Gathering Together: Engaging Students with Remote Access to Live Lectures

In Summer 2014, Dr. Vale ran a pilot summer session of a second year engineering course at the University of Guelph. To provide accessibility for students who were away from campus (for example, due to co-op), the lectures were live streamed using Adobe Connect (audio and screen capture, but no room video). A live chat was also implemented, enabling active class participation for those students accessing the course remotely. Approximately 20 students attended live and 40 attended remotely. An REB was obtained, and the class was surveyed to assess the effectiveness of the remote access to the lectures, the influence of employment on taking the course, efficacy of holding courses during the summer semester, and the impact of this method of delivery on their learning. From this investigation, increased attendance to lectures showed improved student performance, regardless of the method of attendance. Overall, the students appreciated the remote access and the online in-class chat forum and found that this method of delivery was complimentary to the traditional in-class lecture format. Some tips and tricks to implementing and using the technology and some of the challenges of engaging students both remotely and in class will also be discussed. Attendants are encouraged to bring their laptops for participation in a live online chat

More Disciplines With Less Course Offerings

Teaching large size classes is becoming the norm in many engineering schools. With these increasing numbers come the traditional challenges such as meeting the educational needs of the students who have various learning styles. At Guelph, we are in the unique position of not only needing to meet the needs of a large number of students, but also to meet the needs of students focusing on different fields of study: being non-departmentalized, students in engineering at Guelph are grouped in common courses regardless of focus of study. This results in, for example, Computer Engineering Students taking the same electric circuits course as those in Environmental Engineering; we therefore find ourselves in the unique position of needing to not only adjust for diversity of learning styles and background knowledge, but also to ensure that each student has the required depth of knowledge to succeed in their future program specific courses. We attempt to address these challenges in a number of ways. To leverage the fact that we have many disciplines in the same room, we use think pair share (via clicker quizzes and problem based lectures) to encourage interaction. In an attempt to draw some of the more reluctant students into the course material, we introduce analogies from other disciplines to make the topic more comfortable (e.g., water analogies to teach circuits) and introduce applications that answer the question “why is this topic relevant to me?” Finally, to address the varying background and future depth requirements, we use simple introductory open labs and tutorials to bring every student up to the same level and provide scaffolded assignment problems to challenge those who will need more depth in later courses while providing more straightforward problems for those who do not

Stability and Performance for Two Classes of Time-Varying Uncertain Plants

In this thesis, we consider plants with uncertain parameters where those parameters may be time-varying; we show that, with reasonable assumptions, we can design a controller that stabilizes such systems while providing near-optimal performance in the face of persistent discontinuities in the time-varying parameters. We consider two classes of uncertainty. The first class is modeled via a (possibly infinite) set of linear time invariant plants - the uncertain time variation consists of unpredictable (but sufficiently slow) switches between those plants. We consider standard LQR performance, and, in the case of a finite set of plants, the more complicated problem of LQR step tracking. Our second class is a time-varying gain margin problem: we consider an reasonably general, uncertain, time-varying function at the input of an otherwise linear time invariant nominal plant. In this second context, we consider the tracking problem wherein the signal to be tracked is modeled by a (stable) filter at the exogenous input and we measure performance via a weighted sensitivity function. The controllers are periodic and mildly nonlinear, with the exception that the controller for the second class is linear

The Human Immune System: A Challenging Control Problem

This work deals with the control of the human immune system. A standard immune system model is modified by introducing control signals corresponding to drug cocktail and immune suppressor treatments. The ultimate objective is to use these control signals to 'cure' a chronically-ill patient. Control is challenging for this system due to nonlinearities and time delays. In fact, it is shown that fundamental aspects of the system dynamics are lost when the system is linearised; hence, control approaches involving linearisation are fruitless. Feedback linearisation and some optimal control methods are also investigated and shown to be infeasible. However, it is shown that, for certain parameter values and initial conditions related to the virus and patient, a specific open-loop control scheme using only the drug cocktail achieves the objective. It is also proven that, unfortunately, this control scheme fails for other parameter values and initial conditions. A two-stage open-loop controller that uses both control inputs is then proposed. It is shown in simulation that the two-stage controller works over a larger set of parameters and initial conditions than the single-stage controller, but a rigorous analysis of the two-stage controller remains elusive

Backchannel chatter or spatter? A comparison of online synchronous chatroom use during STEM and Social Sciences lectures.

