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2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Riding the Wave of Change in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Presented at Electrical and Computer Division Technical Session 10

Electrical and computer engineering technologies have evolved into dynamic, complex systems that profoundly change the world we live in. Designing these systems requires not only technical knowledge and skills but also new ways of thinking and the development of social, professional and ethical responsibility. A large electrical and computer engineering department at a Midwestern public university is transforming to a more agile, less traditional organization to better respond to student, industry and society needs. This is being done through new structures for faculty collaboration and facilitated through departmental change processes. Ironically, an impetus behind this effort was a failed attempt at department-wide curricular reform. This failure led to the recognition of the need for more systemic change, and a project emerged from over two years of efforts.

The project uses a cross-functional, collaborative instructional model for course design and professional formation, called X-teams. X-teams are reshaping the core technical ECE curricula in the sophomore and junior years through pedagogical approaches that (a) promote design thinking, systems thinking, professional skills such as leadership, and inclusion; (b) contextualize course concepts; and (c) stimulate creative, socio-technical-minded development of ECE technologies. An X-team is comprised of ECE faculty members including the primary instructor, an engineering education and/or design faculty member, an industry practitioner, context experts, instructional specialists (as needed to support the process of teaching, including effective inquiry and inclusive teaching) and student teaching assistants. X-teams use an iterative design thinking process and reflection to explore pedagogical strategies. X-teams are also serving as change agents for the rest of the department through communities of practice referred to as Y-circles. Y-circles, comprised of X-team members, faculty, staff, and students, engage in a process of discovery and inquiry to bridge the engineering education research-to-practice gap. Research studies are being conducted to answer questions to understand (1) how educators involved in X-teams use design thinking to create new pedagogical solutions; (2) how the middle years affect student professional ECE identity development as design thinkers; (3) how ECE students overcome barriers, make choices, and persist along their educational and career paths; and (4) the effects of department structures, policies, and procedures on faculty attitudes, motivation and actions.

This paper will present the efforts that led up to the project, including failures and opportunities. It will summarize the project, describe related work, and present early progress implementing new approaches.

Authors
  1. Dr. Diane T. Rover Iowa State University [biography]

    Diane Rover is a University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. She has held various faculty and administrative appointments at ISU and Michigan State University since 1991. She received the B.S. in computer science in 1984, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in computer engineering in 1986 and 1989 (ISU). Her teaching and research has focused on embedded computer systems, reconfigurable hardware, parallel and distributed systems, visualization, performance monitoring and evaluation, and engineering education. She has held officer positions in the ASEE ECE Division, served as an associate editor for the ASEE Journal of Engineering Education, and served on the IEEE Committee on Engineering Accreditation Activities, the IEEE Education Society Board of Governors, the ABET EAC (2009-2014), and EAC Executive Committee (2015-2018). Dr. Rover is a Fellow of the IEEE and of ASEE.

  2. Prof. Joseph Zambreno Iowa State University [biography]

    Joseph A. Zambreno has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University since 2006, where he is currently an Associate Professor, director of the Reconfigurable Computing Lab (RCL), and site director for the Security and Software Engineering Research Center (S2ERC). Prior to joining ISU he was at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL, where he graduated with his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2006, his M.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2002, and his B.S. degree summa cum laude in Computer Engineering in 2001. While at Northwestern University, Dr. Zambreno was a recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, a Northwestern University Graduate School Fellowship, a Walter P. Murphy Fellowship, and the EECS department Best Dissertation Award for his Ph.D. dissertation titled "Compiler and Architectural Approaches to Software Protection and Security." He is a recent recipient of the NSF CAREER award (2012), as well as the ISU award for Early Achievement in Teaching (2012) and the ECpE department's Warren B. Boast undergraduate teaching award (2009, 2011, 2016).

  3. Dr. Mani Mina Iowa State University of Science and Technology [biography]

    Mani Mina is with the department of Industrial Design and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. He has been working on better understanding of students' learning and aspects of technological and engineering philosophy and literacy. In particular how such literacy and competency are reflected in curricular and student activities. His interests also include Design and Engineering, the human side of engineering, new ways of teaching engineering in particular Electromagnetism and other classes that are mathematically driven. His research and activities also include on avenues to connect Product Design and Engineering Education in a synergetic way.

  4. Dr. Phillip H. Jones III Iowa State University [biography]

    Phillip H. Jones received his B.S. degree in 1999 and M.S. degree in 2002 in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2008 in Computer Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, where he has been since 2008. His research interests are in adaptive computing systems, reconfigurable hardware, embedded systems, and hardware architectures for application specific acceleration. Jones received Intel Corporation sponsored Graduate Engineering Minority (GEM) Fellowships from 1999-2000 and from 2003-2004. He received the best paper award from the IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design in 2007.

  5. Dr. Douglas W. Jacobson Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6835-4687 Iowa State University [biography]

    Doug Jacobson is a University Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. He is currently the director the Iowa State University Information Assurance Center, which has been recognized by the National Security Agency as a charter Center of Academic Excellence for Information Assurance Education. He teaches network security and information warfare and has written a textbook on network security. For a non-technical audience he co-authored a book on security literacy and has given numerous talks on security. His current funded research is targeted at developing robust countermeasures for network-based security exploits and large scale attack simulation environments and is the director of the Internet-Scale Event and Attack Generation Environment (ISEAGE) test bed project. He has given over 75 presentations in the area of computer security and has testified in front of the U.S. Senate committee of the Judiciary on security issues associated with peer-to-peer networking. He has served as an ABET program evaluator representing IEEE for five years. He is a Fellow of IEEE and received the IEEE Educational Activities Board Major Educational Innovation Award in 2012 for his work in teaching information assurance to students of all ages.

  6. Prof. Seda McKilligan Orcid 16x16http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7446-3380 Iowa State University [biography]

    Dr. Seda McKilligan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Iowa State University, in the United States. She has a B.I.D. in Industrial Design from METU in Turkey and an M.F.A. in Design and a Ph.D. in Design Science from the University of Michigan, in the US. Her current research on approaches in the design innovation process, ideation flexibility, investigations of problem-solution spaces, and concept generation and development practices of novices through practitioners is supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation. She produces theory, design principles and systems to support design, engineering and educational innovation processes, through studying experiences of individuals and teams that lead to innovative thinking and through integrating that knowledge into organizational change.

  7. Prof. Ashfaq A Khokhar Iowa State University
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