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Enhancing
Engineering Education with Information Technology (April
5, 1 pm - 3 pm)
COL
Don Welch, Associate Dean for Information & Educational Technology,
USMA
This
workshop centers on a walking tour of the engineering computer facilities
at USMA. Following an introduction to the use of IT in engineering
education and discussion of the IT resources available to engineering
students at West Point we will visit the engineering computer labs
that support the civil, mechanical, systems, electrical engineering
and computer science programs. In this workshop we will also discuss
our requirements, funding and maintenance models.
Enhancing
Teaching Effectiveness (April 5, 2 pm - 4 pm)
Dr. Anita Gandolfo, Director, Center for Teaching Excellence,
USMA
The Key to Effective
Teaching? The Engineering Design Process!
In this session, Professor Anita Gandolfo, Director of USMA's Center
for Teaching Excellence, will review the theoretical basis for much
of the contemporary emphasis on "active learning" in higher
education and will show how effective teaching is actually rooted
in the engineering design process. Participants will learn why.
. .
. . ."active
learning" is a misnomer;
. . . we often don't teach what we think we're teaching;
. . . "good" teaching fails to affect many students.
Participants
will learn how. . .
. . . the
engineering design process is the root of all effective teaching.
SUCCEED
Coalition Workshop on Multidisciplinary Design (April
5, 1 pm - 4 pm)
Dr. David F. Ollis, Distinguished Professor, North Carolina State
University
This
workshop is offered as part of the NSF-funded SUCCEED Engineering
Education Consortium’s work on multidisciplinary design.
It will include discussion of best practices, emerging possibilities,
and college-wide approaches to institutionalization of multidisciplinary
design. (The SUCCEED Coalition includes Clemson, Georgia Tech,
FAMU/FSU, North Carolina State, North Carolina A & T, UNC-Charlotte,
University of Florida, and Virginia Tech).
Introduction
of the Design Process to Freshmen Engineering Students (April
5, 2 pm - 4 pm)
Ronald Musiak,
Steve Schreiner, Thomas Keyser, Richard Mindek, Mary B. Vollaro,
Western New England College
This workshop
demonstrates student capabilities of a one-semester Freshmen
course, Introduction to Engineering. The content of the course
focuses on learning the engineering design process and some
of the tools (such as hand graphics, CAD, and various computer
packages) needed to support that process. The course has a significant
portion of its content devoted to a hands-on exposure to engineering
design. The students, working in teams, experience the entire
design process twice during the Fall semester using RoboLab
by LEGO-DACTA as a platform to solve engineering problems. This
past semester student teams had as their second project the
challenge of designing an autonomous robot capable of seeking
out and navigating to a light source in the shortest possible
time. The terrain the robot had to navigate consisted of a four
by eight foot pit filled with loose gravel and immovable boulders
large enough to block line of sight to the light source. There
were 24 Freshmen design teams involved in the competition. During
this workshop some of those design teams will be demonstrating
their solutions to the design challenge while those faculty
involved in teaching the course present how the course is structured
and delivered. Students will also present their perspective
of the course.
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