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Hands-on sessions
An important feature of the ALE
workshop is the hands-on programme.
Active learning approaches are
usually aimed at the increase of
student involvement in learning,
therefore, a hands-on session on
active learning count on active
involvement of its participants.
Three different hands-on are
scheduled, meant to enable the
enhancement of active learning
practice.
Hands-on HO.A - What is the role of growth when talking about technology and
sustainability?
Miguel Romá and Tomás Martínez -
Signals, Systems and
Telecommunications group (SST),
University of Alicante, Spain
In the context of engineering
education, it is compulsory to make
the students think about the impact
that technology has in many aspects
of life. We, as engineers, and our
students as future engineers, must
be aware of both kind and awkward
effects of technology from the
widest possible range of points of
view. Issues like how to manage
technological waste (related to
programmed obsolescence), the risk
of the generation of unemployment
caused by the use of technology
(automation and robotics), the
relevance of having a strong
technological industry to support
our working environment, the
relationship between sustainability
and renewable resources…, are clear
examples of aspects suitable to
generate interesting debates.
However, there is a key element that
is commonly left apart as it derives
to uncomfortable conclusions. Can we
talk about sustainability avoiding
thinking about the effects of
economic growth?
In this hands-on we will present an activity used to promote critical
thinking in students about the
relationship between economic growth
and sustainability. We will try to
present the most common thoughts
when technology, energy,
sustainability and growth are placed
in the same bowl. If we conclude
that economic growth and
sustainability are not odd with each
other, a pleasant landscape will be
shown in front of our eyes.
Notwithstanding, if we conclude that
sustainability is not achievable in
a growth environment, the panorama
will possibly be comfortless.
Hands-on HO.B - Sustainability in
Engineering Education
Pau Bofill1, Montse
Farreras
- Department of Computer
Architecture, UPC Barcelona Tech,
Barcelona, Catalonia
This document presents a Hands-On
session on Sustainability in
Engineering Education.
Sustainability is defined as the use
of resources in such a way as to
allow them to regenerate in time.
Sustainability should be considered
in connection with equity, so that
the resource is equally available to
everyone. Then several categories
for analysis are defined, such as
GDP growth, progress, environment or
holistic so as to guide the
discussion. The hands-on takes place
in small groups, that are asked to
write a short poster on how they
would introduce the subject of
sustainability in a project with
their students. The learning goal is
that sustainability is a holistic
quality, that has to do with many
dimensions at the same time.
Hands-on HO.C - Integration of the
Model Based Design – Industrial
Approach - for Teaching Engineering
Science
Ascension Vizinho-Coutry - The
Mathworks, Inc.
Model-Based Design (MBD) has been
adopted in the past two decades by
engineers and researchers. By
adopting MBD the development process
is centered on the system model,
from requirements capture, design to
implementation and test throughout
the process. Using Modeling,
Simulation, Automatic Code
generation and Test capabilities,
MBD can be applied to any project
ranging from small device
implementation to enterprise
applications and vehicles. The
French Ministry of Education is
revamping the science and technology
flow, starting from High-School to
University levels with the
integration of “Engineering” into
schools. This is being done
for two reasons: 1- to attract
students to become engineers and 2-
to reduce the gap between
Educational schools and Industry by
developing appropriate skills for
the next generation of engineers.
Engineering Sciences topics are
attracting more attention and weight
during evaluations and exams. French
teachers are increasingly adopting
MBD workflows within their courses.
This workshop will present the
association of the Model Based
Design (MBD) and the recent French
teaching Gap Analysis approach. This
combination enables students not
only to learn the Engineering
workflow (or V-cycle) but also learn
the disciplines relevant to the
selected course. The main topics
are: (i) Model-Based Design
principles; (ii) Gap Analysis
approach for teaching Sciences and
Engineering; (iii) Teaching concepts
through a simple problem: the design
of logic of the angular position
controller of a DC motor; (iv)Focus
on different domains: mathematical
equations describing the systems
behavior and concepts relevant to
engineering.
Invited
Hands-on session
Using
Flanagan’s critical incident
technique to improve active teaching
and learning in Engineering
Education
Michael Christie (Stockholm
University)
Description:
In this interactive plenary session
the delegates will be introduced to
John Flanagan’s critical incident
technique (CIT). CIT has had a major
impact on both quantitative and
qualitative research since Flanagan
first described it in the
Psychological Bulletin in 1954, but
in this session we will be using it
more as a professional development
tool. The presenter will explain
briefly different ways of using the
tool, both at an individual and team
level. Our aim is to give you the
opportunity to reflect on a specific
instance when you felt you really
activated your students’ learning.
