The pendulum of engineering education is swinging from an emphasis purely on theory to a balance between concrete experiences and analysis. This balance calls for engaging students in active learning through new materials such as hands-on activities, interactive multimedia, and group learning. This balance with concrete experience is especially needed in “building-block” courses that create the foundation for advanced design courses. If we expect students to perform well with open-ended, project-centered problems, we need to provide a pedagogical basis across the entire undergraduate curriculum. This paper presents such a basis for one important engineering core topic: mechanics of materials. Active learning concepts applied in mechanics of materials courses are discussed, including specific examples of hands-on, multimedia, and group design exercises.

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Extreme Experience Interviews for Innovative Designs: Classroom Assessment of a New Needs-Gathering Method Abstract A recently published “Extreme Experience Design1” method places interviewees in simulations that parallel physical disabilities (such as wearing dark glasses to simulate low vision) in order to elicit normally-hidden product needs. This new needs-gathering technique equips students with awareness and skills to design for persons with disabilities, as well as an interview method leading to breakthrough design innovations through uncovering latent (hidden) needs. Traditionally-taught needs gathering interviews typically lead to parametric needs and thus incremental design changes; however, the latent needs uncovered with extreme experience interviews are often non-parametric and offer greater potential for breakthrough innovations. We implemented the new extreme experience interview technique in 1st year Cornerstones Design and 3rd year Design Methods courses through a slide-based lecture and a live demonstration of the interview method. We then surveyed ~100 students from both classes across two semesters in order to assess student learning and the effectiveness of the interview method for uncovering user needs. We also analyzed a subset of 26 design team interview transcripts for new information elicited by extreme experience interviews following a “benchmark” articulated use interview. Building upon previously reported work2, results include a summary of student surveys, analysis of customer needs before and after extreme experience interviews, and a qualitative review of re- design ideas generated. The surveys show students understand and like both the “normal” benchmark articulated-use interviews and the extreme experience interview technique and would like to re-use them on future projects. Surveys also indicate strong agreement that extreme experience interviews “inspired ideas that are better for average users as well.” An examination of interview transcripts shows the extreme experience interviews are valuable not only for uncovering a much more comprehensive set of customer needs, especially with respect to product-user interactions, but also for obtaining innovative redesign suggestions from customers themselves. The results collectively show extreme experience interviews are an effective and valuable addition to the design process in these courses, with additional room for improvement in teaching technique. 1 Introduction In the last decade the engineering design community has shown tremendous interest in design for such “frontier contexts” as persons with disabilities and rural villagers. Recent design research not only acknowledges the importance of accounting for persons with disabilities in the design process, but further suggests the resulting insights may benefit the larger community and lead to breakthrough innovations. A new “Extreme Experience Design” method at the forefront of this exciting theme places interviewees in simulations that parallel physical disabilities (such as wearing dark glasses to simulate low vision), in order to elicit ideas and needs that are normally hidden and known as “latent needs.”

Recent curriculum advancements in engineering education highlight the value of a healthy synergy from including applied mathematics and science, industrial work, and need-based projects. In light of the growing interest in globalizing engineering education, a service-learning approach to globally-based humanitarian projects is an effective approach to help in achieving this balance. The importance of integrating both globalization and social needs into the engineering curriculum is acknowledged by the ABET criteria. Human need is also a clear priority of engineering as a profession and of major world religions. It is not surprising, therefore, that faith-based institutions place a high value on such projects. This paper presents the methods and conclusions of design projects from four faith-based institutions that exemplify the successful integration of both globalization and humanitarian interests. The presentation focus is a model for conducting such projects. Particular results, within the context of these projects, include specific characteristics and insights for designing, selecting, and executing international humanitarian design projects within the undergraduate engineering curriculum.

A suitable quality metric is essential to improving ideation effectiveness. Many proposed quality metrics struggle to adequately capture this critical, subjective concept in a reliable and efficient way. This paper shows our development and testing of a quality metric that is meaningful, repeatable, and efficient. This quality metric is a weighted sum of quality dimensions adapted from the literature. The weighting factors for each dimension are adjusted to the specific ideation problem, and we present here a systematic method to quickly determine these weightings by experimental means. We demonstrate repeatability of the quality metric through interrater reliability, we show meaningfulness by comparing with raters’ intuitive interpretation of quality, and we demonstrate efficiency in the rating process. These initial findings show the quality metric has great promise and merits additional testing and refinement in future work.

