Students who successfully pass professional certification exams while in school are often targeted first by industry for internships and entry level positions. Over the last decade, leading industry suppliers of computer-aided design (CAD) software have developed and launched certification exams for many of their product offerings. Some have also…

This column presents ideas and techniques to enhance science teaching. In this month's issue an upper elementary Science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) challenge brings an engineer into the classroom while emphasizing cooperation, communication, and creativity. STEM activities come in various shapes and sizes. Some are quite involved…

This article illustrates how mathematics teachers can develop design-focused projects, related to project-based learning, to motivate secondary mathematics students. With first-hand experience as a secondary mathematics teacher, I provide a series of steps related to the engineering design process, which are helpful to teachers in developing…

Sensors of all kinds play significant roles in the way that we use and interact with technological devices today. Smartphones, household appliances, automobiles, and other products that we use every day incorporate many different kinds of sensors. While the sensors are hidden from view in the products, appliances, and tools that we use, they…

We investigated the use of a new system, HemoFlow™, which utilizes state of the art technologies such as particle image velocimetry to test endovascular devices as part of an undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum. Students deployed an endovascular stent into an anatomical model of a cerebral aneurysm and measured intra-aneurysmal flow…

This paper presents a network security laboratory project for teaching network traffic anomaly detection methods to electrical engineering students. The project design follows a research-oriented teaching principle, enabling students to make their own discoveries in real network traffic, using data captured from a large IP darkspace monitor…

The focus on construction in T&E education has drastically changed. This article presents a series of topics and design-based labs that can be taught at various grade levels to integrate STEM concepts while also increasing students' overall awareness of construction and structural technologies.

The Next Generation Science Standards call for the integration of science and engineering. Often, the introduction of engineering activities occurs after instruction in the science content. That is, engineering is used as a way for students to elaborate on science ideas that have already been explored. However, using only this sequence of…

Context based learning (CBL) is a powerful tool that utilises areas of student interest framed in meaningful contexts to foster development of new skills and understanding. For middle school students, engineering activities that relate to real-world problems provide suitable CBL contexts for acquiring conceptual scientific and mathematical…

The power of 3D printing technology has grown exponentially in just the past few years--people around the world are using 3D printers to prepare food, create tailored clothing, build cars and homes, and advance the medical field in ways that never seemed possible. In classrooms across the nation, 3D printers have become increasingly common because…

Medical imaging systems (MIS) constitute an important emergent subdiscipline of engineering studies. In the context of electrical and electronics engineering (EEE) education, MIS courses cover physics, instrumentation, data acquisition, image formation, modeling, and quality assessment of various modalities. Many well-structured MIS courses are…

This paper presents a series of course modules developed as a high-impact and cost-effective learning tool for modeling and simulating the microfabrication process and design of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices using three-dimensional (3-D) printing. Microfabrication technology is an established fabrication technique for small and…

This paper presents the development, implementation, and assessment of a project-based Bioinstrumentation course. All course lectures and hands-on laboratory activities are related to a central project theme: a cardiac pacemaker. The students create a benchtop cardiac pacemaker by applying instrumentation knowledge acquired in the course to each…

This paper describes a student-centered approach to a power engineering technology course using the flipped or inverted classroom as well as active learning in the form of group discussions and team problem solving. The study compares student performance and perceptions of a traditional, teaching-centered classroom to two different flipped…

The construction of a simple volumetric adsorption apparatus is highlighted. The setup is inexpensive and provides a clear demonstration of gas phase adsorption concepts. The topic is suitable for undergraduate chemistry and chemical engineering students. Moreover, this unit can also provide quantitative data that can be used by young researchers…