Recent posts for Projects
Nephrotex: Teaching first year students to think like engineers
Shaffer, D.W., Chesler, N.C., Arastoopour, G., and D’Angelo, C. (2011). Nephrotex: Teaching first year students how to think like engineers. Poster presented at the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) PI Conference, Washington D.C.
Use of Professional Practice Simulation in a First-Year Introduction Engineering Course
Chesler, N., D’Angelo, C., Arastoopour, G., and Shaffer, D.W. (2011). Use of Professional Practice Simulation in a First-Year Introduction Engineering Course. Paper presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference (ASEE), Vancouver, BC.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/Chesler_ASEE_2011.pdf
Collaborating in a Virtual Engineering Internship
D’Angelo, C., Arastoopour, G., Chesler, N. & Shaffer, D. W. (2011) Collaborating in a Virtual Engineering Internship. Paper presented at Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Conference (CSCL), Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.
http://epistemicgames.org/eg/wp-content/uploads/DAngelo_CSCL2011.pdf
Girls Sweep Global Google Science Fair
Google holds an annual competition to give talented high school students around the world a chance to showcase their ideas about science. NPR reports that Google has just announced their 2011 science fair winners.
The three winners, beating out over 10,000 students in the competition, were all young women. Girls can do science and engineering at the highest level, but we know that somewhere along the way they get turned off (see Goodman’s Final Report of the Women’s Experiences in College Engineering).That’s one of the reasons we are excited about Nephrotex, an epistemic game that offers something different from the typical engineering education curriculum.
We are already seeing results that women who participate in Nephrotex understand what engineering is and have motivation to persist after completing the virtual internship.
Underrepresented Minorities in Engineering
From an American Institutes for Research report:
“Research also suggests that the freshman year experience in particular is important to a student’s decision to persist with a degree program; hence, attrition rates are highest in the first semesters of coursework (Kramer, 2005). For students interested in a STEM career, this pattern may especially be the case. The freshman-year STEM curricula consists of demanding, largely lecture-based classes that essentially “weed out” students who may not have the potential to succeed in the scientific and technical fields (Cooney et al., 1990; Kramer, 2005). Critics of engineering education commonly agree that this weeding process impacts the retention rates of individuals who are disproportionately represented and that the field could benefit from providing introductory courses that are more interdisciplinary.”
This is one of the reasons why we launched our virtual internship, Nephrotex, in an undergraduate freshmen engineering course.
