An Experimental Undergraduate Research Seminar

As an experiment in student-directed group research activity in an area of social relevance, a small interdisciplinary group of undergraduates engaged in a ten-week research seminar concerned with technical aids to the blind. The instructor played only a minimal role. Several projects were undertaken and many have been pursued, at the students' initiative, beyond the end of the seminar. Although the extreme freedom experienced by the students led to some frustrations, most enrollees felt the experience to have been very valuable.     

Interdisciplinary project work: practice makes perfect?

This paper reports the findings of an action research study into a major interdisciplinary group project. The project was performed over one semester by some 180 third-year undergraduate students majoring in engineering and design disciplines at De Montfort University in the United Kingdom. The paper discusses the rationale behind the project, the academic background of the students and the project brief. In addition, the assessment criteria used by the academic staff to assess the work of the groups is introduced. The paper utilizes the research findings to identify and discuss a number of changes in students' performance, attitude and culture. The results of the research into undergraduate multi-disciplinary teams are compared to findings from research into multi-disciplinary projects operated in the European motor car industry. Finally, a comparison is then made with current findings of studies of student multi-disciplinary work in the American academic environment. The author concludes that multi-disciplinary product design teams yield many tangible benefits including the rapid development of marketable products. Undergraduate students also gain many intangible benefits such as improved interpersonal skills, positive emotions and an increase in personal performance and motivation through working in multi-disciplinary teams     

Bioinformatics and Proteomics: An Engineering Problem Solving-Based Approach

There is a growing need for engineers in the burgeoning fields of bioinformatics and proteomics. The high-throughput nature of both of these related fields has made traditional biological methods, which tend to focus on one or two molecules at a time, obsolete. The consequent deluge of experiment-based information has made engineering and problem-solving skills essential to attack the resulting complex, multiscale problems. Certain technologies, such as robotics automation, microfabrication, control, and signal processing, are particularly amenable to the engineering expertise of electrical and other engineering disciplines. This paper describes methodologies and findings from 6.092/HST.480, two courses taught in 2005, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that focused on bioinformatics and proteomics with an engineering-based, problem-solving approach. Many questions exist regarding how such interdisciplinary courses should be structured. For example, what should be the prerequisites, and what teaching methods could be successfully used? The course teaching style involved an elaboration, theory-based approach so that students could extend and apply engineering concepts at increasing levels of complexity as the course progressed. In addition, the biological epitomes used were in increasing levels of abstraction. On subsequent evaluations, students had high praise for the teaching, and several pursued further research in this area. Analysis of the student feedback suggested that this course served a previously unfilled need     

A Course in Energy and Public Policy-A Liberal-Art Course for Power Engineers and Public Administrators

We present herein a report on an interdisciplinary course in Energy and Public Policy, that is now required of all Power Systems Engineering students at Northeastern University. The course is based on objectives put forth by T.J. Nagel [1]. Briefly, these are: (1) To provide a broad overview of the technical, economic, social and political aspects of the energy problem; (2) To enable the student to gain insight into the wide variety of rational and irrational arguments that surround the energy industry; (3) To enable the student to develop effective methods for dealing with complex interdisciplinary problems where he/she is but one member of a team; and (4) To help the student develop improved written and verbal communication skills. This paper describes our first effort at balancing and combining the methodologies of seminar, lecture and debate to work toward our four objectives. We were quite successful in producing a course that aroused enthusiasm. The course proved far more effective than we anticipated in developing communication skills. On the other hand, an unbiased examination of the students' papers and debates would have found them long on enthusiasm but short on scholarship. This paper presents our analysis of why this happened and how we intend to improve upon our initial effort.     

Student attitudes toward statistics before and after acomputer-integrated introductory statistics course

A validated questionnaire measuring the attitude of engineering students toward statistics was administered to 46 male and 17 female undergraduate engineers during the first and last week of class. The objective was to test the hypothesis that a newly designed computer-integrated statistics course positively affects students' attitudes toward statistics. For the students as a whole, no significant difference is found between the students' attitudes before and after the course. However, some demographic characteristics indicate distinctions among the attitudes of students. Specifically, students owning computers have initially a more positive attitude toward the course. Males also start the semester with a more positive attitude toward the application of statistics to their engineering fields. At the end of the semester, however these differences are no longer evident. On the other hand, students with previous exposure to statistics and the course with a more positive attitude than other students. Also, by the end of the semester, students in industrial, manufacturing, and civil engineering tend to have a more positive attitude toward the usefulness of statistics in their profession than other engineering students. Supporting previous educational research, it was found that a student's attitude toward the course is positively correlated with the grade received. For future curriculum development, this research indicates that integration of statistics into a student's curriculum may provide the greatest impact on improving attitudes toward statistics     

