on Information System course. The results show: a pass rate of
45% with a confidence interval of 95% varying between 42% and 49% for the Programming I; and a pass rate of 31%
with confidence interval of 95% varying between 27% and 34% for the Algorithms I.
CUR6: Mathematics and Science Curricula Design
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Doblon
ROBOTRADER COMPETITION: EDUCATING ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN FINANCIAL MARKETS
Eduardo Lopez-Gonzalo (Universidad Politécnica Madrid, Spain)
This paper describes the design and progress of the annual Robotrader competition that is organized at
Telecommunication Engineering School of Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) for university students all across
Spain. The aim of the competition is to program real time algorithmic trading systems; but along the way students, that
usually have a technical engineering profile, explore the financial markets and get to know the firms and products from
the financial sector. The initiative involves a mixture of education styles, each aimed at achieving specific goals. First,
there are lectures given by professors and professionals from both the financial and computer science sectors. The
lectures are followed by a competition in which students can put into practice what they have learnt in the lectures. The
initiative provides a forum for the students that serves as a tool for e-learning during the market formation period as well
as a way to follow the results of the competition.
ROBOTICS ENGINEERING PROGRAM AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
Rachid Manseur (State University of New York at Oswego, USA)
Robotics, as a multi-disciplinary branch of science and technology, is concerned with a variety of computer-controlled
electro-mechanical structures designed for a multitude of applications. A few years ago, robotics was a graduate-level
field of research in engineering offered only in a few large engineering institutions of higher learning. It has now become
an engineering discipline of its own with an increasing number of schools offering an undergraduate engineering degree
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in Robotics with plans to develop degrees on only particular sub-disciplines of robotics. Robotics is an area with a
potentially enormous economic impact that has produced, and will continue to lead to the creation of, several new
products and markets, and these markets require an engineering workforce educated and skilled for effective
contributions in robotics. Robotics has developed from several different engineering disciplines and sciences, therefore
robotics engineering requires a systems integration approach of concepts from Mechanical, Electrical, Computer, and
Software Engineering, and Computer Science. Support courses from cognate areas such as Mathematics and Physics
need to be selected to provide effective preparation for robotics. This research explores and discusses the challenges and
choices associated with the development of a Robotics Engineering undergraduate curriculum. A comparative study and
analysis of recently offered curricula provides a starting point. The already large diversity within robotics and its
numerous applications lead to many challenges in the development of a robotics degree program. The integration of a
new robotics degree program within the academic infrastructure of a relatively small university and the resource impact
will also be presented. One of the challenges addressed in this research is the multidisciplinary nature of robotics which
imposes certain pre-existing conditions to a successful undergraduate program development. Several points will be
considered including support disciplines and faculty availability, preparatory courses in supporting departments and the
impact that a new robotics program will have on those departments. This presentation will also address the selection of
robotics areas and applications to include or to exclude. Robotics covers several topics and addresses engineering
concepts that apply differently to different types of robots. While robot manipulators used in manufacturing still
represent the largest robot population in the world today, an ever increasing number of applications requires different
kinds of robots including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as drones, Unmanned Underwater
Vehicles (UUVs), Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), several types of biomimetic robots including humanoid robots
as well as micro- and nano-robots used in the study of swarms and their applications, to name only a few. Since the first
robotics engineering degree program was offered in 2006, there are over four others now in existence. This research will
prove informative to any engineering educators already engaged in, planning, or thinking about, the development of new
engineering programs and a robotics program in particular.
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A NEW ENGINEERING MATHEMATICS COURSE
Zohra Manseur (State University of New York at Oswego, USA)
Rachid Manseur (State University of New York at Oswego, USA)
Mathematics education is an essential part of every engineering curriculum. At our institution, two new engineering
programs have been recently introduced, one in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the other in Software
Engineering. The development phase of the curriculum required a thorough review of courses in the core and in the
supporting science and mathematics courses with the objectives of reducing the overall number of credit hours needed
for the degree and facilitating student paths though the curriculum to improve successful graduation rates. Studies have
shown that traditional mathematics courses sequences are perceived as barriers to timely successful graduation, thereby
causing several students to drop out of engineering and move to other majors considered less mathematically stringent.
The question of how much math should engineers know has been a question of debate and the mathematics content that
best serves an engineering education has become an important topic in engineering education. The objective of this work
is to streamline mathematics course content so that engineers learn important mathematics concepts and when they need
to apply those concepts. In most universities, when designing a new engineering curriculum, reliance on other existing
departments to provide support courses in the sciences and mathematics is required. The Olin College experience where
all departments were newly formed and all courses were developed to better serve an engineering education cannot be
easily reproduced at other institutions with a long tradition of a liberal arts education. This article discusses the choices
and trade-offs that led to a mathematics preparation for engineers that centers on successful integration of engineering
programs within the university and provides the needed mathematics preparation for engineers while reducing the
number of mathematics courses to maintain a reasonable total engineering degree credit requirements without hindering
accreditation requirements. The course presented in this work, is the result of cooperation between mathematics and
engineering faculty. It is designed to include topics that are required for engineering courses and it plays a central role in
the implementation of the new engineering degree program. This new course reduces the number for mathematics
courses required in the overall engineering curriculum by providing course content that combines and emphasizes those
topics that engineering students need to better understand early engineering material while avoiding content of less
relevance to engineering. This approach improves both retention and overall student success. The topics covered in the
course include streamlined elements from four areas of direct relevance and importance to an undergraduate engineering
education. These are Complex Analysis, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, and Numerical Analysis. The inclusion
of these important areas of mathematics in a single four-credit semester course is possible through careful selection of
course materials and application examples, the use of modern computing tools, and a hands-on approach to teaching.
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A MODULAR APPROACH TO USING THE ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS IN SECONDARY SCIENCE
CURRICULUM: EXPERIENCES IN SINGAPORE AND THE UNITED STATES
Ann Kaiser (La Salle Academy, USA)
As a result of classroom practice and Fulbright research in Singapore, a modular approach to employing the Engineering
Design process to frame projects in secondary science curricula has been developed. It is meant to facilitate project
design and implementation by teachers who have little or no background in engineering. The focus is on highlighting
different aspects of the design process while maintaining clear connections to subject area content. The approach has
been tried in classrooms in the United States and Singapore in biology, chemistry and physics classes. Research data
indicates a better understanding of scientific concepts, more realistic knowledge of engineering and significant transfer
of skills. The motivation for a more user-friendly approach is the need to incorporate more engineering into preuniversity science to allow for more skills-based learning, real life connections and compliance with the Next Generation
Science Standards (NGSS). A Fulbright grant to study science education in Singapore, in particular at the School of
Science and Technology, allowed an action-based research plan to be implemented to assess the development of
performance tasks framed in the engineering design process. Triangulation of data based on student pre- and post
surveys, extensive classroom observation and teacher and student post-activity interviews provided clear qualitative data
indicating better connection to scientific content and more divergent thinking than in traditional verification focused lab
activities. Developing a more modular approach to incorporating engineering design makes it less intimidating for high
school science teachers to begin to move from verification labs to design based projects. Time and training constraints
make it difficult for teachers to implement extensive engineering projects while attempting to convey content knowledge,
as required by high stakes testing, and to encourage skills-based learning in line with 21st century thinking and
pedagogy. Developing a modular approach highlighting one or more steps in design along with clear connections to
scientific content provides a transitional approach. Creativity and group work form the background for all projects, as
techniques for divergent thinking, criteria determination, scaling, prototyping, designing reasonable testing (DOE),
modification and presentation of results are individually highlighted. Students learn how to engineer over the course of
many projects while actively reinforcing subject area content. This approach also exposes a wider range of students to
engineering, adding to the number who may choose to pursue post-secondary engineering programs. In addition,
increased 21st century technological literacy and interest in STEM applications has been documented.
