ASEE Best Card Competition

Winners' Circle

The American Society for Engineering Education's (ASEE) Best Card Competition is an exclusive opportunity open to those presenting posters or papers at ASEE's Annual Conference. Presenters are eligible to enter the competition by submitting their materials on an Engineering Unleashed card. Cards can hold lesson plans, presentations, images, videos, and much more for others to download, use, and adapt in their own classes and projects.

The Engineering Unleashed Community Catalysts provided a peer review of the materials through a multi-category rubric. 

Winners will receive: 

  • First Place: $500 and a trophy
  • Second Place: $250 and a plaque
  • Third Place: $250 and a plaque

Beyond the possibility of winning, the competition provides a great opportunity for faculty and staff to share their work outside their institutions and organizations.

ASEE Competition image

CardDeck: ASEE Best Card Winners

You'll find all the winners on this page collected in a CardDeck where you can download materials, favorite and share, and discuss.

2020 ASEE Best Card Competition Winners

First Place: Stephanie Gillespie

Stephanie Gillespie

Entry: Prototyping via Makerspace Training in First-Year-Engineering 

Focus on the specific training materials used to introduce students to the makerspace equipment at a first-year student level! 

Stephanie Gillespie (University of New Haven), introduces three 100-minute class periods with one of the following technologies introduced during each class period alongside entrepreneurial mindset objectives: 

  • 3D Printer -> Rapid Prototyping for Risk Management 
  • Arduino -> Resiliency and Learning from Failure 
  • Laser Cutter + Hand Tools -> Exploring Creativity and Assumptions

Second Place: Chao Wang

Chao Wang

Entry: An Open Ended Design Project Promoting Autonomy in an Introduction to Engineering Course

Get more positive and motivational student responses in an introduction to engineering course! 

Chao Wang (Arizona State University), shows how to engage and motivate students by letting them choose their own design project while introducing broad topics such as: 

  • The engineering design process
  • Engineering modeling and drawing
  • Teamwork
  • Technical communication
  • Project management
  • An entrepreneurial mindset

Third Place: Cheryl Bodnar & Elise Barrella

Cheryl Bodnar & Elise Barrella

Entry: "Master” Entrepreneurial Mindset Concept Map

Get the Who, What, Why, and How aspects of an entrepreneurial mindset within the context of engineering education! 

Cheryl Bodnar (Rowan University) and Elise Barrella (DfX Consulting LLC), worked with seven faculty experts in the Engineering Entrepreneurship field to finalize this “master” concept map begun at the 2019 KEEN National Conference.

After reviewing the map and accompanying materials, faculty will be able to: 

  • Describe the key aspects of an entrepreneurial mindset 
  • Relate the key aspects of entrepreneurial mindset to one another 
  • Use the "master" entrepreneurial mindset concept map as a reference for course planning or assessment

Honorable Mention: Kimberly Demoret

Kimberly Demoret

Entry: Students Teaching Engineering - Making Products for Education 

Tailor this project to your class goals while cultivating student curiosity and creating enormous value! 

Kimberly Demoret (Florida Institute of Technology), demonstrates in her Introduction to Aerospace Engineering class how to provide hands-on experience in large lecture classes without lab sections. Use these materials as a single large homework assignment or a multi-part semester project, or expand to allow students to engage with university maker spaces and fabrication facilities.

Honorable Mention: Yingyan Lou

Yingyan Lou

Entry: How is the Yellow Interval Determined for a Signalized Intersection? 

Get your students analyzing theories and assumptions through storytelling, class discussion, and an individual research project! 

Yingyan Lou (Arizona State University), provides this module for students to analyze the theories, assumptions, and implications behind the yellow duration calculation, investigate contrarian proposals to current practice, and explore additional possible solutions. 

2019 ASEE Best Card Competition Winners

First Place: Haolin Zhu & Tirupalavanam Ganesh

Haolin Zhu & Tirupalavanam Ganesh

Entry: Concept Mapping, a Tool for Assessment of First Year Students' Understanding of the Design Process

Are you teaching a first year engineering course, or the engineering design process? Are you looking for an assessment tool for the design process? Do you want to implement 'connections' out of the 3C's in your course?

Haolin Zhu and Tirupalavanam Ganesh (Arizona State University), use concept mapping to require students to:

  • Internalize the knowledge
  • Identify key concepts that are relevant
  • Document relationships between the concepts, demonstrating knowledge of the engineering design process at multiple levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.


