ASEE Conference Closure

Yesterday was the final day of the ASEE Conference, but it was my most productive day. It started off with a blast of useful information. At 7:00 a.m. I attended a session on teaching sustainability. The first three presenters did a fabulous job explaining their papers, all of which IRE and ICC could utilize ideas from. My second session was on entrepreneurial skills and mindset. Although the presenters had good information, none of it was new to the IRE model. They did mention Formula SAE Cars on a tangent conversation, which would be awesome to build on a team at IRE. The third session I attended was on problem solving and modeling. Jennifer Cole presented her paper on how to assess students' mathematical modeling abilities. She had many good points in her paper and presentation that I believe IRE can use to improve our mathematical models. I then moved on to a session for communication. Sandra Soto discussed an interesting method of presenting called Pecha Kucha. A Pecha Kucha presentation is a 20 slide PowerPoint in which the presenter spends 20 seconds per slide presenting the information. The whole presentation is 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. The majority of students surveyed said that even though this presentation is more challenging, it is better, and they would prefer to use this style rather than traditional. Michael Alley nearly blew my socks off when he presented his paper on bullet lists, good or bad. His presentation was by far the best of the conference. He engaged his audience for the whole presentation, and never even stopped to turn around and see what was on the projector screen. He didn't even have a mirror or reflector to see it... Trust me; I checked. So now you're thinking, "Wow! That sounds like a whole lot for just one day." But wait, there's more! I had the privilege of seeing not only Mason Hansen, an instructor at ICC, present on Itasca's learning community, but also seeing Ron Ulseth present the Iron Range Engineering Project Based Learning Model. I was surprised at how few questions were asked, (about 10 out of the 30 people) but Ron did do a very good job explaining the model. The project based learning session concluded my first ASEE National Conference. I have 12 pages of notes and an experience of a life time. I want to thank Ron Ulseth for allowing student interns to attend this Conference. I would also like to thank Itasca Community College, Iron Range Engineering, and all of their sponsors and funding organizations, because without them, this trip would not have been possible. I have learned a lot in these last three days, not only for my personal growth, but things that I can offer to students and faculty at IRE. If you would like more details on the sessions, contact Ron Ulseth for my ASEE National Conference Sessions Summary.