Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Students Research Articles

Exploring the Influence of Requirement Representation on Idea Generation

Abstract The objective of this research is to understand how different representations of requirements influence idea generation in terms of quantity, addressment, novelty, and variety of conceptual sketches. Requirements are testable statements of need, desires, and wishes of the stakeholders that are used by engineers to frame the problem. Project success is highly dependent on well-defined requirements documents. An experimental study was conducted with 52 fourth-year mechanical engineering undergraduate students. Two design problems are used with three different representations: a problem statement with embedded requirements, a problem statement and a traditional requirement list, and a problem statement with contextualized scrum stories. Each student addressed both design problems with two different representations of requirements. It was found that the use of contextualized scrum story representations significantly affected the novelty of solution fragments and addressment of requirements, while no significant change in variety and quantity was seen. Finally, it was found that quantity is not directly related to the number of requirements addressed in the sketches.

Engineering culture under stress: A comparative case study of undergraduate mechanical engineering student experiences

AbstractBackgroundEngineering culture research to date has described the culture as rigid, chilly, and posing many barriers to entry. However, the COVID‐19 pandemic provided an important opportunity to explore how engineering culture responds to a major disruption.PurposeThe purposes of this study are to understand how elements of engineering culture emerged in mechanical engineering students' perceptions of their classroom experiences during the pandemic and how their experiences varied across two national contexts.MethodThis qualitative comparative case study examines undergraduate mechanical engineering students' perceptions of their experiences taking courses during the pandemic at two universities—one in the United States and one in South Africa. Semistructured interviews were conducted across both sites with 21 students and contextualized with 3 faculty member interviews. Student interviews were analyzed using an iterative process of deductive coding, inductive coding, and pattern coding.ResultsWe identified two key themes that characterized participants' experiences during the pandemic: hardness and access to resources. We found that students at both sites experienced two types of hardness—intrinsic and constructed—and were more critical of constructed forms of hardness. We found that the South African university's response to facilitating student access to resources was viewed by students as more effective when compared with the US university.ConclusionsWe found that hardness remained a central feature of engineering culture, based on student perceptions, and found that students expressed awareness of resource‐related differences. A key distinction emerged between intrinsic and constructed hardness.

Spatial visualization for development of visual thinking and cognitive abilities among mechanical engineering students through tool design ideation

With the exposure of the mechanical engineering undergraduate students to the concepts of spatial visualization, this work assesses the effect of spatial visualization skills on the visual thinking abilities. Influence of spatial visualization on visual thinking and cognitive abilities like reasoning, abstract thinking, planning, comprehension of complex ideas, quick learning and learning from experience, is analysed through FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis). The RPNs (risk-priority-numbers) have been calculated and priority is set for proposing the corrective actions. Further to this, case studies in tool design have been picked for exhibition of spatial visualization skill set. Influence of tool design on visual thinking capability of the students is understood through various case-studies. Thus, tool, die and mold design ideation is used as a platform for the proposing improvements in visual thinking and cognitive abilities among mechanical engineering students.

Comparing reflective and supportive scaffolding in 3D computer‐aided design course: Engineering students' metacognitive strategies, spatial ability self‐efficacy, and spatial anxiety

AbstractThree‐dimensional (3D) modeling provides a suitable context for the improvement of students' higher order thinking skills as it involves challenging and complex learning tasks. For students to succeed in difficult learning tasks, it is necessary to determine the effects of the scaffolding type given to the students in the learning process. This study asserts that reflective and supportive scaffolding has a critical effect on the dependent variables. Reflective scaffolding enables students to explain their reflective processes and clarify their reflective behavior, using personal reflection as a learning tool. Supportive scaffolding provides a process to develop knowledge and guidance on what participants should consider. This study compares the effects of different scaffolding types (reflective or supportive), students' prior knowledge on students' use of metacognitive strategies, spatial ability self‐efficacy, and spatial anxiety in the 3D computer‐aided design course. A pretest and posttest 2 x 2 x 2 factorial quasi‐experimental model was used in the study. This study was carried out with 118 undergraduate mechanical engineering students. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used in the analysis of the data. The results showed that the supportive scaffolding group scored higher in the metacognitive strategies variable than the reflective scaffolding group. The supportive scaffolding group showed higher spatial ability than the reflective scaffolding group. This study provides engineering educators with an overview of the use of scaffolding types, their effects on the effectiveness of learning environments, and the design of these environments.

