Simulating Real-World Work Experience in Engineering Capstone Courses

Experiential learning and cooperative education provide students with the necessary tools to succeed in the workplace by simulating their future working environment. Various studies have shown that many graduates have gaps related to their so called soft skills , which are related to teamwork, time management, working under pressure and tight deadlines. The main purpose of the inclusion of the industry expert in senior design discussions is to provide meaningful feedback through a competitive led by industry practitioners. In this simulation, the senior engineering students take on the role of actual engineering job functions, on a demanding, continuous basis for the entire school year or semester. These job functions come with all the shortcomings and particular difficulties associated with those functions in the real world. In order to develop the interpersonal professional skills needed by industry, a methodology presented in this paper is given which allows the student teams to evolve socially as departments, while supporting them with information such as Tuckman\u27s stages of group development, Myers-Briggs type indication, and recognition of the various personalities and issues arising when working in a cross-functional, team based environment. The application of this methodology and course set-up resulted in engineering graduates that were not surprised by the potential difficulties that may be encountered when ensconced in full-time, permanent engineering employment. This paper will detail some of the necessary elements required to make mechanical engineering and engineering technology capstone courses simulate real world work experience and provide students with immersion in their senior design experience which engages their soft skills . It presents a method whereby the senior design course is taught by a faculty with extensive industry experience and guided by the panel of experts made up of other faculty from the department and industry representatives. The technique(s) presented in this paper were tailored to the traditional roles of mechanical (design) engineers in the modern industrial setting, but can be reapplied to other engineering areas

The Road Ahead for State Assessments

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards offers an opportunity to make significant improvements to the large-scale statewide student assessments that exist today, and the two US DOE-funded assessment consortia -- the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) -- are making big strides forward. But to take full advantage of this opportunity the states must focus squarely on making assessments both fair and accurate.A new report commissioned by the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), The Road Ahead for State Assessments, offers a blueprint for strengthening assessment policy, pointing out how new technologies are opening up new possibilities for fairer, more accurate evaluations of what students know and are able to do. Not all of the promises can yet be delivered, but the report provides a clear set of assessment-policy recommendations. The Road Ahead for State Assessments includes three papers on assessment policy.The first, by Mark Reckase of Michigan State University, provides an overview of computer adaptive assessment. Computer adaptive assessment is an established technology that offers detailed information on where students are on a learning continuum rather than a summary judgment about whether or not they have reached an arbitrary standard of "proficiency" or "readiness." Computer adaptivity will support the fair and accurate assessment of English learners (ELs) and lead to a serious engagement with the multiple dimensions of "readiness" for college and careers.The second and third papers give specific attention to two areas in which we know that current assessments are inadequate: assessments in science and assessments for English learners.In science, paper-and-pencil, multiple choice tests provide only weak and superficial information about students' knowledge and skills -- most specifically about their abilities to think scientifically and actually do science. In their paper, Chris Dede and Jody Clarke-Midura of Harvard University illustrate the potential for richer, more authentic assessments of students' scientific understanding with a case study of a virtual performance assessment now under development at Harvard. With regard to English learners, administering tests in English to students who are learning the language, or to speakers of non-standard dialects, inevitably confounds students' content knowledge with their fluency in Standard English, to the detriment of many students. In his paper, Robert Linquanti of WestEd reviews key problems in the assessment of ELs, and identifies the essential features of an assessment system equipped to provide fair and accurate measures of their academic performance.The report's contributors offer deeply informed recommendations for assessment policy, but three are especially urgent.Build a system that ensures continued development and increased reliance on computer adaptive testing. Computer adaptive assessment provides the essential foundation for a system that can produce fair and accurate measurement of English learners' knowledge and of all students' knowledge and skills in science and other subjects. Developing computer adaptive assessments is a necessary intermediate step toward a system that makes assessment more authentic by tightly linking its tasks and instructional activities and ultimately embedding assessment in instruction. It is vital for both consortia to keep these goals in mind, even in light of current technological and resource constraints.Integrate the development of new assessments with assessments of English language proficiency (ELP). The next generation of ELP assessments should take into consideration an English learners' specific level of proficiency in English. They will need to be based on ELP standards that sufficiently specify the target academic language competencies that English learners need to progress in and gain mastery of the Common Core Standards. One of the report's authors, Robert Linquanti, states: "Acknowledging and overcoming the challenges involved in fairly and accurately assessing ELs is integral and not peripheral to the task of developing an assessment system that serves all students well. Treating the assessment of ELs as a separate problem -- or, worse yet, as one that can be left for later -- calls into question the basic legitimacy of assessment systems that drive high-stakes decisions about students, teachers, and schools." Include virtual performance assessments as part of comprehensive state assessment systems. Virtual performance assessments have considerable promise for measuring students' inquiry and problem-solving skills in science and in other subject areas, because authentic assessment can be closely tied to or even embedded in instruction. The simulation of authentic practices in settings similar to the real world opens the way to assessment of students' deeper learning and their mastery of 21st century skills across the curriculum. We are just setting out on the road toward assessments that ensure fair and accurate measurement of performance for all students, and support for sustained improvements in teaching and learning. Developing assessments that realize these goals will take time, resources and long-term policy commitment. PARCC and SBAC are taking the essential first steps down a long road, and new technologies have begun to illuminate what's possible. This report seeks to keep policymakers' attention focused on the road ahead, to ensure that the choices they make now move us further toward the goal of college and career success for all students. This publication was released at an event on May 16, 2011

