WWW Page Design: Projects for Introduction to Design for Environmental Engineers Elizabeth A. Eschenbach Environmental Resources Engineering Humboldt State University Arcata, CA 95521
[email protected] http://www.humboldt.edu/~eae1
Abstract
Course Description
All Humboldt State University Environmental Resources Engineering (ERE) students are required to take ENGR 111: Introduction to Design. In the Spring and Fall semesters of 1995, ENGR 111 students were assigned World Wide Web page design projects. In the Spring of 1995, 45 students designed WWW pages describing the ERE Department. In addition, each of the 11 design teams worked closely with an ERE faculty member and developed a home page for that faculty member. The Fall 1995 ENGR 111 class completed two design projects. 20 students designed WWW pages describing the Schatz Energy Research Center, which focuses on hydrogen fuel cell research. The second half of the class (25 students) designed web pages describing the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, which is the first constructed wetland in the nation to be used for waste water treatment. This paper describes ENGR 111, its WWW page design projects and various student and departmental benefits of those projects.
In the past, ENGR 111 focused on the design process and CAD. Due to the ever increasing use of computers in engineering practice, ENGR 111 has evolved to include more Internet and computing skills. In addition, a higher emphasis on team work and team communication has been added to the course. New ERE students are taught survival skills for the major by experiencing a customerbased design process. The following course objectives are presented in the syllabus. • Students will learn about and experience the engineering design process. • Students will begin to develop the many computing skills needed by practicing engineers. These skills include: word processing, spread sheet programming, graphics and/or CAD (Computer Aided Design), and Internet (World Wide Web, file transfer protocol (ftp) and email). • Students will begin to develop the many communication skills needed by practicing engineers. These skills include: written communication, verbal and visual presentation skills, and team work.
Introduction Humboldt State University has one of the oldest and largest accredited programs in environmental engineering in the country. The program started in the 1970s and currently has over 400 majors. All majors are required to take ENGR 111: Introduction to Design. The course has no prerequisites and its purpose is to provide students with an introduction to the design process, along with an introduction to the Environmental Resources Engineering program and the types of problems environmental engineers solve. The design of WWW pages for the department, its faculty and various research projects was a great opportunity to provide beginning ERE students with such a learning experience. Before the specifics of the projects are presented, the course will be described.
Each semester up to 50 students are split into design teams of 3 to 5 people, in order to an solve open ended design problem. At Demo Night, at the end of the semester, each team presents its design concept and a prototype. The students receive a grade for how well they communicate their design concept in their oral report. They also participate in a “friendly” design competition. They are not graded on how well their prototype is judged in the design competition so they will not be penalized for lack of technical knowledge in their first engineering course. But the competition provides an opportunity for students to become more personally invested in the process. The designs are judged by a panel of ERE faculty and former ENGR 111 students. The use of a friendly design competition in a
freshman design course was first communicated to the author by Mary Sansalone, Professor of Civil Engineering at Cornell University, during the Spring 1991 class of ENG 600: Teaching Engineering [3]. At the end of term, each team turns in a design report. Each team member turns in an evaluation of all his or her teammates, including him or herself. In addition, all students submit their class notebooks for evaluation. At the “Final Party” (a potluck held during the final period) students receive their graded reports, peer evaluations, notebooks and final grade for the class. Students ENGR 111 students have a wide range of backgrounds. The age of the students ranges from 17 to 55 years, with an average age around 25. Students are admitted to the program if they meet the California State University entrance requirements. Since the course has no prerequisites, some ENGR 111 students have not completed Precalculus, while transfer students (25% to 50% of the ENGR 111 students) have completed all lower division requirements. Given this diverse student population, it has been difficult to provide a design project that is stimulating, yet not overwhelming. Developing a design and prototype of WWW pages provided a project that was stimulating to advanced students, yet was not too difficult for beginning students. Course Grading Criteria
• • • • •
40% Design Report (Team Grade) 10% Design Presentation (Team Grade) 15% Peer Evaluation (Individual Grade) 25% Lab and Class assignments (Individual Grade) 10% Class Note Book (Individual Grade)
Design Report The main focus of the class is on the design report which documents five phases of the design process [1,2]: 1. Define the problem. 2. Gather information. • Literature review. • Customer interview. 3. Generate multiple solutions. 4. Analyze and select a solution. 5. Finalize, test and implement a solution. • Describe final solution. • Cost analysis. (Design, implementation, and maintenance costs). • Prototype development discussion. Design Presentation At the end of the semester, student teams present oral reports of their final designs using