MODERNIZING PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS ENGINEERING CURRICULA
James Rowland (University of Kansas, USA)
This Work-in-Progress paper describes an ongoing project for modernizing the probability and statistics program
component for electrical and computer engineering majors at the University of Kansas. Traditionally in engineering
curricula around the nation, this three-hour senior-level course has at most focused on the probability of overlapping
events, properties and examples of discrete and continuous random variables, and only rudimentary statistical principles
involving confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and linear least-squares curve fitting. Some courses nationwide
emphasize only probability and random variables, some focus only on the statistical aspects of data handling, and a few
also include small projects that feature computer-generated pseudo-random numbers. ABET has program criteria that
require graduates to have some knowledge of probability and statistics. Usually, programs seek to satisfy this
requirement by one of these single self-contained three-hour courses. What is needed to modernize the curricula is a
more comprehensive treatment that not only improves the course and extends these concepts beyond into the senior
capstone and other courses but also prepares graduates for more extensive probability and statistics applications after
graduation.
DES1: Novel Approaches for Teaching Design
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Patio 3
PUMPKIN CARVING AS AN EXERCISE IN DESIGN PROCESS THINKING
William E Genereux (Kansas State University, USA)
Katrina Lewis (Kansas State University, USA)
As digital imaging technology has improved and simple-to-use media sharing websites have appeared, the complexity of
Halloween jack-o-lanterns being created has been increasing. In response to this trend, a team of faculty at Kansas State
University teaching beginning design courses in Engineering Technology and Interior Architecture and Product Design
has developed an interdisciplinary pumpkin design project. Students in Manhattan, Kansas and Salina, Kansas practice
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design skills in pumpkin carving using techniques such as information gathering, digital photography, and drawing by
hand or using vector drawing software. Students completing this project must consider the fragility of the pumpkin
material being carved while addressing the challenge of converting a two-dimensional design into a three-dimensional
object. The exercise is continually improved and revised as participating faculty electronically share syllabi, rubrics,
lesson plans, and finished carved pumpkin examples. Community engagement and service learning is a key component
of this project. Partnerships with the zoos in both communities have been established. The students display their
completed work, or publicly demonstrate their design and carving techniques at their respective zoos.
DEALING WITH COMMON PROBLEMS IN ENGINEERING DEGREES' FINAL YEAR PROJECTS
Mikel Villamañe (University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain)
Begoña Ferrero (University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain)
Ainhoa Álvarez (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Spain)
Mikel Larrañaga (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Spain)
Ana Arruarte (University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain)
Jon A. Elorriaga (University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Spain)
After the implementation of the Bologna Process, the Final Year Project (FYP) is a mandatory course in all bachelor
degrees in Spanish higher education system. Although the FYP is new for many degrees, it was already established in the
previous education system for engineering degrees. The authors of this paper are lecturers in a bachelor degree in
Computer Science at three different colleges of the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU. In the last few years,
they have supervised more than 80 FYPs and they have all faced similar problems during the supervision process. This
paper presents a study conducted to determine if the observed problems are just a perception of the authors or whether
they are general problems in the elaboration of FYPs. In the study, 60 former students and 27 lecturers took part. Four
main categories of problems have been identified and a proposal to overcome them is presented.
USING ALIEN-CENTERED DESIGN FOR TEACHING ITERATION IN THE DESIGN PROCESS IN
UNDERGRADUATE DESIGN COURSES
John Mendoza-Garcia (Purdue University / Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, USA)
Monica Cardella (Purdue University, USA)
Design and design thinking are crucial skills engineers need to develop. Alien centered design is a teaching strategy that
has been used in the First Year of Engineering at a Midwestern research University. The goal of this strategy is to
contribute in the creation of designs centered in the user and to promote going one step forward in students' process of
becoming informed designers. This document presents the details of one experience using this teaching strategy in which
one of the focused was to teach students why is iteration needed when creating a design solution in order to fulfill
customer's needs. The design project had five steps, and with each step new information about the customer (the aliens)
were revealed to students based on their questions. An overview of the information that was revealed to students and
evidences of the iterations two teams did in their process is presented. We quoted for example their problem definition in
different moments and their design solutions. Additionally, some comments from students from the final evaluation of
the course are also shared.
EER9: Creating Successful Teams
Chair: Susan Nolen
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Aranjuez
TAKING CARE OF THE TEAM IN A FIRST-YEAR DESIGN EXPERIENCE COURSE
Mark Fontenot (Southern Methodist University, USA)
Katherine Canales (Southern Methodist University, USA)
Andrew Quicksall (Southern Methodist University, USA)
Design experience coursework for first-year engineering and computer science students is not new. These experiences
are often team-based and typically focus extensively on the technical aspects of the project, while the behavioral and
interpersonal aspects of the team sometimes go unnoticed. Here, we report on a novel organization for an introduction to
engineering design course that provides direct and proactive support for both the engineering components of the course
as well as proactive support for first-year students and their teams. The course is structured to allow students to focus on
engineering design and implementation of a robotics system while also taking time to engage in reflection activities
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geared towards assessment of team dynamic and impact on team productivity. Team facilitators observe the teams during
work time over the course of the semester and use information gathered in structured team debriefs called retrospectives.
While much work has been done, we continue to iterate on the design and implementation of this course.
PRODUCTIVELY ENGAGING STUDENT TEAMS IN ENGINEERING: THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN DOING
AND THINKING
Milo Koretsky (Oregon State University, USA)
Susan Nolen (University of Washington, USA)
Debra Gilbuena (Oregon State University, USA)
Gavin Tierney (University of Washington, USA)
Simone Volet (Murdoch University, Australia)
In this qualitative case study, we examine modes of engagement of advanced, undergraduate student teams undertaking a
complex, authentic engineering project. The task is designed to simulate professional practice and, therefore, provide the
opportunity for teams' productive disciplinary engagement (PDE). We operationalize PDE as learners using the
discourses and practices of the discipline in authentic projects in order to "get somewhere" (develop a product, gain
better understanding) over time. Engle and her colleagues have shown the types of interactions characterized by PDE are
more likely to result in deep learning of concepts and incorporation of practices. However, this engineering project is
also delivered in the context of a class in school, and promotes other, "school world" forms of engagement. Students may
move back and forth between the school and engineering worlds as they engage in the task. In this study, we look at
three student teams as they formulate their approach to the project to identify instances of PDE. Our goal is to
characterize how PDE is triggered and sustained in relation to other forms of engagement, elements of the task itself, and
social interactions of students within the team and with the instructor. The results provide empirical evidence towards
features of engineering learning environments that help promote PDE. The project studied was delivered in a laboratory
course typically taken by students in their final year of an undergraduate engineering program. The three week project
uses industrially-sized virtual equipment where students are placed in a social environment intended, as much as
possible, to mimic industry. Teams of three students were audio-recorded and observed any time two or more members
met. We characterize episodes of discourse longitudinally to interpret how engagement unfolds. Specifically, we classify
engagement in three dimensions: school vs. engineering world, procedural vs. conceptual orientation, and task coproduction vs. knowledge co-construction. Production is an essential element in both school world and engineering
world tasks. When professionals engage in an authentic engineering task, at its essence, it is an act of production, i.e., the
tangible outcome is either to make a product or to develop a process. However, in the school world, task production is
often associated with "getting in the assignment" but not necessarily with understanding. We identify task co-production
(i.e., "doing") in this project corresponding to engagement in the school world in some instances and in the engineering
world in other instances. Similarly, co-production is at times associated with a procedural orientation and at other times a
conceptual orientation. When the teams co-produce with a conceptual orientation, it allows the teams to make sense of
their engineering work, and, reflexively, enables greater possibilities and direction in their engineering work. Thus, PDE
is characterized by conceptual engagement in the engineering world, and contains elements of both task co-production
and knowledge co-construction. However, teams are not observed to start the project in PDE. Rather we trace an iterative
path towards PDE that generally begins with school world co-production and through incursions of engineering world
production and co-construction reaches PDE.
