Thesis (EdD)--Open University.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1920. / Vita. "Selected bibliography for farm shop work": p. 79-82.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of WisconsinM--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

<p> The purpose of this casual-comparative study was to determine if students being taught the Minnesota Science Physics Standards via contextual learning methods in Project Lead the Way (PLTW) Principles of Engineering or the PLTW Aerospace Engineering courses, taught by a Career Technical Education (CTE) teacher, achieve at the same rate as students in a physics course taught by a science teacher. The PLTW courses only cover the standards taught in the first trimester of physics. The PLTW courses are two periods long for one trimester. Students who successfully pass the PLTW Principles of Engineering course or the PLTW Engineering Aerospace course earn one-half credit in physics and one-half elective credit. The instrument used to measure student achievement was the district common summative assessment for physics. The Common Summative Assessment scores were pulled from the data warehouse from the first trimester of the 2013-2014 school year. Implications of the research address concepts of contextual learning especially in the Career Technical Education space. The mean score for Physics students (30.916) and PLTW Principles of Engineering students (32.333) was not statistically significantly different. Students in PLTW Principles of Engineering achieved at the same rate as students in physics. Due to the low rate of students participating in the Common Summative Assessment in PTLW Aerospace (four out of seven students), there is not enough data to determine if there is a significant difference in the Physics A scores and PLTW Aerospace Engineering scores.</p><p>

This dissertation integrates 2 soft skills, communication & teamwork, into a traditional Industrial Engineering course (MIE 353, Engineering Economic Decision Making) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in the fall of 1997. This will be considered the program group. A team project, formally presented at the end of the course & graded by neutral observers to pre-set standards, supplemented the lecture material. A comparison or control group was concurrently measured in IE 312, Engineering Economic Analysis, (comparable engineering content & team project requirements, no exposure to communication & teamwork material) at Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts. Multiple assessments took place at both schools to measure performance & attitude differences. A University of Massachusetts alumni survey (same questionnaire) was also conducted to compare to the student data on the importance of communication & teamwork to their career success. Due to limited sample sizes at each school, this research is considered a "pilot study". The preponderance of the assessment data tend to support the Hypotheses. Rationale & motivation for this study follows: Engineering curriculum designers face several diverse stakeholders with often opposing needs. These stakeholders include their customers (the students) & their investing families, society & the local community, industry, graduate schools (both research & application oriented), accreditation boards, & other university departments & schools. Industry, as it always has, requires solid technical foundations; the "hard" skills, such as computer modeling, the sciences, analytic decision making & competence in the specific engineering discipline. Given worldwide competitiveness & complexity, accelerating product & service dynamics, & increasingly sophisticated customers, industry has incremented the hard skills above with a set of "soft" interpersonal skills, such as communication, teamwork, project management, delegation & leadership. To survive & thrive, industry has raised its expectation level of engineering graduates, as well as the engineering schools that produce them. Industry does not want to take on the entire soft training burden.

<p> Every field of study has a set of domain-specific concepts that anyone who desires to work in that field must know and understand. Most students who pursue university degrees in engineering trust that their education is designed to provide them with this knowledge. But does it? In electrical engineering (EE), conceptual understanding of electrical phenomena has rarely been addressed. Even though the presumed goal of instructors and students alike is to learn the concepts of electrical phenomena well enough to be able to use the concepts to design useful things, it is difficult to determine whether this goal is being achieved. The purpose of this study was to develop reasonable representations of the mental models used by senior EE students as they thought about and worked with electrical phenomena. Focusing on students&rsquo; mental models of threshold concepts in electrical phenomena can thus increase knowledge of students&rsquo; conceptual understanding, which can contribute to systematic research into pedagogical and assessment methods in this area of study, which forms one of the most basic and fundamental areas of knowledge needed by EE students.</p><p> Thus, the research question addressed by this study was:</p><p> What do senior EE students&rsquo; mental models of the fundamental electrical phenomena of voltage, current, and the relationship between them look like? </p><p> The theory of mental models claims that everyone organizes their understanding of the way the world works by constructing models in the mind by which they both explain phenomena that they observe, and make predictions about what is likely to occur in a given situation.</p><p> To observe the students&rsquo; mental models in operation, semi-structured interviews were used to engage the participants in a conversation concerning their knowledge and experience in applying electrical ideas. Using discourse analysis, a representation of each student&rsquo;s mental model was created, consisting of a concept map and a short narrative. While the models were all different, analysis of them as a group led to the emergence of five dominant themes, or ways of thinking.</p><p> The findings of this study have implications for the course of study that these students are engaged in. How effective has it been in developing the conceptual understanding that they will need after they graduate? Knowledge of the outcomes of a course of study: the conceptual understanding of these students, the misconceptions present in their models, and the dominant themes that drive their models, can inform ongoing efforts in curriculum development. </p>

<p>This mixed-method research study evaluated the effectiveness of value stream mapping (VSM) and 5S lean tools based on Ohno&rsquo;s waste model and Womack&rsquo;s lean thinking concept to identify and eliminate office waste during the employee award nomination process in a large U.S. manufacturing company. The participants involved 19 award administrators and 108 previous award nominees from 2007 to 2012. The researcher carried out two surveys using structured and non-structured questions. Data was collected and analyzed. A Balanced Integrated Office Lean Model (BIOLM) framework was developed and pilot tested to engage employees with practical application of lean tools outside of the manufacturing shop floor. This research addressed the existing gap in the body of knowledge dealing with office lean practice. The findings from this study are generalizable and applicable to businesses interested in improving productivity in the office environment. </p><p> <i>Keywords</i>: lean thinking, office lean, employee engagement, award nomination, continuous improvement, 5S, value stream mapping, and waste management </p>

