COURSE / PROGRAM

•  EMgt 4710

ABSTRACT

As campus enrollment has continued to grow, so has enrollment in this course. The course involves advanced statistical analyses and methods for process improvement through the use of statistical software. The content can be difficult for students to grasp with only a few examples covered during a normal lecture. Further, with such a large course, class discussions can also be very difficult.

The goal of this project is to blend one lecture per week. Further, the students will be broken up into two groups. Note that this is not two sections as that would require additional resources. Half of the students would attend the Tuesday class and the remaining half would attend the Thursday class; essentially reducing the class size from 48 to less than 25. The in-class time would then be spent on hands-on activities and statistical software. Through a smaller class size, more individual attention can be provided to students to better learn the material.

COURSE / PROGRAM

•  ChE 3111: Numerical Computing

ABSTRACT

ChE 3111 is a new course that will be taught as a blended course. Two hours per week will be online video lectures. The students will meet once per week for a 1.25-hour laboratory session. This course is intended to make better use of the basic computing skills of our students so that they can solve the more complex problems typical in upper-level ChE courses This course is complicated by the fact that the student's programming experience has been in a variety of programming languages (primarily C++ and Matlab) and that they will be applying these new computing skills to topics that they have not yet seen.

Music Appreciation is a general overview of music. This class has been taught traditionally since it was first offered on campus. I plan to make this a blended course, having an online listening/video aspect on Fridays while Monday and Wednesday are traditional in-class days. I would like to eventually make this class entirely online.

Students benefit by having something to refer back to, both for listening and for obtaining the skills necessary to play the drums. Having a music class for the LASTA minor not only benefits the minor but also Performing Arts and ALP. No new music offering has happened in Performing Arts since I suggested the general Music Appreciation class many years ago ( 1 O+); this class has been full almost every semester and I see Music Appreciation: Music of Latin America being at least the same if not needing another section.

COURSE / PROGRAM

• GEO 3631: Systematic Paleontology

ABSTRACT

GEO 3631 is currently composed of two components: a 50-minute lecture taught twice a week, and a once a week 150-minute laboratory section. The course lectures are all in the form of conventional PowerPoint presentations, which are full of illustrative graphics accompanied by specific technical information. The laboratory component comprises hands-on exercises compiled into a lab manual and complemented with ample hand specimens and microscopic slides. Student assessments are comprehensive; they are formative (four lecture examinations, four laboratory quizzes, laboratory exercises, assignments, presentations, clicker questions) and summative (term paper, field trip) in nature. See Appendices 1 and 2 for GEO 3631 blueprint and information respectively.
This junior-level course is currently transitioning from a classroom/laboratory teaching format to a blended format with a distance/online section. In the summer of 2017, we began the process of redesigning the course content to convey the subject in the simplest and most informative way by emphasizing the use of critical thinking rather than the memorization of facts and data. During this redesign process, we surveyed nineteen GEO 3631 students about the course's strengths, weaknesses, and possible improvements. The survey found a very positive attitude about (1) the new class structure and materials (PowerPoints, clicker questions, supplementary information, handouts, and notes), and (2) the hands-on experience during lab sessions. This sense of motivation encouraged us to digitize the ample fossil collection used for teaching GEO 3631 to develop online educational materials.

Our main goal is the development and implementation of an interactive and user-friendly approach to improve the students learning experience through the use of (1) an online database (Fossils3D) and (2) a web app interface for desktop and IOS/Android devices (PaleoApp). These new two educational tools are intended to design interactive weekly study exercises that will facilitate students’ understanding of lecture and laboratory material. Furthermore, as GEO 3631 is currently being offered for the first time through distance education, we aim to guarantee distance students an effective laboratory component by providing them access to hands-on experience with fossil specimens.

We strongly believe that the implementation of these two new online tools in GEO 3631 will deeply engage students with paleontology concepts by interactively exploring the reasons why the study of fossils is so fascinating. The herein proposed educational materials will not only improve our new blended approach to teaching paleontology but will certainly break down geographic barriers, especially in regions where even an introductory paleontology course is not formally taught. As paleontologists, we have to be able to transfer our knowledge about fossils and their applications to educate future generations of critical thinkers.

COURSE / PROGRAM

•  ENGL 3590: Game Studies

ABSTRACT

English 3590 will be a challenging and difficult course to design; careful planning of goals, objectives, and outcomes with an S&T instructional designer will be necessary to ensure that students learn, engage, and apply game theories for each of the three-game uses (entertainment, education, professional). Each type of game normally requires a significant time investment. For example, entertainment games with substantial narrative content can require 50-100 hours to complete. Since this amount of time is obviously far beyond what can be reasonably expected of students, judicious decisions will have to be made about which narrative games students should play, which the instructor should introduce in class, and how the games should be delivered as course content. There are a number of ways to include games in the course:

1. Students play the games in total or in part
2. Instructor creates videos about the games
3. Instructor introduces videos in face-to-face class sessions
4. Students watch gameplay as online course assignments

COURSE / PROGRAM

•  Engineering Ethics and Professionalism
  

ABSTRACT

If we expect our students to be ethical professionals when they enter the professional arena, we must provide them with a solid foundation in ethics and an understanding of the meaning of ethical behavior. Because engineers must remain worthy of the public trust, we as educators must provide our students with a solid foundation in both technical skills and in understanding ethical behavior. To help meet this need, a new course will be developed that will provide students with an in-depth appreciation of professionalism and ethical behavior in engineering practice. Students will explore, learn, and "do" ethics through the consideration of a number of case studies and examples.

The course will be developed so that it can be taught as a semester-long engineering ethics course (i.e. it will meet tlu·ee times per week for fifteen weeks), or can be offered as individual interdisciplinary modules as needed by faculty across campus through a blended learning environment. This presentation of course materials will not only help optimize campus resources but will also engage non-traditional or place-bound students who desire to pursue college-level education.