EVIDENCE FOR THE PERSISTENT EFFECTS OF AN INTERVENTION TO MITIGATE GENDERSTEREOTYPICAL TASK ALLOCATION WITHIN STUDENT ENGINEERING TEAMS
Lynn Andrea Stein (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Deyna Aragon (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Daniel Moreno (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Jeremy M Goodman (Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Left to their own devices, student project teams often divide work along gender-stereotypical lines, leading to
differentiated learning experiences and, the literature suggests, differences in self-confidence and persistence. Colleagues
teaching a first-semester design course previously introduced an intervention that largely mitigates gender-stereotypical
task allocation in that course. In the present study, we demonstrate modest evidence that the impact of this intervention
persists into subsequent coursework, suggesting that it may be possible to persistently shift student behaviors away from
gender-stereotypical defaults, in turn improving self-confidence, persistence, and outcomes. Left to their own devices,
student project teams often divide work along gender-stereotypical lines, leading to differentiated learning experiences
and, the literature suggests, differences in self-confidence and persistence. Colleagues teaching a first-semester design
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course previously introduced an intervention that largely mitigates gender-stereotypical task allocation in that course. In
the present study, we demonstrate modest evidence that the impact of this intervention persists into subsequent
coursework, suggesting that it may be possible to persistently shift student behaviors away from gender-stereotypical
defaults, in turn improving self-confidence, persistence, and outcomes.
USING DISCOURSE ANALYSIS TO UNDERSTAND "FAILURE MODES" OF UNDERGRADUATE
ENGINEERING TEAMS
Ryan Eggert (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Aditi Joshi (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Saarth Mehrotra (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Yevgeniya V Zastavker (Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, USA)
Veronica Darer (Wellesley College, USA)
In recent years, engineering education has been increasingly emphasizing teamwork to solve "real world" problems.
However, teamwork as an educational tool has been called into question. Our study seeks to understand how team
discourse constructs a unique team culture, established in the early stages of the teaming process. We investigated four
co-ed teams of first-year engineering students in an introductory design course. Discourse analysis was used to break
team discussions down into countable units for quantitative and qualitative analysis. We found that despite the
preemptive team-related intervention regarding gendered role differentiation and the importance of pursuing individual
learning goals, all four teams faced challenges in co-constructing knowledge within the first few weeks of the teaming
process. Careful faculty scaffolding is needed to support team formation and maturation throughout the entire teaming
processes to foster development of successful communication. We discuss the four "failure modes" encountered in this
study as models-in-use and propose possible intervention approaches.
ENT1: Cultural Dimensions in Entrepreneurship
Chair: Andrew O. Brightman
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Patio 1
SEEDING EVIDENCE-BASED EDUCATIONAL PRACTICES INTO ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Jennifer Karlin (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA)
Eric James (Huron Consulting Group, USA)
SEED (System of Entrepreneurialism and Economic Development) is an evidence-based co-curricular learning
environment. This paper provides an overview of the SEED process, three of the core areas of learning theory on which
it is based (holistic learner development, mentoring, and authentic learning contexts), and how the learning theories are
applied in the implementation of SEED. Utilizing student participation within this process creates a unique learning
opportunity for students as they advance through their undergraduate and graduate careers. A wide variety of students
may be offered such learning opportunities through work study and other positions, which allows the office of economic
development to diversify its field of knowledge through the experiences of students with varying STEM majors.
Additionally, a unique environment of teamwork and collaboration was created for the students, enhancing the social and
managerial aspects of learning experienced at the university.The literature about entrepreneurialism shows that students
who are exposed to economic development during their education are more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves;
this concept was then taken to the next step: specifically designing a system where students are intentionally engaged in
the economic development process.
EXPLORING INSTITUTIONAL CLIMATE AND ENGINEERING ETHICAL REASONING: A CROSSINSTITUTIONAL STUDY
Megan Kenny Feister (Purdue University, USA)
Qin Zhu (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Patrice Buzzanell (Purdue University, USA)
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Alan Mead (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
In engineering ethics, the traditional approach views engineers as individual moral agents who are capable of making
autonomous decisions. However, the broader context in which engineers work and make their ethical decisions often is
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overlooked. In workplace, the social ethics approach to engineering ethics has studied the implications of the managerial,
organizational, policy, and legal contexts for technological decision making. In teaching engineering students,
institutional cultures help define how educational programs, curricula, and pedagogical modules are designed with some
values and beliefs prioritized over others. The purpose of this research was to investigate if and how institutional culture
shapes the ways in which students prioritize ethical values when making ethical decisions. In doing so, we conducted a
cross-institutional study within four project-based engineering design programs at four different universities. Based on
the neo-Kohlbergian theory, we developed a scenario-based instrument to evaluate students' ethical reasoning in these
four programs. Our research showed that students from these programs demonstrated different approaches to ethical
reasoning in some scenarios. These differences may reflect the different orientations of each of the programs, such as a
focus on entrepreneurialism, marketable products, or human-centered projects. In order to better understand the
dynamics of institutional culture in shaping students' ethical reasoning, we conducted observations and semi-structured
interviews with design teams in the four engineering programs. In general, our quantitative and qualitative results
revealed that institutional culture shaped the ways in which students defined, prioritized, and solved ethical problems,
even when they were not specifically aware that they were facing ethical issues. This paper concludes with
recommendations for effectively teaching ethical reasoning skills in the context of project-based design teams. By
reflecting on institutional culture, engineering educators have to ask themselves what values are highlighted explicitly
while others are overlooked in teaching ethics to students. Administrators could explore opportunities for reforming
institutional culture to broaden their students' notions about ongoing ethical dilemmas beyond the priorities and valued
embedded in their particular programs.
EXAMINING THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN ASSESSING INDIVIDUAL ETHICAL REASONING ON
MULTIDISCIPLINARY ENGINEERING PROJECT TEAMS
Qin Zhu (Purdue University, USA)
Megan Kenny Feister (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Patrice Buzzanell (Purdue University, USA)
William Oakes (Purdue University, USA)
Alan Mead (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
Engineering is becoming an increasingly global profession, requiring interaction with diverse sets of people from
different countries, cultures, and traditions. This diversity introduces more social and ethical complexity to the profession
(NAE, 2011) and highlights the importance of enabling engineers to work collaboratively and develop strong ethical
decision-making skills. This study examines the relationship between cultural differences and students' individual ethical
decision-making and reasoning skills. We conducted this study across four universities with distinct project-based
multidisciplinary engineering programs. We developed an instrument for assessing individual ethical reasoning based on
a neo-Kohlbergian framework as part of a larger project. The instrument asked participants to consider their priorities
and interests in response to engineering project scenarios. Ethical priorities and interests were based on three schemas
consistent with Kohlberg's moral development phases, which include preconventional, conventional, and
postconventional, and were found to be measured reliably and validly. However, we felt it was important to examine
how this instrument performed across participants from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. This study employs a
mixed methods approach to investigate the ways cultural differences in this instrument might affect findings. We
conducted statistical tests to examine how the instrument performs across different cultural factors of citizenship and
ethnicity. In addition to administering the instrument, we conducted semi-structured interviews with students from all
four programs to probe how they understand and handle ethics in the context of their project teams, as well as how
cultural differences may play in to these perceptions. We analyzed the interviews using a discourse analysis approach to
help explain the differences we found in scores based on cultural factors. We examined these interviews through a
discourse analysis approach in which participants' assumptions and reported ethical decision making in their projectbased teams provided insight into their understanding of scenarios and scale items. We will present the results of the
statistical and qualitative analysis that explore the variation of the instrument based on citizenship and ethnicity. By
employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, we will be able to both isolate and assess statistical differences
relating participants' scores when controlling for ethnicity and national culture, showing whether respondents vary to a
statistically significant degree based on cultural factors, as well as exploring how students themselves grapple with these
issues and what factors might contribute to this difference. This study contributes to our understanding of potential
cultural biases in our instrument, as well as the cultural perspectives embedded in participants' discourses and reasoning
about engineering ethics in general and ethical decision-making processes in engineering project teams. By focusing on
the influence of national culture on these processes, we aid engineering educators in the ongoing effort to train
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engineering students who are equipped to navigate the diversity in their team composition and in reasoning about ethical
dilemmas in their engineering design work.
