Increasing interests in both engineering education research and sustainability education motivated development of a survey instrument aimed at measuring engineering educators' attitudes and dispositions toward these endeavors. An online survey instrument was distributed to engineering faculty and instructors at a medium-sized land-grant university within the United States, with results briefly summarized in the 2017 Conference Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). The survey is presented here in its entirety, along with statistical analyses of the previously summarized results and discussion of responses to open-ended items. The survey instrument was effective in measuring engineering faculty support toward both engineering education research and sustainability education. The survey items also factored to measure attitudes toward climate change, teaching practices and curriculum as well as use of research-driven pedagogies. Statistical analyses of the survey structure are also presented along with suggestions for its further development and potential use.

Developing self‐directed learning (SDL) skills in engineering students is critical to support life‐long learning. This research was conducted at Iron Range Engineering (IRE), an innovative, problem‐based learning (PBL) engineering program, which has suffused the concept of metacognition throughout its curriculum.

The Sequential Nature of Engineering Problem Solving Iron Range Engineering (IRE) is an innovative, problem-based-learning program in Virginia, Minnesota. Part of its innovation comes from the program’s strong emphasis on developing metacognitive skills necessary for students to become self-directed learners of the knowledge and skills required for professional engineers. In our NSF IUSE project, we have been investigating the cognitive processes involved in engineering problem solving, focusing specifically on the role of metacognition. Using verbal protocol analysis, we recorded students’ utterances as they solved two engineering design problems, a pre-problem at the beginning of their engineering program and a post-problem at the end. We identified categories of utterances, some metacognitive and some non-metacognitive, and measured the frequency of those utterance categories. However, because problem solving does not reside in a single utterance nor in the frequency of utterances but rather in the sequence of the utterance categories, we examined the sequences of students’ utterances as they solved the two problems. This poster will address the sequential nature of the cognitive processes revealed in students’ utterances as they solved engineering design problems and to identify the role that metacognition plays in that sequencing. We hypothesized that as students acquired greater engineering knowledge and were exposed to greater use of metacognitive thinking and strategies that focused on that knowledge across their education at IRE, the sequencing of their utterances would indicate the following differences from the pre- to the post-problem: 1) greater sustained use of engineering knowledge when solving the post-problem; 2) increased metacognitive monitoring occurring before and after the use of engineering knowledge on the post-problem; 3) greater elaboration of solutions on the post-problem; 4) increased metacognitive monitoring before and after providing solutions on the post-problem; 5) greater use of metacognitive knowledge of strategies on the post-problem. A lag-one sequential analysis (i.e., an utterance [lag 0] directly followed by another utterance [lag 1]) was conducted by producing three matrices for each of the 11 participants for the pre- and post-problems: a frequency matrix showing the frequency of lag-one transitions; a transitional matrix showing the probability of a particular category of utterance occurring given that a specific category of utterance had occurred; and a z-score matrix produced from each frequency matrix showing what sequence transitions significantly differed from chance. We averaged the z-score matrices across students’ pre- and post-problems and computed a χ2 statistic to analyze differences between the two. Our results are preliminary, but the χ2 was significant. We found support for hypotheses 1, 3, and 5, partial support for hypothesis 2, and no support for hypothesis 4. From pre- to post-problems, students increased their use of engineering knowledge, elaborated their solutions, made greater use of their metacognitive knowledge of strategies, and made greater use of metacognitive monitoring before but not after the use of their engineering knowledge. Metacognitive monitoring remained stable before a solution but decreased after a solution. The IRE program showed positive growth in both students’ engineering knowledge and in their metacognitive use of that knowledge.

