Download Sample Poster Template for developing the FOEE posters. Resource Added: August 31, 2016 125KB, PPTX
Download Attracting Product-oriented Sophomores to ECE An introduction to Northeastern's revices ECE curriculum with two lab-oriented introductory sophomore courses for discovering the range of EE, and CE topics respectively. This presentation also touches on our efforts for introducing a common platform for hands on active learning in ECE. Resource Added: October 25, 2015 1MB, PPTX
Download Expanding and Aligning Design Innovation Offerings Across Campus A look at Northwestern's project-based Design Innovation offerings on campus, across the Design for America studios, and through the newly formed Integrated Design Innovation program consortium. Resource Added: October 25, 2015 4MB, PDF
Download Integrating Formal and Informal Engineering Learning through a Residence-based Educational Approach The Global Engineering Residential Academic College at CU-Boulder is a Foreign Language and Global Geopolitics-focused residential 4-year program for Engineering Students. Resource Added: October 24, 2015 1MB, PPTX
Download Concept-oriented, step-by-step animated, stress-free courses The objective of my education innovation is to teach Structural Engineering in form of an interesting and motivating raising scheme that invokes students' interest, keep them attentive and involved, and excites their wish to deepen their knowledge after the lecture is completed. My two main innovations in teaching engineering are (i) concept-oriented, yet detailed, step-by-step animated PowerPoint slides, made available to students, and (ii) “make-up” and “self-check” possibilities for “stress-free” interim quizzes and exams. In addition, simple physical models, professional visits to sites and structures, selection of impressive examples from real life, assignment of intriguing homework and challenge problems, and less conventional tools such as Lego and Geomag play sets, and humor, are used. Resource Added: October 23, 2015 228KB, PDF
Download Leveraging Student Educational Diversity: Graduate/ Undergraduate Student Mentoring in Proposal Development Projects In a thematic elective on tissue engineering I have students with educational levels from junior undergraduate to advances graduate. In addition to diversity in experience levels, this course attracts students from engineering departments as well as Biology and the School of Medicine. I have incorporated a semester long proposal development project with out-of-class assignments designed to guided students from their area of initial interest, to a research question, to a fundable written proposal. My innovation lies in pairing graduate students with undergraduates in defined and agreed upon mentor:mentee rolls and having the pairs chose a tissue of interest and work collaboratively on all assignments. Together students formulate research ideas that they each incorporate into individual final written proposals. This pairing gives all students accessibility to another student with the same interests but very different perspectives with whom they can exchange ideas. Resource Added: October 22, 2015 223KB, PPTX
Download Adding Context to Engineering Education Design Projects EE courses often use artificial contexts that do not consider users or business constraints. The Maker Movement promotes lifelong learning by engaging Makers to learn what they need to in order to solve problems of their choosing. This innovation seeks to add context to design courses to promote lifelong learning and student engagement, while integrating elements of the Maker mindset into the classroom. Resource Added: October 22, 2015 1MB, PPTX
Download “Viral Videos” on the Mechanics of Materials Improving communication and comprehension by student-created video content. Project: Create a short educational video that conveys an important concept from Mechanics of Materials in an insightful and enjoyable way. Resource Added: October 22, 2015 2MB, PPTX
Download Final Challenge Approach to Robotics Education Students often have difficulty understanding the application of theoretical concepts, and lose intrinsic motivation to learn as a result. In an attempt to address this difficulty, I have developed an approach that I refer to as a ‘Final Challenge’ structure. The Final Challenge structure combines concepts from both lab-based teaching methods and the project-based approach. In the Final Challenge structure, a semester begins with students in the class introduced to a defined project, task, or device to be built, which is referred to as the ‘Final Challenge’. Students are informed that at the end of the semester, they will have a defined amount of time (in my classes, the time is two weeks) to complete the Final Challenge. Students are informed that in order to successfully complete the Final Challenge, they will need to apply all of the knowledge and skills they have gained over the course of the semester. Resource Added: October 22, 2015 193KB, PPTX
Download Facilitating high-level understanding in engineering education through STE inspired examples Teaching high level concepts in systems engineerly easy in comparison to some other STEM majors (such as mathematics or particle physics). The theoretical foundations of engineering are however very complex, and the successful teaching of these foundations somehow requires one to properly convey to the students why these concepts are taught at all. A significant fraction of the students have trouble understanding concepts if these are not properly motivated. Most of the time, this high level explanation about the course structure requires one to give examples in which the methods taught in the class are not applicable. My objective is to build a list (for each concept) of examples of applications of concepts, as well as examples in which these concepts are not applicable, focusing on real-life examples/ Resource Added: October 22, 2015 158KB, PPTX
Download Electronic Resources for Mechanical and Chemical Engineering Courses My colleagues and I have developed and implemented a multitude of resources to help instructors use electronic resources in their classrooms, including 1.) a tablet PC with Microsoft OneNote, 2.) the preparation and dissemination of screencasts, 3.) the dissemination of concept questions, 4.) the preparation and use of interactive simulations, and 5.) the use of finite-element algorithms in SolidWorks to visualize stress distributions and deformation of parts in a Mechanics of Solids course. Resource Added: October 22, 2015 473KB, PDF