Second Place: Ajmal Khan, Firas Hassan, Heath LeBlanc, Khalid Al-Olimat

Ajmal Khan, Firas Hassan, Heath LeBlanc, Khalid Al-Olimat

Entry: How Analogies Fit in a Framework for Supporting the Entrepreneurial Mindset in an Electric Circuits Course

A few key modifications reinforced continuously throughout this course supports the integration of Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value (the 3Cs) of the entrepreneurial mindset!

Ajmal Khan, Firas Hassan, Heath LeBlanc, and Khalid Al-Olimat (Ohio Northern University), target each of the 3C's:

  • Curiosity is targeted through the formulation of exploratory questions and deeper exploration of those questions 
  • Connections is targeted by circuit analogies related to more familiar topics
  • Creating Value is targeted through a circuit design-build-test project that requires a value proposition 

Third Place: Lindy Mayled

Lindy Mayled

Entry: Effects of Alternative Course Design and Instructional Methods in the Engineering Classroom

What are the benefits of a flipped learning course design? Increased peer-to-peer interaction and improved student engagement are just two of the many positive outcomes. Yet large-scale, quantitative statistical analysis of student outcomes and achievement remains limited.

Lindy Mayled (Arizona State University), examines the effects of varied instructional methods by investigating the student achievement outcomes of engineering students enrolled in the same course taught through three different instructional models. 

Honorable Mention: Bruce Oestreich, Cheryl Bodnar, Kaitlin Mallouk, Scott Steiner

Bruce Oestreich, Cheryl Bodnar, Kaitlin Mallouk, Scott Steiner

Entry: Product Archaeology: Digging Into Consumer Products

Much like an archaeological dig is a process, so is product archaeology for engineers! Each week, students complete a phase of the product archeology process: preparation, excavation, evaluation, and explanation.

Bruce Oestreich, Cheryl BodnarKaitlin Mallouk, and Scott Steiner (Rowan University) help students arrive at a deeper understanding of the global, societal, economic, and environmental impacts of the design.

Honorable Mention: Jacquelyn Nagel

Jacquelyn Nagel

Entry: Butterflies, Termites, and Mollusks, Oh My! - Helping Students Make Connections for Bio-inspired Innovation

Showing engineering students the significance and utility of bio-inspired (or biomimicry) design is easy, but teaching them how to do bio-inspired design is much more difficult.

Jacquelyn Nagel (James Madison University) shares an instructional technique for teaching bio-inspired design to engineering students based on the concept-knowledge (C-K) theory of design that scaffolds the discovery and knowledge transfer processes involved in using natural designs to inspire engineering solutions.

2018 ASEE BEST CARD COMPETITION WINNERS

First Place: John Estell

John Estell

Entry: Connecting with Clients by Creating Educational Software

Set your student teams working with clients to develop apps suitable for elementary, middle, or high school environments! 

John Estell (Ohio Northern University) describes enhancements made to a term project for a first-year programming sequence. Students develop software to support lesson plans specific to disciplines, such as language arts for early childhood education. Teams use the NABC (Need, Approach, Benefits, Competition) method to present a value proposition to the client. 

Second Place: Cheryl Bodnar & Kaitlin Mallouk

Cheryl Bodnar & Kaitlin Mallouk

Entry: Games, Games, Games: Teaching Entrepreneurial Mindset through Board Game Design

Having difficulty thinking of a method that allows for integration of technical content with creative and human centered design elements? Try leveraging board game design principles!

Cheryl Bodnar and Kaitlin Mallouk (Rowan University) guide students to:

  • Determine the purpose of the board game they are designing
  • Review current products on the market
  • Brainstorm potential board game concepts
  • Develop a minimum viable prototype
  • Seek stakeholder feedback to help iterate on the design
  • Do final testing with the target market

Third Place: Lawrence Funke & Louis DiBerardino

Lawrence Funke & Louis DiBerardino

Entry: Dynamic Systems 1: Out-of-Class Problem-Based Learning Assignment

Encourage students to communicate with a customer while reducing cost and satisfying customer requirements! 

Lawrence Funke and Louis DiBerardino (Ohio Northern University) set students to researching and modeling an electromechanical elevator system while requiring customer communication and basic research in order to successfully complete the design. Learning objectives included determining a solution based on monetary and non-monetary constraints.