2022 First-Year Engineering Experience

GIFTS: Engaging First-Year Mechanical Engineering Students in Spreadsheets and Programming

Presented at Technical Session T2

In a course focused on introducing first-year mechanical engineering students to spreadsheets and programming, there are many challenges to engaging students in the material. This paper focuses on the MEE 114L Introduction to Programming course at the University of Dayton and changes to the course structure designed to improve student engagement and learning. The Introduction to Programming course provides students with an introduction to the application and use of computer programs for mechanical engineers. The 1 credit hour course focuses on building foundational skills in use of spreadsheets, plotting, data manipulation, and basic programming through two software tools: Microsoft Excel and MATLAB. The course is taught in a flipped classroom format with students learning new concepts outside of the classroom through an interactive online textbook and class sessions devoted to time for students to work on problems in the online textbook and software-based projects with assistance from peers and instructors. In the initial implementation of this course, students spent most weeks in the semester working solely in the online textbook and completed software-based projects during 4 dedicated project weeks during the semester. Both the instructors and students observed challenges with this structure that were related to limited direct exposure with the software tools. In the Spring 2022 semester, changes were made to address these challenges by reorganizing the course structure to engage the students with the software tools each week of the semester through weekly software-based project activities. While the course is currently underway, the instructors have observed that student programming skills have improved in comparison to previous semesters and that the reorganized course structure is beneficial for both student engagement and learning.

Authors

Dr. Allison L. Kinney http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3553-0733 University of Dayton [biography]

Allison L. Kinney is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Dayton. She received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University in 2005 and her MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Her interests include biomechanics of human movement, musculoskeletal modeling and simulation, and engineering education.
Dr. Vinayak Vijayan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4657-6318 University of Dayton [biography]

Vinayak Vijayan is a Lecturer in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Dayton. He received his bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from University of Dayton in 2015, his MS in Mechanical Engineering from University of Michigan in 2017, and his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from University of Dayton in 2022. His interests include biomechanics and engineering education.
Yucheng Li University of Dayton [biography]

Yucheng Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Dayton. He received his B.S. in Material Forming and Control Engineering from Shenyang Aerospace University, Shenyang, China, in 2014 and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Dayton, Dayton, OH, USA, in 2017. His current research interests include modeling of continuum robots and shape-changing mechanisms.
Shanpu Fang University of Dayton [biography]

Shanpu Fang is a PhD Candidate from the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the Univeristy of Dayton. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering and Automation from the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, in China, in 2016, and his MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton in 2018. His reasearch interests include biomechanical analysis of human movement and musculoskeletal simulation.

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