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It is well-established that students have difficulty transferring theory and skills between courses in their undergraduate curriculum. At the same time, many college-level courses only concern material relating to the course itself and do not cover how this material might be used elsewhere. It is unsurprising, then, that students are unable to transfer and integrate knowledge from multiple areas into new problems as part of capstone design courses, for example, or in their careers. More work is required to better enable students to transfer knowledge between their courses, learn skills and theory more deeply, and to form engineers who are better able to adapt to new situations and solve “systems-level” problems. Various authors in both the cognitive and disciplinary sciences have discussed these difficulties with the transfer of knowledge, and noted the need to develop tools and techniques for promoting knowledge transfer, as well as to help students develop cross-course connections. This work aimed to address these barriers to knowledge transfer, and crucially develop the needed activities and practices for promoting transfer by answering the following research questions: (1) What are the primary challenges experienced by students when tasked with transferring theory and skills from prior courses, specifically mathematics and physics? (2) What methods of prior knowledge activation are most effective in enabling students to apply this prior knowledge in new areas of study? In this paper we present a holistic summary of the work completed under this award. Initially, findings from a series of n=23 think aloud interviews, in which participants were asked to solve a typical engineering statics problem, is presented. These interviews evidenced multiple barriers to knowledge transfer (lack of prior knowledge, accuracy of prior knowledge, conceptual understanding, lack of teaching of applications, language of problem, curricular mapping) that hindered participant success in terms of using their mathematical skills to solve the problem. Findings also indicated the importance of reflective thinking on behalf of the participants to their problem solving success. Based on this initial work using think alouds, a further set of interviews (n=8) were conducted to more deeply examine student conceptions of important mathematical topics that are transferred into engineering such as integration and centroids. Findings indicated that participant knowledge and understanding of centroids in particular was generally based around more intuitive or geometrical conceptions rather than concrete physical or mathematical models. Following up on the initial study of problem solving, the importance of reflection on behalf of the problem solver was also examined in more detail. Comparison of expert (faculty) and novice (student) approaches to problem solving demonstrates how often experts reflect on their progress during the solving process and the manner in which they are able to connect problems in one context to similar problems they have encountered in the past in other areas of engineering. The ability of experts to “chunk” problems into smaller stages and reflect on individual elements of the problem at hand rather than the problem as a whole was also seen to be a differentiating factor in their approach as compared to novices. Similar to this paper, the associated poster presentation will cover a holistic representation of the findings of this study. 

Academic makerspaces represent an ideal opportunity to present engineering students with active, experiential learning opportunities that reinforce theoretical concepts through conceptual design and prototyping. When appropriately supported, experiential learning in makerspaces has the capacity to drive development of technical skills and positive self-efficacy among novice engineers. However, research suggests that students who identify as part of historically underrepresented groups (i.e. those who are not White and male) can experience makerspaces in ways that marginalize their success. Thus, care must be taken in makerspace design and operation to create an environment that has a positive impact on the success of all students. In this study, we consider the perceptions and experiences of women and underrepresented racial/ethnic minorities (URMs) in an academic makerspace at one large, research intensive institution. We surveyed 256 undergraduate mechanical engineering students to compare and contrast their self-efficacy, their perceptions of makerspace support, and their peer-to-peer interactions. We found that student self-efficacy for conceptual design and prototyping did not differ by race or gender. However, females reported they were more likely to have a positive experience in the makerspace when supported by a teaching assistant who was also female. Students who identified as URM were significantly more likely to report discomfort in working with peers in the makerspace. We anticipate the outcomes of this study will provide implications for faculty and staff makerspaces at other postsecondary institutions who aim to build an inclusive and accessible learning environment for all students. 

