Date: April 15, 2010                                        

 Time: 11:30 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Participants:

• MSU: Mark,  Jon, Abdol, Neeraj, Daina, Claudia
• LCC: Louise
• CSW: Cindee, Kysha
• SAMPI: Mary Anne

1) Minutes from April 1, 2010

• Need to edit and clarify the objective of the workshop in the minutes (Claudia)

There was a discussion about the Summer workshop (not in the agenda). The proposal has two workshops one the first year (2010) and the other one the second year. During a conversation with Jon J. Fairweather indicated that for the first year workshop we only need one week for delivery and a second week to assemble the materials. One suggestion was to propose a workshop for ASEE using the materials that Jim puts together.

2) Questions about Cascade problems:

Nanoclay problem from Cascade Eng.:

• Daina reviewed the technical information about the problem. If we are going to do experiments we need to know what is the infrastructure support to do that. Would Cascade give us data? do we generate data? These are the kinds of things we need to consider.
• The people that do experiments with nanoclays in our (CHE) curriculum are 400 level people. It is one of our (CHE) concentrations.
• Daina explained the type of experiments that the students do now and there are simulation components in the experimental process. the students can adjust the program until they achieve the desired properties.
• Neeraj indicated that the nanoscience is part of the functionally graded materials which is of great interest to green industries and issues of sustainability.
• In terms of the simulation this is a computational component of the problem that could be used in a freshman course. Also appealing is the introduction of simulation processes to the students. May be get some videos or other materials that are appealing to students.
• This package is part of a research grant and is open to everyone. Daina thinks it is used in the Summer Institute but not sure.
• We need to ask cascade what type of properties are they looking for and why do they want to get the exfoliation to 100% where particles start to break. it is an optimization problem as well.
• Is this the type of problem that could wind up through the curriculum?
• Daina indicates that she can see the freshman and the seniors but the middle is not so clear. 201 would do simulations.
• Ideally a class of problems can be identified that permeates all the levels. the applications in the different disciplines would change. How the problem can be formulated remains the challenge and not all courses lend themselves to this kind of work.
• To create the simulations for the students they can use reasonable assumptions.
• Ask Cascade what kind of data they have that they are willing to share. It will be cool to have real industrial dat so that they can see the noise, apply some statistics.
• From the 102 perspective that could be useful too. There are some pieces from the Cascade data that can be used in the simulations but some other can not and would be useful to something else that do no require a simulation. For 102 we need to use some other kind of data analysis like excel, MATLAB; so getting a range of data is good.
• Daina and Jon are the point persons to talk with Cascade.
• Daina will communicate directly with Cascade.
• We have a new instructor for EGR 102 in the Fall. He is a mechanical Eng and a modeler. It would be good to clue him-in.
• We were going to look at the other problems specifically the bio-sand water filtration problem to maximize the time with Cascade.
• We need to ask someone in Eng for an expert opinion. People like Susan will offer insight about this problem as this is her area of expertise. Jon will contact Susan.
• The plan is: Jon will try to contact Susan before our next meeting and then Daina will contact Cascade with either two problems or one problem.

3) Evaluation discussion.

• The most critical thing to talk about is getting the IRB going. We talked about using the capstone project to do the evaluation.
• We need a rubric that assesses Computational Thinking (CT) in the capstone course. Then at the end of our intervention we asses again.
• We need a rubric now to get a baseline from capstone courses that have not had the intervention.
• Since every capstone is different we will need to f tune the rubric for each of them. For now we need a rubric that allows us to evaluate the computational aspect.
• CHE has two capstones and we should use the traditional not the national design project capstone.
• The challenge is to define CT and how to measure it.
• We need to define and design the rubric using the CT parameters that we defined form our data using computational concepts in the FITness report.
• SAMPI probably needs to do a separate IRB for their evaluation piece.
• The rubric is not only used for the evaluation but is used to determine whether or not we are getting the educational outcome that we intended in our intervention.
• We need to get rubrics to IRB and get them as exempt and we would be able to change it later.
• We will do a basic rubric to give to the IRB using the FITness concepts; how do we identify characteristics from each concept? What is the evidence for each of the concepts.
• Neeraj, Abdol and Louise will be in charge of developing this rubric. They will have it for the next meeting.
• Mary Anne will get this rubric to her IRB as well.