You will be asked to jot down what
happened and why your incident
exemplified active learning. As you
soon as you have your story prepared
you will join a group of three or
four other delegates and then take
turns to explain your incident and
why it is a good example of
activating learning. Each group
should appoint someone to report
back and after all the incidents
have been described the group
decides on what it considers to be
the four most important ingredients
of active learning that emerged from
the incidents. The facilitator will
ask each group to nominate three of
their most important ingredients and
begin to build a list of active
learning characteristics. The
reporter should try to sum up each
ingredient in a few words, for
example ‘good design’, ‘relevant,
open questions, motivating material,
intriguing problem etc. Once the
list has been compiled there will be
an opportunity to debate what key
ingredients, types of context,
motivation and attitudes are
required to put theories of active
learning into practice. The
presenter will summarize the
findings and explain how individuals
can use this technique to
systematically improve individual
teaching and learning or carry out
action research projects in teaching
teams
Workshops
An important feature of the PAEE
Symposium is the workshop programme.
Projects approaches to learning are
usually aimed at the increase of
student involvement in learning,
therefore, a symposium on project
approaches like PAEE/ALE’2016 count
on active involvement of its
participants. Two different
workshops are scheduled, meant to
enable the enhancement of project
practice and the reflection on
practice.
Workshop WK.A - RoboSlam:
Robot-Building Workshops for
Engineering Educators
Shannon Chance, Damon Berry -
College of Engineering and the Built
Environment, Dublin Institute of
Technology, Ireland
Paul Stacey – Department of
Engineering, Institute of Technology
Blanchardstown
A volunteer team of
engineering and robotics teachers
from Dublin Institute of Technology
(DIT) will offer a two-hour hands-on
RoboSlam: Robot Building Workshop
for educators who attend the PAEE
and ALE conferences. Participants in
this workshop will each construct a
working robot and will also learn
about our train-the-trainer program.
No prior robotics experience is
necessary!
Our team has used this Problem Based
Learning format to teach hundreds of
students and teachers in Ireland how
to build and program robots. To
date, RoboSlam has been delivered 38
times, to more than 677 participants
and to an additional 100 students at
our sister Institute of Technology
in Blanchardstown (ITB), Ireland. We
have trained many people to
facilitate these workshops
successfully, including third-level
students studying electrical and
electronics engineering and also
tutors running a professional
practice module at ITB.
Workshop WK.B - Active Learning
Exercise: Viewing Other Students'
Projects through Green Lenses
Jacqueline Asscher - Quality and
Reliability Engineering, Kinneret
College on the Sea of Galilee,
Israel
The
activity as run with 3rd year
undergraduate students.
This 2.5-hour activity has several
learning objectives: get to
know a number of good projects
carried out by students from
previous classes; learn about
writing an abstract and writing and
editing a project by experiencing
reading 10 abstracts and one
project; practice viewing projects
from a sustainability point of view
("green lenses"); practice
summarizing and presenting. The
lecturer selected ten projects based
on criteria of relevance to
sustainability, good quality and
variety of topics. Step 1: Working
in pairs, students read all ten
abstracts and selected and ranked
five. This was done in advance by
email. Step 2: Students worked in
class in pairs, reading the project
they were allocated and preparing a
five minute presentation that
answered two questions: What was the
content of the project? How was
sustainability considered, and how
could it have been considered
further? For example, in one project
the reliability of a system was
evaluated, but the cost of
over-design (using materials and
processes that are more expensive
than required) was not considered.
Step 3: Students gave presentations,
each student answering one of the
two questions. Step 4: Each student
wrote a reflection exercise
consisting of writing five points on
"how to write a good abstract" and
five points on "how to write and
edit a good project". The students
found the activity very useful as
they will soon start their own final
projects. They had ideas about how
sustainability could have been
incorporated in the projects that
they reviewed. For the conference.
Participants will enjoy seeing
projects from other programs
("benchmarking") and experiencing
one way that they can be used as a
teaching resource. Also, this is an
opportunity to look at a range of
engineering projects from a
sustainability point of view.
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