The ability to communicate technical information in written, graphical, and verbal formats is an essential durable skill for engineering students to develop as undergraduates and carry forward into the workplace. The importance of technical communication skills is emphasized in the core ABET outcome “3. an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences.” Undergraduate engineering programs tend to adopt one of two strategies for technical writing instruction, either offering a stand-alone course that is frequently taught out-of-discipline or embedding technical communications skills within-discipline in laboratory or design classes. Despite these efforts, employers still report that novice engineers’ technical communications skills do not meet industry expectations. Prior work by our group attempted to address this skills gap through the design and implementation of a unique stand-alone technical communications course that was specifically created for first-year mechanical engineering students and centered on multiple, industry-aligned modalities of communication. Preliminary evaluation of this new curriculum showed that students demonstrated substantive gains in self-efficacy for nearly all technical communication skills covered in the course, including synthesis of background research, graphical representation of data, basic statistical analyses, and composition of technical reports and presentations in a variety of formats. In this paper, we will extend our prior work by examining whether the skills emphasized in this stand-alone first year course are transferred into later courses within the discipline. Specifically, we will focus on three core skill sets: (1) writing clear, concise, and coherent technical narratives; (2) graphical representation of quantitative and qualitative data sets; and (3) basic statistical analyses, including linear regressions, one-way ANOVA, and propagation of error. We will follow a single cohort of mechanical engineering students (n=147), beginning with the stand-alone technical communications course taken in the spring of their freshmen year, through their two subsequent semesters of coursework involving discipline-specific design and laboratory-based courses. For two semesters, post-course surveys will be administered to students that assess self-efficacy for the three core skill sets as well as their perceptions of the value and applicability of the first-year technical communications course in their current coursework. Also, written deliverables for a subset of students will be evaluated by faculty instructors according to established technical communications rubrics. The results of this study will be used to refine our first-year technical communications course and modify the strategies that we are using in later lab and design courses to activate prior technical communications knowledge (e.g., review exercises, exemplars, and common rubrics). More broadly, our approach to developing and reinforcing industry-aligned technical communications skills throughout our undergraduate curriculum may be of interest to other programs seeking to improve student outcomes in this area. 

Within the profession, there is a desire for graduating engineers to be “T-shaped” professionals who have a deep subject knowledge (the vertical of the “T”), with the ability to apply that knowledge across a broad range of contexts (the horizontal of the “T”). The ability to transfer knowledge between courses in the undergraduate curriculum, and then into one’s career, is, therefore, an important skill that should be developed in engineering curricula. Based on prior work in this area, and with the goal of developing adaptive problem solvers who can transfer their knowledge across a range of contexts, we compare the problem solving approaches taken by both experts (faculty) and novices (students) when faced with problems that require knowledge to be transferred in order to be solved. Transcripts and artifacts generated through a series of think aloud protocols are analyzed using an a priori coding scheme and thematic analysis based around a sense-making framework of knowledge transfer. A comparison of expert (faculty) and novice (student) approaches to problem solving demonstrated how often experts reflect on their progress during the solving process and the manner in which they are able to connect problems in one context to similar problems they have encountered in the past in other areas of engineering. The ability of experts to “chunk” problems into smaller stages and reflect on individual elements of the problem at hand, rather than the problem as a whole, was also observed to be a differentiating factor in their approach as compared to novices. 

It is well-established that students have difficulty transferring theory and skills between courses in their undergraduate curriculum. At the same time, many college-level courses only concern material relating to the course itself and do not cover how this material might be used elsewhere. It is unsurprising, then, that students are unable to transfer and integrate knowledge from multiple areas into new problems as part of capstone design courses, for example, or in their careers. More work is required to better enable students to transfer knowledge between their courses, learn skills and theory more deeply, and to form engineers who are better able to adapt to new situations and solve “systems-level” problems. Various authors in both the cognitive and disciplinary sciences have discussed these difficulties with the transfer of knowledge, and noted the need to develop tools and techniques for promoting knowledge transfer, as well as to help students develop cross-course connections. This work will address these barriers to knowledge transfer, and crucially develop the needed activities and practices for promoting transfer by answering the following research questions: (1) What are the primary challenges experienced by students when tasked with transferring theory and skills from prior courses, specifically mathematics and physics? (2) What methods of prior knowledge activation are most effective in enabling students to apply this prior knowledge in new areas of study? Here, we present a summary, to date, of the findings of this investigation. These findings are based on an analysis of the problem solving techniques employed by students in various years of their undergraduate program as well as faculty experts. A series of n=23 think aloud interviews have been conducted in which participants were asked to solve a typical engineering statics problem that also requires mathematical skills to solve. Based on participant performance and verbalizations in these interviews, various barriers to the knowledge transfer process were identified (lack of prior knowledge, accuracy of prior knowledge, conceptual understanding, lack of teaching of applications, language of problem, curricular mapping). At the same time, several interventions designed to promote the transfer of knowledge were incorporated into the interviews and tested. Initial results demonstrated the potential effectiveness of these interventions (detailed in the poster/paper) but questions were raised as to whether participants truly understood the underlying concepts they were being asked to transfer. This poster presentation will cover a holistic representation of this study as well as the findings to date. 