This paper studies how engineering education might change divergent thinking skills. We hypothesized that people use a higher amount of divergent thinking when a task is unfamiliar. Our previous work developed an online survey to measure divergent ideation in two ways: with one ideation task, equally familiar to both novice and experienced designers, and a second ideation task, familiar only to experienced designers. We sorted ideas from 40 engineering upperclassmen and 40 freshmen into hierarchical categories and scored fluency, flexibility, and originality. The results did not confirm our hypothesis; rather, we found that originality scores were not significantly different between freshman and upperclassmen. Additionally, both groups produced their most-original ideas in the generally-familiar ideation task.Limitations in our methods prevented meaningful conclusions about flexibility, and further study will be necessary to confirm our other conclusions. To better explore factors influencing divergent thinking, we will refine our methods for future work and retest the participants from the freshmen group in a longitudinal study.

Shah’s metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness have been used extensively by the engineering design community to quantify the value of designed concepts. Shah measures novelty as the infrequency of an idea relative to a set of ideas. Vargas-Hernandez extended this novelty metric using partial genealogy trees to consider the frequency of ideas that share the same working principle. These genealogy trees capture differences between individual ideas organized by the following levels of abstraction: physical principle, working principle, and embodiment. Shah’s and Vargas-Hernandez’s metrics both require that all ideas be described at the lowest level (embodiment). This approach excludes ideas that are described at higher levels of abstraction. This paper proposes a new novelty metric that extends Vargas Hernandez’s metrics by including the higher levels of the genealogy trees, allowing abstract ideas to be properly evaluated. This paper compares the newly proposed novelty metric to Shah’s and Vargas Hernandez’s metrics using data from a previous study. The study required participants to perform problem-solving tasks in which they submitted a textual list of ideas for how to solve general day-to-day problems. The proposed novelty metric addresses limitations of the previous metrics when applied to the abstract ideas in the data set and meets established metric requirements. The proposed metric also broadens Shah’s metric in a similar manner as Vargas Hernandez but extends it to capture the entire genealogy tree rather than a subset of the tree.

Scientific evaluation of prototyping practices is an emerging field in design research. Prototyping is critical to the success of product development efforts, and yet its implementation in practice is often guided by ad hoc experience. To address this need, we seek to advance the study and development of prototyping principles, techniques, and tools. A method to repeatedly enhance the outcome of prototyping efforts is reported in this paper. The research methodology to develop this method is as follows: (1) systematically identify practices that improve prototyping; (2) synthesize these practices to form a guiding method for designers; and (3) validate that the proposed method encourages best practices and improves performance. Prototyping practices are represented as six key heuristics to guide a designer in planning: how many iterations to pursue, how many unique design concepts to explore in parallel, as well as the use of scaled prototypes, isolated subsystem prototypes, relaxed requirements, and virtual prototypes. The method is correlated, through experimental investigation, with increased application of these best practices and improved design performance outcomes. These observations hold across various design problems studied. This method is novel in providing a systematic approach to prototyping.

Using Natural Sketch Recognition Software to Provide Instant Feedback on Statics Homework: Assessment of a Classroom PilotDespite the importance of hand-sketched Free Body Diagrams for engineering education andpractice, large class sizes often prevent detailed feedback on such diagrams. Relatively recentlycomputing technology has become powerful enough to enable rapid and plentiful feedback onhand-sketched engineering diagrams. Researchers have recently developed the free “Mechanix”sketch recognition tutoring system for free body diagrams (FBDs) and trusses which providesintelligent and immediate feedback.This paper will describe the process and results of piloting this software at a primarilyundergraduate university with approximately 40 students enrolled in a Statics class, contrastedwith a control group. Results will include attitudes towards technology, online homeworkscores, test scores, and self-reported perceptions of the effectiveness of the sketch-recognitionsoftware. Preliminary results look very positive, and the full paper will include a detailed dataanalysis of both quantitative learning outcomes and qualitative comments from users.

Guilford's Alternate Uses Test (ALTU) measures a person's spontaneous flexibility, a propensity for generating many varied responses to a situation, by requiring them to list six possible uses for a given object. Shah's metrics of ideation effectiveness measure the innovative qualities of engineering concepts with similar scales. The study presented in this paper explores the relationship between spontaneous flexibility and engineering concept generation through a research study. Fifty-two participants generated ideas for three items on a spontaneous flexibility test (SFT) and three problems on an engineering ideation test (EIT). The participants' responses were analyzed for fluency and flexibility. Correlations between the SFT and EIT were identified in order to better understand the role of spontaneity and divergent thinking in an engineering environment. It was found that both fluency and flexibility of responses were strongly correlated between the two test types. It is hypothesized that the EIT complements the SFT in measuring spontaneous flexibility in engineering design.

