Andrew Jackson is currently pursuing a PhD in Technology through Purdue's Polytechnic Institute, with an emphasis on Engineering and Technology Teacher Education. His research interests are engineering self-efficacy, motivation, and decision making. Andrew is the recipient of a 2015 Ross Fellowship from Purdue University and has been recognized as a 21st Century Fellow by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association. He completed his Master of Science in Technology Leadership and Innovation at Purdue University with a thesis investigating middle school engineering self-efficacy beliefs. He previously taught middle school and undergraduate technology courses, accompanying both experiences with classroom research to improve practice.
She has worked with students and faculty in multidisciplinary and mulitmodal projects for more than twenty years. She has participated in projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Art Education Foundation, and the National Science Foundation. Recently, her graphic design students worked in collaboration with the School of Music and the National Nanotechnology Initiative in making short animations to explain various aspects of nanotechnology, and designing and developing non-digital games for learning, reading and speaking Cherokee focused on its use of pronouns while partnering design students with faculty and students in the Cherokee Language program and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians in western North Carolina. Both the nanotechnology animations and the Cherokee word games has been distributed to large and multifaceted audiences nationally. Dr. Lane Graves Perry III, Western Carolina University Lane Graves Perry, III (PhD, ME, MEd, BBA) currently serves as executive director of the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning at Western Carolina University, a Carnegie Community Engaged campus. His reserch interests include community engagement/service-learning, global citizenship development, and public health.
Project Based Learning (PBL) provides opportunities for students to apply theoretical design knowledge to solve practical problems at all levels of the curriculum. Graduates of these programs are extremely well prepared for industry with skills including project management, team-work, and customer focused design. The programs at Western Carolina University provide a series of five PBL courses from the freshman to the senior year. The last two of these courses form the fourth year capstone sequence where students do projects for external sponsors, typically companies. Leading up to this point the students learn and apply the skills required for successfully executing major technical projects. This paper will outline the shared PBL course sequence at Western Carolina University in the School of Engineering+Technology. The School houses disciplines ranging from Electrical to Mechanical Engineering. More uniquely, the Engineering Technology and Engineering programs are not separated into separate schools. As a result the PBL project teams contain a multidisciplinary mix of students with a range of practical and theoretical approaches. PBL instructors embrace this diversity and foster an environment that is much more productive and capable that a single program experience could offer. The PBL sequence will be described including course content and project work that concurrently addresses the ABET 7 criteria for ETAC and EAC accreditation. Lessons that have been learned will be shared for other schools hoping to create a similar curricular experience.
Why do we use team based projects when we teach? In part it is because we want students to apply new knowledge beyond structured homework problems. The benefit of working in a team is that each team member can contribute towards a common goal and achieve more than one could individually. And, after graduation, our students will work as part of a team on many projects.How are student teams usually made? When the students are allowed to group themselves the results are clusters of friends, interspersed with human filler. When grouped by instructor the teams can be designed to distribute strengths and weaknesses across all teams evenly to ensure even chances of success. Methods to categorize strengths and weaknesses can be as simple as grades 1 , or as complex as personality indicators. When personality indicators are used the teams are designed to have complimentary personalities.What makes a team successful or fail? A team that functions well will approach a task and produce strong results without 'issues'. Some teams will be pulled off track by conflicts with an individual and produce sub-optimal solutions. Teams that are largely non-functional will simply fail because of widespread personality conflicts. Essentially, conflicts impact the team performance. Issues that tend to lead to major conflicts on student teams include but are not limited to a lack of motivation, lack of talent, working too much, and abrasive personalities.The topics of personality and conflicts must be dealt with separately when forming teams, with conflicts being given the higher priority. This paper describes a method for forming project teams that can be copied or modified for use in other courses. In simple terms the method can be described as "Group students on teams with similar challenges, and everybody will benefit".
Open any newspaper today, search current news service websites, or turn on the television and one finds negative images of outsourcing, the closure of factories, and the loss of manufacturing jobs in our country. Many corporations find it profitable to move operations overseas seeking less expensive labor. There is outrage in our nation as we see manufacturing and product design careers and opportunities disappear. In addition, many Manufacturing Engineering and Technology programs in this country are seeing an alarming decline in enrollments. In most cases (if not all), the remaining twenty five ABET accredited manufacturing engineering programs in the U.S are shrinking as the numbers of incoming students dwindle.If our students are indeed basing their academic choices on negative information and images promoted by mass media, it is up to educators to appeal to students and revitalize the image by promoting the positive future of manufacturing education and prepare for the opportunities of outsourcing. Educators must be prepared for this phenomenon and prepare students adequately for the new world that faces them. Moreover, we must revise our programs to reflect the new reality of manufacturing as a global enterprise where our graduates are likely to design products locally to be produced in another part of the world.
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