AN ETHICS TRANSFER CASE ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR MEASURING ETHICAL REASONING ABILITIES
OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS USING REFLEXIVE PRINCIPLISM APPROACH
Justin Hess (Purdue University, USA)
Jonathan Beever (Penn State University, USA)
Andrew Iliadis (Purdue University, USA)
Lorraine Kisselburgh (Purdue University, USA)
Carla Zoltowski (Purdue University, USA)
Matthew Krane (Purdue University, USA)
Andrew O. Brightman (Purdue University, USA)
This work in progress paper presents initial results on the development and testing of a novel assessment tool utilizing an
ethics transfer case methodology targeted at measuring the ethical reasoning ability of engineering students employing
reflexive principlism. This work evaluates the reliability and transferability of a rubric-based assessment of students'
responses to a transfer case study employed at Purdue University in the Spring of 2014. The scoring rubric was
developed to assess students' ability to apply the reasoning components of reflexive principlism including: (a)
identification, (b) specification, (c) empathic perspective-taking, (d) justification, and (e) reflectivity. To determine
reliability of the scoring rubric, two raters independently scored 19 students' pre-course responses through 3 iterations of
the rubric's development, until 85% overall inter-rater agreement was reached. Two additional scorers, normed on the
coding framework, then provided feedback on wording and applied the rubric to the same 19 student responses. Initial
results from this analysis and discussion of the assessment tool are presented.
IDP1: Interdisciplinary Learning
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: La Galería
COMPUTER SCIENCE FOR NON-TECHNOLOGICAL CYBER PROGRAMS
Amir Rubinstein (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
The world of cyberspace revolves around the scientific and technological as well as other facets of the internet, data
encryption, digital communication, signal processing and data mining. Tel Aviv University has initiated a new cyber
study program for students from the non-technological disciplines. In this paper we propose an introductory Computer
Science course, aimed at those students. This course exposes students, in addition to programming and several cyberoriented topics, to general, fundamental concepts and ideas from Computer Science. The course aims at familiarizing
students with the computational "culture", thus broadening their perspective on the scientific aspects of the cyber world.
The Python programming language was chosen as the language used for experiencing with the course topics. This course
was offered for the first time in Fall 2013. We describe the considerations in the design of the course, its content and
structure. We propose several educational stand-alone modules, which can be incorporated into similar courses.
THE USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES FOR AN INTERDISCIPLINARY UNDERGRADUATE
EDUCATION: SOLVING QUADROTORS LIMITATIONS
Carlos Molina-Pena (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Reynaldo Belfort (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Rafael Pol (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Oscar Chacon-Rosario (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Luis Rivera (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Daniel Ramos (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
Eduardo Ortiz-Rivera (University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Puerto Rico)
It is the purpose of this paper to encourage the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the development of
interdisciplinary engineering education projects. The use of UAVs is an excellent tool to gather students from various
engineering and science fields. This paper explores the different features that a four-rotor UAV is used for STEM
education including the training of undergraduate students. In this paper, it is discussed how an interdisciplinary team of
undergraduate students from University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez are working together to provide solutions to the
encountered problems regarding quadrotors. The interdisciplinary team was composed by undergraduate students from
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mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and computer engineering. The study problem being treated is the issue of
range and endurance of quadrotors in closed perimeters. To attack this problem a docking station in which battery
powered quadrotors can autonomously land and recharge themselves was proposed. The first prototype of the docking
station was designed and is under construction, this prototype is a proof of concept which will serve as a test bed for
future improved models, including adding the capability of communication between various vehicles and land stations.
This project provides undergraduate engineering students the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge gained at
courses and provides hands-on experience building the prototype. The study of UAVs is an excellent tool to motivate
students involved in this kind of projects, to pursue graduate school, because it is a project that can be worked in order to
make an expertise in a specific area of research. In addition, the UAV project has got the attention of undeclared
freshmen and sophomore students, and it was used to encourage them to pursue studies in science and engineering.
Throughout the semester, the interdisciplinary team attended several outreach activities directed towards high school and
middle school students. In these activities, it was described how engineering students from various fields can work
together to develop a physical object, in this case the quadcopter, and apply the knowledge learned in classes as well as
acquire new skills that would otherwise not be obtained in normal courses. Finally, in the paper it is discussed the
interdisciplinary student's learning skills developed as part of this UAV project.
ENGINEERS OF THE WORLD UNITE AN INTEGRATED COURSE ON EMBEDDED SYSTEMS AND SOCIAL
MOVEMENTS
Lynne Slivovsky (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
Thomas Trice (California Polytechnic State University, USA)
This paper presents the design, implementation, and reflections of students and faculty of an innovative integrated course
(taught in Spring 2012) that combined seemingly disparate topics from engineering and the humanities. The primary goal
of the course was to promote the growth of intrinsically motivated students who internalize the value of their technical
work, connect their technical work to societal contexts, and cognitively engage in their own learning process. The faculty
designed a high-level framework for the new integrated course on embedded systems and social movements by
implementing an autonomy-supportive, context-rich engineering educational experience. This framework focused on
several elements of course design: (1) identification of broad, competency-based learning goals for the integrated course
block, (2) development of learning activities that supported broad goals such as communication, contextual awareness,
and self-directed learning, and (3) selection of assessment methods aligned with broad competency goals and supportive
of cross-disciplinary collaboration. Students were attracted to the self-direction designed into the course and reported
greater awareness and understanding of the societal impacts of technology.
REALISING STUDENT POTENTIAL THROUGH A TRULY INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Ian Smith (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Lise Thenault (Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom)
Yuxin Zhang (Shanghai Normal University, United Kingdom)
Edinburgh Napier University (ENU) and Shanghai Normal University (SNU) offer a joint undergraduate programme in
Civil Engineering. The programme was launched in 2007. The dual-award programme is fully accredited by the
Professional Body for Civil Engineering in the UK (the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)) and is approved by the
Ministry of Education in China. Such professional accreditation enables graduates of the programmes to practice as fully
qualified civil engineers in China, in the UK and in many other countries in the world where the ICE accreditation is
recognised. The programme has received high recognition from authorities in both countries for its role in providing a
truly international experience for the students. The four year long programme enables graduates to achieve the award
BSc (Honours) Civil Engineering. Students study Years 1 - 3 in Shanghai and then transfer to Edinburgh for Year 4. In
total, more than one-third of the entire course is taught in English. To enable this, staff from Edinburgh Napier
University teach in Shanghai during Years 2 and 3. In this way, the students start to appreciate the significance of the
English language throughout their studies, and naturally gain knowledge of the technical subjects with an international
approach. Exposure to the innovative teaching techniques utilised by the Edinburgh Napier staff prepare the students
well for their transition to the UK for the continuation of their studies in Year 4. Modules in many engineering subjects
are delivered and assessed in English in 2-week long blocks. Students wishing to progress to Year 4 in Edinburgh must
achieve an IELTS score of 6.0 or more. This becomes readily achievable for most students having studied these modules
in English in Shanghai. Students choosing not to study Year 4 in Edinburgh can instead study Year 4 in Shanghai where
additional modules are delivered by Edinburgh Napier University staff. Students studying in Edinburgh experience a
truly international dimension to their studies. Mixing with students of many other (mainly European) nationalities gives
the Chinese students a real international experience. Living, studying and working in Edinburgh is very rewarding for the
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students and many choose to continue their studies to Masters level following completion of the BSc. This paper
describes the structure of the joint programme, the mode by which it operates and the great opportunities that exist for all
students enrolled on the programme. Observations on the changes in teaching approaches required, and the challenges
therefore faced, by ENU staff for effective delivery in China (e.g. through no access to social media, YouTube etc.) are
described. The paper also describes the innovative teaching approaches that have to therefore be adopted, within the
constraints imposed by the teaching infrastructure available in Shanghai, for the effective delivery of course content.
