Minutes September 14, 2010

CPACE meeting minutes September 14, 2010
Attended:
MSU: Daina, Mark, Jon, Abdol, Claudia, Colleen
LCC: Louise
SAMPI: Mary Anne
CSW: Cindee

1) Review Minutes August 10, 2010

  • Some comments about the highlights
    • Are we going to use the word cloud or not?
    • We can leave the word clouds and create a version based on the final text of the highlights, once we have the pictures we can get advice from the press office.
  • In terms of targeting employers to collect AP we can have some of this conversation during the AB meeting but we also need to revise the list of industries that we already have chemical and civil (we've already interviewed) and decide our next targets for AP collection.
  • To facilitate this part of the process we need to look at the interview data (mission critical) and also at the next courses that we are targeting (have disciplinary faculty in the meeting) and see which industries align better with the target courses.

2) AB Meeting

  • We discussed the draft agenda.
  • Need to slow down the introduction because of the new member (Brandon Perkin from Eaton)
  • Opening remarks, Jon, Satish; [Claudia to check schedules for room and people].
  • Define Authentic problem (AP) areas.
  • Overview/context about the courses
    • 102, civil and chemical and LCC. Important to transmit the idea that we want this to progress throughout the curriculum.
    • It will be an overview of the courses and then 'here is where we are now', this is what we want from you in the meeting and then after the meeting.
  • they can give us ideas about engagement, other networks, new contacts, getting the AB members that are in the civil, chem areas a set of questions to get them to think about problems that are relevant to us.
  • What about the other areas? we don't want to turn them off.
  • Before we talk about the AP we want to show them how we analyzed the data that we collected to extract the computational aspects/principles, we want to show them the distribution of computational competencies in the pie chart and when we show the examples we want to show the examples in that context other wise they are all going to focus on engineering. We need problems that put focus on the computational aspects. This should be part of the definition/description of what an AP is from our perspective.
  • From our Cascade pilot we learned that the impression that they had was to have MSU solve a problem that they were having at the eng. level we want to make sure that we do not communicate this message.
  • What are the principles that lead to the linkage between the engineering problems and the computational principles? they help to solve the eng problem. EGR 102 is the place in the curriculum where we are most explicit about the computation and this has been part of the discussion, how do we get these computational pieces in there? What is computational about this? As we do the implementation we need to clarify this; once we move into a disciplinary course the discipline is going to be foregrounded so we need to know how to explicitly connect these computational pieces to the problems in a disciplinary context.
  • Overview of the AP generation process. Example or two of AP.
  • Activity discussion. Getting them to think about the process that we want to use to get the AP information, ask for their input from their employer perspective.
    • The questions are broad enough that all can provide good input and discuss
    • Those specific for civil and chem can be answered on note cards to follow-up after the meeting for further engagement alternatively, we can take these questions out and follow up with civil and chemical after the meeting.
    • Could we separate the groups by discipline? The computational principles are there, and it has to do with the future of the project. We need to maintain engagement for all the AB members.
  • Higher Ed. Change Process: information to provide context, can be shorter if we are pressed for time [Claudia to contact Jim].
  • Evaluation: Mary Anne has it planned.
  • Closing Jon

3) NSF Highlights

  • We reviewed Mark's document with the track changes, Mark pulled some lines from the project summaries that we submitted to NSF.
  • Transformative research. We need to look at the definition that NSF provides and all the research projects do not need to be transformative. Jon thinks that the paradigm shift is applicable to this project, it needs to be worded in a way that addresses the paradigm shift and how that plays; Jon will edit and send it around for review.
  • Societal benefits via the AP you capture students interest better and that plays specially for non-traditional engineering students, Jon will edit this part as well.
  • Pay attention to the highlighted parts where Kysha indicated that she needed input.
  • When we have a final version Mary Anne will do a word cloud.

4) EGR 102 meeting update

  • In the first meeting we showed them the ideas for the projects. The second meeting they said they liked the filtration problem because they have a sand filtration problem that's their area of research.
  • What they want in a problem (optimization):
    • problem should have many solutions not just one right answer
    • students should be able to decide among several variables what to hold constant and how to deal with multiple variables is a challenge that the students should face and learn how to deal with it.
    • different problems between honors and regular sections.
    • graphic stuff to encourage students to graph their data.
    • self assessment of their work. Is the data making sense?
    • developing models from data. Is it too simple?
    • can the teams have different data sets?
    • noisy data? How noisy?
    • the math is a challenge, 1st order eq. are OK 2nd order eq. are too complicated. What to black-box?
    • using Abdol's ideas of problems as stepping stones.
  • Get back to Cascade to close the loop. We do not need data from them. We need to fold this back and have an eng. coming to introduce the problem.
    • We need the more specific 'this is what resulted from our interaction' communication.
    • We MSU should be the ones sending it along with the open invitation to come.
    • As the date approaches we will organize the details.
  • Next step is to get the tour of the lab with Panni and Miles [ask Jamie to initiate this contact]. During this lab tour we will clarify the questions and establish what data we could get and get more information to move forward.
  • We need a definition of the problem in a way that it goes to Marco and his team for implementation.
  • Abdol worries that the AP really does not have much CT on it. Jon thinks that we have two options one is the data modeling and we have integration of tools for a purpose and that is a CT win that is beyond where the freshman usually are.
  • The sense is that the instructor is very cooperative.
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