Engineers need to be able to work on crossfunctional teams. Some researchers advocate exposing first year students to the professional skills, and then reinforce them throughout the curriculum. A collaborative effort was made between a first-year introductory engineering course and an introductory marketing course. As each team of engineers worked on a product improvement design project, a team of marketing students developed a marketing plan for their proposed product. Nearly 40% of the engineering projects incorporated very specific design changes as a direct result of the input from their marketing partners. Further, an additional 46.5% of the teams seriously considered the marketing input. As expected, the greatest obstacle was finding meeting times that would work for both teams. Although appreciated, 25% of students indicated communication with non-engineers was difficult. Despite these obstacles, the collaboration was successful in promoting cross-functional teamwork. Many students, 69%, valued the input and indicated the best aspect of this project was learning to communicate with non-engineers.
The main purpose of this project was to see if there is a difference in performance between blind and sighted subjects when reading raised letters by feel. A secondary purpose was to attempt to find the optimum height while keeping all other variables constant. Six blind and 22 blindfolded subjects were asked to identify raised plastic letters by feel. The following confusion letters were used: E,F,P,R,G,C,O,Q,D,B,U,V,J,I,T. The heights were 1.27, 1.91 and 2.54 cm. The time it took to identify the letter and whether or not the letter was misidentified were recorded. There was not enough evidence to conclude a difference between blind and blindfolded subjects. The sizes 1.91 and 2.54 cm were not significantly different. However, 1.27 cm was harder to identify. There were significant differences between letters. There was no correlation between identification time and accuracy.
developed and is now the director of the Manufacturing Engineering Technology program. Her primary interest area is at the intersection of manufacturing engineering and statistics involving lean, continuous improvement, and quality. She also does research in engineering education applying the principles of continuous improvement to her teaching.
Aaron J. Barker, St. Cloud Technical and Community CollegeColleagues know Aaron as a dedicated and enthusiastic individual with a passion for teaching and the ability to think outside the box. When Aaron became the head of the electronics program at St. Cloud Technical & Community College in 2009, the program's existence was being threatened by very low enrollment. Since then, he has been the driving force for the success of the program and has played a major role in the development of other new programs at SCTCC. Aaron was instrumental in helping SCTCC partner with Xcel Energy in 2010 to develop the Nuclear Technician Program. The program is designed to prepare graduates for work as Nuclear Plant Maintenance Technicians. The nuclear track is the newest addition to SCTCC's current catalog of energy tracks: wind power, ethanol, bio-diesel, solar power, and fossil fuel energy production.
Our small group learned and implemented the Understanding by Design (UbD) pedagogy in our courses. The principles of UbD were then adapted to the task of developing a new program in engineering technology. This approach gave direction and, in many cases, solid solutions to numerous hurdles, including curriculum development, selection of textbooks, the development of online labs, and novel approaches to linking program content to courses. Informal feedback from industry indicates students know what they need to know to be successful. The adaptation of the UbD pedagogy was crucial to the development of the program and we believe it could be used successfully by others.
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