Student Project Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Underwater robotics projects offer an excellent medium for discovery based engineering and science learning. The challenge of building underwater robotic vehicles and manipulators engages and stimulates students while encompassing a very broad spectrum of engineering disciplines and scientific concepts. This paper describes the successful design and implementation of student projects, building wire guided remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) with motorized grabbers. This work is part of an ongoing effort to incorporate innovative, hands on projects into our freshman engineering curriculum. These projects help expose students to practical design issues in the freshman year, foster creative problem solving skills and may aid student retention on engineering programs. These projects have also been successfully piloted in pre-college programs, aimed at generating interest in engineering careers among high school students.

This paper describes an application of a Game Development Framework (GDF)-Microsoft XNA in software architecture (SA) course at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and evaluates how well the GDF is to use and integrate in a software engineering (SE) course. The result of the evaluation is based on the questionnaire with 9 types of general questions related to SE learning. In most aspects, the result shows that XNA is a suitable teaching aid in SE learning and can be used to teach SA. It is easy to use and save students time in development, thus let them have more time focusing on the course theory.

This paper describes a statistical analysis of the students' results in mechanical engineering Final Year Project (FYP) at undergraduate level eight. Project marks of the final year students obtained over the past six years (2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008) were recorded and analysed. A detailed and comprehensive assessment of the marks achieved was examined. This included assessment of the presentation, report and progress results. This study provided an interesting insight into the trends of assessors' marking and students' performance. A gradual statistically significant reduction in student marks over these six years was noted. Reduced student performance over the last 10 years in Leaving Certificate mathematics along with the general fall of in the numbers of engineering students are discussed as possible contributing factors. Care must also be taken to ensure that marking is consistent and standard such that it fully and fairly expresses student performance.

We study the Student-Project Allocation problem (SPA), a generalisation of the classical Hospitals / Residents problem (HR). An instance of SPA involves a set of students, projects and lecturers. Each project is offered by a unique lecturer, and both projects and lecturers have capacity constraints. Students have preferences over projects, whilst lecturers have preferences over students. We present an optimal lineartime algorithm for allocating students to projects, subject to these preferences and capacities. In particular, the algorithm finds a stable matching of students to projects. Here, the concept of stability generalises the stability definition in the HR context. The stable matching produced by our algorithm is simultaneously best-possible for all students. The SPA problem model that we consider is very general and has applications to a range of different contexts besides student-project allocation.

- by Robert Irving and +1
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- Student Project, Linear-time algorithm, Capacity constraint

Technology advancement and human needs have led to the integration among many engineering disciplines. Mechatronics engineering is an integrated discipline that focuses on the design and analysis of complete engineering systems. These systems include mechanical, electrical, computer, and control subsystems. In this paper, the importance of teaching mechatronic system design to undergraduate engineering students is emphasized. The paper offers the collaborative experience in preparing and delivering the course material for two universities in Jordan. A detailed description of such a course is provided and a case study is presented. The case study used is a final year project where students applied a six-stage design procedure that is described in the paper.

- by Ashraf Saleem
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- Engineering, Robotics, Education, Engineering Education
- by Smaranda Boroș and +1
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- Psychology, Law, Emotion Regulation, Conflict Management

STUDENT PROJECT PROSES ASUHAN FISIOTERAPI THORACIC OUTLET COMPRESSION SYNDROME

- by Ayu Satya Dewanti
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- Fisioterapia, Risk Assesment, Student Project

Mechatronics is a branch of engineering whose final product should involve mechanical movements controlled by smart electronics. The design and implementation of functional prototypes are an essential learning experience for the students in this field. In this paper, the guidelines for a successful mechatronics project class are presented, evaluated, and discussed. Furthermore, the paper introduces a general mechatronic system design methodology that should equip students to carry out a successful mechatronics project in their undergraduate training. Three student projects at Philadelphia University, Jordan, are examined in detail, with descriptions of their goals, design, and implementation.