<p> Pultruded glass fiber reinforced polymer (pGFRP) composite profiles, having the advantages of high strength-to-weight ratio and light weight, have seen significant developmental progress and numerous practical applications in the field of civil engineering. However, the low modulus of elasticity and high anisotropy, in addition to the relative slenderness of the thin-walled profiles, result in complex local and global buckling behavior for pGFRP members and significant interaction between local and global buckling modes. In this work, the stability behavior of pGFRP I-sections subject to flexure was addressed. An extensive review of stability behaviors of pGFRP members, including: flange local buckling (FLB), global lateral torsional buckling (LTB) and interaction between local and global buckling (interactive buckling) behaviors, was carried out. Two experimental programs were conducted: 62 four-point bending tests to investigate FLB behavior and 86 three-point bending tests to investigate LTB behavior. Interactive buckling behavior was observed in both series of tests and was shown to be quite prevalent in results from the LTB tests. Experimental results were compared with existing design guides and analytical solutions. Uniform under-predictions were found for FLB behavior of the I-sections considered and over-predictions were generally found for LTB behavior, exhibiting the need of new design formulas with improved accuracy. Analytical studies were presented and non-empirical design formulas derived using energy methods were proposed with respect to the buckling behaviors observed in the experimental program. Supporting the experimental work, a series of material characterization tests were carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties of the pGFRP materials used. Both standard and nonstandard test methods that can be readily conducted using typically available test equipment as well as those requiring simple material preparations are recommended.</p><p>

<p> Industry has a continuing need to train its workforce on recent engineering developments, but many engineering products and processes are hard to explain because of limitations of size, visibility, time scale, cost, and safety. The product or process might be difficult to see because it is either very large or very small, because it is enclosed within an opaque container, or because it happens very fast or very slowly. Some engineering products and processes are also costly or unsafe to use for training purposes, and sometimes the domain expert is not physically available at the training location. All these limitations can potentially be addressed using advanced visualization techniques such as virtual reality. This dissertation describes the development of an immersive virtual reality application using the Six Sigma DMADV process to explain the main equipment and processes used in a concentrating solar power plant. The virtual solar energy center (VEC) application was initially developed and tested in a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) during 2013 and 2014. The software programs used for development were SolidWorks, 3ds Max Design, and Unity 3D. Current hardware and software technologies that could complement this research were analyzed. The NVIDA GRID Visual Computing Appliance (VCA) was chosen as the rendering solution for animating complex CAD models in this application. The MiddleVR software toolkit was selected as the toolkit for VR interactions and CAVE display. A non-immersive 3D version of the VEC application was tested and shown to be an effective training tool in late 2015. An immersive networked version of the VEC allows the user to receive live instruction from a trainer being projected via depth camera imagery from a remote location. Four comparative analysis studies were performed. These studies used the average normalized gain from pre-test scores to determine the effectiveness of the various training methods. With the DMADV approach, solutions were identified and verified during each iteration of the development, which saved valuable time and resulted in better results being achieved in each revision of the application, with the final version having 88% positive responses and same effectiveness as other methods assessed.</p>

The dominant pedagogy for engineering educations still remains chalk and talk despite the large body of education research that demonstrates its ineffectiveness. Traditional approaches to structural engineering education place a heavy emphasis on lecture-based delivery of the theories of structural analysis and the behaviour of common constructions materials. Design projects are given varying emphasis at different institutions, but are frequently left to the final year of the course. Assessment weighting often heavily favours examinations over project work. In recent years, the engineering profession and the bodies responsible for accrediting engineering programs have called for change in assessment and teaching practices.This study proposed that the use of design projects in structural engineering is an effective method of learning that models industrial practice. Projects enable students to understand the synthesis of structural analysis, material behaviour and availability, constructability and economic reality that occurs in the professional practice of structural engineering. To examine effectiveness of project-based learning in structural engineering a case study was undertaken in a third year undergraduate course of a civil engineering program in South Australia.This thesis first provides some background to structural engineering and current practice in structural engineering education. Project-based learning as applied to engineering is also examined. The case study design and data collection are then discussed. The study was developed around a conceptual framework for educational evaluation that differentiates between the intended, implemented, perceived and achieved curriculum. The intended curriculum, defined as the original vision underlying a curriculum, was developed through a literature review that considered the requirements of industry and ++ / engineering accreditation bodies. The degree to which the intended curriculum was successfully implemented in the course was evaluated through video-tapes of lessons, journal records and interviews. The actual learning experiences as perceived or experienced by the students, was evaluated through student journals, interviews and two questionnaires, one of which was also administered to a senior structural engineering industry group to enable a comparison between the student and industry groups perceptions of the importance of certain skills in the engineering profession. The achieved curriculum, defined as the resulting learning outcomes of the students, was also examined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the findings of the study as well as their significance and limitations and then considers the possible extensions of project-based learning to other areas of engineering and some of the issues that will need to be addressed for this to occur.