A Secure Web-Based Universal Basic Educational Administrative Management System: A National Capacity Building Strategy in Education

Education in Nigeria is an instrument for effecting the development of its citizens in particular, and the nation in general. The Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) established by UBE Act, 2004 is introduced in Nigeria to ensure unfettered access to nine years of formal basic education as well as reduce the incidence of drop-out from the formal school system through improved relevance and efficiency. In this paper, we design, implement and analyze a secure web-based universal basic educational administrative management system to deal with the problem of administration overload in managing pupils, students, teachers, personnel and curriculum data in both primary and junior secondary schools in Nigeria. We adopt the following sequence to accomplish our goal, requirement analysis, architectural design, application design and implementation. The study explores object-oriented database, PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), Apache server pages and MySQL DBMS tools. The System prototype is built on a three-tier client server architecture to provide UBEC, primary and junior secondary institutions with broader information availability, better performance, and eliminate internal security problem, paperwork and manpower. The framework will help to improve education capacity building, reliability, robustness and quality. Keywords: Web-based Database, Formal basic Education, Curriculum Data, Object-Oriented Design, Data-Driven System, Universal Basic Education Commission.

simSchool: An online dynamic simulator for enhancing teacher preparation

A rationale for using a simulated teaching environment to train pre-service teacher candidates is presented, followed by the key components of the simSchool dynamic simulator created to accomplish this task. Results of analyses of two sets of data, for the areas of pedagogical practices and teaching skills, are used to illustrate that changes in pre-service educators can be assessed as a direct outcome of activities completed within the simulated environment. Major outcomes to date indicate that teacher candidates gain a sense of instructional self-efficacy (confidence in their competence) more rapidly using the simulator, compared to traditional teacher preparation classes and related activities. This outcome is true for pre-service candidates working with simulated students spanning the normal range of personality attributes and sensory abilities, as well as pre-service teacher candidates working with simulated students with disabilities

Connecting Science with Engineering: Using Inquiry and Design in a Teacher Professional Development Course

The engineering design process has evolved over time to be the central and effective framework that engineers use to conduct their work. Logically, K-12 STEM professional development efforts have then attempted to incorporate the design process into their work. There has been little in the STEM literature, though, of the explicit measurement of the growth in design process knowledge. Our study presents findings of significant improvements in knowledge of the design process that resulted over the course of a recent summer STEM institute and professional development program among K-5 teachers. As more emphasis is placed on integrating STEM into the curriculum 1 there is a need to enhance the capacity for K-12 teachers. Responding to this call the Colleges of Engineering and Education at Boise State University collaborated to offer an intensive three-day summer institute to address the preparation of elementary school teachers (grades K-5) to teach STEM curriculum. The focus of our institute was on the use of both inquiry and design as approaches for integrating STEM content. In particular we explicitly stressed the link between science and inquiry and engineering and design, how these processes differ, how they can complement each other and how they can be used instructionally to teach a wide range of STEM content. The instructional materials used in the workshop included Lego®-like bricks called PCS BrickLab® (supplied by PCS Edventures! an educational products company) and other common classroom items such as paper, tape, string, and cardboard.. Each participant received a classroom set of the materials at the close of the workshop. The BrickLab® kit contains over 5,000 bricks which is sufficient to simultaneously engage up to about 30 students in hands-on activities, which makes these instructional materials particularly suitable to facilitate classroom instruction using inquiry and design. We engaged the participants in a series of hands-on activities focused on the inquiry process of manipulating variables to gather data to explain phenomena or design processes that focus on creating and refining the best solution given constraints. To determine the effectiveness of our workshop we gathered pre and post data to assess our 58 participants\u27 comfort for teaching STEM, their STEM pedagogical discontentment, their implementation of inquiry curriculum, and their knowledge of the design process. Our initial results indicate significant increases in comfort teaching STEM (t = 12.761, p \u3c .01), decreases in STEM pedagogical discontentment (t = 7.281, p \u3c .01), and increases in design process knowledge (t = 6.072, p \u3c .01). Delayed post data collection for the implementation of inquiry took place in Fall 2010, which allowed time for the participating teachers to apply their learned knowledge and develop a post conference context for their instructional practice with students. All instruments used for data collection were extant and had established reliability and validity. Our results indicate that our three-day summer institute and follow-up support increased our participants\u27 knowledge of design along with comfort for teaching STEM. Also, the institute decreased the teachers’ pedagogical discontentment for teaching STEM