- by Ashraf Saleem
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- Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Education, Science Education

Various forms of robotic technology are currently moving from the confines of the research labs and into the hands of teachers. One area of robotics that is readily available for technology integration into elementary and middle school science and technology classrooms is produced by LEGO ® (Mindstorms for Schools™). Such technology offers the possibility to teach various scientific, mathematical, and design concepts through the designing, building, and programming of robots. Students can creatively explore computer programming, mechanical design, physics, mathematics, motion, environmental factors, and problem solving in a collaborative group setting. This paper describes phases of a case study that integrated LEGO robotic technology into computer and science middle school classroom environments. Data were collected in the form of student projects, reflective journals, observations, and video. Observational results indicate that students had more success during robot building and programming tasks when they used flowcharting to help scaffold their knowledge construction. Recent advances in computer technology have allowed for the design and development of robotic construction kits. For example, LEGO ® has designed several introductory robotic kits such as the Mindstorms for Schools™ Team Challenge Kit #9790 (LEGO, 1999a) which utilize an iconic programming language called ROBOLAB ™ . Designing, building, and programming robots allow students to creatively explore computer programming, mechanical design, physics, mathematics, motion, environmental factors, problem solving, and group collaboration . Students are given ownership for their learning within an active, enjoyable, and non-threatening environment. They can make choices and solve problems as they meet the challenges that are a natural consequence of robot design. Working with robotics also provides students with an opportunity to construct knowledge through activity and further develop numerous mathematical and scientific concepts. Children are able to work with computer

- by Joan Chambers
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- Mechanism Design, Science and Technology, LEGO Mindstorms, Problem Solving

In this paper we discuss how OPNET can be applied in advanced networking education, enhancing the practical skills of future network engineers. At the KU Leuven Master students in Electrical Engineering focusing on Telecommunications have... more

- by Emmanuel Van Lil
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- Electrical Engineering, Voice over IP, Video Streaming, Complex network
- by petra badke-schaub and +1
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- Psychology, Cognitive Science, Social Psychology, Functional Analysis

A fully integrated class-D audio power amplifier for mobile applications is presented. The amplifier is realized in a 0.35μm CMOS process featuring 3.3V and 5V transistors. To reduce the outof-band noise generation, possibly eliminating the need of an output filter, the Double Sided Natural Sampling (DSNS) pulse width modulation (PWM) scheme is used at a designed carrier frequency of 384kHz. By using a 5V full bridge, a maximum output power of 1W (rms) was measured in a 7.5ȍ load at 1% THD+N and an efficiency of 80%. The THD+N was 0.24% at 500mW output, and 0.15% in minimum. The total chip area is 2.55mm 2 including pads. This chip was designed and simulated with Cadence IC design tools as a student project in the course IC Project and Verification at Lund University.

- by Yelin Wang
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- Mobile Application, Design Tool, Chip, Power Amplifier

Although there has been an increasing number of articles on teaching and gender, there has been little discussion of the implications of feminist research methodologies for student projects. This paper aims to overcome this`blind spot' through discussion of the pedago gic implications raised by the adoption of such methodologies in student projects: choice of topic, choice of research methods, emancipatory role of the project, dilemmas experienced during`® eldwork' and interpretive and writing styles used during the research process. The constraints mitigating against the adoption of feminist methodologies are explored, including issues of training, supervision, assessment criteria and presentational issues, with the aim of encouraging a discussion on the use of such methodologies in future student research projects.

- by Parvati Raghuram and +1
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- Geography, Human Geography, Research Methodology, Curriculum and Pedagogy

A little over three years ago, two brand new assistant professors successfully earned funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site at Mississippi State University. In the time that the "Chemistry / Chemical Engineering: The Bonds Between Us" program ran, much was learned about how to organize for a ten week intensive research program, how to ensure each student had a meaningful, positive experience, how to promote camaraderie among participants, and how to streamline participant logistics. In this manuscript and corresponding presentation, a description of the program and its goals will be discussed. This contribution will benefit anyone considering developing an REU program. It will provide guidance on how to structure student projects so that student learning and productivity is maximized. Further, organized professional development activities will be outlined in addition to a summary of structured social act...

