Workshops

Workshop 1A - Software Engineering Department Heads Workshop

This workshop aims at providing a forum for Software Engineering (SE) program leads and chairs to present and discuss issues related to software engineering program delivery. These issues normatively include curriculum issues, program collaboration issues, faculty issues and SE discipline tracking issues. The workshop goals are to help those running, proposing or considering accredited SE programs more effectively formulate and achieve their program objectives. The first half of the workshop will focus on SE Competency Models and their application, while the latter half of the workshop will focus on SE Curriculum, collaboration, faculty and discipline tracking issues.

 

Workshop 1B - The Student Experience in an Integrative, Project-based Course on Quantitative Engineering Analysis

In this workshop, participants will engage with a number of activities based on the experimental course: Quantitative Engineering Analysis, offered to first year students at our college. This 8-credit, two-semester course was designed to help improve student confidence and competence in choosing and using the power tools of engineering in solving real world problems. This course is taught by a multidisciplinary team of faculty at our institution and utilizes a number of innovative approaches to experiential and self-directed learning, and project based learning of fundamental mathematics, physics and engineering content. In the spirit of "learning by doing", participants will engage in a set of activities based on a subset of activities done by students in the class. These activities draw on three modules from the course: boat design, facial recognition, and computational robotics. Activities from these modules will illustrate approaches we took to teaching problem decomposition, learning quantitative tools, and bridging theory to practice. As such, these activities will develop approaches for analyzing and solving engineering problems, as well as fundamental concepts in mathematics, physics, and engineering at the first-year college level. Additionally, we will share the approaches and frameworks we took for teaming - both for students and instructors, appropriate scaffolding for self-directed learning, assessment using a "constructive engagement" rubric, and creating an engaging, student-centered learning environment. It is expected that participants will learn approaches to experiential, project-based learning of fundamental mathematics, physics and engineering for first and second year students, appropriate levels of scaffolding for project-based courses, and encouraging self-directed and peer learning.

 

Workshop 1C - How to Prepare Competitive NSF Engineering Education Proposals

The goal of this workshop is to provide guidance to participants on engineering education funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation (NSF). This will be accomplished through a combination of activities including (i) interactive and dynamic mini-presentations by NSF program directors; (ii) a mock proposal review session by participants working in small groups and (iii) an interactive question and answer session in which participants have the opportunity to  cross-examine a panel of current NSF grantees. In describing the various funding opportunities relevant to engineering education, the workshop will give guidance on how to identify the right funding program as well as how to write persuasive and competitive proposals. Participants will experience rich peer interactions and also have the opportunity to connect directly with grantees and NSF program directors.

 

Workshop 1D - Writing an Engineering Education Proposal for the National Science Foundation: An Interactive Workshop

The goals of this workshop are to increase the community’s knowledge of current funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and to support projects with potential significant impacts on engineering education. This workshop gives new and experienced principal investigators the opportunity to interact with program directors from the Division of Engineering Education & Centers (EEC) in the Directorate of Engineering and the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) in the Directorate of Education and Human Resources (EHR). Participants will learn about new and current funding opportunities in a highly interactive format (i.e., team-based activities and discussion).

 

Workshop 2A - Making MIDFIELD More Accessible: A Workshop for R Beginners

This workshop introduces data and tools for investigating undergraduate persistence metrics using R. Student record data are from MIDFIELD, a database of registrars’ data from US institutions. The stratified data sample includes demographic, term, course, and degree information for 98,000 students from 1987 to 2016. The midfieldr package provides functions for determining persistence metrics such as graduation rates or program stickiness and for grouping findings by institution, program, sex, and race/ethnicity. The goal of the workshop is to share our data, methods, and metrics for intersectional research in student persistence. The workshop is designed for R beginners.

 

Workshop 2B - Tools for the 3C’s of Entrepreneurially Minded Learning (EML)

Entrepreneurially Minded Learning is a pedagogical technique that seeks to equip students to be more curious about trends in the changing world, make connections from disparate sources of information to gain insight, and identify unexpected opportunities to create extraordinary value for themselves and their communities. The core of the entrepreneurial mindset can be summarized succinctly by the three C’s: Curiosity, Connections, and Creating value. This interactive workshop will introduce participants to these three C’s using three specific tools that facilitators have successfully used in their engineering classrooms. The workshop is targeted towards a total of 40 participants and will require only projection capabilities for audio-visual equipment.

 

Workshop 2C - Remote laboratory exercises and tutorials for spectrum-agile radio frequency systems

This workshop will be valuable for anyone teaching or studying wireless communications or using interactive remote laboratories. Specific goals include:

• Introduce educators to engaging remote laboratory exercises and instructional modules that employ an Internet-accessible, software-defined radio-based testbed to demonstrate introductory and advanced wireless communications concepts. In the exercises, students manually operate or program controllers to operate radio links in challenging signal environments, and monitor the performance of these links as transmission parameters are adapted.
• Demonstrate use of the tutorials to present advanced applications such as spectrum sharing and cognitive radio, which can be demonstrated to novice students and addressed through problem-solving remote laboratory exercises that include code development for advanced students and engineers in the workforce.
• Solicit feedback from workshop participants to improve the tutorials and underlying hardware and software infrastructure, and to ensure relevance and applicability of the tutorials across a wide range of institutions and curricula.

 

Workshop 2D - Integrating Systems Approaches into Education Using Active Case Studies

The focus of this workshop is integrating systems approach principles and content into engineering courses of all disciplines using a case study pedagogy. Participants should leave with a clearer understanding of what a systems approach is, how to run active case studies, and how it can be integrated into existing engineering courses. To achieve these goals, our approach is to work through a systems case live with the participants… starting with the participants doing the case as students and then having them switch roles to be instructors working through creating, running, and assessing the case.