Evaluation of STEM Engagement Activities on the Attitudes and Perceptions of Mechanical Engineering S-STEM Scholars.

Since 2009, the mechanical engineering (ME) scholarship-science technology engineering and mathematics (S-STEM) Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) has provided financial support and program activities to ME undergraduate students aiming at improving their retention and graduation rates. The objective of this study is to identify program activities that were most effective to help students for improvements. Current ME S-STEM scholars were asked to complete a survey that measures their scientific efficacy, engineering identity, expectations, integration, and sense of belonging, as well as how program activities impact their attitudes and perceptions. Analyses of 36 collected surveys showed that scholars reported high levels of engineering identity, expectations, and sense of belonging. However, further improvements were needed to help students in achieving scientific efficacy and academic integration into the program. Results demonstrated that pro-active mentoring was the most effective method contributing to positive attitudes and perceptions. The implemented S-STEM research-related activities and internship were viewed favorably by the scholars in helping them establish their scientific efficacy and engineering identity, and understand their expectations and goals. Community building activities were considered helpful for them to integrate into campus life and improve their sense of belonging to the campus and program. Scholars identified mentoring, research related activities, internships, and social interaction with faculty and their peers as important factors for their retention and graduation. Although the sample size was small in the study, we believe that the cost-effective activities identified could be adopted by other institutions to further improve students' retention and graduation rates in engineering programs.

Active learning through flipped classroom in mechanical engineering: improving students\u2019 perception of learning and performance

BackgroundTo address some challenges that the large lecture-focused courses have faced in higher education, the flipped classroom model was implemented in mechanical engineering. The purpose of the study was to investigate mechanical engineering undergraduate students’ performance in the flipped classroom. A comprehensive analysis was conducted to investigate the pedagogical benefits of active learning in the flipped classroom from a self-determination theory perspective. To evaluate the effectiveness of the flipped classroom, students’ academic achievements in the flipped classroom were compared with the ones in the traditional lecture format. Moreover, to explore in-depth students’ learning experiences and their perceptions about the flipped classroom, students’ open-ended surveys were analyzed.ResultsResults demonstrated that students in the flipped classroom performed better and favored the new model, feeling that flipped classroom was useful and helpful in preparing for the course. The qualitative findings showed that students felt that they benefited from the pre-week online lectures in the flipped classroom to prepare for the course.ConclusionsThe current study shows that the flipped classroom model has the potential to create an autonomy-supportive learning environment and provide beneficial learning experiences. This study highlights the benefits of and future direction for implementing the flipped classroom in traditional mechanical engineering courses.

Active learning of eutectic phase diagram in engineering courses

The present article shows a new strategy used to cover phase diagrams for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. It is based on active learning in which students are required to investigate experimentally three different eutectic alloys by using X-ray diffraction and metallography. The first technique allows students to use Rietveld analysis to obtain the mass fraction of the present phases and they must compare their results with those obtained theoretically whilst the second one is used to characterize those phases and measured their area fractions. From these results, they can also compare them with those obtained theoretically, but considering the density of different phases. The results have shown that students understood more clearly concepts such as the lever rule, and the very interpretation of phase diagram: the liquidus and solidus curve and finally the eutectic point.

The Development of an Academic Collocation List for Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Students

Acquiring collocations is widely considered to be essential in language learning. The question arises, however, as to what collocations merit students’ and teachers’ attention in ESP classes at a tertiary level. Thus, this corpus-based study aims to systematically develop an academic collocation list for undergraduate mechanical engineering students who learn English as a foreign language. To identify such a collocation list, the current study relied on a corpus-based approach and an expert-judged approach. The Sample Corpus of Mechanical Engineering containing 2.1 million words was compiled from required and supplementary textbook chapters, reading texts and research articles as specified in the course syllabi for the undergraduate program in Mechanical Engineering at a public university in Thailand. The development of the list involved five stages: 1) compilation of materials 2) creating a specialized corpus 3) extracting high-frequency node words and identifying lexical collocations 4) expert judgement; and 5) ordering the entries. These steps are in line with those proposed by Ackermann and Chen (2013) with some modifications. It is expected that this corpus-informed collocation list consisting of 282 entries will be highly useful for students majoring in Mechanical Engineering as well as ESP teachers and material developers. The complete list of collocations is provided in the appendix.