This is a proposal for a half day tutorial on Weka, an open source Data Mining software package written in Java and available from www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/index.html. The goal of the tutorial is to introduce faculty to the package and to the pedagogical possibilities for its use in the undergraduate computer science and engineering curricula. The Weka system provides a rich set of powerful Machine Learning algorithms for Data Mining tasks, some not found in commercial data mining systems. These include basic statistics and visualization tools, as well as tools for pre-processing, classification, and clustering, all available through an easy to use graphical user interface.

- by Zdravko Markov
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- Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Web Mining

In this paper we present results from using the post mortem analysis (PMA) to evaluate student projects in a software architecture course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The PMA gave students a change to evaluate their own work as well as evaluating the project exercise itself. The results of the analysis revealed several positive and negative issues related to the project that could be used to improve the course next year. We also discovered that the PMA gave us a much more detailled evaluate than using more traditional course evaluation methods.

This paper describes a computerized management system for the processing of final year project in an electrical engineering undergraduate course including a structured project allocation to students, a comprehensive assessment procedure, an automated processing of marks, and a management supporting system. An optical reader is used to scan the project selection made by all the students, and the allocation algorithm allocates as many projects as possible in meeting the students' preferences. A new attempt using a grading category index for each assessment criterion is implemented and the assessment of the student's performance is evaluated through five main components with 31 assessment criteria. The marks for each student are scanned by an optical reader and calculated by a weighted linear conversion of all the grading category indexes. The assessment system is more valid as it has many specific criteria and more reliable as the process is consistent. The management supporting tools and experiences in handling very large groups of students especially in the maintenance of a uniform marking standard to all the students are highlighted. It is hoped that some of our approaches can be selectively adopted for undergraduate course work on continuous assessment even for a smaller student population.

- by Teotonio L E M O S Sequeira
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- Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Education, Management System

The definition of help means to "save, rescue, contribute to, facilitate, promote, to be useful …" In fact, the definition of help is so complex that it demands about three quarters of a column in the Webster's dictionary. Perhaps, this explains why researchers have spent considerable time studying various aspects of helping behaviors. During the year of 2004, a pre-med student in the school of general studies at Columbia University, Elizabeth Rosner, and a group of her fellow students at Columbia seek to further our understanding of the latent complexities behind people's helping behavior, as they fulfilled a required data collection project for their introductory statistics course. More specifically, they were curious to find out: who are we more willing to help, people of the same sex or people of the opposite sex? Whether people are aware of their gender bias? Or whether their overt helping behavior contradicts the way people believe they would behave given the identical situation in hypothetical terms? Such a topic is not foreign to researchers in psychology. In the past, researchers like (Dabbs and Latane, 1975) measured helping behavior by dropping pennies in an elevator and recording whether or not subjects pick them up. According to their findings, overall, men are more likely to help a stranger in need than women. Similar studies conducted, complied with their results (e.g.

- by Tian Zheng
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- Student Project

- by Lutfi Al-Sharif
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- Engineering, Robotics, Education, Engineering Education

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to share the content and early results from an interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum that integrates theory and practice (praxis). The curriculum links new topical courses concerning renewable energy, food, water, engineering and social change with specialized labs that enhance technological and social-institutional sustainability literacy and build team-based project collaboration skills. Design/methodology/approach -In responses to dynamic interest emerging from university students and society, scholars from Environmental Studies, Engineering, Sociology, Education and Politics Departments united to create this curriculum. New courses and labs were designed and pre-existing courses were "radically retrofitted" and more tightly integrated through co-instruction and content. The co-authors discuss the background and collaborative processes that led to the emergence of this curriculum and describe the pedagogy and results associated with the student projects. Findings -Interdisciplinary student teams developed innovative projects with both campus and community-based partners. However, the incentives for an integrated sustainability curriculum faced persistent obstacles including the balkanization of academic knowledge, university organizational structure, and the need for additional human and financial investments. The team is currently designing the second phase of this integration and expanding a social learning network through collaborations with five universities in the Americas and Europe. Originality/value -This paper shows the development process, design and content of an interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum that integrates engineering with the social and ecological sciences while enlivening campus-community relationships through student projects. Several replicable practices include the contents and integration of topical classes, the strategies to overcome the obstacles for developing interdisciplinary student teams engaged in problem-based learning and approaches to negotiate institutional hurdles. Boykoff shared insightful comments during panel at the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences annual meeting in Wisconsin. The authors are also grateful for the ongoing curiosity, creativity and commitments of the many students involved in these courses and projects.

