IntroductionThroughout the engineering profession, an emphasis on requiring strong communication abilities for engineering graduates has been shown in several studies 1,2 . Because of the emphasis on communication in engineering practice, "an ability to communicate effectively" is a core outcome competency within the ABET required program outcomes 3 . In a recent study of engineering graduates, communication skills were ranked with teamwork, data analysis, and problem solving as the four most important ABET outcome competencies 4 .The objective of this study was to identify which aspects of student communication skills were improved by changes to an industry-sponsored capstone senior design course and to what extent they were improved. While previous studies have indicated that industry-sponsored capstone senior design courses improve student understanding of design practice, no study to date has focused on analyzing the extent to which this industry experience improves the communication ability of the students.The civil engineering senior design course at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) places students in unpaid internships with local engineering agencies and companies. Practicing engineers supervising the students have discussed the importance of accurate professional communications with faculty coordinating the course. Students in this course are required to complete communication skills assignments, such as writing memos, reports, and preparing periodic progress presentations of their work. The communication assignments used as the subject of the study in this paper were reviewed by engineering faculty, in consultation with practicing professional engineering sponsors, and the staff at the SIUE Writing Center. Previous WorkOverall lessons from past capstone courses Previous work examining the learning in engineering capstone courses has focused on teambased learning, problem-based learning, and impacts of the learning environment. To improve student teamwork experiences in any course, faculty have an opportunity to apply a wealth of knowledge from fields such as organizational or industrial psychology 5 . Some argue that effective team-based learning in capstone courses require that teams be heterogeneous and have shared goals, meaningful activities, timely internal feedback, and external comparisons and feedback 6 . Thus, for faculty to facilitate an effective team-based learning experience, they must be very deliberate in the planning of team projects, milestones, activities, feedback methods, and timing.Other research has focused on problem-based learning approaches. One study, focusing on a structural engineering capstone course, found that a problem-based learning format required significantly more time due to the additional feedback for students, and that a team-building exercise could strengthen communication between student teams and the instructor 7 . Problembased learning has also been implemented into an entire civil engineering curriculum at the Page 26.1412.2University of Colora...
Three environmental engineering courses offered at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville involve in the teaching of water treatment subjects. In the past, field trips to local water treatment plants helped students to relate the knowledge they learned in the classroom to real-world applications. Since 9/11/2001, water treatment plants are closed to visits of the general public. Furthermore, increased students' participations in the teaching process are needed to improve the effectiveness of students' learning. This paper reports the experience and findings of a project where videos of water treatment subjects were used and integrated in the instructional activities of these courses. The impacts of videos on students' learning were assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Bloom's taxonomy on learning levels was used to design the assessment questions for each course. This project found that the use of appropriately selected videos improved the learning environment, increased students interests in learning by promoting active students participation in the learning process, promoted high levels of learning and naturally broke long class session into small attention units, where the effectiveness of student learning were increased. The use of videos also overcame the limitation of lack of field trip opportunities and helped to bring real-world applications to the classroom.
Forty percent of the global energy consumption is related directly to commercial and residential buildings. Homeowners of energy inefficient housing have an opportunity to reduce energy consumption and to assist in mitigating climate change. This paper reports a study on retrofitting flat roofs of energy inefficient housing in St. Louis, MO. A life cycle analysis was conducted on a 120 year old house to evaluate two design options: a green roof vs. a white roof (solar reflective paint). Both options were studied at a 10 year of roof maintenance cycle. The study found that the green roof would require more retrofit embodied energy than that of the white roof, because the green roof requires soil transportation, soil pan fabrication, roof joist retrofit kit, and the ceiling replacement, while the white roof requires only the manufactured paint. However, the green roof would still outperform the white roof over a 10 year period on total energy consumption. Furthermore, both options would provide energy savings over the no-retrofit option.
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