Students in college algebra, precalculus and calculus courses struggle to understand the concepts of one-to-one functions and inverse functions. They also struggle to understand why these theoretical concepts are important in the “real world.” This short in-class activity, followed by a short homework problem, uses encoded messages to 1) introduce students to the concepts of one-to-one and inverse functions, 2) help students quickly and intuitively grasp the rationale behind the structure of both one-to-one functions and inverse functions, 3) motivate use of one-to-one functions and inverse functions in the real world to securely encode communications, and 4) package this content in a format that students find fun.

Throughout the course of their class on Programmable Logic Controllers, students will learn the ins and outs of the code that drives these user-configurable systems. However, most textbooks and course sequences will not illustrate the value of of these controllers. In a typical mid-size company, the introduction of one PLC system can save tens of thousands of dollars when compared to traditional relays. As part of their final project for this course, students must create a business proposal for a PLC system. They must then connect the PLC to a physical real-world system and write code to demonstrate the logic they aim to control. Finally, they must analyze the economic benefits of this system by comparing against traditional relays. An analysis of relay logic will be required to perform the comparison, and student programs must use latches, subroutines, counters, timers and other concepts covered in class. Finally, students are able to check out portable PLCs in order to perform physical onsite interfacing. Some students may elect to connect the PLC to an offgrid power system to run a greenhouse. Others may elect to interface with standard 12-24V systems, such as garage door openers, automotive electronics (and relays) and marine controllers.

Who: The card is created for an introductory course in Fluid Mechanics. The students who take the class are junior or senior students majoring in Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Engineering and Environmental Engineering.What: The activity considers calculating head loss and flow rate for turbulent flow in conduits and steady uniform open channel flow using a simplification of a real-world case study based on the Central Arizona Project (CAP). Students are asked to solve turbulent flow problems using Darcy-Weisbach approach and calculate discharge of open channel flow using both Darcy-Weisbach and Manning equation for conduits and channels with various material and cross-sectional shape. They are additionally asked to discuss the effects of the conduits/channel design based on their calculation results. When: This activity includes a 75-min class session for introducing the problem set up and knowledge basis, a group assignment for the students to solve the problem, and a half class session for student groups to present their findings. Students will have a week to complete the assignment. Where: This activity should be done after energy equation and pipe flow lectures. Why: The purpose of this activity is two-folded: (1) integrate a subset of course materials that are closely related, and (2) connect the conduit and open channel flow problems to a real-world case study based on Central Arizona Project. The underlying hypothesis is that through synthesis and comparison, motivated by a real-world case study, students will be able to develop a deeper understanding of the materials.

The goal of this project is to be able to build a functional electric circuit with an Arduino that uses at least two different colored LEDs, uses at least one button, and has at least two user-controlled states.  The mini-project is to create a door sign.  An example would be a dorm room door sign with red and green LEDs that turn on and off when you press the button to indicate if you are in your room or not.  Time to complete the project is 3-6 hours.  This is a great beginning project for first-year students.

OverviewCapstone projects are the culminating project experience of many undergraduate engineering programs. They are a chance for students to apply skills that they have acquired and synthesize new solutions based on the specific requirements of the project. At ASU, the Software Engineering Capstone project is also the first time many students interface directly with industry professionals. Students who have adopted the "grade centered" mindset must quickly adapt "customer centered" thinking in order to succeed.This card is a set of three that outline how customer communication and and value creation have been woven into the Software Engineering Capstone program at Arizona State University. The other two cards are:Integrating Scrum Process into Open-Ended Capstone ProjectsCoaching Sessions to Reinforce and Brainstorm Customer Engagement TechniquesIn addition to these cards, a fourth KEEN card (Software Engineering Capstone Projects with Focus on Communication and Customer Value Creation) provides an overview of the Software Engineering Capstone process at ASU.This card provides a teaching module that helps prepare students for interaction with industry professionals. The module is used for both online and in-classroom populations at ASU and has been effective at helping students bridge the gap to understanding customer mindset. Overview of the Module This module is intended to be given in either lecture format (with classroom discussion time), or online with a live-session video conference discussion time. The focus of the module is to introduce students to motivational factors that drive the industry sponsors and equip the students with communications strategies for uncovering and delivering value to the customer. These practices come from insights gained during my 25+ years as an engineering professional as Technical Fellow, Chief Architect and Chief Technology Officer. Topics covered by the module are: Understanding uncertainty, expense rate, and revenue generation as forces within product developmentUnderstanding company roles/personas related to management of uncertainty, expenses and revenue generation: Chief Technology Officer, Vice President of Engineering, Vice President of Marketing.Uncovering hidden opportunities through asking the right questions.Explanation of Materials The following materials have been provided for instructors wishing to incorporate this module in their courses:1. Lecture notes in Microsoft PowerPoint format. They may be used freely so long as proper attribution is given.2. Video lectures showing how the lecture materials are presented to the online population at ASU. Opportunities for Improvement Due to time constraints, this module is covered in one lecture at ASU. Schedule permitting, additional exercises could be incorporated to help students gain additional mastery of the topic. In particular, role playing of customer communications has been shown to be highly effective in industry settings.