AN EDUCATIONAL AND RESEARCH COOPERATION BETWEEN BRAZIL AND GERMANY ON
INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION TOPICS
Vicente F. Lucena, Jr. (Federal University of Amazonas, Brazil)
Peter Göhner (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
Nasser Jazdi (University of Stuttgart, Germany)
The Unibral program is a cooperation framework, coordinated by CAPES and DAAD that supports research and
education cooperation actions between German and Brazilian universities. This program has already an old history of
successful actions between so far away institutions and this work in progress paper will describe a new version of such
an old experience of Unibral, a cooperation project between the University of Amazon (Brazil) and the University of
Stuttgart (Germany). This new project started in 2013 and deals with two institutes related to the electrical and computer
engineering courses. The German side is represented by the Institute of Industrial Automation and Software Engineering
(IAS) of the University of Stuttgart and the Brazilian side by the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of the
Federal University of Amazonas located in Manaus. The main topics of its research and technology transfer are related to
the consumption of energy in automatic plants, and the proposal of new adaptive human-machine interface that may be
usable in industrial automation systems. The project proposes the introduction of new curricular directions and new
subjects in both sides, as well as, joint research action that may put together people from both institutions. Main goal will
be the study of the state of the art in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology subjects applied to real world
industrial applications. It will join the necessary improvement wish of the technical courses of the University of
Amazonas to the large academic and research experience of the University of Stuttgart. The cooperation project is based
on an intensive exchange of undergraduate students and scientific staff members involved on the education of those
disciplines. During the duration of the project about 20 students from Manaus and 12 students from Stuttgart will be
exchanged. This paper will describe the experiences already done and will emphasize the new approaches of this project
phase. Our goal is to contribute with other universities all over the world wishing to establish similar cooperation actions
among so even societies when considering their cultural and technical characteristics.
LAN2: Tools and Techniques for Learning Analytics 1
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: La Granja
COMPUTER TUTORS CAN ADDRESS STUDENTS LEARNING TO SOLVE COMPLEX ENGINEERING
PROBLEMS
Paul Steif (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Luoting Fu (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
Levent Kara (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)
The ability to solve complex problems in which considerable latitude in solution is allowed is an important goal in
engineering education. While feedback is critical to learning, traditional grading of handwritten homework rarely
provides effective, timely feedback on attempts to solve complex problems. To address the research question of whether
automated feedback can be provided on complex problem solving, a cognitive tutor approach is pursued, with truss
problems in statics used as a test case. The tutor maintains a cognitive model of problem solving of the class of
problems, and associates various solution steps with distinct skills or knowledge components. One can determine
whether students learn individual skills by measuring the error rate as a function of practice. Data was obtained from
students using the tutor to solve truss problems in place of the weekly homework assignment. Statistical analyses of the
data showed that distinct skills involved very different error rates, justifying tracking them separately. Furthermore, for
most skills, the error rate either was low from the start or decreased with practice, providing evidence that feedback
improved performance.
ENSURING THE INTEGRITY AND INTEROPERABILITY OF EDUCATIONAL USAGE AND SOCIAL DATA
THROUGH CALIPER FRAMEWORK TO SUPPORT COMPETENCY-ASSESSMENT
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Alex Rayon (University of Deusto, Spain)
Mariluz Guenaga (University of Deusto, Spain)
Asier Núñez (University of Deusto, Spain)
The acquisition of knowledge is no longer enough to succeed in a society characterized by a constant change and high
levels of uncertainty. Accordingly, universities have increasingly emphasized skills and competencies as central
elements of students' development. However, the assessment of these competencies is not an easy task. The availability
of data that learners generate in educational application offer great potential to study how learning takes place, and thus,
to gather evidences for competency-assessment. The lack of interoperability and the decentralization of those educational
applications poses a challenge to exploit those trace data. To face these problems we have designed and developed
SCALA (Scalable Competence Assessment through a Learning Analytics approach), an analytics system that integrates
usage (how the user interacts with resources and platforms) and social (how students and teachers interact among them)
trace data to support competency assessment. In this paper, we are going to focus in how we have Extracted,
Transformed and Loaded (ETL) those heterogeneous data sources in a single data model following the Caliper
framework for ensuring the integrity and interoperability. Finally, we show some initial results of the graphs and learning
analytics techniques to support the competency-based assessment.
CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES IN AN UNDERGRADUATE FLIPPED CLASSROOM EXPERIENCE:
LOOKING THROUGH THE LENS OF LEARNING ANALYTICS
Michail Giannakos (Norwegian University of Science and Technology & Old Dominion University, Norway)
Nikos Chrisochoides (Old Dominion University, USA)
Recent technical and infrastructural developments posit flipped classroom approaches ripe for exploration. Flipped
classroom approaches have students use technology to access the lecture and other instructional resources outside the
classroom in order to engage them in active learning during in-class time. Scholars and educators have reported a variety
of positive outcomes of a flipped (or inverted) approach to instruction. Although, flipped classroom practices have been
used in a number of education studies, the detailed framework and data obtained from students' interaction with the
technology materials are typically not described. In this paper, we present a flipped classroom framework and the first
captured results of such data. The framework incorporates basic e-learning tools and traditional learning practices,
making it accessible to anyone wanting to implement a flipped classroom experience in his/her course. The framework is
structured on open-source and easy-to-use tools, allowing for the incorporation of any additional specificities of a course.
This work-in-progress can provide insights for other scholars and practitioners to further validate, examine, and extend
the proposed approach. This approach can be used for those interested in incorporating flipped classroom in their
teaching, since it is a flexible procedure that may be adapted to meet their needs
USING WEB-BASED LEARNING LOGS TO ANALYZE STUDENTS' CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING OF
TRUSS ANALYSIS IN AN ENGINEERING STATICS COURSE
Joel Mejia (Utah State University, USA)
Wade Goodridge (Utah State University, USA)
Christopher Green (Utah State University, USA)
Engineering statics is a gateway course in engineering education that prepares students for subsequent courses such as
dynamics and mechanics of materials. However, many students tend to have problems when trying to understand
difficult concepts in statics. One example of these difficult concepts is the analysis of internal and external forces in
trusses. Although simple mathematical analysis of the problem may lead to a solution, truss analysis may not have a true
intuitive meaning for the students. Moreover, students may not explicitly voice their concerns or challenges encountered
when trying to understand the material due to their unfamiliarity with engineering concepts in statics. Therefore, it is
important to explore different venues that would allow the instructor to determine and understand the areas where
students struggle. This work in progress investigates how web-based learning logs can help the instructor identify the
information necessary to facilitate instruction and help students understand difficult concepts regarding truss analysis.
This study involves a grounded theory approach by analyzing web-based learning logs through open coding using
constant comparative analysis. One hundred and forty (140) web-based learning logs addressing students' experiences,
concerns, or retrospective and concurrent reflections were recorded and collected. The web-based learning logs were
analyzed using open coding, where initial categories of information about the phenomenon (i.e., misunderstandings of
truss analysis or students' struggles) become discernible by segmenting the information using NVivo 10. The analysis
combined category coding of all incidents identified in the data, as well as simultaneous comparisons across categories,
until saturation was reached. The data set was analyzed jointly between multiple researchers and the codes were
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developed by mutually agreeing on each code. The analysis of this data would eventually be used for a larger exploratory
research study to determine what types of interventions can be used in the classroom to advance the teaching and
learning of difficult concepts in statics. This method of analysis is inductive and interpretative in nature, thus allowing
the research in engineering education to account for different factors, including socially dominant Discourses in
engineering, that may affect student learning. The intent of this work, along with grounded theory, is to generate an
understanding of a phenomenon that relates to a particular situation. In this case, it is the intent of the research to
describe the complexity of truss analysis in order to provide a series of codes and schemes that will eventually advance
the research in engineering statics, and provide a better understanding of students concerns in engineering statics to
facilitate future interventions.
