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We report on the findings from an exploratory pilot study using the experience-sampling method (ESM) and interviews to examine learning in two undergraduate engineering technology courses designed to promote creativity. Results of the ESM analysis showed that students’ positive experience decreased slightly in the first course and increased slightly in the latter course. Surprisingly, both instructors’ presence caused students to report lower levels of willingness to express a creative idea and feel like other students were really listening. Interviews revealed student perceptions about the importance of creativity as essential to the engineering industry and beliefs about being creative in the classroom during the stages of the design process, which relies heavily on group work. Discussion builds on these themes for facilitating creative classrooms emphasizing work with peers as an integral part of curricular and instructional design.

is a Professor and Department Chair of Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunications Engineering Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He teaches courses technical programming and embedded systems design. His research interests include algorithm development and implementation in Field Programmable Gate Arrays.

The hallmark of Engineering Technology (ET) programs is its student-centered curriculum and hands-on approach to teaching. Many institutions with ET programs now require scholarship of their ET faculty in addition to their teaching duties. In many institutions that have always emphasized scholarship and research, undergraduate student education has often times taken a back seat to research. The question that arises for ET programs as we begin to engage in scholarly activities is: how do we insure that ET scholarship is student-centered similar to ET teaching and curriculum? The benefits of scholarship to ET students include enhancement of their critical thinking, innovative, lifelong learning skills, skills that many ET employers today are looking for in our students. In this paper, the author examines issues relating to the importance of scholarship to ET undergraduate students, barriers to ET student scholarship, mechanisms for embedding scholarship in the ET curriculum, resources required to facilitate ET student scholarship, and feedback from ET student scholars who recently worked on a scholarly project with the author. The author concludes that embedding scholarship in the ET curriculum is very desirable and suggests some ways and means to facilitate and nurture student scholarship in ET.

The new accreditation criteria (TC2K) of the Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET require an assessment of Program Intended Learning Outcomes. Some of the learning outcomes required by the "a" through "k" and the Civil criteria of TC2K include leadership skills, teamwork skills, project management skills, communication skills, and design and construction skills.The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Institute for Steel Construction (AISC) sponsors regional and national concrete canoe and steel bridge competitions on an annual basis. The Civil Engineering Technology (CET) students at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have participated in these competitions for the past nine years. These competitions give students a chance to apply what they have learned in the classroom.To assess the impact of the concrete canoe and steel bridge competitions on student learning and development, the authors carried out a survey of current students and graduates of the CET program at RIT who have been members of the concrete canoe and steel bridge teams. The issues addressed in our survey include the following: impact of these activities on leadership skills, communication skills, teamwork skills, design and construction skills, project management skills, confidence levels, students' enthusiasm for the profession, and a positive image and exposure for students and CET programs.In this paper, we discuss the results of this survey and some of the challenges to student participation in these non-credit activities at RIT, and present some suggestions for enhancing the level of student participation.

Most colleges in the United States use end-of-term course assessment as the main feedback mechanism from students. By using this method of summative assessment, students are able to rate the course, the performance of the instructor, and what they have learned in the course, among other things. One drawback of the end-of-term feedback is that the current students are not able to benefit from any improvements in the course that may result from their feedback. To overcome this drawback, the author explores in this paper the use of ongoing assessment of student understanding of course topics throughout the quarter using module surveys. In this paper, the author presents the advantages of the ongoing assessment technique, the survey data from online and on-campus sections of the author's structural analysis course, and feedback from students regarding the effectiveness of the module surveys. This continuous improvement process has been successfully adopted in the author's structural analysis, structural steel design and reinforced concrete design courses. The analysis of the data obtained from administering this survey to students in the structural analysis course is presented. Based on the survey data and the students' feedback, it can be concluded that ongoing formative assessment methods enhance student learning and should be adopted in Engineering Technology (ET) courses as one way of satisfying the "closed loop" continuous improvement process now required by the accrediting agencies.

A technique was recently developed for the continuous assessment of student learning that involves measuring students' perception of learning of course topics. The assessment instrument is divided into several modules with each module consisting of a detailed listing of course topics. This instrument has been used in the author's on-campus and online structural analysis courses. The results of the data collected from a structural analysis course pointed to enhancement in student learning, with the additional benefit of forcing the students to reflect on and take charge of their own learning. This assessment technique has been further implemented in structural steel design and reinforced concrete design courses. The data collected is analyzed and compared to students' experiences from the structural analysis course to determine the impact of using this assessment instrument on student learning in structural design courses. The impact of students' perception of learning as measured by the assessment instrument on the final grades obtained in the course, and the influence, if any, of using this ongoing course assessment technique on the end-of-term student course evaluations are also investigated.