As initial preparation for a second group project in a first-year engineering course, students complete an online personality assessment based on Jung's typologies and the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. Within their groups, the students discuss their own results and those of their teammates. At the conclusion of the second group project, students reflect on their understanding of themselves and their peers may have affected their experience. Significantly, the discussions are framed as explorational, raising awareness of behaviors and interactions that often emerge within teams. The online results are explicitly not held up as indicating fixed characteristics that define individuals' modes of contributing in groups.

Getting ready to give a presentation about your work with KEEN? Want to share more about the Network with others? Are you looking for implementation strategies or people to invite to speak at your campus? Get the most current information about KEEN here, including existing resources for your presentations and discussions. And if you are looking for a list of current partners, click here. If there's anything you would like to see that isn't listed here, please add a note in the Discussion section.

While evangelizing the entrepreneurial mindset (EM) falls mostly to curricular and co-curricular efforts, EM does provide a framework for venture development at ASU, particularly through Venture Devils, which supports all ASU student, faculty, staff, and community-based entrepreneurs. Venture Devils was created in 2016, coincidentally launching at same time that ASU initially became involved with KEEN. This card is a companion to the the All In: Venture Devils case study available on the EM @ ASU website. Supporting resources discussed in and otherwise relevant to the case study can be found in the folder(s) below. Likewise, this card is where the community can discuss the case and its broader topic of the connection of EM and student funding opportunities.Case Study SynopsisFunctioning as a meta-cohort for practicing entrepreneurs, Venture Devils is for all types of ventures at any developmental stage (e.g., pre-revenue, in revenue, capitalized, etc.) and is designed to streamline access to mentorship, funding, and workspace. More specifically, the program aims to catalyze the entrepreneurial success of venture founders by connecting them with Venture Mentors who provide regular, ongoing support. Throughout 2017, while exploring ways to increase integration of EM, ASU also undertook a major redesign of its venture funding model, transforming it from having siloed funding sources to having integrated funding tracks, making the model easier to understand, even intuitive.About the EM @ ASU Case StudiesThe EM @ ASU website's 20-plus case studies tell the story of FSE's multi-year initiative to more fully and deeply integrate EM/EML throughout its curricular and co-curricular programs. The cases are organized into four main categories, and relationships between the cases are highlighted to illustrate the initiative's scope and resulting ecosystem. The cases have a consistent structure comprising a "Case at a Glance" box and the following sections: Context, Integration Details, Integration Outcomes, Future Plans, and Considerations. Some cases include video commentaries, and each case is available as a downloadable PDF.

Watch an overview video of this module! The entrepreneurial mindset focuses on value creation, and the qualities and characteristics associated with identifying unexpected opportunities to create value. This is not a new concept, as throughout history many famous individuals devoted their lives to developing inventions, many of which create value. The module “Role of Product in Value Creation” helps the student to investigate the total product concept, one that introduces a contrarian view the student may not have thought about previously. As part of this concept it is important to keep in mind for whom the products are designed, the consumer. Finally, it is important to go beyond the product to better understand the concept of value.The module “Role of Product in Value Creation” is designed as a self-contained interactive module to help students learn how changing business environments can negatively impact a company and what strategies can be used to adapt to the new conditions.The module is divided into four lessons: 1. Product3: The Total Product Concept, Analyzing Product Success;2. Failure with the Product Concept; 3. Understanding Value Creation with the Value Proposition Canvas;4. Understanding Customers.