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a portable course to teach introductory digital logic. The goals of this course are to simultaneously meet existing accreditation criteria while providing a course that has the potential of being administered completely online. The online characteristic of the course gives the instructor the ability to teach the class in numerous delivery modes. These include an asynchronous online delivery or as supplementary resources for a synchronous face-to-face delivery. The inclusion of a low-cost portable lab kit provides additional flexibility by supporting either the traditional 2-hour on-campus lab section or a more asynchronous lab-anywhere mode. This paper will describe the design of the course, the corresponding learning objectives, the supporting learning activities, and the learning assessment. This paper will present student performance comparisons for different delivery modes collected over the past 4 years at a medium-sized land grant university. This paper will also provide data on the impact of an adaptive learning component of the course that was implemented for the more difficult course concepts. The adaptive learning component allows the student to receive additional computer instruction on a topic that varies the level of difficulty based on automated formative assessment. The adaptive learning component of the course was shown to have a significant impact on students with GPAs between 2.5 – 3.0 on one of the outcomes without needing instructor interaction. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, thus all resources for the course are open to the engineering education community. This paper will be of interest to any engineering educator that teaches digital logic or anyone that has interest in augmenting their current course with online resources or switching to a portable lab kit.

“Frack Attack” is a transferable classroom activity that combines active learning and teamwork to critically evaluate sustainability topics in contemporary engineering contexts. The activity was recently explored in three chemical engineering courses at Montana State University: two elective courses on sustainable energy (one freshmen-level and one senior-level) and one core sophomore-level fluid mechanics course. In all courses, the activity aimed to show the broader impacts of engineering (e.g., fracking), while tying in basic engineering concepts and practices (e.g., pump sizing). This article describes the class activity, its implementation and assessments, as well as opportunities for improvement and adoptability into other engineering courses.

A transferable module is presented that brings sustainability topics into a core chemical engineering fluid dynamics course. A topic was chosen based on technical applicability to the course and currentdebate on the topic. In this case, hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) was chosen for the connection tocourse content (e.g. pumps, porous media flows) and its widespread debate in the United States. Onthe day of the activity, a guest instructor first surveyed the students with questions on theirunderstanding of and opinion on topics within fracking. The students were then shown two short videoson the topic, one from a science-focused group and one from an industrial proponent of the frackingtechnology. After the videos, students were sorted into five theme areas: science/technology,economics, policy, society, and the environment. These areas were chosen to highlight the breadth oftopics that must be engaged in order to approach such complex problems. Further, it is a move towardinterdisciplinary learning within engineering curricula where students consider broader societal themesas part of an engineering solution4. Students brought a research device for this day, and all students hadaccess to laptops or various smart phone devices. During the in-class activity, the students in theirgroups engaged in their own research on the topic using a variety of web-based sources. As they foundinformation relevant to their theme area, they took notes and then brought that into a groupaccumulation of relevant information. With this data compiled, one representative from each areasummarized salient points to the entire class. A course-wide (n ~ 40) discussion ensued with facilitationfrom the guest instructor. Beyond that day of integration, the course instructor aimed to show theimportance of such topics via three practices. First, the course objective ‘Students will analyzeengineering problems in the context of economics, technology, society, and the environment’ wasadded to the course syllabus along with ten other objectives focused on more traditional technicalcontent. Second, after the activity, a homework assignment was given on material balances and pumpsizing requirements associated with a typical hydraulic fracturing site to directly connect the technicalcourse content to the broader focus of the fracking activity. Lastly, a bonus problem on the final examasked students “If you were a landowner, would you allow hydraulic fracturing (fracking) on your land?Briefly explain your answer.” Select survey results from Fall 2017 are chosen to highlight students’ selfreportedunderstand of and support for fracking (pre-post responses), if the class-format was effectivein their learning, and open ended comments relating to changes in their opinion and the course format.The transferability of this module is discussed, along with ways to translate the concept to othercourses, such as into a heat transfer course via a nuclear power module.

