project skills for engineering students - michael mccarthy

EXPERIMENT:

F2009: Project Skills for First Year Engineering Students

W2010: Internship on Senior Projects,

Impact on Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics Learning

E98: Project Engineering

J. Michael McCarthy and Daniel Flynn

2010 STEM Summit, Early Childhood through Higher EducationArnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academies of Sciences and EngineeringUniversity of California, Irvine

Literature on Project Education

Peynircioglu, Z., (1989). The generation effect with pictures and nonsense figures. Acta Psychologica. 70, 153-160.When subjects draw pictures (read: actively engaged to create) their retention of the elements was increased illustrating

the generation effect for non-verbal elements.

Doolen, T. L., and Long, M. (2007). Identification of retention levers using a survey of engineering freshman attitudes at Oregon State University. European Journal of Engineering Education, 32(6), 721–734.

Incorporated hands-on learning in the early engineering coursework to help provide students with confirmation that engineering is an engaging and active profession.

Bhattacharyya, S., Bhattacharya, K. (2009). Technology-Integrated Project-Based Approach in Science Education: A Qualitative Study of In-Service Teachers’ Learning Experiences, Electronic. Journal of Science Education Volume 13(3), 113- 138.

By directly engaging the learner with the science (or content-related) problem, a PBA can create authentic learning experiences through which learners discover a fact, concept, or principle on their own.

Rehman, Said, Al-assaf (2009) An integrated approach for strategic development of Engineering curriculua: Focus o Students' Design Skills. IEEE Transactions on Education 52(4) 470-481.

There have been scattered efforts to deliver engineering design experience at various levels of undergraduate studies [10]–[21]. However, most of these attempts [10]–[21] focused on the design of an individual course, possibly enlightening the reader about that particular course and sometimes identifying the weaknesses and strengths of the course.


Engineering Education


ScienceMathematics

Engineering ScienceLaboratory Courses

CapstoneProject

Professional Spine

Professional spine: Engagement, teamwork, retention, communication, competition, entrepreneurship, innovation.

ScienceMathematics


CapstoneProject

ScienceMathematics


CapstoneProject

FreshmanProject

Our Experiment: Do project skills and experience improve learning?

Senior Projects at UCI


For 2010 there 76 projects in five departments involving over 500 students

4 EECS Retreat: Engineering Education at UCI

Some Context

1905:• About 10,000 MEs in the U.S.• Average salary $5,000/yr ($100,000/yr today)• Good job security• A dentist earned $2,500/yr

2005:• About 260,000 MEs in the U.S.• Average salary about $60,000• A license to look for a job (7-yr half life)• Average dentist salary is greater by 7 times

Engineers have lost ground by more than an order of magnitude

George A. Hazelrigg, NSF

Wm. Wolf (President, National Academy of Engineering)

“The thing that distinguishes engineering from the sciences is design.”

Design is all about decision making, not problem solving.

China and India are producing nearly 1 million engineers per year:• they are well educated;• they will work for $5,000/yr; and• in 5-10 years, there may be enough to supply the world’s need for engineers.

5 MAE 145: Machine Theory

Engineering v.

• National Basketball Association, 30 teams, revenues of approx. $100m each, $3.13 billion in 2008/2009

• Major League Baseball, 30 teams, revenues of approx. $175m each, $5.2 billion in 2009.

• The Recording Industries Association of America (RIAA) reports $8.4 billion revenue in 2008.

• Parker-Hannifin Corp. reports $12.1 billion in revenue in 2008 ($9.0b in 2009).

• Boeing Corp. reports $68.2 billion in revenue in 2009.

• Ford Motor Co. Reports $112.3 billion in revenue in 2009 ($172.4b in 2007).

• General Motors, Corp. reports $148.9 billion in revenue in 2008 ($179.9b in 2007).

Engineering companies:• can have more than 10-20 employees for every 1 engineer;• can generate over $200,000 in revenue for every employee; (Parker $164,000, Boeing $399,000, Ford $565,000)• support service providers such as financial services, shipping and transportation, facilities and real estate, and human resources.

The effort of engineers has a significant impact on the U. S. economy.


From Science to Engineering

y=f(x)

Data

y=f(x)

Question: How do I make it work?

These are two very different questions.

Question: What do I know about the world?


Teach Project Skills?