MINI WS: Helping Students to Learn to Use Diagramming as a Problem Solving Tool
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: El Jardin
HELPING STUDENTS TO LEARN TO USE DIAGRAMMING AS A PROBLEM SOLVING TOOL
Alisha A. Waller (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
Joseph Le Doux (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
This miniworkshop focuses on diagramming as problem solving tool. Unfortunately, many students enter engineering
without valuing the use of diagrams in model-based reasoning. Too often, they see diagramming as something which is
superfluous and disconnected from "real problem solving." Students often come to their first engineering course with a
well-practiced strategy that uses a rote problem solving approach in which they 1) write down the known and unknown
variables they find in the problem statement, 2) search for a formula or equation that uses these variables, and then 3)
enter the numbers into the formula and calculate an answer. Our first goal is to share our major research findings and our
second goal is to share the learning activities we have developed and tested in our classroom. These activities increase
students' motivation to use diagramming as a "tool for thinking" when solving complex problems. Our research shows
that students can be taught to improve their diagramming skills and be more successful in both problem solving and
conceptual understanding. Participants in this mini-workshop will receive a packet of materials, including full lesson
plans for 5 different activities, an example diagram assessment matrix, and copies of mini-lecture slides. This activity
based mini-workshop will include mini-lectures, whole group discussion, paired work, and problem solving which will
give participants the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to adapt and implement the lesson plans in their courses.
Faculty who attend will be better equipped to incorporate direct instruction in diagramming as a "tool for thinking" and
as an "engineering habit of the mind".
OER1: Evaluating Open Educational Resources
Chair: William Jobe
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Escudo
OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES FOR ENHANCING THE LEARNING OF CALCULUS IN ENGINEERING
EDUCATION
M. Rosa Estela (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain)
Joana Villalonga Pons (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Sweden)
Lecturers of Calculus at Civil Engineering School at the UPC think Engineering students have to master mathematics to
have a solid math foundation for their future studies and jobs as well as for developing and maintaining life-long
mathematics learning skills. Our experience shows us that it is a difficult task but which can be achieved if we work to
motivate and encourage students to understand, enjoy and learn for themselves this basic mathematics. In the present
paper we introduce the last resources and materials that we have incorporated in the Calculus course taught during the
first year of the Civil Engineering degree at the ETSECCPB in order to motivate and encourage students to study and
learn mathematics for themselves. One of these last implementations is a set of face-to-face workshops which
incorporates a televoting system. The other one consists in two collections of specific videos: one of them with the
intention to motivate Civil Engineering students towards mathematics and the other one presents Calculus skills to
enhance students' important mathematical concepts. The data collected for each of these resources allow us to think that
these resources can really help us to achieve our purpose.
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EXPLORING THE USE OF STUDENT TAUGHT CLASSES TO INTRODUCE NEW TECHNICAL TOPICS TO
ENGINEERING UNDERGRADUATES
Anish Simhal (University of Virginia, USA)
Venkata-Gautam Kanumuru (University of Virginia, USA)
Archie Holmes (University of Virginia, USA)
Edward Berger (University of Virginia, USA)
As the engineering discipline evolves, universities are challenged to continually incorporate new material into the
undergraduate curriculum. Traditionally, the two primary methods of incorporating new material are to either change the
curriculum of a specific class or hire a new instructor to teach a new class. In our paper, we introduce a new model for
introducing skills and tools necessary for undergraduates to succeed in industry/academia via the Student Taught Classes
program (STC). Beginning in the spring of 2013, the student-run Engineering Council at the University of Virginia
(U.Va) created and managed the program, running seven classes over three semesters incorporating five majors and
almost three hundred students. The classes are officially listed on U.Va's course registry as one-credit, pass/fail offerings.
Each class has a faculty advisor from the area being taught; and for all students, these courses satisfy no degree
requirements, and the instructors are not compensated or credited for their time. Applications Process The STC
application process requires students to not only demonstrate mastery in their field, but also proven teaching proficiency
prior to acceptance in the program. All SEAS students are eligible to apply and outstanding applicants are offered an
opportunity to interview. Interviews consist of questions about past experiences with the subject material and teaching
experience, and fifteen minutes of a sample lecture. Historically, the sample lecture portion is where excellent instructors
outshine the rest. Structure The overarching structure of courses stayed relatively constant throughout the STC program;
basic requirements required students to attend 75% of classes and attempt a majority of homework assignments.
However, based upon observations and survey results, an extensive number of students went beyond the baseline
expectations of the class and found the student-led courses to be both manageable and worthwhile. 98% of students
found that they spent approximately 60 minutes or less on each homework assignment, while 87% of students gave the
student instructors the highest marks possible when reviewing their teaching. Overall, 94% of students involved in the
STC program said they would take another student-led course. Impact The influence of the student-led courses extends
beyond the engineering school and U.Va community as a whole. Multiple classes in the STC program were backed by
industry sponsorships that provided real world data sets and examples for students to use in assignments. Through
portals such as University of Reddit as well as personal websites, some courses gained a following online. On average,
classes that pushed for an online presence had more than 500 participants. For the instructors, participation in the STC
program has led to multiple benefits including publications and university wide recognition. Conclusion Overall, the
STC program has been widely successful and far reaching. The popularity of the program can be attributed to the
rigorous application process, flexible class structure, and broad impact that each of the seven classes taught have had
over the past three semesters. When instituted in the right way, Student Taught Classes have the ability to add a new
dimension to any undergraduate engineering curriculum.
RECOMMENDATION OF OERS SHARED IN SOCIAL MEDIA BASED-ON SOCIAL NETWORKS ANALYSIS
APPROACH
Jorge Lopez-Vargas (Technical University of Loja, Ecuador)
Nelson Piedra (Technical University of Loja, Ecuador)
Janneth Chicaiza (Technical University of Loja, Ecuador)
Edmundo Tovar (Technical University of Madrid, Spain)
Access to information is essential to learning as much as instruction. The evolution of the Web, from Web 1.0, where we
were consumers of information, to a Web 2.0 where now we are producers and consumers of information, has allowed
the Web becomes a huge database and in constant expansion. At present much of the information published on the Web
is published on social media, represented through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, to name only the most
prominent. Each of the media and social networks has its own scheme of operation and different working characteristics,
ranging from the length of text that can be used, the use of different forms to identify topics until reaching the reciprocity
of relationship between the participants. For example Twitter is a social network where millions of daily messages called
Tweets, within the message can be used labels, called hashtags, to identify the subject of the message, the message also
may include links to other resources that expand the original content or showing interesting information and the
relationships between users are represented as non reciprocal relationships named "Following". Much of the information
exchanged in social networks can be used for learning, so that you can get from Twitter: resources (Open Educational
Resources - OERs) in Twitter are represented as links; find experts that in Twitter are represented as popular users;
virtual communities in Twitter user lists; events are described through "hashtags" on Twitter. One of the main challenges
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is the extraction of information posted on social networks, but that can be overcome with the use of various technologies,
such as linked data that allow retrieving resources and link with other external sources, graphs databases that help
represent the working scheme of a social network and social network analysis (SNA) as a technique to discover relevant
information that goes beyond the individual properties. The scope of this work is to use information that is published on
Twitter to extract and recommend Open Educational Resources to help with the learning process. The results obtained
are a set of recommendations on: users (identified as experts), virtual communities (lists of Twitter users) and related
events, according to the learning needs described as tags.
E-YANTRA LAB SETUP INITIATIVE: SUSTAINABLE KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND SCALABLE
INFRASTRUCTURE CREATION AT ENGINEERING COLLEGES
Saraswathi Krithivasan (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Krishna Lala (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Kavi Arya (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Saurav Shandilya (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Shailesh Jain (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Piyush Manavar (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Sachin Patil (Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India)
Embedded systems and Robotics are subjects that involve multi-disciplinary approaches to problem solving with an
emphasis on hands-on experiments. Due to lack of infrastructure - robotics labs to execute projects, or trained teachers to
mentor projects - engineering students in India do not get the benefits of hands-on experience. e-Yantra Lab Setup
Initiative is designed as a scalable and sustainable approach that addresses infrastructure creation and teacher training to
create an ecosystem at colleges to impart effective engineering education. In this paper, we discuss the three-pronged
approach used in eLSI to: train a team of four teachers from each college and enable setting up of a robotics lab at each
college. Analysis of feedback received from 64 teachers who participated in the pilot: (i) after the two-day workshop, (ii)
at the end of e-Yantra Robotics Teacher Competition, (iii) during a visit to labs post lab inaugurations, and (iv) during a
symposium held a year later for sharing and showcasing projects implemented in their robotics labs - shows that eLSI is
effective in sustainable knowledge creation. The model used to establish robotics labs at 35 colleges across five regions
of India in the current phase proves the scalability of the model.