A Mixed Method Approach to Understanding Researcher Identity

<strong>Background:</strong> Identity research in engineering education has been expanding to include multiple forms of measurement. While a variety of approaches have successfully contributed to our understanding of identity, mixed method approaches have been utilized minimally in identity research. Therefore, additional insight on the implications and affordances of mixed method approaches for identity research is needed. <strong>Purpose:</strong> Our work explored undergraduate engineering students’ researcher identity using a fully integrated mixed method approach by interweaving deductive (quantitative) and inductive (qualitative) strands of survey and interview data. We aimed to answer the research question: <em>How can quantitative and qualitative data approaches be used in combination to explore how students conceptualize their researcher identity?</em> <strong>Method:</strong> The data included responses from 20 undergraduate mechanical and biomedical engineering students representing six different institutions. Students completed surveys, and their survey responses served as a foundation for subsequent interviews. Both the survey and interview contained an identical item (a single anchored scale measure of researcher identity), which directly connected the two data sets. While the survey data was used during the interviews, analysis of the strands was initially separate but concurrent. <strong>Results:</strong> After initial analysis, mixing the data provided two key opportunities to attain a deep understanding of participants’ researcher identity. The anchored scale provided a platform to discuss researcher identity with participants and allowed us to look within and across participants’ experiences in unexpected ways. Our discoveries of how individual students’ conceptualizations of the identity being measured varied and how those conceptualizations changed over time were only possible through the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data. <strong>Conclusions:</strong> Our fully integrated mixed method approach resulted in a more complete understanding of students’ researcher identities, allowing us to extend our theoretical understanding beyond what would have been possible with either method alone. Researchers exploring complex topics that can be fluid and affected by time and experience, such as identity, may benefit from integrating a similar approach into their research protocols.

A campus start-up ecosystem for mechanical engineering students: Challenges, approaches, catalysts and solutions

Start-up ecosystems are emerging rapidly worldwide. The speed of technology innovation and the diversity of business ideas keep the start-up landscape in constant flux. While many emerging start-ups are in the areas of electronics and information sciences, the field of mechanical engineering has huge potential that has yet to be exploited. Today’s mechanical engineering students need to be well positioned to recognize and seize potential start-up opportunities. This study examines the involvement of Indian mechanical engineering students in campus start-ups and the challenges they face in nascent entrepreneurship. Structural equation modelling was applied to a sample of 396 final-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students from the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University in Kerala. Data collection was achieved through a questionnaire developed on the basis of existing literature, feedback and market research. The findings highlight the currently prevailing barriers and best practices, and recommendations are derived for leveraging the nascent entrepreneurship potential of the mechanical engineering discipline. The negative effects of the barriers are positively moderated by the activities of campus-based entrepreneurship centres. The study results provide insights into the role of universities, higher education departments and government agencies in promoting a sustainable campus start-up culture through entrepreneurial learning.

A methodology to analyze undergraduate engineering student’scampus start-up activities and its scope of B2C companies

Business is passion for the educated youth in the current global market scenario. Youth have a vision on Business-to-Consumer venture for their profit growth. This is achieved by the acceptance and utilization of technology trends and are handled by engineering students. Curriculum projects of engineering students should be converted into useful products for the society through the business model. Innovative projects are happening in the campus, but scope of these projects scaled up into prototypes and its development in to marketable products is minimal. Most of these markets are in the electronics and information sciences arena. Mechanical Engineering stream has a huge potential that is waiting to be explored. The aim of this paper is to enhance discussion on the entrepreneurial inquisitiveness of mechanical engineering students to campus start-up and its possibilities for a Business-to-Consumer model. For that, final year undergraduate mechanical engineering students across Kerala, India has been selected.SEM was applied to a sample of 392 students from the APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University, across Kerala, India. The findings highlight the participation of mechanical engineering students on campus start-ups and its support from various organizations. The scope of start-up products from business to consumer is positively accepted.

