Free ticketed event
MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are a recent phenomenon that, some believe, will transform higher education. With their low cost and potential to reach a large number of students, MOOCs have the potential to broaden access to education at all levels at any time, in any place, at any pace. MOOCs have infiltrated higher education at such a rapid pace that there has been little time for large groups of educators to have meaningful discussions about how MOOCs can be leveraged to support student learning. This NSF-funded workshop is one in a four-part series designed to bring together experts on MOOCs, online learning, and engineering faculty to discuss the potential for MOOCs in engineering education. In addition to stimulating conversations and research collaborations among faculty about this topic, a research agenda around this topic will result from this workshop series.
Acknowledgments: This workshop is supported by National Science Foundation grant number 1341340.
Dr. Diane Rover is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. She has served on the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET since 2009. From 2006-2009, she served on the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities. From 2009-2013, she held the positions of secretary/treasurer, program chair, chair-elect, chair, and past chair of the ASEE ECE Division. From 2000-2008, she led the Academic Bookshelf column as a senior associate editor for the ASEE Journal of Engineering Education. Dr. Rover was associate dean for academic and student affairs in the College of Engineering from 2004-2010. Prior to that, she served as associate chair for undergraduate education in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2003-2004. She began her academic career at Michigan State University. She received a B.S. in computer science in 1984, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer engineering in 1986 and 1989, respectively, from Iowa State University. Her teaching and research have focused on embedded computer systems, reconfigurable hardware, integrated program development and performance environments for parallel and distributed systems, visualization, performance monitoring and evaluation, and engineering education. Dr. Rover is a 2012 ASEE Fellow and member of the IEEE Computer Society, the IEEE Education Society, and ASEE.
Dr. Yacob Astatke currently serves as the associate chair in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at Morgan State University. He won ASEE's National Outstanding Teaching Award in 2013. For the past five years, he has been a leader in the development and delivery of electrical engineering laboratory experiments for regular and online students using state of the art portable laboratory instrumentation such as the Mobile StudioTM and recently released Analog DiscoveryTM boards. He played a leading role in the development of the first completely online undergraduate electrical engineering program in Maryland. Dr. Astatke travels to his native Ethiopia and other African countries every summer to provide training and guest lectures related to the use of the mobile laboratory technology and innovative teaching pedagogy to enhance the ECE curriculum.
Dr. Kathryn Jablokow is associate professor of mechanical engineering and engineering design at Penn State University. She holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Ohio State University, Dr. Jablokow’s teaching and research interests include problem solving and creativity in science and engineering, as well as robotics and controls. She is currently developing a new methodology for cognition-based design, which includes a classification of problem solving and design techniques based on their cognitive properties. Dr. Jablokow is a member of ASEE, a senior member of IEEE, and a Fellow of ASME. She is the architect of a unique 4-course module focused on creativity and problem solving leadership, which is offered in both resident and online forms. Dr. Jablokow is one of three engineering faculty members leading Penn State’s Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Creativity, Innovation, and Change, which completed its first offering in Fall 2013.
Dr. Bonnie H. Ferri, the associate chair for undergraduate affairs in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, teaches a MOOC on linear circuits primarily aimed at students who are not ECE majors. She is doing research on the effect of flipping an on-campus course using the MOOC. She has co-authored a junior-level textbook and has written a number of papers on controls education, and is most recently active in developing pedagogical methods for mobile hands-on education, which she employs in the MOOC. She has been selected by the ECE senior class for the Best Teacher Award and has received several other campus-wide awards for her teaching, mentoring, outreach, and leadership activities. She has won several national awards including the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award and the 2004 Best Paper Award from IEEE's Control Systems magazine, and the Hewlett-Packard/Harriet B. Rigas Award from the IEEE Education Society.
Dr. Ferri has been very active in the IEEE Control Systems Society. She was elected twice to that society’s Board of Governors, was the Program Chair for the 1998 American Control Conference, and is a past chair of the Control System Society Technical Committee on Education. She has held the position of Associate Technical editor of the IEEE Transactions on Education and Control Systems magazine. She received her B.S degree in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1981, an M.S. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 1984, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1988. She has been on the faculty of Georgia Tech since 1988, and is currently a professor.
Dr. Brian Skromme obtained a B.S. in electrical engineering with high honors from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign. He was a member of the technical staff at Bellcore from 1985 to 1989, when he joined Arizona State University. He is currently professor in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and assistant dean for academic and student affairs. He has more than 120 refereed publications in solid-state electronics and is active in freshman retention, computer-aided instruction, curriculum, and academic integrity activities, as well as teaching and research.
Dr. Don Millard is a program director in the Division of Undergraduate Education within the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at the National Science Foundation. He is involved in the Advanced Technology Education (ATE) program, the Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program, the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program, and leads the Transforming Undergraduate Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (TUES) program. Prior to joining NSF, Dr. Millard was the director of engineering education and the Academy of Electronic Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. During his many years at Rensselaer, he served as a faculty member of the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Department and directed a number of research centers; including the Center for Integrated Electronics.
Jeremi London is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University and an intern in the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Purdue. She has worked in various quality and logistics positions at Anheuser-Busch and GE Healthcare. As part of her current roles, she uses mixed methods research designs to study the following research topics: the effective use of cyberlearning tools in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education; characterizing and measuring the impact of federal investments in STEM education research; and applications of systems engineering techniques to conduct undergraduate STEM education curriculum evaluation.