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1. Poetry Writing as a Creative Task to Enhance Student Learning

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47850  

   Atherton, Emma; Akcali, Elif (June 2024, ASEE Conferences)

   Most engineering students are rarely assigned creative tasks to think abstractly around mathematical models, other than being asked to apply theory to real-world scenarios. Challenging the traditional pedagogy, students enrolled in inventory and supply chain system design and control, an upper-level industrial and systems engineering course, were asked to complete two poems throughout the semester-long course. The students were asked to construct poems around a concept, model, or topic covered in the course: the first poem was focused on deterministic inventory modeling and the second poem was focused on stochastic inventory modeling. At the end of the semester, students completed a lookback survey asking several open-ended questions detailing their experience and attitude towards these creative writing assignments. Data was collected during the semesters Fall 2022 and Spring 2023 and of the 84 total students over the two semesters, 64 consented to participate in the study. The student responses to reflection prompts and student-written poems were analyzed to understand how engineering students approached this creative writing assignment, what type of creative processes they utilized to complete these assignments, and how these assignments contributed to their learning. To this end, the student responses to reflection prompts were analyzed to identify the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations as well as to elicit the steps of their processes toward completing these assignments. A sample of of student-written poems were examined in detail to assess their technical accuracy as well. In this paper, we will present our findings on why students pick specific topics for their poems and how their reasons for choosing topics influence their effort in their writing as well as the technical accuracy of their poems. 

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2. Quantifying Changes in Creativity: Findings from an Engineering Course On the Design of Complex and Origami Structures

   Hess, J. (June 2018, 2018 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition)

   Engineering educators have increasingly sought strategies for integrating the arts into their curricula. The primary objective of this integration varies, but one common objective is to improve students’ creative thinking skills. In this paper, we sought to quantify changes in student creativity that resulted from participation in a mechanical engineering course targeted at integrating engineering, technology, and the arts. The course was team taught by instructors from mechanical engineering and art. The art instructor introduced origami principles and techniques as a means for students to optimize engineering structures. Through a course project, engineering student teams interacted with art students to perform structural analysis on an origami-based art installation, which was the capstone project of the art instructor’s undergraduate origami course. Three engineering student teams extended this course project to collaborate with the art students in the final design and physical installation. 

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3. Improvement in Freehand Sketching Application for Spatial Visualization Training

   Cowan, Elizabeth Cowan; Delson, Nathan; Mihelich, Robert; Van Den Einde, Lelli (October 2017, Conference on Pen and Touch Technology in Education)

   Spatial visualization is the cognitive ability of mentally representing and manipulating two-dimensional and three-dimensional figures. This is a learnable cognitive skill that has been correlated with increased GPA’s and retention in science, technology, engineering, and math (S TEM) disciplines [ Sorby, 2009]. Traditional spatial visualization training includes freehand sketching assignments, which require human grading. A spatial visualization training application (app) was developed in which students freehand sketch on a touchscreen and an automatic grading algorithm provides immediate feedback. In spring 2014, the App was used with iPads in a one-unit spatial visualization course where students took pre and post spatial visualization assessment tests. In 2014, 46% of the students who scored low on the pre-assessment had a significant improvement of 10% or more on the post-assessment. This paper describes how the App was modified to increase student gains: feedback to the user was changed to motivate increased persistence; new assignments were developed, taking advantage of color and cues that are not present in traditional paper based sketching assignments; and assignments were modified to address common errors. The course was taught with the new user interface in 2017, during which 82% of incoming students with low spatial skills showed significant improvement. The increase from 46% to 82% is attributed to the capability of pen and touch technology to be adapted effectively for educational purposes. 

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4. Fostering Reflective Engineers : Outcomes of an Arts- and Humanities-Infused Graduate Course

   https://doi.org/10.1109/WEEF-GEDC.2018.8629714  

   Campbell, Ryan C.; Reible, Danny D.; Taraban, Roman; Kim, Jeong-Hee (November 2018, Proceedings of the 2018 World Engineering Education Forum - Global Engineering Deans Council (WEEF-GEDC))

   Engineering education traditionally focuses on technical content and problem-solving, leaving little room in the curriculum to examine broader environmental and sociotechnical impacts of engineering work. However, if engineers wish to have intentional, positive influences on these broader impacts, skills for reflective thinking and ethical decision-making are essential. The arts and humanities can provide important and often neglected perspectives for engineers in developing such skills. In a recent seminar course for civil/environmental engineers, we explored ways of developing these skills through activities including Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), in-class readings & discussions, essay writing, and portfolio assignments. In this paper, we present selected findings from this experimental course. While the class was small, comprised of a dozen graduate students, results were encouraging. For example, findings from qualitative thematic analysis of pre- and post-course essays showed an increase in recognition of the importance of breadth of knowledge and/or perspective. Similarly, pre-post Likert-type survey results showed a statistically significant increase (p<0.005, d=1, n=10) in Contextual Competence, a self-reported measure of ability to anticipate and understand the impacts and constraints of broader contexts on engineering solutions. These findings are preliminary but suggest the course helped students develop capacity for reflection through arts- and humanities-based activities. 

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5. Experiences during the implementation of two different project-based learning assignments in a fluid mechanics course

   Ayala, O. (January 2022, 2022 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference)

   Two different implementations of PBL projects in a fluid mechanics course are presented in this paper. This required junior-level course has been taught since 2014 by the same instructor. The first PBL project presented is a complete design of pumped pipeline systems for a hypothetical plant. In the second project, engineering students partnered with pre-service teachers to design and teach an elementary school lesson on fluid mechanics concepts. The goal of this paper is to present the experiences of the authors with both PBL implementations. It explains how the projects were scaffolded through the entire semester, including how the sequence of course content was modified, how team dynamics were monitored, the faculty roles, and the end products and presentations. To evaluate and compare students’ learning and satisfaction with the team experience between the two PBL implementations, a shortened version of the NCEES FE exam and the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) survey were utilized. Students completed the FE exam during the first week and then again during the last week of the semester to assess students’ growth in fluid mechanics knowledge. The CATME survey was completed mid-semester to help faculty identify and address problems within team dynamics, and at the end of the semester to evaluate individual students’ teamwork performance. The results showed that the type of PBL approach used in the course did not have an impact on fluid mechanics content knowledge; however, the data suggests that the cross-disciplinary PBL model led to higher levels of teamwork satisfaction. Through reflective assignments, student perceptions of the PBL implementations are discussed in the paper. Finally, some of the PBL course materials and assignments are provided. 

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