Explaining the importance of Euler’s method in rigid-body dynamics

The purpose of this study is essentially pedagogical and aims to provide an additional argument in clarification of a question often raised by first-year undergraduate mechanical engineering students concerning the reason for using two frames of reference—one fixed in space and one fixed in the rigid-body—to describe its motion. The reasoning employed to illustrate the inappropriateness of using a single reference frame entails showing that the equations of motion, thus obtained, are far more complex than the equations resulting from application of the traditional Euler Method. This point is illustrated through the well-known frictionless symmetrical spinning top problem.

Motivators and barriers in undergraduate mechanical engineering students’ use of learning resources

ABSTRACT As innovations in instructional methods and educational technology become more prevalent, it becomes increasingly important to understand how research-based learning resources are utilised by students in their education. This qualitative study examines the motivators and barriers impacting students’ choices to engage with their class-provided learning resources. Students from two semesters of a core, undergraduate Dynamics course were interviewed regarding their study habits, use of resources, and perceptions of the course environment. Our results centre on availability and relevance: students were motivated to find immediately available, effective resources, and often encountered barriers due to scheduling concerns and doubts regarding the information their resources provided. Our findings expand on previous literature examining students’ help seeking choices, giving insight into students’ individual needs and concerns within a Blended Learning context. The implications of these findings are discussed, including concrete changes to the existing Dynamics course and insights regarding opportunities for future inquiry.

A LabVIEW module to promote undergraduate research in control of AC servo motors of robotics manipulator

AbstractThis paper presents a project‐based learning pedagogy for undergraduate mechanical engineering students which integrates traditional hardware‐based laboratory with LabVIEW to control the angular position, velocity, and acceleration of AC servo motors of a six‐degree of freedom manipulator. The proposed experimental modules have been proved to be very effective in assisting teams of undergraduate students within the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus, who have used the modules in designing a new mechanical structure of a robot during their capstone design project. The proposed pedagogy inspired undergraduate students to publish their first paper based on the outcomes of their project. The focus on this paper is to present how the students' learning experience has been significantly enforced and their role in developing the modules introduced in this paper. Three modules are presented; the first configures a timer to generate a signal that drives the servo motors. The second drives the servo motor to a specific angular position with a constant angular velocity. Finally, the third is used to control the servo motor to follow any desired angular position, velocity, and acceleration.

Toward better learning opportunities for undergraduate mechanical engineering students: A case study

This paper presents an attempt to enhance the learning opportunities for undergraduate mechanical engineering students. We introduce a variety of interactive activities in a major elective course to encourage students’ engagement in the learning process, enable a better understanding of the course material, and promote critical thinking. To investigate the impact of these activities on learning, feedback was obtained directly from students via surveys, online discussions, and face-to-face meetings. Overall, students valued the teaching approach based on active learning. On completion of the course, the program outcomes were successfully achieved as per the students’ perceptions and direct measures calculated by the instructor from the different assessment tools. Group problem solving and out-of-class projects were the most beneficial activities to their learning. Some students raised some concerns related to time management and unclear roles in the group. Suggestions were also given to the instructor to improve further the learning process. The students requested mainly to have more time when solving illustrative problems in the class and add an experimental component to the course.

Improving Class Participation by Using an Online Interactive Platform

Class engagement and participation has a direct impact on students’ learning. Improving participation has been one of the main focuses of education. It has been shown that classroom participation through asking questions can reinforce students’ learning process and improve their knowledge foundation. Classroom dynamics, that is, the interaction between the instructor and students, is another factor that influences students’ attentiveness and learning.The motivation for this pilot research is to examine the impact of using existing online platforms on the class participation and engagement of undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students at the University of British Columbia. By the use of this online platform, students can anonymously and dynamically provide feedback to the instructor and ask their questions.The findings of this work confirmed that classroom dynamics vary in different tutorial sections and instructional adjustments are necessary to accommodate students’ needs and learning dynamics. Overall, students were positive about the use of online platforms and more than 50% of the students suggested the use of this tool for future tutorials.