The assignments described on this card were created and deployed as part of developing a new Engineering Design Program at Rose-Hulman. Engineering Design was approved as a major in Spring 2018, to be offered beginning in Fall 2018. The major features interdisciplinary Design Studios in every quarter of the first two years. In addition, the first year of Engineering Design Studios has been adopted as part of the freshman curriculum for Biomedical Engineering majors. (All BE majors are taking this curriculum for at least 2017-2019.) Please see the card "Engineering Design Studios for First-Year Students" by Patsy Brackin et al. The author of this card, Anneliese Watt, is a rhetoric specialist in this interdisciplinary program, and will focus on a couple of KEEN-associated assignments used in our first-year curriculum.One simple assignment we used throughout the first-year studios is reflective writing on the 3Cs. We directly taught students about the 3Cs by showing them the descriptions of the entrepreneurial mindset and each C on the engineeringunleashed webpage. Then, at regular time intervals (such as every two weeks), or after particular individual or team assignments, students were asked to write a 3-5 paragraph essay directly addressing how Curiosity, Connections, and Creating Value figured into or were evoked by their work on that project or in that time period. (The prompt was that simple.) it turns out students are able to see all three elements each time they were asked to reflect. We were pleased to discover that these reflective writings not only led students to see how the assignments created an entrepreneurial mindset, but also led, we believe, to greater appreciation of the assignments, projects, and course activities in general.Studio 1 also featured the elevator pitch module authored by Julia Williams and Ella Ingram for KEEN. Watt attended the workshop hosted by The University of New Haven, and then we plugged the module into our Moodle course. Students were required to complete the module in the early stages of a design project for a non-profit client. Based on what they learned in the module, students developed and delivered pitches for adapted toy designs that they proposed designing and building for the client, These pitches were part of an Innovation Tournament: students gave initial pitches; a subset of pitches were selected as semi-finalists and students reflected on any failure and the nature of their first pitch experience; students presented the revised semi-finalist pitches now in pairs; and final selections were made, setting up the remainder of the project. The audience for the pitches included key stakeholders from the client organization as well as our class members. I've featured the rhetorical triangle as the image for this card, because understanding the conventions of the genre (elevator pitch) as well as audience needs and context were keys to successful pitches.

Georgia Tech and Emory University’s Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering is infusing within their core courses a story-driven learning curriculum that helps students’ build their entrepreneurial mindset.  As part of this new program, we've created and piloted a new junior-level course entitled “The Art of Telling Your Story”.  In this workshop, Joe Le Doux, the department’s Associate Chair for Learning and Experience, and Janece Shaffer, an award winning playwright and StoryReady Founder present elements of Shaffer’s interactive storytelling curriculum which is now integrated into Georgia Tech’s biomedical engineering required curriculum. Like the Georgia Tech students, the workshop participants will learn basic strategies to craft dynamic and memorable narratives along with the must-haves of impactful storytelling such as compelling specificity and inspiring transformation. Within 30 minutes, participants will put these strategies into action by creating their own stories, sharing them in small groups and then raising their storytelling game through aha-filled, group coaching. Participants will learn why details make stories “sticky” and how a “see it, see it, feel it” strategy builds emotion and connection.  The workshop will emphasize how stories can inspire and illuminate the process by which engineers create value. Workshop attendees will leave the workshop with a draft of their own story.  They will also receive a booklet that describes The Coulter Department’s story-driven entrepreneurial mindset learning program, the junior-level storytelling course’s syllabus and story prompts, Shaffer’s tips for how to amp up stories, a rubric for evaluating stories, and a tip sheet for how to run a stories workshop.  Example student stories may also be provided.

