ExCEEd teaching workshop: Tenth year anniversary

In response to the need for faculty training, the American Society of Civil Engineers developed and funded the ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) Teaching Workshop that is today – the summer of 2008 – celebrating its tenth year of existence. For the past decade, nineteen ExCEEd Teaching Workshops (ETW) have been held at the United States Military Academy, the University of Arkansas, and Northern Arizona University, with two more workshops scheduled for this summer for a total of 21 offerings. ETW has realized 449 graduates from 203 different U.S. and international colleges and universities. This paper summarizes the content of ETW, assesses its effectiveness, highlights changes in the program as a result of the assessment, and outlines future directions. The assessment data were obtained from multiple survey instruments conducted during each workshop, surveys taken six months to a year after the workshop, and a ten year longitudinal survey

Celebrating 20 Years of the ExCEEd Teaching Workshop

In response to the clear need for faculty training, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) developed and funded Project ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) which is celebrating its twentieth year of existence. For the past two decades, 38 ExCEEd Teaching Workshops (ETW) have been held at six different universities. The program has 910 graduates from over 267 different U.S. and international colleges and universities. The ExCEEd effort has transformed from one that relied on the grass roots support of its participants to one that is supported and embraced by department heads and deans. This paper summarizes the history of Project ExCEEd, describes the content of the ETW, assesses its effectiveness, highlights changes in the program as a result of the assessment, and outlines the future direction of the program

A Method to Quantify Mouse Coat-Color Proportions

Coat-color proportions and patterns in mice are used as assays for many processes such as transgene expression, chimerism, and epigenetics. In many studies, coat-color readouts are estimated from subjective scoring of individual mice. Here we show a method by which mouse coat color is quantified as the proportion of coat shown in one or more digital images. We use the yellow-agouti mouse model of epigenetic variegation to demonstrate this method. We apply this method to live mice using a conventional digital camera for data collection. We use a raster graphics editing program to convert agouti regions of the coat to a standard, uniform, brown color and the yellow regions of the coat to a standard, uniform, yellow color. We use a second program to quantify the proportions of these standard colors. This method provides quantification that relates directly to the visual appearance of the live animal. It also provides an objective analysis with a traceable record, and it should allow for precise comparisons of mouse coats and mouse cohorts within and between studies

The ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop: Assessing 20 Years of Instructional Development

The Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Teaching Workshop (ETW), a week-long teacher-training program sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers, has been improving the quality of university teaching for twenty years. The 41 workshops conducted over this period have produced 963 graduates from 253 universities around the world. This article celebrates the history of this landmark faculty development initiative. It assesses the extent to which the ETW provides a unique contribution and has influenced teaching practices in U.S. civil engineering programs. This assessment includes participant satisfaction, the long-term influence on participants, the influence on those participants who became ETW faculty leaders, the satisfaction of the deans and department heads who sponsored the participants, the scholarship that has resulted from the ETW, and the implied influence on the engineering students who ultimately benefit from this workshop. Finally, the future direction of the ETW is addressed. Although the workshop is intended primarily for civil engineering programs in the U.S., the results of this study are also highly relevant to other engineering disciplines and to engineering programs outside the U.S

The ASCE ExCEEd Teaching Workshop: Assessing 20 Years of Instructional Development

The Excellence in Civil Engineering Education (ExCEEd) Teaching Workshop (ETW), a week-long teacher-training program sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers, has been improving the quality of university teaching for twenty years. The 41 workshops conducted over this period have produced 963 graduates from 253 universities around the world. This article celebrates the history of this landmark faculty development initiative. It assesses the extent to which the ETW provides a unique contribution and has influenced teaching practices in U.S. civil engineering programs. This assessment includes participant satisfaction, the long-term influence on participants, the influence on those participants who became ETW faculty leaders, the satisfaction of the deans and department heads who sponsored the participants, the scholarship that has resulted from the ETW, and the implied influence on the engineering students who ultimately benefit from this workshop. Finally, the future direction of the ETW is addressed. Although the workshop is intended primarily for civil engineering programs in the U.S., the results of this study are also highly relevant to other engineering disciplines and to engineering programs outside the U.S

RGB proportions for the red, brown, and yellow colors.

<p>RGB proportions for the red, brown, and yellow colors.</p

Photographs, colorings, and pie charts of mice.

<p>Photographs of mice were processed as described in the text to produce yellow areas of uniform color and agouti areas of uniform color that closely matched yellow and agouti areas on the live mouse. A script was used to generate a pie chart from these areas of uniform color to determine the percentage of yellow and agouti in the mouse. Two examples are shown here.</p

Inter-rater reliability between the two raters on the individual days, evaluated using the average of measurements from photos taken from the left and right sides.

A<p>Intraclass Correlation Coefficient, type (2,1) in Shrout and Fleiss <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0005414#pone.0005414-Shrout1" target="_blank">[25]</a> notation.</p