Teaching Engineering Ethics in the Classroom through a Town Hall Meeting Activity

Engineers often contribute to projects that impact many people and have ethical implications. Some may even move to a career of political advocacy and policy-making. However, most engineering curricula have a strongly technical focus and do not require students to think critically about ethical issues related to engineering. To bridge this gap, we developed a classroom-based town hall meeting activity that demonstrates the ethical issues that may arise when engineers are advocating for or helping craft public policies. Our town hall meeting scenario, which was set in a fictional tourist town called Rainbow Town, divided a class of twenty engineering students into groups of engineers, politicians, and voters. There were two opposing political groups and two engineering groups with competing interests. The voters had individual characters with varying careers and objectives. The town hall meeting was a debate on whether Rainbow Town should undertake a construction project that would bring jobs to the city, but could potentially adversely impact fish population at the town’s natural heritage site, the main source of income for the town. The objective of the activity varied based on what role each student was playing. The politicians’ job was to further the objectives of their own party while simultaneously keeping their voter base happy. The engineers’ job was to help voters make an informed decision about which policy (or party) to vote for, while helping politicians craft the right policy. The voters’ job was to protect their own livelihoods. Despite the simplicity of the town hall meeting scenario, the students wholeheartedly donned the mantle of their assigned role, taking the objectives of their role seriously. At the post-activity debrief, students commented that the activity was harder on the engineers since they had to prove everything with facts, but the politician groups did not.Cockrell School of Engineerin

Utilizing Ipads To Enhance Student Engagement In Vocabulary Learning: A Case Study

According to research evidence, the relationship between vocabulary and reading proficiency is so powerful that it is a valuable predictor of reading comprehension and academic achievement in the later school years (Scarborough, 2011). The major contributor to reading problem is the vocabulary demand of texts that students are assigned in school (Mckeown, Corsson, Arts, Sandora, & Beck, 2012). National Assessment of Education Progress (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012) stated the essential link between the words students know and students’ ability to use those words to understand what they read. Therefore, researchers and educators have both agreed the importance of minimizing vocabulary gaps in order for students to be able to succeed academically and deal with rigorous content (Sparks, 2013). This case study examined the effects of how utilizing an iPad would enhance a student’s engagement in vocabulary learning. A third grade student performing below grade level in reading comprehension and vocabulary participated in this study. The research took place at the University of Central Florida, College of Education, Reading Clinic. This research study concentrated on five different iPad applications that focused on enhancing the student’s engagement in ways to use the iPad to engage students with vocabulary learning. The data obtained from this research were gathered through pre and post vocabulary test developed by the researcher to assess the student’s learning gains. In addition, multiple sources such as attitude pre and post survey, game results, and observations were also collected. At the end of the research, the participant displayed tremendous learning gains in vocabulary. In addition, the researcher concluded that utilizing an iPad significantly enhanced the student’s engagement in vocabulary learning

19. They Ask Me

https://crossworks.holycross.edu/poetry2023/1019/thumbnail.jp

Getting It Published: Transforming the Publishing Activities of STEM Graduate Students through a Collaborative Workshop Series

Writing and publishing are essential activities for young researchers, yet many newly arrived graduate students struggle to learn both foundational writing skills and the knowledge necessary to navigate an increasingly complex publishing landscape. To help students make informed decisions through their writing publishing journey, science and engineering librarians at Duke University Libraries partnered with the Pratt School of Engineering in summer 2019 to organize a series of workshops on the publishing life cycle for STEM graduate students. This collaboration was especially unique as it was the first time that the library has collaborated with a school to share expertise with the wider Duke community. Students participating in these workshops learned and practiced skills important in different stages of the publishing life cycle, such as picking among citation management software to best organize their research and avoid plagiarism, writing introductions and abstracts, selecting a journal for submission, copyright considerations in publishing and responding to reviewer feedback. The organizers selected these topics from questions that they’ve received from students and roadblocks observed in their work. In addition to detailing the workshop series and its planning, presenters will address the role of the liaison librarian in building relationships that allow for collaborative partnerships of this type. They will also discuss factors contributing to the need for this type of programming, including increased participation in professional masters degrees and growing international student populations in all types of graduate programs

Cesium‐vapor‐based delay of single photons emitted by deterministically fabricated quantum dot microlenses

Quantum light sources are key building blocks of photonic quantum technologies. For many applications, it is of interest to control the arrival time of single photons emitted by such quantum devices, or even to store single photons in quantum memories. In situ electron beam lithography is applied to realize InGaAs quantum dot (QD)‐based single‐photon sources, which are interfaced with cesium (Cs) vapor to control the time delay of emitted photons. Via numerical simulations of the light–matter interaction in realistic QD‐Cs‐vapor configurations, the influence of the vapor temperature and spectral QD‐atom detuning is explored to maximize the achievable delay in experimental studies. As a result, this hybrid quantum system allows to trigger the emission of single photons with a linewidth as low as 1.54 GHz even under non‐resonant optical excitation and to delay the emission pulses by up to (15.71 ± 0.01) ns for an effective cell length of 150 mm. This work can pave the way for scalable quantum systems relying on a well‐controlled delay of single photons on a time scale of up to a few tens of nanoseconds.BMBF, 03V0630TIB, Entwicklung einer Halbleiterbasierten Einzelphotonenquelle für die QuanteninformationstechnologieBMBF, 13N14876, Quantenkommunikations-Systeme auf Basis von Einzelphotonenquellen (QuSecure)DFG, 43659573, SFB 787: Halbleiter - Nanophotonik: Materialien, Modelle, BauelementeTU Berlin, Open-Access-Mittel - 201