- by Dustin Mulvaney and +3
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- Social Change, Education, Renewable Energy, Sustainability in Higher Education

Die AG Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung an der Universität Hamburg besteht aus Studierenden, Lehrenden, Hochschuldidaktiker*innen sowie Mitarbeiter*innen der Verwaltung, die gemeinsam Informationen zu Lehrveranstaltungen zur Nachhaltigkeit zusammentragen, eigene interdisziplinäre Lehrveranstaltungen realisieren und den hochschulweiten Diskurs zum Wert Nachhaltigkeit in Studium und Lehre vorantreiben. Dabei orientiert sich die gemeinsame Arbeit an didaktischen Grundideen des partizipativen Lernens, interdisziplinären Lernens, Problem- und Projektbasierten Lernens, dem Constructive Alignment und an gesellschafts- und lernprozessrelevanten Themen.

- by Miriam Block and +2
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- Organizational Change, Sustainability in Higher Education, Sustainability Education, Interdisciplinary Teams

A nationwide call has requested educators to emphasize methods that will encourage student participation and engagement during class. Concurrently, technology and ubiquitous computing have been making advancements onto campuses of higher education. This paper will discuss research that is merging these two events and creating a platform using Tablet PCs that can be used in the traditional classroom setting. The platform enables the use of "digital ink" within slideshow-based note taking, collaborative activities, and formative and summative assessment activities. In addition, course specific software will be made available on the Tablet PCs and used to enhance the learning in individual courses instead of relegating these activities to out-of-classroom experiences. The paper discusses the differences and similarities between Tablet PCs and laptop computers, in general, and also presents information about low cost options to allow the use of "digital ink" in traditional computer labs. The paper also presents results the author has collected while making use of Tablet PCs to (1) present course material during the lecture period; (2) administer summative assessment during the lecture period; (3) grade assessments with "digital ink;" and (4) provide timely feedback of student projects. Lastly the paper presents some of the author's long term research plans of making use of Tablet PCs, "digital ink," and other currently available technology in the traditional lecture to (1) provide more communication between instructors and students; (2) elicit more frequent and higher quality feedback on student progress; (3) introduce more frequent and varied classroom teaching styles and activities and (4) expose students, in a variety of disciplines, to the technology that is currently available.

- by Melody Abacan
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- Higher Education, Ubiquitous Computing, Teaching, Further Education

An important theme in an introductory statistics course is the connection between statistics and the outside world. We describe here some assignments that have been useful in getting students to learn how to gather and process information presented in the newspaper articles and scienti c reports they read. We discuss two related assignments. For the rst kind of assignment, students work through prepared instructional packets. Each packet contains a newspaper article that reports on a scienti c study or statistical analysis, the original report on which the article was based, a worksheet with guidelines for summarizing the reported study, and a series of questions. In the second kind of assignment, each student is required to nd a newspaper article themselves, track down the original report, summarize the study using our guidelines, and write a critique of the article. Here, we describe the guidelines we developed to help the student in reading the newspaper article and original source, and the procedures we used for each type of assignment. Examples of handouts and assignments appear as appendices.