Computer vision in undergraduate education: modern embedded computing

Computer vision has historically been taught as a graduate subject since few examples of the discipline were being practiced in mainstream engineering. In recent years, the incorporation of multimedia into embedded devices has drawn some vision topics into mainstream attention. Examples of consumer products include digital video recorders, cellular phones, and automobile collision-avoidance systems. This paper describes the development of an undergraduate course that incorporates some vision topics into the larger context of embedded computing. Traditional topics, such as processor types, dynamic power management, and real-time scheduling, are taught alongside relevant vision topics, such as codecs, concurrent interfaces, and multimedia signal acquisition, storage, and rendering. In lab work, the students program hardware to operate as a digital video camera. While the primary goal for the course is to teach embedded computing, a secondary goal for the course is to entice students into graduate study in computer vision. However, a major developmental point was to justify the vision content in the context of how it serves the needs of students not opting for graduate study, as well as how the course would impact students working in other related graduate research areas.     

Computational electromagnetics in education at the University ofBradford, England

The incorporation of high-frequency computational electromagnetics into courses on antennas and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) is reviewed. The lecture material consists of an overview of the main techniques, plus a deeper treatment of the method of moments and the planar near-to-far-field transformation method. Class exercises using moment-method software are possible in the Master of Science course. For the lecturer, and for students with a deeper interest in the area, the greatest benefit is undoubtedly obtained from dissertation projects which permit an extended study of some problem. These are usually chosen to have some element of novelty, and hence frequently produce some useful research return     

A Course in Law and Technology

There has been growing interest in the interactions between law and technology as subject matter having potential utility for understanding modern society and for helping to resolve some of its difficulties. There has also been increasing interest in various "mastery" strategies as effective ways to organize and conduct courses. This paper describes a course in law and technology taught using selected features of mastery strategies modified to the unique needs of an interdisciplinary course and a very limited number of proctors.     

An Individually Paced Introductory Course in Network Analysis

This paper describes some results of a course in network analysis taught to all electrical and mechanical engineering sophomores at the University of New Hampshire. The report covers two years experience with the course. The first year (spring 1971) forty students took the course under an individually prescribed instruction approach (IPI) while fifty students were taught with the standard lecture-recitation method. The second year (spring 1972), all seventy students took the course under PI. Comparison between students in IPI and the lecture-recitation method by semester end test, a three month retention test, and performance in the next electrical engineering course indicate no significant difference in the material learned. A detailed questionnaire was filled out by each IPI student. Most significant were the responses that indicated that although most students considered the IPI approach to be more work, most preferred it to the standard approach.     

Balancing technical and social issues: a new first-year designcourse

The new ABET EC2000 accreditation guidelines call for greater emphasis on social and ethical issues in the education of engineering students. Universities are responding in varied ways - generally through increased liberal arts content and, in a few instances, through design activities, but generally, design education focuses primarily on the technical and process aspects. This is especially true in the new first-year engineering design courses that have evolved in the 1990s. A first-year “Introduction to Engineering Design” course has been developed at the University of Dayton that seeks to achieve a balance between technical, social and ethical issues throughout the design process to help ground the education of engineering students with the ideals of social and ethical responsibility as part of their profession. This grounding has been achieved through interdisciplinary projects, which teach students, through self-discovery, the relevance of social, environmental, cultural, political and ethical factors to their normal engineering functions     

Effective technology transfer to the undergraduate and graduate classroom as a result of a novel Ph.D. Program

This paper examines a case study that suggests using new research results as the central component of an original course developed by a Ph.D. candidate is an effective way to transfer technology to the undergraduate and graduate classroom. The technology transfer outlined here took place in the form of a course that was built around two years of state-of-the-art research, before the research was completed and published. This method represents a new way of training Ph.D. candidates who aspire to be professors and also results in the development of an innovative course. This work is premised on the need to educate science and engineering students in the latest technology, specifically in micro- and nanotechnologies, which have the added demands of multidisciplinary content and a shortage of qualified graduates for an expanding job market.     