Exploring Contemporary Issues in Sustainable EnergyAbstract: In this study, two unique chemical engineering courses were compared in terms ofindividual student responses to standardized questions before and after in-class online research,in addition to their active discussions. The two courses, both focused on “sustainable energy”,were a 100-student 1st year science-core course with primarily non-science majors, and a 40-student 4th year technical elective course with primarily senior-level engineering majors. The in-class online research and discussions were structured in a manner to focus on five issues(science/engineering, environmental, social, economic, and political) related to hydraulicfractured oil/gas well stimulation, or “fracking”. This topic was chosen as a contemporarysocietal issue with significant engineering considerations. Questions were aimed at identifyingstudents’ understanding of basic science and engineering concepts, as well as gauging opinionson the practices and policies related to fracking. Following initial questions, students werepresented basic related science and engineering information in video format. Students, pre-assembled into equal-sized groups, then conducted individual online research focusing on thespecific issue to which their group was assigned. Student scribes were self-identified within thegroups to compile and distill information collected during online research, which theysubsequently shared in open discussion. Students were then asked identical questions followingthe discussion, in addition to rating the effectiveness of the class format on their individuallearning. In general, students’ basic understanding of fracking improved significantly, theiropinions on the topic shifted from neutrality, and the majority agreed that the format waseffective in their learning. Additional results from comparing the two courses, as well asexamples of student-generated materials are presented and discussed in context of improvingapproaches to exploring contemporary issues in engineering courses.

This paper presents a comparison of online to traditional face-to-face delivery of undergraduate digital systems material. Two specific components of digital content were compared and evaluated: a sophomore logic circuits course with no laboratory, and a microprocessor laboratory component of a junior-level computer systems course. For each of these, a baseline level of student understanding was evaluated when they were being taught using traditional, face-to-face delivery. The course and lab component were then converted to being fully online, and the level of student understanding was again measured. In both cases, the same purpose-developed assessment tools were used to carry out the measurement of understanding. This paper presents the details of how the course components were converted to online delivery, including a discussion of the technology used to accomplish remote access of the electronic test equipment used in the laboratory. A comparison is then presented between the control and the experimental groups, including a statistical analysis of whether the delivery approach impacted student learning. Finally, student satisfaction is discussed, and instructor observations are given for the successful remote delivery of this type of class and laboratory.

The use of project circuits (a photoplethysmograph circuit and a simple audio amplifier), introduced in a sophomore-level electric circuits course utilizing active learning and inquiry-based methods, is described. The development of the project circuits was initiated to promote enhanced engagement and deeper understanding of course content among students. The new activities were assessed by student surveys, student scores on essay exams probing deeper learning, and classroom observations by an assessment specialist. The results are compared to similar assessments made before the introduction of the project circuits and are related to other applications of active learning approaches in the teaching of electric circuits.

To better motivate the study of basic electric circuit analysis and to encourage a deep learning approach among the sophomore electrical engineering students taking the course, the implementation of a " project circuit" was carried out in the Fall 2011 offering of EELE 201 at Montana State University. The project circuit, a photoplethysmograph (PPG) circuit used to monitor a person's pulse, was chosen to demonstrate a compelling circuit whose design requires a student to have strong command of key topics from the course. For example, to understand the operation of the PPG circuit and to make reasonable design choices in implementing it, students must be comfortable in making basic voltage, current and power calculations for this batteryoperated device; they must be able to handle dependent sources calculations; identify and design basic operational amplifier (op amp) circuits; appreciate the importance of static offsets in op amps; develop Thevenin equivalent circuits; and carry out first-order circuit calculations. Naturally, students must also demonstrate skill in a laboratory setting as they put together and debug their circuits. So as to help the typical student through the relatively complex considerations in designing the project circuit, several standard lecture sessions were converted into active-learning group work. These activities were spread out over the semester and in many cases the activities amounted to pre-lab exercises including studying component datasheets and speculating on the impact of component specifications on circuit function. The lab activities were made to require students to tackle open-ended problems and fashioned using inquiry-based techniques.The initial implementation was assessed in terms of student performance on essay type exams crafted to probe deeper knowledge of the course material, student mastery of standard learning outcomes as evidenced by their scores on more typical calculation-type exams, student surveys, and class observations made by an evaluation expert. Prior to the implementation of the project circuit materials in the course, baseline data were collected to provide a means to determine the impact of the project circuits on student learning. This paper provides details regarding the materials and activities developed around the project circuit as well as assessment tools, evaluation methods and results in comparing the initial implementation of the project circuit materials to an offering of the course prior to the intervention. Based on the assessment of the initial deployment of the project circuit materials, revision of both the in-class prelab activities and elements of the lab explorations are underway in an attempt to enhance the typical student's ability to connect and apply the concepts learned in class to the project circuit.