- by Deborah NOLAN
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- Statistics, Statistical Analysis, Instruction, Student Project

ABSTRACT: A pedagogically effective teaching strategy that integrates computer-aided design and programming into a course on mechanism analysis and design is presented. Mechanism analysis is enhanced when coupled with computer programming... more

- by Matthew Campbell
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- Engineering, Computer Science, Education, Computer Aided Design

Despite strong political support for the development of sustainability literacy amongst the UK graduates, embedding sustainability in the higher education curriculum has met with widespread indifference, and in some cases, active resistance. However, opportunities exist beyond the formal curriculum for engaging students in learning about sustainability. Previous research has highlighted the potential of the university campus for experiential, place-based learning about and for sustainability. This has been conceptualised as the ‘informal’ curriculum, consisting of extra-curricular activities and student projects linking estates and operations to formal study. However, the impact of the so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ (the implicit messages a university sends about sustainability through the institutional environment and values) has been overlooked as a potential influence on student learning and behaviour. This article reports on a small-scale research project which utilised a phenomenographic approach to explore students’ perceptions of the ‘hidden sustainability curriculum’ at a leading sustainability university. The findings suggest that helping students deconstruct the hidden campus curriculum may enhance aspects of sustainability literacy; developing students’ understanding about sustainability and creating solutions to sustainability issues, enabling evaluative dialogue around campus sustainability and also self-reflection, which could be transformative and translate into pro-environmental behaviour change. This research is transferable to other contexts.

The department of Mechanical Engineering in Universiti Tenaga Nasional decided to test and implement a new Final Year Proj ect title selection system because of perceived weaknesses in the existing system which employs a first come first served mechanism to allocate titles to students. The new system, dubbed the Preference Based system, uses a computer algorithm to allocate titles to students based on students' submissions of their 10 most preferred titles in order of preference. Three algorithms were developed for this allocation purpose, and they were evaluated by calculation and comparison of the costs of their selection. The Network Flow Optimization algorithm, which was able to produce a selection with the lowest cost, was selected and used to allocate titles for students from Semester 1 of the 2009/2010 academic year. The algorithm was able to ensure that each student got one of their 10 preferred titles and 78.5% of the students got titles that were ranked in their top 3. A survey carried out after the selection exercise confirmed the students' satisfaction and preference of the new system over the previous first come first served system.

- by K. Sahari
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- Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Education, Network Flow, Student Project

This paper describes the evolution of the teaching of electrical engineering to mechanical engineering students based on motivation and a pedagogical strategy incorporating interdisciplinary mechatronics projects in a learning studio environment. Implementation of student projects within the curriculum has been demonstrated to be highly motivational and educational and has even evolved from "play and learn" into industry-inspired green energy applications as a platform for multiple student competitions. Several examples of successful student projects are discussed. These modules can be used as motivation instruments to gradually enhance the interest of current and future engineering students in mechatronics. In this paper, a summary of student feedback is provided, and benefits, challenges, and lessons learned from this initiative are discussed.

- by Dan Necsulescu
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- Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Education

For over a century, studio-based instruction has served as an effective pedagogical model in architecture and fine arts education. Because of its design orientation, human-computer interaction (HCI) education is an excellent venue for studio-based instruction. In an HCI course, we have been exploring a studiobased learning activity called the prototype walkthrough, in which a student project team simulates its evolving user interface prototype while a student audience member acts as a test user. The audience is encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback. We have observed that prototype walkthroughs create excellent conditions for learning about user interface design. In order to better understand the educational value of the activity, we performed a content analysis of a video corpus of 16 prototype walkthroughs held in two undergraduate/graduate HCI courses. We found that the prototype walkthrough discussions were dominated by relevant design issues. Moreover, mirroring the justification behavior of the expert instructor, students justified over 80 percent of their design statements and critiques, with nearly one-quarter of those justifications having a theoretical or empirical basis. These results suggest that prototype walkthroughs can be useful not only in helping to teach HCI design, but also in helping to gauge students' evolving design knowledge.

- by Marian Petre
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- Human Computer Interaction, Content Analysis, User Interface, Art Education

Using structured methods for managing business innovation can be an effective way to improve the ideation process. Teaching structured methods is a potent way to enhance the innovative capabilities of companies and to develop creative products for the marketplace. In this paper, structured models of innovation and product development are reviewed and an approach to them is presented, based on several MSc student projects. The implications for managers, such as the need to train employees in structured methods, and the implications for those who teach innovation management are discussed in detail.