Practicing mechanical engineers interface regularly with machinists to design and manufacture components in metal and other engineered materials. Direct, hands-on exposure to precision machining operations, like mill and lathe work, helps young engineers design manufacturable components and facilitates better collaboration with machinists. Mechanical engineering undergraduate programs have been cited for weaknesses in training students on industry-standard manufacturing practices. While there are several excellent examples in the literature of student manufacturing projects, these projects are relatively advanced on the whole, and they require extensive human and capital resources to deploy in large-enrollment classes. Prior investigators have conserved resources by teaming students on projects, which dilutes the hands-on manufacturing experience for individual learners. In this study, we present an introductory mill training exercise for engineering students that allows them to individually develop transferable machining skills but requires fairly modest resources. This exercise, which we call the “Mini-Mill Experience,” involves students individually manufacturing two separate parts with a hobby-grade mini-mill and then completing a written self-reflection documenting their procedures and final part inspection. Students first manufacture a simple part out of reusable wax with direct coaching from a teaching assistant. They then independently manufacture one of six different wooden Erector Set components. The Mini-Mill Experience is designed to give students firsthand experience and promote confidence with the basic mill controls and operations, e.g., changing out an endmill or squaring up a face, that are transferable to the full-sized mills they will use in later courses. The one-time equipment set-up costs for this exercise were approximately $60 per student, with recurring costs of less than $2 per student for stock material. Each student completed the exercise during a two-hour lab period, and it took approximately six weeks for all students in the course (ca. 170 students) to complete the exercise. All sessions were supervised by a machinist and one to two teaching assistants. To gauge the effectiveness of the Mini-Mill Experience, a survey was distributed to all students in a freshmen year mechanical engineering design course. Survey responses indicated that the majority of the students (77%) had no prior experience with mills. Post-activity, students reported high levels of self-confidence in identifying the critical components of a mill and most basic mill operations, like proper use of a vise and tool changes. Compared to students who had prior mill experience, students with no prior experience demonstrated slightly lower self-efficacy with more advanced mill operations like creating blind holes and tapping threads. Post-activity, 75% of students agreed they “were not intimidated or afraid to use the mill to make a part,” and 90% said that they “looked forward to their next experience on a mill.” In this study, we developed an introductory manufacturing experience – the “Mini-Mill Experience” – that is effective in teaching basic mill operations, promotes students’ self-efficacy and enthusiasm for future machining experiences, and is cost effective and scalable for large class sizes. In these ways, it is a valuable addition to the existing literature and curriculum on manufacturing education for mechanical engineers. Future work by our group will focus on whether the skills acquired in the Mini-Mill Experience are transferable to manufacturing experiences later in the curriculum. 