PowerPoint and test their prototype using Netscape. The teams are graded on the quality of their presentation and how well they communicate their design. Students are not graded on how well their prototype performs in the design competition. Peer Evaluation In order to create interdependence and accountability among team members (two key attributes needed for cooperative learning [4]) 15% of a student’s final grade is dependent on the endterm peer evaluation he or she receives from his or her team mates. At midterm students perform a practice evaluation. The midterm evaluations are reviewed in a student-teacher conference and methods of improving feedback to peers are given to each student. The midterm peer evaluation not only serves as an opportunity for students to practice writing evaluations, but also provides the instructor a chance to monitor team dynamics. (Teams are also required to email weekly progress reports). In addition, midterm evaluations often serve as motivation. Students that were not productive team members at midterm have an opportunity to improve their performance by the end of the term. Only the comments on final peer evaluations are used for the final grade. Students submit the evaluations on disk, so that the evaluations for one student can be cut and pasted together from his or her teammate’s evaluations. Team members receive this feedback at the Final Party, where grades, notebooks and reports are returned to students. Most team members thoroughly enjoy reading what their teammates wrote. A copy of the End Term Peer Evaluation is found in Appendix A. Much of the content of the peer evaluation was borrowed from materials presented by Professor Gregory Deierlein in the Spring 1991 Class of ENG 600 Teaching Engineering [3]. Lab and Class Assignments Throughout the semester, individual assignments are given in order to build the various engineering survival skills listed earlier. Below is a partial list of the assignments. • Small group discussions on team dynamics and methods to create and maintain a great team. • Word processing personnel profile [5] and use ftp to email personnel profile to project supervisor. • Tour library and learn library search techniques. • Written technical description and diagram describing an engineered system at the Campus Center for Appropriate Technology. • Develop personal home page using HTML. • Small group discussions and analysis of ethical issues presented in different case studies. • Small group assignments analyzing and improving writing samples.
• Practice presentations. • Spreadsheet analysis. • Two tours of local research projects. Class Notebook Students are required to keep a course notebook that contains all class and lab notes, assignments and handouts. In order to help foster study skills in beginning ERE students, students are graded on how well they organize course materials. In order to receive full credit on their notebooks, students must include a Table of Contents with page numbers that can be used to find materials on lecture topics, assignments and handouts within the notebook.
instructor. The teams estimated various costs, including cost of design in student hours, implementation time and storage requirements for the pages. The prototypes and designs were judged at Demo Night. The feedback from the judges was used for the implementation phase in the next semester. During the following semester, about 25 students implemented the WWW pages by combining the designs preferred by the judges. The author received a small grant to partially pay the students for their implementation efforts. Descriptions and the URLs of the pages implemented by these students are given below.
Lecture Topics The first five weeks of lecture are spent presenting the steps of the design process and team development. The teams and the project are assigned after these first five weeks. The last 10 weeks of lecture are spent reviewing specific topics for each of the design phases. In addition, engineering ethics, technical writing topics, and engineering design vs. engineering research are covered. Guest lecture topics cover different career opportunities for environmental engineers. One lecture period, “Advice From Seniors”, is not attended by faculty.
WWW Page Design Project Descriptions The design project was set up so that students would follow the prescribed design process presented in lecture. Their first task was to identify the problem and gather information to help solve that problem. Part of the problem definition phase was to identify customers and interview those customers. With respect to the WWW page projects, the students needed to identify who would want to access the pages they would design, and who would be knowledgeable on what information should be contained in those pages. Once the teams had collected enough information (or they had run out of time) they brainstormed on possible page designs. These different designs considered: what information should be conveyed, how it should be organized, the style and layout of the pages, etc. Then the teams selected a solution that best met their predetermined criteria. Some the criteria considered were ease of use and aesthetics. The last phase of their design process included describing the final design in detail using both words and diagrams, developing a prototype and performing a cost analysis. As soon as the teams determined what graphics would be used for their prototype design, they communicated their requests for scanned images to the
Environmental Resources Department and Faculty During the Spring of 1995, 45 ENGR 111 students designed WWW pages describing the Environmental Resources Engineering Department at HSU. In addition, each design team designed and implemented a home page for an ERE faculty member. The students interviewed current ERE students, ERE faculty and themselves in order to determine how to best design the ERE pages. Their literature reviews included topics such as: ERE department history, the history of the Internet and the World Wide Web, good and bad WWW page design, and major elements of HTML. About 10 students were involved implementing the pages found at the URL http://www.humboldt.edu/~ere_dept. Schatz Energy Research Center In Fall 1995, 20 students ENGR 111 class designed web pages describing the Schatz Energy Research Center, which focuses on hydrogen fuel cell research. In order to design the pages, the students determined who would be the possible users of the pages. In addition, they learned about the Center’s main research topic: Hydrogen Fuel Cells. They interviewed the Center’s director, ERE Professor Peter Lehman and received a tour from an ERE graduate student, Arnie Jacobson. The next semester, about 8 students implemented the pages found at http://www.humboldt.edu/~serc. Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary The second half of the Fall 1995 ENGR 111 class (25 students) designed web pages describing the Arcata Marsh and Wildlife Sanctuary, which is the first constructed wetland in the nation to be used for waste water treatment. Again the students determined potential users of the pages, and learned about the technical issues associated with constructed wetlands and integrated wastewater treatment. The students interviewed ERE Professor Robert Gearheart, one of the
original designers of the constructed wetland. After the Demo Night judges identified the strongest elements of the designs, about 10 students implemented the pages at http://www.humboldt.edu/~ere_dept/marsh.
