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.

Day 2 in Vancouver

Today was rather short, but very productive. I started off the morning by going to a session on Educating Students for Professional Success. The very first presenter was Robert Gustafson P.E. who explained how to teach students to become teachers. As an IRE student, we are required to lead learning conversations, so this presentation seemed to have many good pieces of information to extract from it. I then moved onto computer and electrical engineering laboratories. There was not much in this session that was beneficial to IRE, but I learned more about nano technology along with wireless communications. My last session of the day was ASEE International Partners, which was led by the President of ASEE. Anette Kolmos from Aalborg University, Masa Takei from a Japanese University, and Myongsook Oh from a Korean University, all presented their current status of incoming students and the percentages of engineering students. They also discussed their future plans to improve the amount of engineering students that enter and graduate from their institutions. It was a great opportunity to meet the presidents of other countries. My final blog post for the ASEE Conference will be posted tomorrow night. Thanks for reading!

Proofed By: Andrew Nelson

Robotics is Over, But the Fun has Just Begun!

Today was the first day of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference in Vancouver. The Robotics Competition was concluded today with Itasca Community College placing 8th out of 16 teams. Congratulations to Brian, Matt, Ashley, Ryan, and Steve. The sessions that I attended today were Project Based Learning, the Main Plenary, ABET Assessment Outcome J, and Engineering Economics. It felt like IRE was being praised in my first session, because all the things the speakers wish they could do with their programs we already do! The Main Plenary session was almost the exact same thing, but instead of 40 people in the room, there were thousands! After the project based learning sessions, I then moved onto ABET Outcome J. The first 2 speakers had nothing to do with ABET Outcome J, but before I got too worried, the 3rd speaker said just what I wanted to hear. She talked about 3 different types of activities students can do to prove competence in ABET Outcome J, which all seem to be good ideas. Though she was the only speaker of 5 to actually speak on ABET Outcome J, I feel got enough information from her session. I then relocated myself across the street and up 2 flights of stairs for an Engineering Economics session. The first speaker mentioned how helpful "clickers" are in a lecture because it keeps the class engaged. However, the con to the clicker is that every student must buy their own. The instructors believe students do not use it enough to justify the cost of one. However, Ron figured out how to incorporate the clicker into his class without that con by simply purchasing them all himself. This way the clickers remain in the classroom for all classes to use, and everyone can stay engaged during a lecture. When I said this during the comments part of the session, many people looked surprised as if they hadn't thought of this option, or maybe surprised that an instructor would actually perform such a favor for their students. One man asked, "What school is this?" To which I answered, "Itasca Community College, located in Northern Minnesota." I should've added "The Best Place to Start" with a wink. I finished up the day by attending Becky Bates session where she was competing for national best paper. She is competing against 3 others, each from different regions of North America. She presented her paper on testing in groups very well. I hope she wins! Stay tuned for day 2 in Vancouver.

STEM Camp

July 11th - 15th is Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) camp week here at the Mesabi Range Community and Technical College. During this week, 7th-10th grade students will be doing activities that relate to STEM. This year's focus is on Natural Disasters. The interns at IRE have signed up to lead two activities that engage the students in an engineering perspective. Being that the focus is on natural disasters, we chose to model flooding and hurricanes. In two hour blocks, the students will be split into groups to design a solution for the given problems. In the flooding activity, the students are to create the best way to control water when flooding occurs. This will be done by giving them a platform for them to mold river beds. At the end, water will be released at the top of these platforms to see how it gets distributed. The team with the most water control wins. For hurricanes, the task will be to design a structure with a given set of materials. When the groups have finished, they will test to see if their structure stands against an industrial fan. There will be five different distances at which the fan is placed to model different strength hurricanes. This will be a great way for IRE to give back to Mesabi's campus and also to create relations.

Proofed by Andy L

Vancouver ASEE Conference

After the 3.5-hour drive to Minneapolis, a 3.5-hour flight to Seattle, a 2-hour lay over in Seattle, and finally a 35-minute flight to Vancouver, we finally made it to Vancouver. The city is beautiful. I am very excited to go to the conference tomorrow. David Janassen is presenting on project-based learning tomorrow, which I hope to attend. Ron Ulseth, Bart Johnson, Mason Hansen, Andrew Nelson, Ryan Telander, Steve Spooner, Matt Drazenovich, Brian Stevensen, Ashley Bredemus, Katy Marking, Emmy Stage, Emily Kilpatrick, and I are all representing IRE and ICC here in Vancouver. The conference starts at 7 a.m. and will finish for the day around 5:30 p.m. There are a total of 207 sessions tomorrow. Unfortuanetly we won't be able to go to all the good ones, but we will see most of them and take notes. Look for my blog tomorrow for details of the events.

Proofed by: Andrew Nelson