Download Preparing Mechanical Engineering Students for Collaborations Across Distance and Disciplines (CADD) Traditional teaching and learning methods in engineering seem ill-suited to create the mechanical engineers needed in today’s job market. Some educators fail to realize that scientific and engineering research increasingly involves multidisciplinary collaborations, sometimes across multiple organizations. The goal of this proposal is to take the initial steps towards developing an integrated CADD education-research-outreach program that will provide experiences to students through multidisciplinary collaborations with universities, industry and other institutions that can be equivalent to industry-respected internships. Resource Added: October 21, 2015 2MB, PPTX
Download Virtual Hands-on Teaching An efficient method to connect course materials to real-world applications is to show students how things are working in reality. However, in some fields, including power engineering, it is impossible to actually implement the experiments on real systems. The objective of developing “Virtual Hands-on Teaching” is to provide student with real-world experience through virtual experiments by using computer programs Resource Added: October 21, 2015 241KB, PPTX
Download Development of “do it at home” thermo-fluidic labs for online education and 3D imaging outreach activities Online degrees facilitate access to affordable college education, however, requirement of laboratory courses makes introduction of fully online undergraduate engineering programs challenging. So far this problem was resolved for electrical engineering—a cost-effective circuit kit with related software was sent to each student. My interests are in developing an equivalent kit and activities that could be performed with it at home for mechanical engineering. Resource Added: October 20, 2015 9MB, PDF
Download Enviropedia: on-line game and learning environment to study materials engineering Understanding the environmental impacts of materials we use in our daily lives and translating this knowledge into effective educational strategies are crucial to making sustainable and environmentally sound choices. These strategies can provides current and future engineers with real incentives to develop innovative materials solutions that reduce environmental impacts on our planet. Sustainable materials play a central part in our future economy whereby by carefully selecting the most environmentally friendly and energy efficient materials we can reduce our energy consumption and increase sustainability of our life style. Development of innovative educational tools to teach future engineers on both materials selection and on environmental impacts of their design decision is at the heart of this proposal. Resource Added: October 20, 2015 478KB, PDF
Download Living the Computational Life Computer Science is a famously non-diverse discipline, a by-product of lack of exposure, lack of confidence and a lack of “computational play”. Extensive research has shown that K-12 students are not exposed to computing in public schools and that lack of familiarity causes them to avoid computing classes in college. We believe that combining a residential college experience coupled with a strong social component in the classroom will lead students to adopt the “hacker / maker culture” of computational building and exploration through expanded familiarity. Challenges to this include expanding our successful residential college program beyond Engineering to integrate other computational disciplines from the sciences and social sciences Resource Added: October 20, 2015 154KB, PPTX
Download An Applied Engineering Experience: From First Year Through Capstone Design Our engineering college has been tremendously successful implementing undergraduate research programs and courses to provide students multiple pathways into faculty-mentored and student-defined research. However, many engineering students are focused on careers in industry or starting their own business, yet the structure for providing co-curricular opportunities to these students is not as developed as that supporting undergraduate research. This innovation describes a co-curricular program to prepare industry-bound and entrepreneurial students in a manner that parallels opportunities currently provided for research. Through this program, students will be better prepared for positions in industry or their own startups by having significantly greater experience in engineering innovation, design, entrepreneurship and teamwork by participating in, co-curricular, long-term engineering projects. Resource Added: October 20, 2015 1MB, PDF
Download Scaffolded Prototyping Activity to Support Reflection and Learning in a Product-Based-Learning Engineering Design Course Building and creating physical prototype artifacts can be a means to demonstrate course learning objectives and support professional formation for engineering students. I seek to further understand and develop scaffolded prototyping assignments for product-based learning, mechanical engineering design courses to encourage genuine iteration and reflection. I incorporate prototyping activities for students to solve problems and demonstrate their technical and holistic learning. There are pre-defined milestones and assignments for the student teams that additionally encourage student team self-efficacy and independence. For students, they are “building to think,” reflecting and iterating expansively to evolve and address both the problem and solution. A prototype of any type also allows student teams to seek feedback from their imagined users, relying less on feedback from me as the instructor. Resource Added: October 20, 2015 972KB, PPTX
Download Engaging the Online Classroom Goal: Create an online classroom environment that supports active learning, enables group work, and results in engaged peer-to-pear interaction through in-class problem-solving activities. I applied strategies that I previously developed for an in-person flipped Statics class, and brough the in-class activities online using virtual collaboration tools. Resource Added: October 20, 2015 382KB, PDF
Download Development of Technical Writing Skills During An Undergraduate Laboratory Course Am attempting a shift away from group report writing towards individual reports in a junior level chemical engineering lab course. The goal of this change would be to enhance the technical writing capabilities of all students and to ensure that all students passing the course are capable of effectively communicating in a written form. Past efforts are discussed as well as practical matters such as providing effective feedback to the students. Resource Added: October 20, 2015 1MB, PPTX