A student-led comparison of techniques for augmenting the field experience

We report a study in which 30 university geography students compared five techniques to enhance the experience of visiting outdoor locations. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay of the visual scene; a custom-designed visitor guide running on a PDA; the mScape location-based software running on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted virtual reality display. The students were given the assignment as part of their assessed coursework for a field trip to the UK Lake District, where they had to evaluate the techniques and propose improvements or future designs to enable tourists or students on field trips to gain an enhanced understanding of their surroundings. The paper describes these techniques, reports the process and results of the student assignment, and concludes with a discussion of some broader issues emerging from the project

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project

The Two Cultures of Engineering Education:Looking Back and Moving Forward

The prevalent historical model of engineering education is centered on a conception of engineering as a technical discipline. However, engineering students are increasingly expected to develop nontechnical competencies for their workforce preparation and professional responsibility. In particular, ethics is an important outcome of engineering education. Ethics has roots in the humanities and social science (HSS), creating a tension between the technical culture of engineering and its engagement with these disciplines. There is a persistent disconnection between the engineering and HSS cultures, which impacts how ethics is valorised and integrated in the curricula. This chapter explores the dichotomy between how technical and nontechnical learning outcomes are addressed in engineering education and its implications for ethics. Drawing on two studies that were independently designed and conducted in Ireland and the US, this chapter synthesizes the perspectives of educators across the two national contexts. Educators in both countries completed semi-structured interviews to understand their practices and perceptions related to engineering ethics. The interviews uncovered four themes related to the de-prioritization of ethics in engineering education: the weight assigned to ethics in accreditation, the piecemeal integration of ethics in the engineering curriculum, the perceived status of ethics as soft and ancillary, and the lack of faculty training. Based on these findings, the chapter concludes with recommendations to bridge the divide between technical and nontechnical learning outcomes and support the more cohesive and interdisciplinary integration of ethics in engineering education.</p

Informal Learning as Opportunity for Competency Development and Broadened Engagement in Engineering

Informal learning is increasingly being recognized as a way to complement the formal curriculum within engineering and provide additional opportunities for competency development while engaging diverse students. Learning about engineering occurs throughout life, via experiential and spontaneous opportunities that inform our understandings of the world. Learning is not confined to the engineering curriculum and class time but, rather, continues informally and implicitly throughout the daily lives and activities of university students. Often framed in contrast to formal learning, informal learning is more as it represents a significant portion of students’ time and effort and contributes to their persistence, competence development, and broadened engagement. This chapter provides an overview of informal learning, discussing its definition, history, and settings and activities relevant to engineering education. The second section of the chapter focuses on the benefits and outcomes of informal learning, related to competency development and engagement of diverse learners. The third section identifies implications and provides recommendations for engineering researchers and practitioners to study, integrate, and recognize informal learning as an opportunity to prepare the current and future generations of engineers for 21st-century challenges, via cultivating the requisite competencies and engaging students with a range of backgrounds and experiences

Augmenting the landscape scene: students as participatory evaluators of mobile geospatial technologies

This paper provides a two-phase study to compare alternative techniques for augmenting landscape scenes on geography fieldtrips. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay; a custom-designed mobile field guide; locative media on a smartphone; virtual globe on a tablet PC; a head-mounted virtual reality display, and a geo-wand style mobile app. In one field exercise the first five techniques were compared through analysis of interviews and student video diaries, combined with direct observation. This identified a particular challenge of how to direct user attention correctly to relevant information in the field of view. To explore this issue in more detail, a second field exercise deployed ‘Zapp’, a bespoke geo-wand-style app capable of retrieving information about distant landscape features. This was evaluated using first-person video and spatial logging of in-field interactions. This paper reflects upon the relative merits of these approaches and highlights particular challenges of using technology to mimic a human field guide in pointing out specific aspects of the landscape scene. We also explore the role of students acting as design informants and research co-participants, which can be mutually beneficial in promoting a critical appreciation of the role of technology to support learning about the landscape