Hands-On Workshops to Assist in Students' Conceptual Understanding of Heat Transfer

A two-year study was conducted to engage undergraduate mechanical engineering students to approach heat transfer education in an active, hands-on manner and excite them to pursue research and graduate studies in the field. Physical workshops were designed and implemented into junior level heat transfer classes, allowing students to feel and observe heat transfer using heat flux and temperature sensors that provided real-time data. These instruments, coupled with open-ended, challenge-based pedagogy, provided opportunities for students to explore important heat transfer concepts, such as the differences between heat and temperature. The conceptual knowledge of the students was assessed through concept-specific questions. These results were compared to those of a control group who took the traditional lecture without the workshops. The results yielded significantly higher scores for the experimental group in the first year but much less of a difference in the second year, which added video-enhanced workshops in place of the purely hands-on workshops. In addition to concept questions, surveys taken by the students reveal that the students much preferred the workshops in either form over not having them. They also believed the workshops strongly enhanced their learning by giving them a real, hands-on experience.

RELATIONAL LEADERSHIP IN DESIGN PROJECTS

Abstract – As a continuation of previous research pertaining to the self-assessed effectiveness in various interpersonal aspects by undergraduate Mechanical Engineering students as the Lassonde School of Engineering, the authors present in this paper, the findings of new research elaborating upon areas of concern surmised from the prior study. Motivation for this new research stems from the previous data relating to interpersonal and team relational skills inadequacies and the experiences of this paper, the authors present the findings of new research continue upon previous research pertaining to undergraduate students in Mechanical Engineering program self-assessment of effectiveness. The main objective of this paper is to present upon the common challenges of design team projects according to students, and the influence (or relation) effective and/or ineffective interpersonal relationship skills have upon those challenges. Results from this investigation indicates that human-related challenges experienced in team projects stem largely from ineffective manipulation of communication and relational skills and the various facets of team dynamics directly and indirectly affected by them. Additionally, research indicated that females team members had more gendered experiences with their teams. The author found there to be correlations between the negative female experiences and ineffective relational / interpersonal skills. &#x0D;

A Comparative Analysis of Attainment of Program Outcomes for Courses with and without the Use of Modern Tools

An important consideration in higher education is that graduates meet or exceed the program outcomes (POs). While there exists anecdotal evidence that the use of modern tools i.e. computer modelling and simulation, improve attainment of these outcomes, there is little empirical research available. Where empirical evidence is available, the variables considered would almost certainly have a bearing on the outcomes. In this work, the attainment of the POs by undergraduate engineering students in courses with and without the use of modern tools, based on quantitative data, were compared. It was hypothesized that courses using modern tools would lead to better overall attainment of POs, compared to courses not using these tools. As a case study, the PO attainment of students in the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate program at Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (UTP) was considered. Quantitative data obtained through UTP's outcomebased education (OBE) software was used to assess the overall attainment of the POs for all courses for a cohort of 126 Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students class of 2017. It was found that, for the case study considered, the usage of modern tools has led to slightly better attainment of some POs, with slightly poorer attainment in other POs. Specifically, attainment in POs where the cognitive or the knowledge domain is more dominant improved, as the usage of modern tools helped students to understand theoretical concepts better. Attainment in POs were the affective domain is more dominant recorded a slight decrease, and the incorporation of modern tools did not aid in the attainment of these POs. The study is at a preliminary stage and a more detailed study, involving more cohorts, is planned to establish a correlation (if any) between the use of modern tools in higher education and attainment of POs.

Addressing Cultural Challenges in a Global Service Learning Project to Reduce Plastic Waste in Rural India

In the summer of 2015, a group of chemical and mechanical engineering undergraduate students from the University of Kentucky Paducah Extended Campus Program participated in a Global Service Learning and Sustainability course focused on implementing a project to convert waste plastic into a sustainable liquid fuel in rural southern India. The successful construction, operation and testing of the liquid fuel in local diesel powered irrigation pumps will be described. Service learning projects conducted in other countries often face cultural hurdles that are quite different than in traditional study abroad programs. Working side-by-side with local people requires adapting to cultural practices that may be quite different from the students’ expectations. To address this, cultural aspects and social sustainability were included in a lecture component of the service learning course as well as in the implementation of the service project. The learning outcomes for this course included providing students with clear understanding of the key issues of sustainability and sustainable community development in rural and underdeveloped regions and educating them as to how engineers must consider cultural factors when working in underdeveloped regions. This service learning project was conducted in collaboration with the Organization of Development Action and Maintenance (ODAM) in Tiruchuli, India.