Recent research has investigated methods based on design by -analogy meant to enhance concept generation. This paper presents Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps, a new method to prompt generation of analogous solution principles drawn from multiple analogical domains.The method was evaluated in two separate design studies using senior engineering students. The method begins with identifying a primary functional design requirement such as "eject part." We used this functional requirement "seed" to generate a WordTree of grammatically analogical words for each design team. We randomly selected a set of words from each WordTree list with varying lexical "distances" from the seed word, and used them to populate the first-level nodes of a mind-map, with the functional requirement seed as the central hub. Design team members first used the word list to individually generate solutions and then performed team concept generation using the analogically seeded mind-map. Quantity and uniqueness of the resulting verbal solution principles were evaluated. The solution principles were further analyzed to determine if the lexical "distance" from the seed word had an effect on the evaluated design metrics. The results of this study show Analogy Seeded Mind-Maps to be useful tool in generating analogous solutions for. engineering design problems.

Creativity is often considered to be a critical aspect of engineering innovation and successful product design. Many methods have been proposed for enhancing creativity, originality, and innovation. When these methods are tested, the experiment often generates large numbers of concepts that must be evaluated by experts in a time-consuming process. Similarly, the increased use of crowd-sourcing for generating concepts often leads to a plethora of alternatives that must be evaluated. Accordingly, engineering design practitioners and researchers alike often find themselves evaluating large numbers of concepts. In this paper, the feasibility of using non experts to evaluate engineering creativity is investigated. Dozens of students at two universities are asked to rate the originality of several different solutions to a design problem, for which validated expert ratings are available. Results indicate that it is possible to extract expert-level ratings from the non-expert student raters by focusing on the student raters with excellent inter-rater agreement amongst themselves and by training the students with example problems prior to the rating exercise. These results suggest that it may be possible to evaluate originality reliably with a large set of novice raters, perhaps with a Mechanical Turk type of approach.

Jeff Johnson is an Instructor at LeTourneau University. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering Technology from LeTourneau in 1994 then proceeded to spend 16 years in industry focusing on machine and civil design as well as project management. In 2010 he began his teaching career at his alma mater to share his experiences with engineering and technology students. He is currently a co-PI on the schools NSF-STEP retention grant.

This work seeks to introduce and evaluate effects of a novel method for designing prototyping strategies. This newly developed heuristics-based tool guides designers in planning a prototyping strategy based on answers to Likert-scale questions that embody empirically validated heuristics. We created this tool to augment prior work in the development of prototyping planning methods. The new tool guides designers through six critical prototype strategy choices: (1) How many concepts should be prototyped? (2) How many iterations of a concept should be built? (3) Should the prototype be virtual or physical? (4) Should subsystems be isolated? (5) Should the prototype be scaled? (6) Should the design requirements be temporarily relaxed?We assessed the new planning tool in two environments: (1) a controlled experiment in which volunteers completed a prototyping design challenge, and (2) a capstone design class with a diverse range of open-ended sponsored design projects. In both cases, students received training for the method and then employed it in their own efforts.In our study the new tool caused student teams to employ significantly more efficient and effective prototyping strategies, such as prototyping early and often. The results indicate a higher functional performance of prototypes from groups using the new planning tool compared to control groups. This paper describes the new prototyping strategy planning tool, details both sets of experiments, and discusses results.

A new prototyping planning tool guides designers in choosing between virtual vs. physical prototyping strategies based on answers to Likert-scale questions. We developed this tool to augment prior work in design methods seeking to facilitate prototyping strategy development. This new tool was tested with a pilot experiment in which engineering students were tasked with optimizing the design of a four-bar linkage to be used to draw a specific shape. The students were then instructed to use the new prototyping planning tool to decide whether to create a virtual or physical prototype of a four-bar linkage, with the goal of maximizing the performance metric detailed in the design problem statement. This paper describes the new prototype strategy planning tool, the pilot experiment, and results and conclusions. The very encouraging pilot results provide a template and strong motivation for conducting a larger scale experiment for generic prototyping applications.