Institutional Differences in the Education of Engineering and Computing Students About Ethics and Societal Impacts

This study explored the extent to which faculty report teaching engineering and computing students about ethics and societal impacts (ESI) in courses and via co-curricular activities. The research questions were to determine if there were differences in the topics, teaching methods, assessment methods, and satisfaction with ESI instruction between faculty from religiously-affiliated (RA) and non-religiously affiliated (NRA) institutions. A national survey was conducted, with about 1400 responses. This included 122 faculty from 60 RA institutions (across 17 denominations/faiths). Chi-square tests evaluated statistically significant differences (

Faculty Perspectives and Practices Related To Engineering Ethics and Societal Impacts Education

Across the world there is increasing emphasis on developing engineering students&rsquo; understanding of ethical responsibility and awareness of societal context. This trend has necessitated a closer examination of the role that engineering faculty play in the integration of ethics and societal impacts (termed ESI) in curricula. Like all instructional decisions, those related to if, how, and where to teach ESI are the result of a complex combination of factors that are both within and outside of the control of the individual educators. This research applied the Academic Plan model (Lattuca &amp; Stark, 2009), which conceptualizes course planning in higher education to understand influences on engineering faculty&rsquo;s practices and perspectives related to ESI. This framework posits that personal internal factors, environmental influences, and external forces shape educational processes and outcomes through curriculum design. The Academic Plan provided the structure of this dissertation so that each of the three chapters explored a different component of the model: individual internal influences, academic environment, and sociocultural environment. First, in-depth and semi- structured interviews with engineering faculty who teach ESI illuminated the personal beliefs and interests and academic and professional experiences that shaped their instruction. Second, a case study exploration of two engineering departments elucidated the influence of academic environment and culture on engineering faculty&rsquo;s teaching related to ESI. Third, a broader view of environment through a cultural lens explored similarities and differences in the ESI practices and perspectives of educators in Anglo and Western European countries. Taken together, these results build on the Academic Plan to provide granularity on influences of significance in ESI education in engineering. The findings indicate both conflicting and complementary influences on ESI course planning and how factors at the personal and environmental level can be leveraged to support faculty&rsquo;s teaching of ESI and thus students&rsquo; education on these important considerations.</p

Clustering and Precipitation Processes in Microalloyed Aluminium Alloys(APFIM/FIM)

Recent progress in understanding the origins of hardening in Al-1.7Cu-0.01Sn (at. %) and Al-1.1Cu-1.7Mg-(0.1Ag, 0.3-0.5Si) (at. %) microalloyed alloys is presented. The results of systematic studies involving atom probe field ion microscopy in conjunction with transmission electron microscopy indicate that the precipitation processes depend to a considerable degree upon the nature of pre-precipitate clustering reactions which occur early in the decomposition of the solid solution. Furthermore, it is shown that the presence of these co-clusters can influence significantly the alloy properties

A comparison of the mechanical behaviour of self-piercing riveted and resistance spot welded aluminium sheets for the automotive industry

The increased application of lightweight materials, such as aluminium has initiated many investigations into new joining techniques for aluminium alloys. The resistance spot welding (RSW) concept for aluminium has always attracted many researchers from different organizations. Self-piercing riveting (SPR) is the major production process used to join aluminium sheet body structures for the automotive industry. The research team at the University of Warwick has investigated these two major joining technologies for aluminium assembly. The paper reported here gives an in depth comparison of the mechanical behaviour for each joint type under different loading conditions. It covers symmetrical and asymmetrical assembly from thin gauge of 1.0 mm to thick gauge of 3.0 mm. The results suggest that generally RSW can provide similar strength performance to SPR with the exception of T-peel; the energy to maximum load needs be considered ‘case to case’ and is dependent largely on loading conditions and the failure mode particularly with respect to SPR. The spread of results for SPR is generally smaller than for RSW, and the performance of SPR joints improves as the thickness increases