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1. Using 3D Printing to Teach Design and Manufacturing Concepts

   Aqlan, Faisal ; de Vries, Charlotte ; Sargent, Mariea ; Valentine, Andrew ( January 2020 , Proceedings of the 2020 IISE Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, is commonly shown to students through low cost 3D printers. Many high school and community college educators have access to 3D printers at their home institutions. In this study, Research Experience for Teachers (RET) participants developed a set of modules which can be integrated with a design project given at both the high school and college curriculum levels to explore the concepts of manufacturing and design (e.g., dimensioning and tolerancing, Design for X, Proof of Concept, etc.). The study identified a product in which these concepts can be integrated, and developed a set of constraints the students need to consider in their design project. It was the goal of the RET participants to identify best practices for teaching 3D printing and develop projects to explain design and manufacturing concepts through 3D printing. 

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2. Enabling K-14 Educators in Developing and Deploying Advanced Manufacturing Curricula

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47255  

   Sarder, MD ; Mayyas, Mohammad ; Abouheaf, Mohammed ; Kremer, Gül ( June 2024 , ASEE Conferences)

   Manufacturing is undergoing rapid changes due to the demands of product complexity and variety, and therefore factories are demanded to become smarter and more efficient. This transformation is known as advanced manufacturing and will require a new generation of skilled employees. There is a huge lack of qualified personnel in advanced manufacturing stemming from a lack of student interest compounded with a lack of experienced teachers who usually motivate students. This paper describes the findings of an NSF RET project at an US university that successfully addresses the common need to produce STEM graduates in the advanced manufacturing area. We recruited fifteen high school and community college STEM educators for a six-week immersive summer research experience in the state-of-the-art robotics laboratory. At the end of their research workshop, they developed customized hands-on advanced manufacturing curricula for their students. This project produced fifteen competent high school and community college educators, who are capable of blending research with educational activities at their institutions, motivating students for STEM degrees, and building long-term collaborative partnerships in the region. This paper will share some of their successful research projects, how they translated their research into actionable curriculum modules, and some lessons learned from implementations. This paper will also explain the evaluation process and share the results. In view of the pre-survey and post-survey data analyses, it can be concluded that educator participants of the program increased their knowledge and research experiences at very high-quality research facilities and under expert guidance. 

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3. Advanced Manufacturing Curriculum Development in Ohio High Schools and Community Colleges

   Sarder, MD ( May 2024 , IISE Annual Conference 2024)

   There is a huge lack of qualified personnel in advanced manufacturing in the U.S. Midwest stemming from a lack of student interest compounded with a lack of experienced teachers who usually motivate students. This paper describes the findings of an NSF RET project at Bowling Green State University that successfully addresses the common need to produce STEM graduates in the advanced manufacturing area. The NSF-RET project’s unique hands-on research experience combined with local industry collaboration prepare future STEM teachers, who can interject research experience in a classroom learning and tie that with the real-world implementations. The project cements the partnership among BGSU, local high schools, and community colleges in Ohio to address the common need of producing STEM graduates in advanced manufacturing area. This project addresses the workforce needs by producing competent high schools and community college educators, who are capable to blend research with educational activities at their institutions, motivate students for STEM degrees, and build long-term collaborative partnerships in the region. This project focused on two goals: (1) explore a sustainable educational model that connects high schools, community colleges, university, and industry; and (2) play a transformational role in preparing future leaders in advanced manufacturing. This paper explains the need, scope, and nature of the curriculum development process through engaging K-14 educators. This paper will share some of their successful research projects, how they translated their research into actionable curriculum modules, and some lessons learned from implementations. 

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4. Mini-projects based Cybersecurity Modules for an Operating System Course using xv6

   Jansen Tan ; Divya Ravindra ; Quamar Niyaz ; Xiaoli Yang ; Sidike Paheding ; Ahmad Y Javaid ( August 2022 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Cybersecurity continues to be a critical aspect within every computing division, especially in the realm of operating system (OS) development. The OS resides at the lower layer above the hardware in the computing hierarchy. If the layers above the OS are well hardened, a security flaw in the OS will compromise the resources in those higher layers. Although several learning resources and courses are available for OS security, they are taught in advanced UG or graduate-level computer security classes. In this work, we develop cybersecurity educational modules that instructors can adoptin their OS courses to emphasize security in OS while teaching its concepts. The goal of this work is to engage students in learning security aspects in OS, while learning its concepts. It will give students a good understanding of different security concepts and how they are implemented in the OS. Towards this, we develop security educational modules for an OS course that will be available to the instructors for adoption in their courses. These modules are designed to be used in a UG-level OS course. To work on these modules, students should be familiar with C programming and OS concepts taught in the class. The modules are intended to be completed within the course of a semester. To achieve this goal, we organize them into three mini-projects witheach can be completed within a few weeks. We chose xv6 as the platform due to its popularity as an educational OS for developing the modules. To develop the modules, we referred to the recent version of a popular OS textbook for the security concepts. The topics discussed in it include authentication, authorization, cryptography, and distributed system security. We kept our educational modules mostly aligned with these topics except distributed system security. We also included a module for implementing a defense mechanism against buffer-overflow attacks, a famous software vulnerability. We created three mini-projects for these modules, each accompanied by proper documentation and a GitHub repository. Two versions are created for each project, one for a student’s assignment available in the repository and another as a solution version for instructors. The first project implements a user authentication system in xv6. Students will implement various specifications such as password structure with encryption and programs such as useradd, passwd, whoami, and login. The implementation guidelines are provided in the documentation, along with skeleton code. The authorization project implements the Unix-style access control system. In this project, students will modify and create various structures and functions within the xv6 kernel. The last project is to build a defense mechanism against buffer-overflow using Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). Students are expected to implement a random number generator and modify the executable file loader in xv6. The submission for each project is expected to demonstrate the module behavior comparable to relevant systems present in production grade OS, such as Linux. 

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5. Engaging Female High School Students in the Frontiers of Computing

   Stein, G. ; Gransbury, I. ; Jean, D. ; Alvarez ; L. ; Hill, M. ; Catete, V. ; Grover, S. ; Barnes, T. ; Broll, B. ; et al ( January 2022 , 2022 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition)

   Creating pathways that stimulate high school learners’ interest in advanced topics with the goal of building a diverse, gender-balanced, future-ready workforce is crucial. To this end, we present the curriculum of a new, high school computer science course under development called Computer Science Frontiers (CSF). Building on the foundations set by the AP Computer Science Principles course, we seek to dramatically expand access, especially for high school girls, to the most exciting and emerging frontiers of computing, such as distributed computation, the internet of things (IoT), cybersecurity, and machine learning. The modular, open-access, hands-on curriculum provides an engaging introduction to these advanced topics in high school because currently they are accessible only to CS majors in college. It also focuses on other 21st century skills required to productively leverage computational methods and tools in virtually every profession. To address the dire gender disparity in computing, the curriculum was designed to engage female students by focusing on real world application domains, such as climate change and health, by including social applications and by emphasizing collaboration and teamwork. Our paper describes the design of curricular modules on Distributed Computing, IoT/Cybersecurity, and AI/Machine Learning. All project-based activities are designed to be collaborative, situated in contexts that are engaging to high school students, and often involve real-world world data. We piloted these modules in teacher PD workshops with 8 teachers from North Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York who then facilitated virtual summer camps with high school students in 2020 and 2021. Findings from teacher PD workshops as well as student camps indicate high levels of engagement in and enthusiasm for the curricular activities and topics. Post-intervention surveys suggest that these experiences generate student interest exploring these ideas further and connections to areas of interest to students. 

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