- by sonia vieira
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- Creativity, New Product Development, Business and Management, Innovation Management
- by Klaus Netter and +1
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- Cognitive Science, Relational Database, Natural Language Processing, Machine Translation

One of the prominent uses of WWW has been WEB-based querying of databases. Search sites such as Yahoo and Infoseek present the WWW user with a form to be filled in with a query and return the results of the search. WEB forms are also being increasingly used for interaction with database management systems. One key element of the Intranet environment is the use of WEB-based facilities for query processing.In our undergraduate database course project, we decided to not only have the students design and implement relations in a relational database management system, but also provide a WEB-based facility that allows for fairly complex query processing. The actual data was the entire catalog (12,000 holdings) of the Department of Business Management's Library. The students had to first design the appropriate normalized relations and then load the data into a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). We used PostgreSQL as the RDBMS [1]. The students then designed WEB forms that a...

- by Sohail Aslam
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- Public Domain, DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, Query processing, Teaching Techniques

In this paper, we describe the integration of research and new teaching strategies into computer science and engineering departments at universities and colleges related to the automatic code generation, automatic development tools and integrated environments within student software (software) engineering and research projects. A significant amount of current software engineering research is conducted within the context of computer science, computing and engineering departments or colleges. However, every computer department has its own experiences, successes or pitfalls in Software Engineering and software development teaching and student research integration, which would be useful to share and discuss with the education community. We will discuss our experiences and results from seven years of teaching Software EngineeringCoSc 470/471 and Projects in Computer Science CoSc 224 (PCS) in Computer Information Systems (CIS) diploma and Bachelor of Computer Information Systems (BCIS) degree programs at Okanagan College (OC), Université Paris-Est Créteil (UPEC), France and almost 2 years of teaching at University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBC O). We suggest possible ways of integrating Software Engineering research and teaching strategies by using many different industrial software Engineering tools, development workbenches, frameworks and environments to automatize code generation and speed up student project development within student capstone projects into computer science departments at universities and colleges.

- by Gaétan Hains
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- Software Engineering, Technology, Documentation, Software Development

Geant4 is one of the most powerful tools for MC simulation of detectors and their applications. We present a student project to simulate a combined Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation-Positron Emission Tomography (TMS-PET) system using Geant4. This project aims to study PET-TMS systems by implementing a model for the brain response to the TMS pulse and studying the simulated PET response. In order to increase the speed of the simulations we parallelise our programs and investigate the possibility of using GRID computing.

Data mining is becoming increasingly important as the amount of data being stored increases, and data miners are highly sought after in the job market. This paper describes a pilot course-offering in data mining in a small, four-year liberal arts college as part of a mixed Computer Science and Computer Information Systems curriculum. Several curricular choices are examined, including text and software selection, and the design of a final project to assess student performance. The final project offered three alternatives: The student could implement or extend a data mining algorithm in the language of their choice, the student could prepare a major paper on the impact of data mining to their discipline, or the student could find an outside project (with instructor approval) to analyze using the developed data mining techniques. The role of service learning as an intentional curricular choice is also examined, and two student projects are discussed.

- by Terry Letsche
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- Data Mining, Service Learning, Job Market, Student Performance

Today graduate need to be self directed and possess lifelong learning skills. They need to be creative, critical thinkers, problem solvers and analytical in their approach. In present teaching scenario, polytechnics are still practicing the traditional approach in classroom such as pen-and-paper or exam-based learning. Students can no longer survive by memorizing textbooks, they now need to explore and experience genuine tasks that connects to the real-world; in which they can develop, master, and demonstrate authentic skills. Engineering Education needs to move from an instructive to constructivist approach. Problem based learning (PBL) is one of the constructivist approaches where cooperation among learners plays important role in the learning method. Project is one of the core subjects in Polytechnic system which carrying 2.5 credit hours. Students will be assessed based on their performance throughout the projects as well as the final outcome of the projects. Generally, most of this final projects designed by students are lack of creative and innovative except a few only. This approach differs in certain aspects from conventional learning. In normal conventional classes, students normally learned based on what the lecturers delivered in class. This study compares the learning and study strategies of project course by using PBL and traditional approach between two groups of the students of the Department of Electrical Engineering in Polytechnic Port Dickson. The research proposed the cognitive constructive learning model (ADDIE) in Problem Oriented Project Based to study to what extend does PBL improve the performance of students project with respect to the conventional method of learning. On the others hand, this study also research into whether PBL approaches creativity, criticality and team working among polytechnic's students.