The engineering profession's experience with outcomes-based assessment and accreditation provides three lessons for legal education. First, the process of identifying educational goals and assessing whether they have been met can be a catalyst for curriculum reform and responsiveness to changes in the legal profession. Second, outcomes-based education need not consider only easily measured knowledge and skills but can also include such areas as ethical development in law students. Third, ambitious, institutionally focused outcomes assessment approaches are desirable, but even course-focused outcomes, based approaches can generate useful reforms, as demonstrated by a case study discussed in the article.

Engineering education programs are looking for effective ways to more efficiently deliver engineering education to an increasingly heterogeneous customer base, including nontraditional students, some of whom are working full time. Online courses and programs can be one option to meet the needs of this new customer base; however, educators need to ensure that the quality of the educational experience is maintained. Thus, it is important to assess student learning in the online environment. At Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, the College of Engineering is experimenting with online courses and programs that can be delivered not only to local students who have time constraints but also to students at a distance in one of the largest states in the U.S. One required undergraduate course for electrical engineering students, Introduction to Logic Circuits, has recently been offered in the face-toface (fall 2010) and online (spring 2011) environments, using exactly the same materials, which are modular materials developed summer 2010 for an online application. The materials were accompanied by an in-person lecture in fall 2010 and a recorded Camtasia Relay lecture spring 2011. At the end of spring semester 2011, we were able to compare the performance of students from each environment in regard to performance on the same homework assignments, quizzes, and final exam. This data offers an assessment of student learning in the two environments. The paper also includes a summary of the course modules.

This paper describes an approach to assessing and improving the understanding of microprocessor systems for electrical and computer engineering students by developing measurement-based laboratory experiments. During fall semester of 2009, we assessed the level of understanding of microprocessor systems on a control group using five learning objectives. Students in the control group were enrolled in EE 371, Microprocessor Hardware and Software Systems, a required course in the electrical engineering and computer engineering programs. We measured the level of understanding using a set of assessment tools that includes self surveys, weighted multiple choice questions, and short answer questions. These assessments set a baseline measure on the five learning objectives for our current microprocessor curriculum. In fall of 2010, we introduced measurement-based laboratory experiments using logic analyzers. The measurement-based experiments were introduced in two forms: hands-on and remote operation. Assessment data was collected for both experimental groups and compared to the control group from fall 2009 to determine (1) if the level of understanding of microprocessor systems is improved by adding hands-on measurements and (2) if a remote laboratory experience can maintain or improve the level of understanding compared to the control group.In this paper, we summarize the development of the assessment tools used in this project, including the creation of a grading rubric to achieve a finer resolution on the scores of the short answer questions. We also report on the comparisons between the three groups (control group, hands-on measurement group, and remote measurement group) in regard to self-reported learning on the five learning objectives from survey results. Finally, we present comparisons of direct measurement of learning on the five learning objectives from multiple choice and short answer quiz results.

In this paper, we report on the results from a qualitative study of six exemplary engineering programs focusing on the ways and the extent of nurturing creativity in engineering students. The study (P360: Prototyping the Engineering of 2020) included data collection from students, faculty, and administrators at the six institutions. This data collection focused mainly on three student outcomes, including design and problem solving. Creativity and how creativity was nurtured, both inside the classroom and outside, often emerged as a major theme. We also support our qualitative findings with quantitative data. Overall, the results indicate that although students improve their creativity in design settings, this result is mostly a by-product of design teaching, and creativity is not taught per se. Quantitative results show that program emphasis on creativity and innovation significantly correlates to skill levels in design problem solving, interdisciplinarity, contextual awareness, and recognizing perspectives. Qualitative data provide supporting evidence for this.