PRE6: Diversity in Precollege Education
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: Comendador
INCREASING AWARENESS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE IN HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS
Gerald Gannod (Miami University, USA)
Janet Burge (Miami University, USA)
Victoria McIe (Miami University, USA)
Maureen Doyle (Northern Kentucky University, USA)
Karen Davis (University of Cincinnati, USA)
The "Girls on the Go: The Mobile Computing College Experience" is a residential summer camp whose aim is to
encourage high school aged female students to attend college, to consider computer science as viable major, and to
pursue computing related degrees. The camp is run by faculty and students from Miami University, University of
Cincinnati (UC), and University of Northern Kentucky (NKU), and has been hosted the last two years on the campus of
Miami University. The camp content is designed primarily around a user-centered design process, with the students
gaining experience in the development of a zoo-themed mobile app. In addition to technical experience, students
participate in sessions that educate them on campus life, the admissions process, and more importantly, what a career in
corporate IT may hold for them. The students interact with corporate mentors who serve as role models for females in
the IT field with the goal of providing insight into careers in computing and IT. In the Summer of 2013, a cohort of 20
students from Ohio, Illinois, and Florida participated in the one-week experience. As a residential camp, students lived
on campus, used the dining halls for every meal, and attended course sessions that focused on the use of project-based
learning to teach mobile development. We used the MIT AppInventor platform to ensure a gentle learning curve while
still achieving an outcome that allowed the students to go from concept and design to an executable deliverable. The
camp, supported in part by funding from Miami, UC, and NKU, and a grant from NSF, has been offered for two
consecutive summers, and emphasizes a two-tier mentorship structure that engages current CS students in significant
roles as counselors that remain with the students throughout the entire journey. Using pre and post camp surveys, we
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applied a Student's T-Test to determine whether the camp had an effect on attitudes towards computer science as a
major, and on the careers available to computer science graduates. To this end, our analysis revealed a statistically
significant effect upon raising awareness of the role of computer scientists, and the relevancy of computing for solving
real world problems. In this paper, we analyze and present data based on each iteration of the camp, and we compare
differences between each iteration with the intent of identifying both lessons learned and avenues for improving the
experience.
ROBOTICS EDUCATION INITIATIVE FOR ANALYZING LEARNING AND CHILD-PARENT INTERACTION
Francisco Cuellar (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
Christian Penaloza (Osaka University, Japan)
Pedro Garret (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
David Olivo (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
Miriam Mejia (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
Nancy Valdez (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
Agueda Mija (Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru, Peru)
This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the first robotics education workshop in which children and
parents interact by experimenting with concepts of robotics. Unlike traditional robotics educational workshops that are
targeted to children only, our initiative encourages children and parents to interact as a team and learn through ludic
activities using a robotic kit. Therefore, apart from presenting the advantages of robotic educational tools, the concept of
parenting styles is introduced in order to explore their relationships with participants learning. Analysis results describe
child's performance and evidence of the influence of parenting style in the child's learning process. Our approach
establishes a precedent to design and implement innovative workshops to encourage and motivate students in order to
gain interest in science and technology through robotics, and their parents to use positively the different aspects of
parenting styles in the learning process of their children in these workshops.
ACROSS-THE-AGES: A STUDY OF ROBOTICS IN CARIBBEAN EDUCATION
Tricia Gilkes (Ministry of Education, Trinidad and Tobago)
Cathy-Ann Radix (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
Daniel Ringis (The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago)
STEM Education has been recognised as critical to Caribbean economic development. Several distinct regional
initiatives utilise Robotics as a driver to develop student interest in STEM subjects. Initiatives range from curricular
interventions,to extra-curricular activities that engage students in competitions which showcase their creations. In this
paper, we review a number of regional and extra-regional robotics initiatives, and reflect on how activities are tailored to
meet the motivational and curricular needs of different age groups of students, as well as the motivation of the
stakeholders involved in enabling an initiative, and ultimately the benchmarks for success of each initiative. The review
forms the basis of an integrated intervention for Teacher Training initiated by the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of
Education Curriculum Division through the Technology Education Curriculum and the eConnect and Learn programme.
The intervention is based on the IDEATE model, a problem-solving process, and targets teachers of students in the early
secondary age group. Empowering and encouraging student volunteers to support teachers in deploying kit-based
robotics activities in schools allows for the increased longevity of the robotics initiative. The potential to foster wider
student interest in STEM subjects within the Caribbean remains to be explored.
PRE-COLLEGE INTERACTIONS, EARLY EXPECTATIONS, AND PERCEIVED BARRIERS OF FIRST YEAR
BLACK AND LATINO ENGINEERING STUDENTS
Sandra Dika (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
Miguel A. Pando (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
Brett Tempest (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
Krystal Foxx (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
One of the most significant challenges facing engineering education in the United States is the problem of inclusion and
retention of underrepresented minority (URM) groups, including certain racial and ethnic groups (African American,
Latino, Native American). This paper will present results from a larger, federally funded project whose aim is study how
formal and informal interactions with engineering faculty and other agents may influence attitudes and intentions of
Black and Latino students for enrollment and persistence in engineering. The purpose of the study is to describe
engineering-related interactions prior to college, perceived barriers during engineering studies, and early expectations of
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interactions with faculty for Black and Latino first year engineering students at one urban research institution in the
Southeast US. The study utilizes a mixed methods design, incorporating both questionnaire and focus group data. The
questionnaire items were developed by the researchers utilizing existing instruments on perceived barriers to education
and engineering-related interactions and were included as part of an annual questionnaire administered to the engineering
freshman seminar at the institution under study. Seven items on likelihood to experience certain barriers (e.g., negative
faculty attitudes, coursework difficulties) are rated from 1=strongly agree to 5=strongly disagree. For seven items on
engineering-related interactions (e.g., visiting an engineering workplace), students indicate all of the adults with whom
they interacted from five possible options (e.g., parent, teacher). About 60% of entering Black and Latino students
responded to the questionnaire (n=58), and are generally representative of the population in terms of gender. Two focus
groups were conducted with entering Black and Latino engineering students, with questions prompting discussion on
what types of encouragement and support students received from family and educators during middle and high school to
study engineering; expectations about interactions with professors prior to beginning classes; actual interactions with
professors in and outside of the classroom; and perceptions about factors that affect how students and professors interact.
The interviews were transcribed for analysis of themes related to the major research question. The paper will present
descriptive data on the number of engineering-related interactions prior to college and perceived barriers to engineering
study. Themes from the focus group interviews related to early expectations of interactions with professors and
perceptions of factors that affect how students and professors interact among first year Black and Latino engineering
students will be identified and illustrated through appropriate quotes from the focus group transcripts. The results of the
larger study will serve to help improve engineering orientation and first-year seminar experiences for underrepresented
students, and to understand what types of pre-college interactions may be linked to engineering enrollment.
AN APPROACH FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION AT AN EARLY STAGE
Kazuhide Sugimoto (Okinawa National College of Technology, Japan)
In this paper, the effectiveness of our approach for engineering education at an early stage is presented. It is designed for
15 or 16-year-old students who have just begun to take lectures for a specific specialized field of engineering in our
college of technology. Here, how to encourage their learning motivation for various fields of engineering becomes
important. Therefore, our program was designed by focusing on skills for communication, writing reports and making
presentation through an engineering education practice as a project based learning by 4 or 5 students a group. The
decision was made through discussion by the group unit. In order to check presence of the difference between
generations, the investigation with a program of the same contents has been carried out for three years. By analyzing the
answer to the questionnaire and impression in free form answering from 160 students in total every year for inspection of
effectiveness, we conclude that our approach is effective not only for the enhancement of student's learning motivation in
the engineering education program but their recognition for importance of the skill acquirement was confirmed.
