Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2024

DOI

10.18260/1-2--47750

Publication Title

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Pages

17 pp.

Conference Name

2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, June 23-26, 2024, Portland, Oregon

Abstract

Seventy-three students who enrolled in a senior-year level fluid mechanics course during spring semesters from 2019-2023 were asked about their perceptions on the impact in their professional preparation of a semester-long multidisciplinary service-learning assignment. This paper aims to evaluate their current perceived impact of the assignment (long-term impact) and whether it might have changed from when they took the course (short-term impact). The project tested their creativity, knowledge of fluid mechanics concepts, and skills to work with people from other disciplines. They were told that they were working for a hypothetical company, “Engineering is for all,” and were assigned to design and develop learning products for children in elementary schools in the local area. The students were required to pick a fluid mechanics topic, develop a relevant hands-on activity, and create a lesson plan that could be used by an elementary school teacher on his/her own. The engineering students were partnered with elementary education students who were enrolled in a science methods course. The students worked in a multidisciplinary team of five, with three engineering students and two education students. There were four main events for this project: 1) a classroom visit to the assigned elementary school where the teams introduced engineering and surveyed the interests of the children they would be teaching, 2) a multidisciplinary teaching/learning session where engineers taught science/engineering to educators and educators taught pedagogy to engineers, 3) a dress rehearsal where the teams practiced their elementary school lesson in front of peers and experts, and 4) the actual final elementary school lesson that the teams taught to the elementary school students. For each of those four main activities, the teams turned in preliminary assignments to instructors for feedback. Those four activities took place during class time and student attendance was mandatory. After four rounds of implementations between Spring 2019 and Spring 2022, a survey was sent to all former students who went through the course and participated in the assignment, with a 50% return rate. The survey included questions about how well they remembered the assignment (some of the students were involved in it 4 years prior to completing this survey), the relevance of the project in terms of their professional preparation, how it impacted their collaboration skills, and whether their involvement affected their interest in participating in engineering outreach activities. To determine how their perceived impact of the project on their professional preparation has changed from when they took the class to now when they are working professionals, we compare their recent responses to the responses in reflections they completed while taking the course. The information gathered in the survey also provides a means to evaluate the effectiveness of the project and identify areas for improvement, which has implications for how similar projects might be designed and enacted in the future.

Rights

© 2024 American Society for Engineering Education.

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2024 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015

Original Publication Citation

Ayala, O., Gutierrez, K., Kaipa, K., Ringleb, S., Cima, F., Kumi, I., Rhemer, D., Pazos, P., & Kidd, J. (2024) Long-term impact of a semester-long multidisciplinary service-learning assignment in a fluid mechanics course [Paper presentation]. 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Melbourne, Australia. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--47750

ORCID

0000-0002-9339-7574 (Gutierrez), 0000-0002-1453-2353 (Cima), 0000-0003-3376-0252 (Ringleb), 0000-0002-5675-5045 (Rhemer), 0000-0003-4348-7798 (Pazos),

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