Work in Progress: Progress of the NSF RED Revolution

The National Science Foundation (NSF) REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) program is an important initiative in engineering education. The goals of RED are to “enable engineering and computer science departments to lead the nation by successfully achieving significant sustainable changes necessary to overcome longstanding issues in their undergraduate programs and educate inclusive communities of engineering and computer science students prepared to solve 21st-century challenges.” In 2015, six RED projects were funded followed by seven in 2016 and six more in 2017, bringing the total number of projects to 19. In addition, NSF funded REDPAR (RED Participatory Action Research), the collaborative effort between researchers at Rose-Hulman and the University of Washington to facilitate communication and collaboration among the RED teams and to study the processes followed by RED teams. This work in progress provides a brief overview of the program and current progress of some projects. We highlight the diversity of current RED projects through updates from eight projects across the three cohorts: four from Cohort 1: Arizona State University, Colorado State University, Oregon State University, and the University of San Diego, three from Cohort 2: Boise State University, Rowan University, Virginia Tech, and one from Cohort 3: Georgia Tech. Updates are also included from the REDPAR team about the RED Consortium (REDCON) and research that crosses the consortium. We hope that this paper will help the engineering education community to learn how these projects are changing the landscape of engineering education in the USA and consider approaches for enacting change on other campuses

Talking About a Revolution: Overview of NSF RED Projects

A significant initiative in engineering education in the U.S. began in 2014 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the IUSE/PFE: REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (IUSE/PFE: RED) program. The goals of IUSE/PFE: RED (hereinafter referred to as RED) are to “enable engineering and computer science departments to lead the nation by successfully achieving significant sustainable changes necessary to overcome longstanding issues in their undergraduate programs and educate inclusive communities of engineering and computer science students prepared to solve 21st-century challenges.” In 2015, six RED projects were funded followed by seven more in 2016. In addition, NSF funded researchers at Rose-Hulman and the University of Washington (called Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments Participatory Action Research REDPAR) to facilitate communication and collaboration among the RED teams and to study the processes followed by RED teams. Overviews of funded RED projects and the collaborative projects across teams are included here. In the conference session, a former RED program officer will introduce the RED program. Then seven RED teams (ASU, Purdue, Oregon State, USD, Colorado State, Iowa State, and Boise State) and the REDPAR team will present highlights from their projects. Session attendees will then engage with RED team members in an interactive format to learn more about the projects, gain insight into how they might prepare their own future RED proposals, see how these projects are changing the landscape of engineering education across the U.S., and consider approaches for applying lessons to their own institutions to enact change

A Teacher’s Journey Integrating Engineering in a Middle School Science Classroom and the Effects on Student Attitudes (RTP)

As teachers are encouraged to help students become problem solvers, incorporating engineering methods into the classroom has become an important theme of conversation. The purpose of this paper is to explore the change in student attitudes when integrating engineering instruction within a middle school science classroom. This study involves 8th grade students located within a single science teacher’s classroom exploring the integration of engineering activities and content for the first time. We assessed student attitudes using a survey constructed by the Friday Institute1 aimed measuring perception toward STEM related fields and study. Surveys were administered before and after engineering lessons. Along with student perceptions toward STEM content, we will describe the journey and thought process throughout the 8-week period from the implementing teacher’s point of view. We will detail the implementation process, reflect on student success and struggles, describe perceptions of student achievement based on student responses and completed work, as well as present an overarching reflection on the author’s journey throughout the process. Through the study and reflection others can learn how to bring engineering design into the classroom. It is also our goal that this process and study, including implementation, will help teachers become more confident adding engineering into their common practices and aid them in finding a place to begin

Motivations and Benefits for College Students Serving as Mentors in a High School Robotics Competition