SER: STEM Education Outreach through IEEE's Pre-University Programs - Engaging volunteers to benefit K-12
education and local communities
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Room: El Escorial
STEM EDUCATION OUTREACH THROUGH IEEE'S PRE-UNIVERSITY PROGRAMS - ENGAGING
VOLUNTEERS TO BENEFIT K-12 EDUCATION AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES
Sohaib Qamar Sheikh (IEEE Region 8, United Kingdom)
Efthymia Arvaniti (IEEE Region 8, Germany)
The quality of STEM education is the cornerstone for increasing the interest of pre-university students in science and
engineering in any country. IEEE has been actively pursuing an agenda to increase the propensity of K-12 to follow a
career path in the above mentioned subject areas by developing a number of targeted programs and resources for the
benefit of students, parents, teachers and the general public. This special session is aimed at discussing the impact of
these programs in the last 10 years and the problems faced by volunteers in implementing them in different parts of the
world. The session will involve a team exercise analyzing different aspects of these programs to increase the impact of
these programs. This interactive session will also provide participants with case studies of the problems faced by IEEE
volunteers and will encourage them to provide 'out-of-the-box' solutions for these problems.
CSE2: Innovation in Computing Education
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Alcalá
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THE IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVE DIALOG IN COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS' CREATIVE
THINKING
Deller Ferreira (Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil)
Anderson Gonçalves (Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil)
Luciana Berreta (Universidade Federal de Goiás, Brazil)
Computer science is a creative field to work, creativity is demanded from industry and very relevant and evident in
software design processes. So, teaching creativity is an important endeavor in computer science education. This work
highlights the importance of verbal creativity, providing empirical evidence that when students engage in other students'
ideas, new knowledge emerge and is deepen. In this work we performed two case studies. In the first one were
considered three computer graphics classes. Patterns of productive discourse that describe knowledge advancement have
been found when students engaged in other students' ideas, criticizing, comparing, evaluating, selecting ideas,
considering different alternatives, and pointing positive and negative outcomes. The second case study was run in six
human-computer interaction classes. The online discourse was analyzed by means of the following categories: relevance,
importance, novelty, bringing outside knowledge to bear a problem, ambiguities, linking ideas and interpretation,
justification, critical assessment, and practical utility. The results show that when students are better in categories critical
assessment, and linking ideas and interpretation, they are also better in category novelty and also the products generated
are better. When they engaged in others' ideas they elaborated better interface designs.
A BRAVE NEW WORLD DEVELOPING METHODOLOGY TO INVESTIGATE INDIVIDUAL AND
COLLABORATIVE STUDENT PRACTICE IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION
Daniel Knox (University of Kent, United Kingdom)
In the past decade, a wealth of new resources have become available to students in tertiary education. Some of these have
been designed to assist teaching and learning, whilst others, such as social networking sites and the wide availability of
mobile devices, have become ambient in our students lives. The impact of this on us (as academics), is that the academic
study (of computing, in our case) has become unbounded from physical space, no longer isolated to lecture theatres and
seminar rooms. We could attempt to follow our students into this new world, but to understand how students learn to
navigate and utilise these new spaces in relation to their academic studies, we need to understand the practices, social
structures and identities that they develop within them. To do this, we need to provide a way for students to show us
these spaces and for them to become our guides. In doing so, we can improve our understanding of students individual
and collaborative working practices during academic study.
THE STUDENT PROMPT: STUDENT FEEDBACK AND CHANGE IN TEACHING PRACTICES IN
POSTSECONDARY COMPUTER SCIENCE
Lecia Barker (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Jane Gruning (University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Research on retaining students in computer science is clear: pedagogical and curricular interventions that are experienced
by all students are the most effective. Yet understanding what brings faculty to modify their teaching practices is scant.
This study presents findings from a study based on interviews with 66 computer science professors and instructors in the
U.S. Faculty described various sources of student feedback that prompt them to change their teaching practices. Though
not originally an interview topic, every instructor mentioned ways in which student feedback instigated change. Faculty
described several sources of feedback that influence teaching choices, with the goal of trying to improve their teaching.
These include formalized evaluations; feedback inferred from student performance; direct requests from students; and
students' nonverbal behavior. As sources of evidence for making decisions about teaching practices, each of these is
problematic. We describe what makes them problematic and offer solutions described by faculty interviewed.
RESEARCH INTO THE COMPUTATIONAL THINKING FOR THE TEACHING OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Ying Li (Beihang University, P.R. China)
Due to the popularity and development of computer science, the connection between computer science and other subjects
became closer. The disciplinary crossing and integration centered on computer science is gradually formed. Computer
has unparalleled advantages in solution problem, data calculation, modeling, simulation and etc. It makes computer
science holds a significant position in other disciplines. How to make students understand computer knowledge better
and use computer to solve actual problems in their fields easier and break the barriers between disciplines are the
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challenges the computer educators will face. This paper thought computational thinking is a good method and introduced
its core concepts, discussed the dialectical relationship between computation and thinking, analyzed its important role in
computer teaching of various disciplines. It indicated computation is a kind of thinking process which uses computing
technology to process information and thinking refers to the activities of the human brain to know the world in which
computation plays an important role. Finally, the paper proposed a modular teaching method based on practical case,
engineering project and disciplinary characteristics for achieving the cultivation of computational thinking.
ENHANCING THE QUALITY OF SOFTWARE DESIGN THROUGH MULTI-TOUCH INTERFACES
Mohammed Basheri (King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia)
Malcolm Munro (Durham University, United Kingdom)
Use of multi-touch interfaces for collaborative software design has become increasingly important. Such surfaces can
accommodate more than one user concurrently, which is particularly useful for collaboration. In this paper, the quality of
collaborative software design using Unified Modeling Language (UML) was studied. In particular, we looked at if/how
the quality of students' design diagrams could be enhanced in a contemporary multi-touch table environment, as opposed
to a traditional PC based environment. Eighteen master's level students enrolled in the Software Engineering for the
Internet module were selected to participate in the study. The participants formed nine pairs. The experiment followed a
counterbalanced within-subjects design where groups switched experiment conditions to ensure each group used the
Multi-touch table and PC-based conditions. All collaborative UML diagramming activities were video recorded for
quantitative and qualitative analysis. To find out whether the quality of the designs in these two conditions differed, two
software engineering experts evaluated the quality of design. Each of the experts scored the diagrams independently
from 0 to 10. The results show that the Multi-touch table condition enhanced the quality of design more the PC-based
condition did.
CUR7: Experiences in Curriculum Design
Chair: Ziming (Tom) Qi
4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
Room: Doblon
TOWARDS DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING CURRICULUM FOR THE CHALLENGES OF THE SMART
GRID EDUCATION
Suleyman Uludag (University of Michigan - Flint, USA)
Peter Sauer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Klara Nahrstedt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Timothy Yardley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
At the tipping of a paradigm shift in the way energy is produced, transmitted and delivered, the research efforts have not
been paralleled by the curricular development. With rapid pace of changes in the field of Smart Grid (SG), the traditional
research and educational efforts have been a major domain for electrical engineers. As a mode of discovery and
education, interdisciplinarity facilitates broadened perspectives, ability to synthesize, analyze, integrate, and apply
knowledge, and out--of--the--box thinking. Our major contributions are discussion of requirements of the educational
efforts in SG with special emphasis on multidisciplinarity, survey of the related work, which is the first in the literature
to the best of our knowledge, and a discussion of the content for such an effort. We have a mixed team of power
engineers and computer scientists that are developing a layered curriculum starting from the introductory material from a
variety of SG topics. A distinguishing advantage is the availability of many software tools and the state--of--the--art
testbed as a result of years of research.
SOCIAL CONTEXT, SINGULAR FOCUS
David Chesney (The University of Michigan, USA)
In the Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan (UM), we have spend the past five years building
social context into several courses in the traditional computer science (CS) curriculum. Specifically, freshman- and
senior-level, project-based classes have been designed to both teach significant and appropriate academic content, while
also building software games and apps for children with cognitive and/or physical disabilities within the university's
associated hospital. That is, children with disabilities provide the context for these courses. During the past academic
year (2013-2014), one of the senior-level courses had the singular focus of developing software apps and games for one
particular 13 year old girl with athetoid