A decline in the annual retention and graduation rates of the engineering and engineering technology program at a small, private university motivated an internal study (summer 2009) of its underlying causes. Analyses of performance and predictor data, as well as surveys of the literature and of non-retained students, produced several recommended actions based on documented best practices. The resulting 5-year retention project, funded by NSF-STEP, began in August of 2010 and focuses on first-year retention initiatives, namely:a faculty mentoring program for first-year students;a peer mentoring program for first-year students;an industrial contact mentoring program for first-year students;exposure to engineering practice through two new freshman courses employing active-learning and multidisciplinary projects aimed at answering the question "What do engineers do?"During the first half of the project many assessment instruments have been developed and deployed to help determine the effectiveness of the initiatives. These instruments include:a pre-and post-engineering survey to determine attitudes toward the engineering profession and program during their first semester;a survey of first-year students to determine the effectiveness of first-year interest groups and the mentors;both a survey and focus group for the peer mentors;a faculty mentor survey;industrial mentor survey.This paper provides details of the retention initiatives employed, and then presents qualitative and quantitative assessment results of the project to date, with the intention of contributing our experiences and findings to the dialogue on retention initiatives. Assessment result details are included to help answer such questions as: "Of the three mentor types, which is the most important?", "Is it important that a peer mentor have the same major as the first-year student?", and "Which student attitudes toward engineering are most easily changed?"

A new industrial mentor program at our university connects practicing engineers with "Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs)" of 6-8 students. Far too many talented young minds walk away from engineering thinking, "I don't want to work calculus problems in isolation the rest of my life, so I'm changing my major!" Face-time with practicing engineers, we believe, helps dispel many misconceptions plaguing the future of our profession. In a casual setting, first semester students can get answers to questions such as, "What do you actually do? Should I pay attention in Calculus? Do you like your job?" This program is part of a larger retention and career-boosting initiative including overhauling the first-year course experience and hiring student peer advisors, funded in part through NSF-STEP.Our industrial mentors commit to 9 hours (including drive time) for the year including: attending mentor orientation, providing student feedback, attending two informal student meetings (with the 6-8 member FIGs), and completing a feedback survey. Several optional activities for interested mentors include giving class presentations, electronic mentoring, and reviewing first-year student team design presentations. In this 2011-12 pilot year, 9 mentors are connected with FIG groups of approximately 7 students each.This paper details the logistics and challenges of starting up this mentoring program, and presents qualitative and quantitative assessment results, with the intention of contributing our experiences and materials to the dialogue on retention initiatives. Details include: creating conducive mentoring groups, identifying and recruiting ideal mentors, empowering student peer advisors to "own" the relationship (and the accompanying logistics), jumpstarting conversations with first-year students and mentors, and program results. Results include data from one focus group and surveys of first-year students, student peer advisors, faculty mentors, and industrial mentors. Results to-date are very encouraging and include recommended improvements.

In a multi-year project our students are designing, prototyping, and testing hydro-kinetic devices intended to provide electrical power in remote regions by extracting energy from river currents. The low-cost submersible devices must not disturb surface use of waterways while producing between 20 and 100 watts of power for river currents between 1 and 3 m/s.These hydro-kinetic power systems must be tested in a full range of water flow velocities. Local river testing does not readily provide a wide range of flow velocities and commercially available water tunnels are infeasible for this application, starting at $14,000 for a model with a maximum flow velocity of 0.3 m/s and a 70 in(2) test cross-section, much less than the 400 in2 test cross-section needed.This paper describes the conversion of a pre-existing 24 foot diameter 4 foot deep above-ground pool into a variable flow-rate "water tunnel" facility using $500 of additional equipment. Steady state flow rates of 0.89 m/s are achieved using an 80 pound thrust (rated) trolling motor powered by a pulse-width-modulated motor controller drawing approximately 970 W of electrical power. Calculations indicate that approximately 400 pounds of rated thrust will be required to reach our goal of 2.0 m/s flow rates near the outer edge of our pool river simulator.

In a multi-year project our students are designing, prototyping, and testing hydro-kinetic devices intended to provide electrical power in remote regions by extracting energy from river currents. The low-cost submersible devices must not disturb surface use of waterways while producing between 20 and 100 watts of power for river currents between 1 and 3 m/s. These hydro-kinetic power systems must be tested in a full range of water flow velocities. Local river testing does not readily provide a wide range of flow velocities and commercially available water tunnels are infeasible for this application, starting at $14,000 for a model with a maximum flow velocity of 0.3 m/s and a 70 in test cross-section, much less than the 400 in test crosssection needed. This paper describes the conversion of a pre-existing 24 foot diameter 4 foot deep above-ground pool into a variable flow-rate “water tunnel” facility using $500 of additional equipment. Steady state flow rates of 0.89 m/s are achieved using an 80 pound thrust (rated) trolling motor powered by a pulse-width-modulated motor controller drawing approximately 970 W of electrical power. Calculations indicate that approximately 400 pounds of rated thrust will be required to reach our goal of 2.0 m/s flow rates near the outer edge of our pool river simulator.