Senior projects with no skills training:• poor quality workspace: either at home or at UCI,• poor equipment: no training, no safety,• poor time management: all the work was left to the last minute, so it caused problems in other courses.• poor cost management: they spent a lot of their own money,• poor personnel management: a few did all the work and others did nothing.

The outcome was a poorly functioning, low quality design that was displayed prominently at public events. Alumni returning to UCI say firmly and repeatedly: “ Their project experience was the ONLY thing in their UCI education that helped their career.”

This should be of no surprise:• Admission policies select for the overachiever, the person in High School who would do the entire group project in order to ensure a good grade;• In-class group projects are small enough that this same behavior is successful at UCI;• This means that the our Engineering students have learned to organize a group project as a personal effort by the group leader;• Our undergraduate students find it emotionally difficult to break a task into components, assign responsibility to individuals, and then trust the individuals to accomplish their tasks on time.

Attention by a faculty member of exactly the same type as needed by beginning graduate students completely overcomes this difficulty, and the outcome is remarkable.

Freshman Project Course

What you will learn:• Basic manufacturing procedures, emphasizing safety• Basic engineering procedures, emphasizing prediction and testing.• Team management using action items and scheduling.• Document preparation: drawings, reports, calculations and portfolios.


Project Skills Training

Week Lecture Lab Milestones

1 L1-Roster, Organization, Planning. EHS safety training, Personal safety equipment. Training videos: Handtools, Fasteners.

Lab 1 : Handtools and fasteners

Organize teams,

2 Technology Assessment. L2-Beam Bending.

Lab 2: (a) Bending of beams. (b) Disassembly of soccer robots and parts evaluation.

Technology assessment.

3 L3-Straight line vehicle dynamics. Training videos: Measurement and layout, Cutting, grinding and filing. Lab 3: (a) Cutting and filing. (b) Layout, drilling and jigs.

Parts drawings using Sketchup.

Evaluate deflection using Excel.

4 L4-Electric motors and batteries. Training video: soldering. Lab 4: (a) electrical wiring and soldering.

Weigh component parts. Estimate vehicle weight. Evaluate acceleration performance.

5 L5-Materials. Tension and shear. Failure of beams and fasteners.

Training video: Basic structures. Lab 5: Evaluate design drawings. Order parts and begin part manufacture.

Evaluate motor performance using Excel. Measure output torque and evaluate vehicle performance.

6 L6-Vehicle mass properties, center of gravity, moments of inertia. Alumni event.

Lab 6: Assemble and test soccer robot. Estimate forces on soccer robot and evaluate joint strength. Alumni Event Nov. 7.

7 L7-Vehicle Chassis and Suspension Lab 7: Mechanical verification. Size and stiffness requirements. Lateral and torsional deflection measurements.

8 Project status report. Lab 8: Dynamic testing: acceleration, braking, skid pad and autocross.

Test report on mechanical verification.

9 Preliminary Design Review Lab 9: Soccer skills assessment, team assignments. Test report on dynamic performance.

10 Robot Soccer match: 2 on 2 with one reserve player. (two out of three wins.) Engineering Plaza.

Test report on skill assessment.

11 Fall Design Review. Portfolios, Detailed design document.


Robot Soccer


The Experiment


Treatment:a. Project skills training Fall 2009;b. Interns on Senior projects for Winter 2010.

Measurement:• Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics grades Fall 09, Winter 10 and Spring 10.• Pre and post-assessment of Engineering fundamentals classified via Bloom.

Evaluation:• Comparison of initial characteristics of treatment and control groups.• Comparison of performance in Mathematics, physics and chemistry.• Comparison of performance on Engineering fundamentals assessment.

Summary


• Engineering project education presents serious challenges in time, cost, personnel, resource management, equipment and maintenance, and safety.

• Engineering faculty focus course preparation on engineering fundamentals, because the fundamentals do not change and they can be adapted to differing circumstances.

• Forced to choose between engineering professionalism and engineering fundamentals, engineering faculty will always choose engineering fundamentals.

Claim: Students must be shown how to adapt mathematics, science, and engineering fundamentals to the differing circumstances presented by real design problems. They do not learn this on their own.

The hypothesis guiding our experiment: Project skills training and experiences ensure students learn mathematics, science and engineering fundamentals.