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1. Engaging Civil Engineering Students through a “Capstone-like” Experience in their Sophomore Year

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34539  

   Sarasua, Wayne ; Kaye, Nigel ; Ogle, Jennifer ; Benaissa, Mehdi ; Benson, Lisa ; Putman, Bradley ; Pfirman, Aubrie ( June 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Many university engineering programs require their students to complete a senior capstone experience to equip them with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed after graduation. Such capstone experiences typically integrate knowledge and skills learned cumulatively in the degree program, often engaging students in projects outside of the classroom. As part of an initiative to completely transform the civil engineering undergraduate program at Clemson University, a capstone-like course sequence is being incorporated into the curriculum during the sophomore year. Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program, this departmental transformation (referred to as the Arch initiative) is aiming to develop a culture of adaptation and a curriculum support for inclusive excellence and innovation to address the complex challenges faced by our society. Just as springers serve as the foundation stones of an arch, the new courses are called “Springers” because they serve as the foundations of the transformed curriculum. The goal of the Springer course sequence is to expose students to the “big picture” of civil engineering while developing student skills in professionalism, communication, and teamwork through real-world projects and hands-on activities. The expectation is that the Springer course sequence will allow faculty to better engage students at the beginning of their studies and help them understand how future courses contribute to the overall learning outcomes of a degree in civil engineering. The Springer course sequence is team-taught by faculty from both civil engineering and communication, and exposes students to all of the civil engineering subdisciplines. Through a project-based learning approach, Springer courses mimic capstone in that students work on a practical application of civil engineering concepts throughout the semester in a way that challenges students to incorporate tools that they will build on and use during their junior and senior years. In the 2019 spring semester, a pilot of the first of the Springer courses (Springer 1; n=11) introduced students to three civil engineering subdisciplines: construction management, hydrology, and transportation. The remaining subdisciplines will be covered in a follow-on Springer 2 pilot.. The project for Springer 1 involved designing a small parking lot for a church located adjacent to campus. Following initial instruction in civil engineering topics related to the project, students worked in teams to develop conceptual project designs. A design charrette allowed students to interact with different stakeholders to assess their conceptual designs and incorporate stakeholder input into their final designs. The purpose of this paper is to describe all aspects of the Springer 1 course, including course content, teaching methods, faculty resources, and the design and results of a Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey to assess students’ learning outcomes. An overview of the Springer 2 course is also provided. The feedback from the SALG indicated positive attitudes towards course activities and content, and that students found interaction with project stakeholders during the design charrette especially beneficial. Challenges for full scale implementation of the Springer course sequence as a requirement in the transformed curriculum are also discussed. 

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2. Adding a “Design Thread” to Electrical and Computer Engineering Degree Programs: Motivation, Implementation, and Evaluation

   Cheville, R. A. ; Thompson, M. S. ; Thomas, S. ( July 2021 , ASEE annual conference exposition)

   null (Ed.)

   This article details the multi-year process of adding a “design thread” to our department’s electrical and computer engineering curricula. We use the conception of a “thread” to mean a sequence of courses that extend unbroken across each year of the undergraduate curriculum. The design thread includes a project-based introduction to the discipline course in the first year, a course in the second year focusing on measurement and fabrication, a course in the third year to frame technical problems in societal challenges, and culminates with our two-semester, client-driven fourth-year capstone design sequence. The impetus to create a design thread arose from preparation for an ABET visit where we identified a need for more “systems thinking” within the curriculum, particularly system decomposition and modularity; difficulty in having students make engineering evaluations of systems based on data; and students’ difficulty transferring skills in testing, measurement, and evaluation from in-class lab scenarios to more independent work on projects. We also noted that when working in teams, students operated more collectively than collaboratively. In other words, rather than using task division and specialization to carry out larger projects, students addressed all problems collectively as a group. This paper discusses the process through which faculty developed a shared conception of design to enable coherent changes to courses in the four year sequence and the political and practical compromises needed to create the design thread. To develop a shared conception of design faculty explored several frameworks that emphasized multiple aspects of design. Course changes based on elements of these frameworks included introducing design representations such as block diagrams to promote systems thinking in the first year and consistently utilizing representations throughout the remainder of the four year sequence. Emphasizing modularity through representations also enabled introducing aspects of collaborative teamwork. While students are introduced broadly to elements of the design framework in their first year, later years emphasize particular aspects. The second year course focuses on skills in fabrication and performance measurement while the third year course emphasizes problem context and users, in an iterative design process. The client-based senior capstone experience integrates all seven aspects of our framework. On the political and organizational side implementing the design thread required major content changes in the department’s introductory course, and freeing up six credit-hour equivalents, one and a half courses, in the curriculum. The paper discusses how the ABET process enabled these discussions to occur, other curricular changes needed to enable the design thread to be implemented, and methods which enabled the two degree programs to align faculty motivation, distribute the workload, and understand the impact the curricular changes had on student learning. 

