PAC 2008 Activities

Joan Carletta, PAC Chair

15 November 2008 New Brunswick, NJ, USA

EAB Public Awareness Committee (PAC)

RWEPReal World Engineering Projects:

Discovery-Based Projects for First-Year EE/CE/CS/EET Students

EAB Joint New Initiative with WIE Two year project: 2007-2008 Total budget: $380,000 (Continuing with EAB funding in 2009)

Focus:High-Quality Undergraduate Education

Goal is to provide faculty worldwide with:

Fully developed curricula for first-year EE/CE/CS/EET team-based projects discovery-based illustrate real-world problems solutions impact society

Workshops for EE/CE/CS/EET faculty online, self-study on the best pedagogical techniques for engineering

Benefits of RWEP

Students discover excitement of real-world problems and understand the importance of IEEE fields to society

Of benefit to all students, but critical for recruiting and retaining women

Former name: Increasing the Representation of Womenin IEEE Fields of Interest

RWEP Review: A Three-Stage Process

Abstract submission Reviewed double-blind online, followed by teleconference

meeting of review committee Accepted abstracts are invited for proposals

Proposal submission Reviewed double-blind online, followed by in-person meeting

of review committee An award is expected for accepted proposals, as long as

authors take reviewers’ comments into account and submit a final project/workshop

Project/workshop submission Vetted by a volunteer subject matter expert Ready for posting in the RWEP portal An award is made

Review Criteria for Projects

Relevance Does addressed problem’s solution benefit society? Is context a real-world, contemporary application? Are connections to real world societal impact explicit?

Quality Is project straightforward, organized, and complete? Are descriptions of methods accurate, clear, and concise? Is project tractable for first year EE/CE/CS/EET students?

Discovery Does project result in student discovery of an underlying

principle or concept? Does the proposed project illustrate strategies and trade-offs

that are important in the engineering problem solving process?

Results of RWEP Calls

2007 Eight project awards / curriculum modules developed:

Circuits Communications Computer hardware / architecture Controls Human computer interaction Power electronics Signal processing

Approx. three of eight awards extended to women

Results of RWEP Calls

2008 Project call (for curriculum modules)

21 abstracts received (reviewed in May) 14 invited for full proposal (reviewed in August) 6 invited to submit curriculum modules (due in December)

Workshop call (for on-line study by faculty) 5 abstracts received (reviewed in May) 2 invited for full proposal (reviewed in August) none invited to submit on-line workshops

Global participation authors from US, Canada, Mexico, Western Europe,

Eastern Europe and Asia

Project Library on RWEP Portal

Status: Six of the eight 2007 awarded projects available now. Two of the eight being edited for quality.

Publicity: Beginning, with IEEE staff pushing information out on email

distribution lists. Article in December issue of IEEE Institute. Interface with ECEDHA annual meeting.

Assessment: Google analytics used to track downloads month-by-month. Registration required for download; this allows us to track

users, possibly to survey them later. On-line rating and feedback system in place. Faculty who use the modules can enroll as “adopters” and

provide information on how they use the projects.

RWEP 2008 Goals

Continue to develop RWEP portal maintain project library automate all reviewing and administration features so

that explicit web designer is no longer needed

Implement assessment plan to understandimpact on student outcomes

Promote inaugural projects Finish second year of calls for projects Revise calls for projects and workshops for third

year, to improve responses (particularly to workshop call)

Arrange for authors to present at FIE 2009, and for special issue in IEEE Transactions on Education

www.realworldengineering.org