Service learning in the classroom has been shown to provide great benefit to students and their communities. During the fall of 2009, a national design competition for the disabled was integrated as a service learning term project in Montana State University's Industrial Engineering Department course entitled “Ergonomics and Safety Engineering I.” This project provided students with hands-on experience in applying both their hard and soft skills (based upon the ABET a-k outcomes) in designing for special populations. Students used the concepts learned throughout the course in order to develop an assistive device that would empower people with disabilities to overcome barriers to employment. Each student group was assigned a person with a disability and a vocational aid. The students designed assistive devices that enabled the workers to perform their jobs with greater ease and efficiency and in some cases with complete independence. In order to encourage a more widespread adoption of service learning within engineering, this paper provides one application of a service learning project that can be applied across a variety of engineering domains.

This panel discussion will provide preliminary findings from a National Science Foundation funded project, Prototyping the Engineer of 2020: A 360-degree Study of Effective Education (P360). is the study explores how the educational practices of six diverse institutions (Arizona State University, Harvey Mudd College, Howard University, MIT, University of Michigan, and Virginia Tech) promote the development of engineering students' contextual competence. Contextual competence is defined as an engineer's ability to anticipate and understand the constraints and impacts of social, cultural, environmental, political, and other contexts on engineering solutions and vice versa. In this session, we share case study findings that reveal a variety of curricular and co-curricular experiences intended to cultivate contextual competence. These include general engineering programs, first-year programs, design-focused curricula, client-based capstone courses, hands-on laboratory courses, project and problem-based learning activities, design competitions, undergraduate research programs, and student clubs. In addition to describing these curricular, instructional, and co-curricular experiences, the session will demonstrate how the institutional cultures, practices, and policies support the development of contextual competence in undergraduate engineers.

Service learning opportunities in engineering education are growing. The most notable examples include the Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICs) program, which now has 17 participating universities around the world, and Engineers Without Borders (EWB), which boasts over 200 chapters working on 170 projects in 41 countries associated with engineering programs. Service learning experiences can enrich the education of all students, but have the potential of being especially valuable for women and under-represented minority students in engineering. The Service in Engineering for Reservations Via Education (SERVE) program at Montana State University, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is designed to enhance successful programs we have in place to recruit, retain, and graduate American Indians in engineering, engineering technology, and computer science degree programs. Most of these successful programs were developed under the broader Designing Our Community program. With SERVE, we are leveraging our initial success with the Designing Our Community seminar for American Indian students by implementing a service learning component in the course. This service learning component gives students an opportunity to help solve a real-world problem with a community or service provider early in their engineering degree program. Early evaluation of our SERVE efforts provides evidence that a service learning experience for American Indian engineering students is contributing to progress toward our goals of recruitment, retention, and professional development for these students. American Indian students successfully completing a service learning course in 2008 persisted at a greater percentage (82%) than those students that did not take a course (71%). Persistence for our study is measured from Fall to Fall enrollment. In the future, engineering student visits to the various reservation communities could strengthen the relationships we are building with these communities. The service learning experience enhances student understanding of the real world value of engineering and how they could use their education to solve societal problems, including those on the reservations. Finally, working with people from the community on solving a problem gives students a better idea of what engineers do, and thus contributes to our goal of providing professional development opportunities for American Indian students.

The faculty development sub-committee of the Engineering Schools of the West Initiative (ESWI) developed and administered a pair of surveys for faculty and administrators. We constructed the surveys with four objectives in mind: (1) to collect descriptive benchmark data about perceptions on issues related to the scholarship of teaching; (2) to understand if there was a difference between engineering faculty and administrators' perceptions; (3) to explore how the respondents' own values, in regard to teaching excellence, aligned with their perception of the values of their institutions; and (4) to articulate some implications as to how excellence in teaching is valued and evaluated in the academic community. The results indicate there are many misalignments between the perceptions of administrators and faculty. We also discovered many misalignments between faculty values and the perceived reward system. However, faculty and administrators did agree on several measures of teaching excellence, such as teaching awards. The final outcome of this project was the development of a revised survey that addressed the shortcomings identified and will be administered in 2009-2010.