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3. HydroLearn: Improving Students’ Conceptual Understanding and Technical Skills in a Civil Engineering Senior Design Course

   Gallagher, Melissa Ann ; Byrd, Jenny ; Habib, Emad ; Tarboton, David G ; Willson, Clinton S ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Engineering graduates need a deep understanding of key concepts in addition to technical skills to be successful in the workforce. However, traditional methods of instruction (e.g., lecture) do not foster deep conceptual understanding and make it challenging for students to learn the technical skills, (e.g., professional modeling software), that they need to know. This study builds on prior work to assess engineering students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results provide an insight into how the use of authentic online learning modules influence engineering students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. We designed online active learning modules to support and deepen undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts in hydrology and water resources engineering (e.g., watershed delineation, rainfall-runoff processes, design storms), as well as their technical skills (e.g., obtaining and interpreting relevant information for a watershed, proficiency using HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling tools). These modules integrated instructional content, real data, and modeling resources to support students’ solving of complex, authentic problems. The purpose of our study was to examine changes in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills after completing these modules. The participants in this study were 32 undergraduate students at a southern U.S. university in a civil engineering senior design course who were assigned four of these active learning modules over the course of one semester to be completed outside of class time. Participants completed the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey immediately before starting the first module (time 1) and after completing the last module (time 2). The SALG is a modifiable survey meant to be specific to the learning tasks that are the focus of instruction. We created versions of the SALG for each module, which asked students to self-report their understanding of concepts and ability to implement skills that are the focus of each module. We calculated learning gains by examining differences in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills from time 1 to time 2. Responses were analyzed using eight paired samples t-tests (two for each module used, concepts and skills). The analyses suggested that students reported gains in both conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. The data also indicated that the students’ self-reported gain in skills was greater than their gain in concepts. This study provides support for enhancing student learning in undergraduate hydrology and water resources engineering courses by connecting conceptual knowledge and procedural skills to complex, real-world problems. 

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4. HydroLearn: Improving Students’ Conceptual Understanding and Technical Skills in a Civil Engineering Senior Design Course

   Gallagher, M. A. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Engineering graduates need a deep understanding of key concepts in addition to technical skills to be successful in the workforce. However, traditional methods of instruction (e.g., lecture) do not foster deep conceptual understanding and make it challenging for students to learn the technical skills, (e.g., professional modeling software), that they need to know. This study builds on prior work to assess engineering students’ conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results provide an insight into how the use of authentic online learning modules influence engineering students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. We designed online active learning modules to support and deepen undergraduate students’ understanding of key concepts in hydrology and water resources engineering (e.g., watershed delineation, rainfall-runoff processes, design storms), as well as their technical skills (e.g., obtaining and interpreting relevant information for a watershed, proficiency using HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS modeling tools). These modules integrated instructional content, real data, and modeling resources to support students’ solving of complex, authentic problems. The purpose of our study was to examine changes in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills after completing these modules. The participants in this study were 32 undergraduate students at a southern U.S. university in a civil engineering senior design course who were assigned four of these active learning modules over the course of one semester to be completed outside of class time. Participants completed the Student Assessment of Learning Gains (SALG) survey immediately before starting the first module (time 1) and after completing the last module (time 2). The SALG is a modifiable survey meant to be specific to the learning tasks that are the focus of instruction. We created versions of the SALG for each module, which asked students to self-report their understanding of concepts and ability to implement skills that are the focus of each module. We calculated learning gains by examining differences in students’ self-reported understanding of concepts and skills from time 1 to time 2. Responses were analyzed using eight paired samples t-tests (two for each module used, concepts and skills). The analyses suggested that students reported gains in both conceptual knowledge and procedural skills. The data also indicated that the students’ self-reported gain in skills was greater than their gain in concepts. This study provides support for enhancing student learning in undergraduate hydrology and water resources engineering courses by connecting conceptual knowledge and procedural skills to complex, real-world problems. 

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5. A Longitudinal Study of the Integration of Writing Support in a Multi-Semester Senior Capstone Course

   Pflueger, Ruth C. ; Meckley, Jonathan A. ( March 2022 , 2022 ASEE North Central Section Annual Conference)

   ABET lists the ability to communicate in writing to both technical and non-technical audiences as a required outcome for baccalaureate engineering students [1]. From emails and memos to formal reports, the ability to communicate is vital to the engineering profession. This Work in Progress paper describes research being done as part of an NSF-funded project, Writing Assignment Tutor Training in STEM (WATTS). The method is designed to improve feedback writing tutors without technical backgrounds give to engineering students on technical reports. Students in engineering programs have few opportunities to develop their writing skills. Usually, composition courses are part of the general education curriculum. Students often see these courses as unrelated to their majors and careers [2]. Ideally, writing support should be integrated throughout a program. Since WATTs capitalizes on existing resources and requires only a modest amount of faculty time, it could enable engineering programs to provide additional writing support to students in multiple courses and provide a bridge for them to see the connection between writing concepts learned in composition courses and their technical reports. WATTS was developed in a junior-level circuit analysis course, where students were completing the same lab and writing individual reports. This paper focuses on a senior capstone course that utilizes concepts taught in previous courses to prepare students to complete an independent team research or design project. Projects are unique, usually based on the needs of an industrial sponsor, and are completed over three consecutive semesters. Each semester, teams write a report based on their activities during that semester, with a comprehensive report in the final semester. The multi-semester nature of the senior design project provides an opportunity for the researchers to chart longitudinal changes from the first to the students’ third semester interactions with the writing tutors, assessing the value of an integrated approach. The program’s impact on students’ attitudes toward revision and the value of tutoring, as well as the impact on tutors, are part of the assessment plan. The program hopes to change the students’ focus from simply presenting their results to communicating them. The goals of the project are to demonstrate to students that revision is essential to the writing process and that feedback can improve their written communication abilities. The expectation is that after graduation they will continue to seek critical feedback as part of their career growth. Surveys given to both students and tutors revealed that the sessions were taken seriously by the students and that meaningful collaboration was achieved between them. An evaluation of the writing in pre-tutored to final submitted report shows statistically significant improvement. Preliminary and current results will be included within the paper. [1] Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Technology Programs, ABET, Baltimore, MD., 2020, p.5, ETAC Criteria (abet.org) [2] Bergmann, L. S. and Zepernick, J., “Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write,” Writing Program Administration, 31, Fall/Winter 2007. 

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