- by Alf Inge Wang
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- Engineering, Computer Science, Education, Software Architecture

The Rural Interprofessional Education Project (RIPE) is a positive response to major changes in health care provision and delivery, which have not necessarily led to modernising the largely mono-disciplinary, often "medico-centric" education and training of health professionals. The project is a three-year initiative that aims to develop a generic interprofessional learning curriculum module, attract students to the prospect of rural practice, conduct research and offer meaningful and enduring educational experiences for students of health-related disciplines.

- by Nick Stone and +1
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- Primary Health Care, Health Care, Interprofessional Education, Experiential Learning

In our age of technological growth and change, the role of the engineer has evolved from lone specialist to team player, from internally focused to globally aware, from reactionary to entrepreneur. The entrepreneur has created much of our social wealth. The characteristics of the entrepreneur transcend academic disciplines, and social as well as economic status. To foster these characteristics among its students, Lehigh University is developing a multidisciplinary educational environment where entrepreneurial spirit can flourish. Lehigh's academic programs in Integrated Product, Process and Project (iP 3 ), Integrated Business and Engineering (IBE), and Integrated Design Arts (IDA) integrate across Engineering, Business and Design Arts through sponsored projects and entrepreneurial teams or e-teams consisting of students, faculty advisors, staff support and company mentors. Project sponsors include the full range from student entrepreneurs and other start-up companies, to established small, medium and large corporations. The multi-level approach to curricular integration includes pre-college outreach, freshman projects, curricula support, capstone projects and graduate projects. The educational environment includes a Campus Center for Entrepreneurial projects; an entire building designed to support students project teams. This paper will discuss the design and implementation of these programs, our assessment and evaluation methods, lessons learned and future plans for improving this environment. business, industrial design and social sciences. To achieve this broadest possible context, Lehigh students work in multidisciplinary teams with company sponsors on real world projects requiring deliverable prototypes and business plans. Based on the industry feedback of the past four years this active, collaborative, project-based learning is superior for developing the characteristics valued by employers. These characteristics include professional competency, industry experience, multi-functional communications skills, team-orientation, problem solving and decision making skills in ill-structured situations and self direction. We believe that this experiential learning approach is equally valid for the student entrepreneurs. The approach is to partner the entrepreneurial teams (e-teams) with start-up companies, student entrepreneurs and others that have the entrepreneurial characteristics and potential for success. To modify the familiar saying, "familiarity breeds not contempt, but imitation." Lehigh University has three notable programs that have embraced the e-team project approach. The first and most established program is the Integrated Product, Process and Project (iP 3 ) Program. The second is a new program in Integrated Design Arts (IDA).

- by Berrisford Boothe and +1
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- Engineering, Education, Engineering Education, Building Design

A hybrid electric Kart is built as a didactical project for the students of the Master of Engineering: Energy of the K.U.Leuven. In order to cope with the growing number of students, a modular hybrid electric kart is conceived. The hybrid configuration allows to diversify between several tasks that have to be addressed by the students. The tasks include a control scheme for an induction motor, a control scheme and design of a power-factor-correction converter which enables power flow between the DC-link and a gasoline generator and finally the control scheme and design of a DC/DC converter allowing bidirectional power flow between a low voltage battery and the DC-link. All control schemes are supervised by a top level control scheme which maximises efficiency. The control schemes are programmed in Matlab/Simulink. A rapid-prototyping control board runs the model made in Matlab/Simulink. The control board interfaces between the different sensors and power electronics present on the kart.

