Senior design projects form an important capstone for most engineering disciplines and must consist of the realistic application of the engineering design process. Some senior engineering students would like the opportunity to participate in research projects, but cannot give the time to perform research and participate in a senior design project. The authors have served as either faculty or students in combined research and design projects for several years, and have made several observations about this combined approach. Many research projects offer the opportunity to perform engineering design although recognition of this fact is sometimes overlooked by faculty. Some general cases where design may be needed in a research problem include: design of an experimental system, engineering software design, and design of a process to manufacture experimental test pieces. Once a design aspect of a research project has been identified, the faculty member that will oversee the design project should carefully consider how the project will require the design process, whether multiple alternative designs will be considered, and in what way will the project satisfy multiple realistic constraints. Students in the design group may already be working on the research project and it has to be clear to these students that they will be doing two projects: the research project and the design project. Use of a design proposal that is signed by the faculty member and students can aid in making sure that all involved, faculty and students, know how the project will meet the research program's and ABET's expectations in terms of design. Our experiences with combined research / senior design projects are discussed in this paper.
Students are often looking for internet resources to supplement college courses. Solutions manuals for course textbooks are readily (if illicitly) available and reduce the amount of time students spend outside of class actually learning to problem-solve. At the same time, the content for many courses is readily available online in many forms-some reliable, some not. There are currently valid concerns about both of these trends; related to the ability of students to solve problems independently and the quality of the information they may find online (due to poor information literacy). Pencasts® provide a way to have students become familiar with course content outside of class, leaving more time in class for problem-solving exercises and discussion and explanation of lecture materials. A Pencast® consists of a video that displays the written work of the instructor with overlayed audio explanations; this is accomplished with a smartpen and a notebook with small, closely-spaced dots (dot paper). The smartpen records the audio and captures the pen movements as written on the dot paper. The resulting videos can be used for lecture content, example problems, demonstration of a process, or course announcements. Pencasts® allow quick production of schematics, equations, and sketches (with accompanying audio) which have been much more difficult to produce. We have begun to implement the following strategy in a senior level course in heat transfer: use of Pencasts, including lecture and examples, as the "homework" outside of class and use of student problemsolving with immediate feedback in class. The results of the initial implementation of this strategy are reported, including results of the pre/post Heat Transfer Concept Inventory (HTCI).
The goal of this robotic research activity in the UCO's Engineering and Physics department was to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM ) among the incoming freshmen so that they will be encouraged to pursue a degree in Engineering, Physics, or computer science. The duration of this research activity was four weeks, during which time these students become familiar with research, teamwork, problem based learning, and the procedures involved in engineering design and building. The first phase of the activity, lasting for one week, involved an introduction to basic theory focusing on electronics, mechanics, programming, and engineering design processes. The second phase of the activity, lasting the remaining three weeks, involved researching, designing, and building a conceptual model and prototype of a minesweeper robot. With the facilitation of their peer mentors, students built a working scaled down model that could autonomously navigate, identify, and extract mines. Following the presentation of their project, these students expressed enthusiasm in pursuing a degree in engineering physics and computer science disciplines.
For a month in the summer of 2008, six incoming freshmen STEM students (mentees) were mentored by two senior undergraduate engineering students (mentors) in a robotics based project. The project focused on the "ground-up" realization of a swarm robot prototype. It differed from most entry-level robotics projects in scope. Instead of using preassembled and pretested robotics components, the students were asked, as a team, to design their own mechanical and electrical systems under the supervision of the senior engineering student mentors. The mentees appeared to be divided as to how they felt about the program. Two students expressed that the program was difficult and were uninterested in the team environment. The other four were much more eager to be engaged in an experience like this, and worked hard to help it succeed. Since the summer program, they have been engaged with the mentors, their fellow classmates, and have had an increased confidence in their abilities to handle an engineering program. These students are currently continuing this project as undergraduate research assistants under the mentorship of the senior engineering students. The mentors expressed that they also benefitted from this program. They gained valuable experience in project and group management. They also increased their in-depth understanding of the mechanical and electrical systems through providing technical support to the incoming freshman students.
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