Student engagement in large lectures is challenging, and one of our strategies has been to introduce online chatting and polling during lectures. Although our initial experiences with a backchannel chat were positive across smaller STEM and larger Social Sciences courses, it became apparent that student usage might differ across disciplines. As such, this study aimed to directly compared the use of backchannel chat in second year Engineering (ENGG*2400; N=418) and Human Sexuality (FRHD*2100; N=263) courses at the University of Guelph. Kountu, a web-based online chat and polling application, was utilized during each Fall 2016 lecture for both courses. The majority of students (72% of FRHD*2100 and 64% of ENGG*2400) tried the chatroom at least once, with an ANOVA demonstrating that the FRHD*2100 students logged in significantly more often (p \u3c .001; m = 9.53 lectures) than ENGG*2400 students (m = 6.55 lectures). ENGG*2400 students, however, posted (m = 14.34) and ‘liked’ (m = 15.25) significantly more messages per person during each lecture than FRHD*2100 students (posts m = 4.38; likes m = 5.64). Interestingly, an online survey of 79 participants indicated that ENGG*2400 students engaged in significantly more off-topic conversations and found their chatroom to be significantly more distracting during lecture than FRHD*2100 students. Additionally, FRHD*2100 students felt significantly more comfortable participating in their chatroom as compared to ENGG*2400. Using live examples and audience participation in Kountu, we will demonstrate the potential reasons for these differences as well as highlight discipline-specific advantages and limitations of using backchannel chat during lecture

A pragmatic multi-centre randomised controlled trial of fluid loading and level of dependency in high-risk surgical patients undergoing major elective surgery : trial protocol

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Student and Faculty Perceptions of Capstone Purposes: What can Engineering Learn from Other Disciplines?

Capstone Experiences (CE) are meant to integrate and culminate the student experience. The most common CE in the Canadian and American engineering curriculums is the final year design course, but other disciplines also have capstone experiences. This paper presents initial results from a multi-institutional, multi-national survey of faculty and student perceptions of capstone experiences. Here, we investigate three criteria (Values, Skills/competencies, Attitudes) and discuss differences and similarities among the disciplines and between engineering students and faculty. There is good alignment between engineering faculty and students, but values such as openness and compassion are selected at (comparatively) lower rates by engineering faculty and students than by other disciplines. These findings provide an opportunity for engineering educators to reflect on the intentions of their CE; e.g., are these results an intentional outcome of engineering capstones, or an oversight on the part of engineering educators

Capstone Experience purposes: an international, multidisciplinary study

Capstone experiences (CEs) serve a variety of purposes in higher education as places to apply academic skills, explore post-graduate life and employment, and achieve a meaningful undergraduate event. This study investigated the purposes of CEs through a content analysis of institutional course syllabi/course outlines/module outlines and catalog/calendar descriptions at five institutions of higher education: a large public research university in Canada, a large public teaching university in the U.K., a large public research university campus in the U.S., and two medium-sized private liberal arts universities in the U.S. Using the CE purposes found in a review of scholarly literature as a research guide, the authors analyzed 84 institutional documents. CE purposes that appeared in the sample at lower percentages when compared with published studies included oral communication, a coherent academic experience, preparation for graduate school, preparation for life after college, and civic engagement/service learning. Implications for practice include the need for instructors and administrators to consider revising CE documents to better reflect the content and goals of the courses and to address the requirements of other audiences (e.g., program reviewers, accreditation evaluators). Moreover, the results of this study may assist educators in considering reasons for omitting explicit purposes from CE documents and/or justifying the inclusion of previously omitted purposes

Cytokinetic astralogy

Division plane specification in animal cells has long been presumed to involve direct contact between microtubules of the anaphase mitotic spindle and the cell cortex. In this issue, von Dassow et al. (von Dassow et al. 2009. J. Cell. Biol. doi:10.1083/jcb.200907090) challenge this assumption by showing that spindle microtubules can effectively position the division plane at a distance from the cell cortex

Parts list for a microtubule depolymerising kinesin

The Kinesin superfamily is a large group of molecular motors that use the turnover of ATP to regulate their interaction with the microtubule cytoskeleton. The coupled relationship between nucleotide turnover and microtubule binding is harnessed in various ways by these motors allowing them to carry out a variety of cellular functions. The Kinesin-13 family is a group of specialist microtubule depolymerising motors. Members of this family use their microtubule destabilising activity to regulate processes such as chromosome segregation, maintenance of cilia and neuronal development. Here, we describe the current understanding of the structure of this family of kinesins and the role different parts of these proteins play in their microtubule depolymerisation activity and in the wider function of this family of kinesins