The ability to communicate technical information in written, graphical, and verbal formats is an essential durable skill for engineering students to develop as undergraduates and carry forward into the workplace. Employers have highlighted recent graduates’ inability to formulate tight, cohesive arguments for their engineering decisions, as well as difficulties adjusting their communication style for different audiences. Even though accreditation outcomes now explicitly include durable skills, such as “an ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences,” prior research suggests that the field is still far from meeting industry expectations for proficiency in the varying modalities and styles of workplace communication. Laboratory courses are frequently relied upon to teach or reinforce writing and presentation skills. There are two major issues with this approach. First, in lab classes, the communication method is typically narrowly focused on reports that simulate writing for hypothesis-driven research projects, which fail to align with the design-based and project management aspects of professional engineering workloads. Second, lab courses that heavily emphasize technical communications frequently do so at the expense of technical knowledge, that is, the engineering concepts involved with the laboratory experiment. Many students already view communication skills as “soft” in comparison to technical knowledge; and this attitude affects their performance and retention. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a stand-alone technical communications course that was specifically created for first-year mechanical engineering students and centered on multiple, industry-aligned modalities of communication. There are two major writing assignments in the course, both of which are open-ended “technical briefs” that involve background research, data analysis, and justification of an engineering decision for a design firm. For these major assignments, students individually submit a draft and receive detailed feedback for improvement before submitting the final versions. These two major assignments are scaffolded with weekly individual assignments that give students experience with a range of communication skills and modalities, e.g., using a reference manager and composing professional emails. To gauge the effectiveness of this stand-alone course in improving students’ technical communication skills, we conducted pre- and post-course surveys of all students enrolled in the course in 2023 (n=147), and we also tracked improvements in technical writing from draft to final form via established rubrics. Students demonstrated gains in self-efficacy for nearly all technical communication skills covered in the course as well as improved self-efficacy in different communication modalities, e.g., email, slide presentations, and executive summaries. The results of this evaluation suggest that a stand-alone, industry-centered technical communications course builds student competency with communication strategies used in the workplace. Future work will focus on whether students are able to transfer these skills into latter courses and ultimately their careers. 

Statics is a core course taken by undergraduate mechanical engineers in their freshmen or sophomore years. The course involves characterizing structures that remain still (static) under load. Statics concepts traditionally build in complexity from isolated particles, then to rigid bodies, and finally to structures formed by multiple rigid bodies. Structural analysis, otherwise known as “frames and machines,” is thus one of the more complex topics covered in Statics because it integrates prior knowledge of particle and rigid body equilibrium with new concepts like two-force members and internal loads. Traditionally, students become proficient in structural analysis by solving textbook problems where implicitly or explicitly, these problems classify the structure as either a “frame” or a “machine.” This classification in problem wording hints at the solution method and typically requires students to calculate the loads at a particular connector or cross section at risk of failure, thus reducing opportunities for structural analysis before computation. In actual practice, structural analysis is less straightforward; engineers must thoughtfully examine the structure to determine the best method of analysis and likely failure location(s). Prior studies have introduced project-based learning (PBL) experiences for Statics courses that involve more realistic open-ended design, analysis, and validation. However, the prototyping component of these studies often falls short of actual practice by limiting students to scale model designs in craft grade materials, e.g., table-top sized bridges constructed from balsa wood. While economical and logistically simplistic, scale model designs do not reinforce industry-relevant design and fabrication skills, e.g., CAD/CAM and shop skills. Furthermore, scale models cannot be subjected to realistic loading conditions, which disconnects the analysis and validation portions of the project from actual engineering practice. In this study, we introduce a novel PBL exercise – the Wooden Bike Frame Challenge – for Statics courses that focuses on structural analysis and involves fabrication of a full-scale wooden bike frame using CAD/CAM techniques. The complete set of instructional materials, including problem statements, assignments, and rubrics, are included in this study for open-source use by other engineering educators. We evaluated the efficacy of this exercise in reinforcing students’ knowledge of statics concepts and previously acquired prototyping skills using a mixed-methods approach. Study subjects were sophomore year mechanical engineering students who were teamed (n=158 students in 37 teams). The effect of the PBL exercise on content knowledge was determined by comparing pre- and post-PBL solutions to structural analysis textbook problems, as well as the more open-ended structural analysis of the bike frame designs. Post-PBL, students individually completed a survey assessing their level of engagement with the analytical and design aspects of the PBL exercise and perceived value of the project. The Wooden Bike Frame Challenge demonstrates the value of embedding full-scale design experiences into core courses like Statics, not only for strengthening newly acquired knowledge like structural analysis, but also for reinforcing industry-standard design and fabrication skills from prior coursework. 