Many universities provide space for student organizations in which undergraduate students are learning leadership skills, mentor other students and bring their engineering skills to practice.Purdue FIRST Programs (PFP) is a service-learning program where university students mentor predominantly high school student teams participating in the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). Whereas most FRC teams are mentored by professional engineers, PFP is unique in both the extent which it relies on student mentors and the overall scope of the organization. Existing models of mentorship do not adequately describe the specific relationship between the college and high schools students: (1) Due to the proximity in both age and experience, the college students cannot be considered more experienced (traditional model of mentorship) and (2) Dueto the fact that both student populations are in different educational systems, the college students cannot be considered peer mentors. To help understand this alternative mentoring relationship,this study was conducted to investigate the mentorship experience of the college students, their perceptions of the challenges, their motivations for participating in the program and their perceived benefits. A survey of all participants (n=37 returned) and semi-structured interviews with a purposefully selected sample (n=10) build the basis for this multiple case study. The interview data were transcribed and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results indicate that college students\u27 primary motivations for mentoring included wanting to continue working with FIRST after high school, wanting to contribute to the community in appreciation of their positive experiences with FIRST in high school, and enjoying doing the technical work associated with robotics competitions. The primary benefits described by the college students were the development of their leadership ability, learning how to work on a team, improving their ability to communicate, and other process skills. The college students also believed that there were significant benefits for the high school students from being mentored by college students, including developing close relationships because of the minimal age difference, helping the high school students to learn about college life and be more motivated to pursue higher education, and greater collaboration and student input compared to teams mentored by experienced engineers coming from industry. While the students were able to give examples of applying their technical knowledge and skills as mentors, they did not perceive significant learning in this area. The main challenges that the mentors faced included conflict resolution on the team, and making sure that mentors understood their role and did not take over and do work on the robot that should be done by the high school students. Despite these challenges, the participants appreciated being able to stay connected to the FIRST Robotics Competition after high school, the ability to develop communication and leadership skills, the close relationships that they developed with the high school students, and the opportunity to contribute positively to both the local and FIRST Robotics communities. Implications and further research needs will be discussed in the paper

Development and Assessment of a Combined REU/RET Program in Materials Science

In this paper we present an evaluation and lessons learned from a joint Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) program focused on energy and sustainability topics within a Materials Science and Engineering program at a public university. This program brought eleven undergraduate science and engineering students with diverse educational and institutional backgrounds and four local middle and high school teachers on campus for an 8-week research experience working in established lab groups at the university. Using the Qualtrics online survey software, we conducted pre-experience and post-experience surveys of the participants to assess the effects of participating in this summer research program. At the beginning of the summer, all participants provided their definition of technical research and described what they hoped to get out of their research experience, and the undergraduate students described their future career and educational plans. At the conclusion of the summer, a post-experience survey presented participants’ with their answers from the beginning of the summer and asked them to reflect on how their understanding of research and future plans involving research changed over the course of the summer experience. Many participants evolved a new understanding of research as a result of participating in the summer experience. In particular, they better recognized the collaborative nature of research and the challenges that can arise as part of the process of doing research. Participants acquired both technical and professional skills that they found useful, such as learning new programming languages, becoming proficient at using new pieces of equipment, reviewing technical literature, and improving presentation and communication skills. Undergraduates benefited from developing new relationships with their peers, while the teacher participants benefited from developing relationships with faculty and staff at the university. While most of the participants felt that they were better prepared for future studies or employment, they did not feel like the summer research experience had a significant impact on their future career or degree plans. Finally, while almost all of the participants described their summer research experience as positive, areas for improvement included better planning and access to mentors, as well as more structured activities for the teachers to adapt their research activities for the classroom

Connecting Hardware and Software in a Middle School Engineering Outreach Effort-RTP

Recent years have seen tremendous growth in outreach programs aimed at bringing computer programming to children and young adults via in-class and extracurricular coding activities. Programs such as the Hour of Code and Girls who Code have introduced millions of young people to programming around the world. For this study, we explored how combining programming with interactive electronics hardware can create a more engaging and dynamic learning environment for some students than what programming alone can achieve. In this paper, we describe an electrical engineering outreach effort in collaboration with the technology and engineering teacher at a local middle school. Beginning with an introduction to programming via the Hour of Code, we progressed to lessons utilizing the Sparkfun Electronics Digital Sandbox, an Arduino-compatible microcontroller board with numerous built-in sensors and outputs. Under the guidance of both a professor of electrical and computer engineering and their own technology teacher, the students learned about the relationship between electronics hardware and software via a series of hands-on activities that culminated in a final design project. To understand the experiences of the students who participated in these activities and develop insights into the relationship between hardware and software and students’ learning outcomes, we administered a survey and conducted a focus group with the students. The students described an overall positive experience, and also appreciated the ability to connect coding with the interactivity provided by the microcontroller board. The students described deriving significant satisfaction out of relatively simple tasks like programming an LED light to blink or change color. The students also overwhelmingly felt that learning about the interconnections between hardware and software gave them an understanding and better appreciation of the complexity of the electronics and computer software they interact with on a daily basis. The students generally found the programming to be the most challenging part of the activity but also rewarding, but tended to indicate activities utilizing hardware as the most engaging activity they encountered. Overall, the results of this study suggest that combined hardware and software educational activities can engage a wide number of students, help students understand the interconnectedness of these areas, and create a positive learning environment