Student Benefits Through the process of designing these WWW pages, students became familiar with the ERE department, its faculty and its research programs in an interactive and engaging manner. They were required to get to know one faculty member well enough to develop a WWW page for that person, describing his or her teaching and research interests. The design topic and obtaining the skill of WWW page design were current issues for ERE students. Students wanted their engineering department on the “net” as soon as possible and they learned a skill that few people on campus know. In fact, a number of ERE seniors were jealous of the ENGR 111 students! Obviously, the students became significantly more confident in their computing skills. These students are now being hired for other campus WWW page development projects. The WWW page projects were all necessary projects. Each project had a number of “customers” interested in the successful implementation of that project. Interested students were able to implement their designs during the next semester. A number of these students have proudly directed friends and family to view the pages they implemented as beginning engineering students.
Department and Faculty Benefits The ERE department and its associated research programs have benefited as they now have WWW pages. In addition, a number of ERE faculty are using the pages developed for them by ENGR 111 students. Given the recent budget crunch in California, there has been little or no funds to support a campus wide effort for WWW page development. ENGR 111 students have provided a means for their program to be on the net.
References 1.
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Howell, Steven K. (1995) Engineering Design and Problem Solving, Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Company, Inc. New York. Krick, E. V. (1976) An Introduction to Engineering: Methods, Concepts and Issues, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York. Sansalone, M., Beebe, P. and Carlsen, W. (1991) Lecture Notes from ENG 600: Teaching Engineering, Spring, Cornell University.
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Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T. and Smith K. A. (1991) Active Learning: Cooperation in the College Classroom, Interaction Book Company, Edina, MN. Collier, K, (1993) From Attracting And Keeping the Best, Building And Managing Effective Student Work Teams, ASEE. November 7.
Appendix A: End Term Peer Evaluation ENGR 111 End of Term Peer Evaluation Your Name Here Your Team’s Name Here Please carefully consider the questions below. Your fair and honest input will influence 15% of your team members’ final grades for the course. Unless you state otherwise, each team member will receive an anonymous copy of your comments along with other team member’s comments. What was the best thing about how your team worked? What would you have liked to change about how your team works? If your team had been paid $10,000.00 for this design, how would you distribute the money among your team mates? For each of your team members and yourself do the following: 1. List his or her name (or your name). 2. List his or her strengths (or your strengths). 3. List his or her weaknesses (or your weaknesses). 4. List how he or she (or yourself) has grown/improved or what he or she (or yourself) has learned this semester. 5. Rate them (or yourself) in the three categories listed below. Team Member Peer Evaluations (Range 1 to 4): Each team member’s contribution will be evaluated by you based on three criteria: 1. Time and Effort 2. Technical Expertise 3. Overall Contribution In each category, a rating between 1 and 4 should be assigned, where 1 implies the lower rating and 4 the highest. Time and Effort Aside from the obvious, the time and effort rating should include the energy and enthusiasm with which one takes on work and the team member’s reliability in terms of showing up for team meetings, etc. Technical Expertise The technical expertise should reflect the depth of understanding of the material and the willingness to learn and grapple with new ideas. Overall Contribution Finally, the overall contribution should be a general measure of each team member’s effectiveness in “getting the job done”. The overall contribution should include considerations as to how effectively each student works as a group member and helps in the organization and direction of others. Please note any additional thoughts regarding the peer review process. Thanks for your input.