- by Pieter Jacqmaer
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- Power Electronics, Rapid Prototyping, Motion, Boost Converter

Increasingly, consensus on the importance of higher education and research for development has occurred among the broad range of stakeholders in the 'development' arena, whether donor governments and organisations or recipient governments, organisations and institutions. Similarly, there is consensus that innovation, especially in the areas of science, engineering and technology are of crucial importance in this endeavour. This recognition should, however, go hand in hand with the recognition of the necessity of curriculum reforms in higher education.

- by Mona Dahms
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- Electrical Engineering, Engineering Education, Lifelong Learning, Higher Education

- by Nick Stone and +1
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- Primary Health Care, Health Care, Interprofessional Education, Experiential Learning

During this past year, several departments at the University of North Dakota have been focusing on the design of inexpensive spacecraft for atmospheric studies and remote sensing. This multidisciplinary design project emphasizes the systems engineering approach, in which extensive documentation is created prior to any construction or testing. Fourteen undergraduate and three graduate students designed and tested the second build

- by Shadi Karazi and +1
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- Mechanical Engineering, Statistical Analysis, Statistical Significance, Student Performance

Introductory statistics courses should incorporate unstructured projects where students themselves generate the problems they choose to study, gather their own data, analyze the information using suitable computer software, and communicate their findings in a report. This article describes my experience with projects in the context of a large lecture course where projects are carried out in groups. Special problems that

- by Johannes Ledolter
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- Statistics, Data Analysis, Teaching, Business statistics
- by Safira Haliza
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- Student Project

More than 200 middle school and high school students from underserved urban communities in Boston, Lowell, and Lawrence, Massachusetts, participated in afterschool and summer enrichment programs over a three-year period, using hands-on learning materials and web resources to complete hands-on microcontroller-based projects. Program content was based on a suite of robotics and electronics kits developed by the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Machine Science Inc., together with on-line instructions, a web-based programming tool, and a shared electronic portfolio of student projects. Participating students worked with classroom teachers and undergraduate mentors to complete a series of projects, and took part each year in a non-competitive robotics exhibition and a competitive robot sumo tournament. Goodman Research Group assessed learning outcomes and attitudinal changes using a variety of measures, including observations of program sessions, group interviews with participating students, pre-and postprogram student surveys, and educator feedback. The program was found to effectively engage participants, give them real engineering and programming skills, improve their attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects, and increase their interest in STEM career pathways. These results are presented, along with lessons learned from the program implementation, technology development, and evaluation.

- by Fred Martin and +2
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- Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics, Cognitive Science

Properly educating computer scientists involves teaching effective means to properly engineer a system. An important part of such engineering work is ensuring that the computing system is both useful and usable. While many systems out there today are difficult to use, performing usability engineering on a system during its development has been shown to be an effective way to make a system more usable. The problem is fitting practical experience into the curriculum. This paper discusses a case example of how a team of undergraduate students learned to take a software system during its developing stages and perform effective usability engineering following the "thinking out loud" methodology.

This paper describes a rather simplistic method of unsupervised morphological analysis of words in an unknown language. All what is needed is a raw text corpus in the given language. The algorithm looks at words, identifies repeatedly occurring stems and suffixes, and constructs probable morphological paradigms. The paper also describes how this method has been applied to solve the Morpho Challenge 2007 task, and gives the Morpho Challenge results. Although the present work was originally a student project without any connection or even knowledge of related work, its simple approach outperformed, to our surprise, several others in most morpheme segmentation subcompetitions. We believe that there is enough room for improvements that can put the results even higher. Errors are discussed in the paper; together with suggested adjustments in future research.

- by Daniel Zeman
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- Morphological Analysis, CLEF, Student Project

Against a backdrop of the debates on religious education in public or state schools, we argue for the introduction of spiritual ideals into the public school curriculum. We distinguish our notion of spiritual ideals from religious ideals as conceptualised by De Ruyter and Merry. While we agree with De Ruyter and Merry that ideas drawn from religious/spiritual sources play a

- by Yew Leong Wong and +1
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- Design thinking, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Student Project