Pitfalls and paths to success in interdisciplinary scientific database research

The challenges of interdisciplinary research are often alluded to but seldom talked about directly. Focusing on interdisciplinary research conducted by biologists and computer scientists, my intent in this article is to present for your consideration thoughts emerging out of my experiences with the hope that you can avoid pitfalls and choose paths that lead to success. Ten real pitfalls in interdisciplinary research are described in the form of painful questions, and some possible paths around them suggested. The first seven are largely about data, while the remaining three are about people. Successfully managing a flood of data with a DBMS leads biologists to perform lots of analyses. But that leads to them being overwhelmed by too many results. Biologists and computer scientists could be mismatched in several ways, each of which causes frustration. However, I have found that we have much in common and really are not isolated islands, or two cultures. As I step back and extract what I have learned, my main conclusion is this: while researchers face formidable scientific and computational tasks, the truly hard part is communicating.     

An interdisciplinary laboratory sequence in electrical and computerengineering: curriculum design and assessment results

In the fall quarter of 1997, the Auburn University Electrical Engineering Department (USA) implemented a new, interdisciplinary core laboratory sequence. This new laboratory sequence was one outcome of a complete curriculum revision based on four years of work by the departmental Curriculum Study Committee. This paper presents the laboratory curriculum design, and the results of a multi-part assessment conducted beginning one year after implementation. Many students are initially surprised by the level of challenge provided in the first laboratory course, but readily accommodate as they progress through the sequence. A multifaceted assessment strategy has evolved which uses end-of-term student evaluations, retrospective student evaluations, student oral interviews, and faculty interviews. The assessment information is used to improve the laboratories through modification of the laboratory manuals, better instructions to graduate teaching assistants, modifications of experiments, and a purposeful effort to keep all faculty informed of laboratory course content so they can build upon the laboratory experience in classroom teaching. The overall result of the new laboratory experience is that students have a more integrated approach to design and a much better understanding of the hardware, software and instrumentation used in electrical engineering practice. In addition, students who complete the sequence have better oral and written communication skills, and are more confident in approaching job interviews and initial job challenges     

电机软起动的一种数存式控制方案及应用尝试

介绍一种交流电机软起动装置的数字存储式实现方案与电气工程及其自动化专业建设及专业综合实践课程教学相结合的一些尝试,主要包括3个方面：1)围绕校内外专业实践教学安排所提出的改革思路．以及对实践教学方案选择所进行的多方面考虑;2)将具体实践方案的实现与学生的科研活动相结合．使之“出自于学生．用之于学生”;3)对结合科研实践所确定的交流电机软起动的数字存储式新型控制方案及装置．从工作原理上进行扼要介绍。经过6届学生的专业实践教学,表明了该方案及诸多改革实践尝试的正确性与可行性。     

Microelectronic manufacturing engineering curriculum development

The author reviews the current status of semiconductor manufacturing education in US universities and identifies some shortcomings. He describes the development of an initiative in microelectronic manufacturing engineering curriculum that was recently implemented at Florida State University. This program utilizes an interdisciplinary curriculum to address the problems identified by the author. A workshop with representatives from Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) companies, university leaders and SRC managers was held to define appropriate curricula. In addition, a comprehensive independent survey which attempts to assess the current semiconductor industry needs in education is presented. Finally, the lessons learned, including specific recommendations of students, faculty, and industry representatives, are presented     

Microtechnology, nanotechnology, and the scanning-probe microscope: an innovative course

An innovative combined microtechnology/nanotechnology/scanning-probe microscope (SPM) course for undergraduate and graduate students has been developed at the University of Nevada, Reno, in conjunction with Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Two years of technical SPM research carried out at Stanford University was transferred to the classroom before the results of the research were completed and published. The course, which was mapped to the Kolb learning cycle, was well received by students and serves as an example of an effective, innovative, and highly pertinent small-systems course anchored by the SPM.     

Assessing experiences of international students in Haiti and Benin

The past two decades have seen an increase in international experiences for engineering students focused on service and research in developing countries. Motivation for these programs reflects the growing recognition that there is a need for creating engineers with greater global awareness [18] who are familiar with the need for integrating solutions to complex problems through interdisciplinary approaches [12]. Of particular interest have been programs in humanitarian engineering that address these needs while at the same time contributing to the attractiveness of engineering, helping to bridge the gender gap that has challenged engineering education, and providing new opportunities to see engineering in a broader global/ethical realm [3], [11], [12], [14], [16], [30].     

An Interdisciplinary Course in Real-Time Computing

A need is arising for engineers who understand both an engineering discipline, and the use and capabilities of real-time computing equipment. This paper discusses the development, content, and implementation of an interdisciplinary course in real-time computing. Experiences in running this course will be compared to the normal electrical engineering course of similar content.