This project is described in a presentation at ASEE 2020 "Best of First-Year Programs Division" session.Background and IntroductionHands-on team-based open-ended design projects in freshman engineering courses have been shown to significantly improve student retention due to the benefits of active hands-on learning, self-directed acquisition of knowledge, development of skills and confidence necessary to succeed in engineering and a growing sense of community. Open-ended design projects can range from highly structured to theme-based to free choice. Combining entrepreneurial thinking and maker technology, student-driven free-choice open-ended design projects allow students to generate their own idea, take ownership of their design project, and results in significant gains in creativity and entrepreneurial intentions. This card describes a free-choice open-ended design project that supports student autonomy, one of the three basic psychological needs from self-determination theory (SDT). SDT postulates that individuals will adopt more internalized/autonomous forms of motivations, resulting in more optimal learning outcomes, when three basic psychological needs are satisfied: autonomy, a sense of choice and control; relatedness, a sense of positive and supportive connections to others; and competence, a sense of mastery and self-efficacy. The introduction to engineering course is a freshman level 2-credit 15-week lecture and lab course consisting of a 50-minute lecture and a 2-hour 50-minute lab each week. Most students enroll in this course during their first semester in college. The course aims to provide students with an introduction to engineering, introduces the broad topics of the engineering design process, engineering modeling and drawing, teamwork, technical communication, project management and an entrepreneurial mindset. In addition, technical knowledge such as computer-aided design including 3D printing and programming a microcontroller is introduced to help students with their two multidisciplinary design projects, i.e., a well-defined project during the first half of the semester (See Card "Project: Autonomous Mail Delivery System") and an open-ended project during the second half. The course is a required course for students majoring in aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering. Project Description and ImplementationThis card provides all of the materials needed to implement a nine-week long team-based open-ended multi-disciplinary design project in an introduction to engineering course. Students, in teams of four, work on their project in class during lecture and lab for nine weeks. There are two lecture periods dedicated to introduce the project before students work on the project during the labs. The project description and grading are in the "Project Description" folder. The project uses the following "theme" statement: "Design an automated solution for a space such as a home, campus building including dorm, office, retail, restaurant, hospital, library, and factory. Your design should add value in an economic, environmental, and/or societal sense. For example, your design might help reduce costs, increase efficiency, reduce pollution/waste, and/or improve accessibility, among other things. Your design must incorporate an Arduino or other microcontroller." Research results from SDT (See paper in the "Publications" folder) showed that, compared to other project definitions which further place constraints on scope and materials, this autonomy-supportive version of the project statement results in more positive student motivational responses. Another interesting finding from the research suggests that the provision of more choice and control seems to have a more dramatic positive impact on women compared to men. The schedule of the project is shown below along with brief descriptions: Week 1 (Lecture 1): Pain Point Investigation and Information Collection (worksheet, group discussion)Week 2 (Lecture 2): Information Synthesis and Opportunity Identification (worksheet, group discussion) Week 3 (Lab 1): Problem Definition, Brainstorming and Solution Prototyping (worksheet, group discussion, hands-on building) Week 4 (Lab 2): Design Decision and Project Management (worksheet, group discussion) Week 5 (Lab 3): Proposal Presentation (oral presentation) Week 6/7/8 (Lab 4/5/6): Prototype Construction & Testing (hands-on building) Week 9 (Lab 7): Final Presentation and prototype demonstration (video, oral presentation and demo) The two lectures help students identify pain points, and collect and synthesize information. Ideally, they should be given at least two weeks before the start of the project so that students have plenty of time to decide which project to work on. The worksheets used in the two lectures are in the "Lecture Worksheets" folder. Lab 1 and Lab 2 give students the opportunity to go through the engineering design process: define the problem, gather information, generate alternative concepts, evaluate the alternatives, select the most promising concept, plan and manage the project. The problem definition and planning documents used are in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder. During the three project construction labs, a lab agenda is used to help students track their progress. It is in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder. Students are asked to complete a business model canvas for their project (assigned during the second construction lab, instructions and template are in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder). They are also asked to write a testing plan for their prototype (assigned during the last construction lab, instructions and template in the "Supplemental Lab Materials" folder). Students have to submit five project deliverables. Instructions, due dates and grading rubrics are in the "Project Deliverables" folder. Evaluation and Future WorkIn the SDT research conducted, for every week of the nine-week project, students were given a Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) survey, which is an instrument to measure different types of motivations on a continuum ranging from autonomous (internal) to controlled (external) motivations. This continuum includes intrinsic motivation, a deeply internalized state of engagement based on interest, enjoyment, satisfaction and passion; identified regulation, a state in which actions are based on an internal sense of self and perceived value, importance, or usefulness of a task; external regulation, a state of compliance with external pressure, prompted by contingent reward or punishment avoidance, and amotivation, state of impersonal or non-intentional action due to learners finding no value and no desirable outcomes in a learning activity. This survey provides useful diagnostic information and practical insights into course design to support more positive forms of student motivational responses. The survey reveals, for example, that the open-ended design project focusing on automation described in this card seems to result in higher external motivation signals and lower internal motivation signals for chemical engineering students. How to come up with remedies to reach this population is an urgent next step in the project design. The weekly motivation survey also shows a dip in positive motivations during Week 2. How to modify the activity to better support positive student motivation is another future improvement. Furthermore, given that the SIMS profile from this project shows both higher average amotivation and external regulation values compared to the “truly autonomous” motivation profile, identifying strategies to further motivate students to adopt more positive forms of motivation is one more important future work. A Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (BNSS) survey was given at the end of the semester, which measures the degree to which three basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence are satisfied. Survey results show that competency may play a role in shaping the motivational responses of students. Therefore, if you do plan to implement an open-ended automation project like the one described in this card, make sure to give students a tutorial and sufficient practice on Arduino, sensors and actuators to make students feel confident in their ability to completing the project. Tutorial and examples on using Arduino, sensors and motors can be found in the Card "Project: Autonomous Mail Delivery System". Both the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS) survey and the Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale (BNSS) survey can be found in the "Surveys" folder.