2022 Research Report: R1 Global Impact - Local Relevance

We are delighted to present the 2022 Research Report for the University of Maine. This year marked the realization of a historic accomplishment by Maine’s land, sea, and space grant university. In January 2022, UMaine ascended to the highest tier of national research universities by earning a Carnegie R1 classification and joining the ranks of the nation’s top doctoral universities with very high research activity. The R1 designation is a well-recognized standard of excellence for top-tier research universities. Earning it is a significant endorsement of UMaine’s advancement as a premier modern 21st-century research university, with nationally and internationally recognized programs of global impact and local relevance that address the workforce needs and advance the social and economic development of Maine and beyond. It comes on the heels of the university’s research enterprise for the third consecutive year achieving all-time high record levels in growth and impact, as measured by multiple indicators, including R&D funding and graduate enrollment

The Craft of Incentive Prize Design: Lessons from the Public Sector

In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private and philanthropic sectors. This report offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors to help understand what types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve, what design elements prize designers use to create these challenges and how to make smart design choices to achieve a particular outcome. It synthesizes insights from expert interviews and analysis of more than 400 prize

Development of a Simulation Game in the Area of Housing

This study focused on the development of a simulation game to teach certain aspects of housing. Underlying the development of the game was the assumption that a simulation game can be an effective teaching technique. The development of the game involved the use of a simulation design: objectives and generalizations for housing, questions that required decision-making, and designing a game board. More precise objectives were (1) to gain information about simulation gaming, particularly current research in the area of gaming in home economics, and (2) to develop a game for use in teaching specific behavioral objectives in the area of housing. It was believed that since simulation gaming was a recognized innovation in home economics instruction, information provided by this study could be used to guide teachers in selecting, designing, and evaluating games. The scope of the research was limited to high school Home Economics III classes and college students. The researcher developed the game for use. with her own students at Brandon-Valley High School, Brandon, South Dakota. The game was limited to certain areas of housing including art principles and elements, backgrounds, windows, lighting and wiring, furniture, furnishings and equipment, care, personal interests, and accessories. The game was conceived with the idea of making a part of the housing unit in Home Economics III different by designing a game, a new teaching technique for the researcher, which could be used by the class. The game was to provide interaction among the students as they assumed the roles of family members in a home which they could plan and furnish, providing a means of learning and applying knowledge about various aspects of housing. The original concept was to develop a housing project as the game was played, simulating the decisions made. The project did not materialize because of the lack of time and materials. The interior of the simulated house on the game board was the area of concern. The major subject divisions in the curriculum were used as areas of the game

Design Thinking Instructional Problems (DTIP): Exploring the Perspectives of K-14 STEM Teachers on the DTIP Approach to Developing Instructional Lessons

abstract: A reform movement in the United States has focused on STEM education and 21st century soft skills such as critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. This spotlight on STEM instruction provided an opportunity to explore how K-14 STEM teacher participants perceived a Design Thinking Instructional Problems (DTIP) approach to developing instructional lessons. The study used a convergent parallel mixed-methods design with a survey instrument and a multiple case study focused on K-14 in-service STEM teachers. Data were collected from teacher participants during two five-week summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs as part of two separate National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Engineering Research Centers (ERC) located at a large southwestern university in the United States (n=16). The study was conducted over three phases. During Phase I and II, teacher participants experienced a Design Thinking Overview workshop and weekly DTIP professional development sessions to facilitate the development of an RET instructional lesson. Pre- and post-program DTIP surveys and background interviews were conducted with all teacher participants (n=16). From this original group, teacher participants were selected as cases. Implementation observations and post-implementation interviews were conducted with these case-teachers (n=10). The study included frequency analysis and descriptive statistics of survey data. Qualitative data were analyzed using direct interpretation, thematic analysis, and open coding with the constant comparative method. A variety of arrays, summaries, and matrices were used to visualize patterns across and within individual case-teacher results. All 16 teacher participants viewed themselves as designers solving complex instructional problems. All 16 teacher participants found the DTIP professional development sessions to have somewhat to very much provided additional value during their RET summer programs. Six of the 10 case-teachers perceived the DTIP model graphic as mostly to completely corresponding to the way in which they developed their RET instructional lesson. Lastly, eight of the 10 case-teachers chose to embed a Design Thinking student learning strategy into the RET instructional lesson they developed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Educational Technology 201