It has been well documented that students face difficulties in transferring their knowledge and skills learned in prior courses to other areas of the curriculum. These problems with transfer are exacerbated by foundational courses being taught outside the major, as well as the fact that many engineering courses are taught in silos, with little connection being made to the engineering curriculum as a whole. Work is needed to better enable students to see the connections between their courses and transfer the requisite knowledge and skills from prior classes to other areas of the curriculum, and in their careers. This study builds on prior work (published at the ASEE Annual Conference last year) which used a series of think aloud, problem-solving interviews to assess the barriers and challenges students face in transferring knowledge from prior mathematics courses into an applied engineering setting. In this prior work, participants were tasked with solving a rigid body equilibrium problem typical of an engineering statics course but which required integration skills, as well as knowledge of the centroid, to solve. In the course of this study it was found that participants could not solve the problem as they could not determine the centroid of the object in question. Participants cited issues such as a lack of applied problems being taught that used centroids, the use of tabulated data for centroids, and forgetting governing equations as major barriers to being able to solve the problem. A majority of participants did however believe that being shown a general equation used to calculate centroids would have improved their problem solving success. Grounded in the results of this prior study, two separate interventions designed to promote the transfer of knowledge and skills from prior courses were developed and tested with the goal of aiding students in determining the location of the centroid. In order to examine the potential effectiveness of these interventions, a series of (n=11) think aloud interviews were conducted based around the same statics problem as had previously been used. One of these interventions used a mathematical, equation-based-prompt in an attempt to promote knowledge transfer, while the other used a similar prompt but provided in a more applied, engineering context - in this case an excerpt from the notes made by the instructor of the department’s engineering statics class. Findings suggested that an equation-based-prompt was largely unsuccessful at promoting problem solving success. The applied prompt based on prior course notes was more successful in enabling participants to solve the problem and find the centroid. It was unclear however if students truly understood the equations and methods presented in this prompt or whether they were simply able to correctly interpret the prompt and copy the pattern onto their solution. Persistent problems with (English) units and a lack of utilizing a formal problem solving method were also observed. A broader analysis of the study also suggests that students do not fully understand the conceptual underpinnings of the calculations used to determine the location of the centroid of an object. 

I initially became interested in knowledge transfer after observing my students’ general inability to use mathematical knowledge and skills in an applied (engineering) context. My personal belief was that the students should have an understanding of basic basic mathematical concepts, like integration, and be able to use them correctly to solve problems. Clearly, something was missing in my students’ understanding or perhaps memory that was causing them problems in this regard. In my initial work on knowledge transfer, I found that many students did not even recognize the need to transfer knowledge and for example, to integrate to solve a problem framed in an engineering context unless they were prompted to do so. Concerned by this troubling observation, coupled with my belief that engineers should be able to both understand and apply mathematical concepts in their coursework and careers, I determined to investigate the cause of the problem and, if possible, evidence a potential solution to help students transfer mathematical knowledge into an applied (engineering) context. In this study, I examine an expert (faculty) approach to problem solving using a semi-structured, think-aloud interview protocol coupled with a thorough thematic analysis for phenomenological themes. This analysis, grounded in an existing framework of knowledge transfer, provides a rich, thick description of the knowledge transfer, and problem solving process employed by the faculty expert and serves as a useful comparative case against which student approaches to problem solving and knowledge transfer can be judged. Important findings of this study relate to the extensive use of reflective and evaluative practices employed by the faculty member at all stages of the problem solving process. These internal checks and balances are rarely observed among novice problem solvers and perhaps represent behaviors that we, as educators, should seek to impart in our students if they are to become more adaptable engineers who are better equipped to transfer their knowledge and skills across a range of contexts.