Microcontrollers for Mechanical Engineers: From Assembly Language to Controller Implementation

This paper describes the evolution of a graduate and advanced undergraduate mechanical engineering course on microcontrollers and electromechanical control systems. The course begins with developing an understanding of the architecture of the microcontroller, and low-level programming in assembly language. It then proceeds to working with various functions of the microcontroller, including serial communications, interrupts, analog to digital conversion, and digital to analog conversion. Finally, the students learn how to characterize first and second order systems, and develop and implement their own controllers for a variety of electromechanical systems. The course takes the uncommon approach of teaching assembly language programming to mechanical engineering students, with the students using assembly language programming for approximately half of the course and the remainder using the C programming language. The authors believe that this approach helps students develop a better understanding of the architecture of the microcontroller and low-level routines found in embedded control applications. The course provides a bridge between traditional mechatronics courses that focus on electronics and interfacing, and lab-based control courses that use turnkey data acquisition systems and graphical programming tools such as Simulink or LabVIEW. The course has existed for over two decades, using a variety of microprocessor and microcontroller platforms. After evaluating numerous alternatives, the course was recently updated to use a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller evaluation board from STMicroelectronics paired with custom interfacing circuitry. This platform was chosen not only for more modern microcontroller technology, but also for the availability of free development tools and very inexpensive evaluation boards. This allows the students to write and test their programs outside of scheduled lab times, along with the ability to cost-effectively utilize microcontrollers in future projects

The Computer Science Professional\u27s Hatchery

As a recipient of a National Science Foundation Revolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) grant, the Computer Science Department at the Boise State University is building a Computer Science (CS) Professionals Hatchery. This paper is a summary to accompany the poster to be presented

Measuring the Effects of Pre-College Engineering Experiences, Year 2

Measuring the Effects of Pre-College Engineering ExperiencesThe implementation of co-curricular and extracurricular pre-college engineering programs hasexpanded dramatically in recent years. Many states now include engineering as part of theireducation standards for both students and teachers, reflecting the increasing acceptance ofengineering at the K-12 level and its potential value to students. In addition to promotingoutcomes that benefit all students regardless of career aspirations such as increased math andscience achievement and greater technological literacy, K-12 engineering programs have beenidentified as a means of recruiting and retaining potential students in engineering.The growth of pre-college engineering programs means that increasing numbers of incomingengineering students will have had some exposure to engineering prior to their enrollment inengineering programs. However, the effects of pre-college engineering experiences onundergraduate engineering students are relatively unexplored. To address this lack ofunderstanding, this study uses a mixed-methods exploratory approach to examine how exposureto pre-college engineering programs affects the experiences of university engineering students.Conducting and analyzing phenomenographic interviews with cohorts of first year engineeringstudents yielded five qualitatively different ways undergraduate engineering students experiencethe transition from pre-college to university engineering. These experiences range from feelingtrapped in engineering due to pre-college engineering, to feelings of boredom and frustration dueto misalignments between the two sets of experiences, to experiencing a boost in confidence andthe ability to help others as a result of participation in pre-college engineering programs.We are currently utilizing these qualitative results to develop an instrument to measure the extentof these effects in the larger population of undergraduate engineering students at multipleinstitutions. We are also exploring the relationship between pre-college engineering participationand quantitative measures of success in undergraduate engineering, including grades andpersistence.While some undergraduate engineering programs may take into account pre-college engineeringexperiences when forming design teams, most undergraduate programs assume little to no formalexposure to engineering prior to matriculation. The results of this research will help engineeringadministrators, instructors and designers of undergraduate and pre-college curricula adapt tostudents’ changing needs and abilities as a result of their increased experience with engineeringprior to university

Voices of Our Students: Using Evidence-Based Methods to Inform a Multidisciplinary Engineering Program Design

Listening carefully to our students and integrating the variables that matter to them is a step that we can take to increase the number of women and underrepresented minority graduates in engineering. This paper shares an evaluative case study as we report findings from data gathering tools guiding our continuous improvement process. The findings illuminate students’ perceptions of their engineering design course and curriculum. We conclude by discussing the pedagogical decisions the teaching team is making as a result of listening to our students’ voices