An evaluation of an Online Student Portfolio for the Development of Engineering Graduate Attributes

1
An evaluation of an Online Student Portfolio for
the Development of Engineering Graduate Attributes

• Stuart Palmer
• Institute of Teaching and Learning

2
The STALGS project team

• Dr Clive Ferguson School of Engineering and IT
• Dr Wayne Hall School of Engineering, University
  of Plymouth
• Dr Dale Holt Institute of Teaching and Learning

3

• Any impatient student of mathematics or science
  or engineering who is irked by having algebraic
  symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along
  without it for a week
• Eric Temple Bell, Mathematician

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Graduate attributes - engineering
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Graduate attributes - assessment

• Student portfolios are one means by which
  individual student attainment of graduate
  attributes can be assessed
• Much assessment is now electronic, hence many
  reported applications are online (e-)
  portfolios

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Project outline

• Translate both Deakins and Engineers Australias
  graduate attributes into discipline-contextualised
  graduate attributes for engineering
• Develop an on-line student portfolio system based
  on BlackBoard (Vista)

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Project outline

• Using a sub-set of the developed graduate
  attributes relevant to SEB421, embed the use of
  the on-line student portfolio into the assessment
  of that unit and
• Conduct a trial and evaluation of the student use
  of the online portfolio system

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Graduate attributes SEB421

• Proficiency in engineering design
• Ability to communicate effectively, with the
  engineering team and with the community at large
• Manage own time and processes effectively,
  prioritising competing demands to achieve
  personal and team goals and objectives
• Fluency in current computer-based word-processing
  and graphics packages
• Capacity for creativity and innovation

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Graduate attributes SEB421

• Evidence Tangible evidence, in an electronic
  form that demonstrates attainment of the
  specified attribute
• Reflection (at least) 200 words that
  demonstrates understanding of the importance and
  relevance of the attribute

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Portfolio engineering design
The design shown above was a design I drew up in
CAD2 for university. This project was a pedal box
for the Deakin Formulae SAE car, the project was
a group one, but I lead the team and also drew up
the cad model. The model was to start out to be a
very simple and easy to manufacture pedal box,
but once all the design specifications started to
be checked off the list, the system become
somewhat more complex. The car itself was tiny,
there was not much room to mount anything, the
pedals could be mounted from the top or the
bottom, but pedals mounted from the bottom would
not leave enough room for legs etc. Using this
constraint, a base was designed that would fit
into the cars nose that could be bolted on, then
the pedals started to be designed. The biggest
problem was designing the leverage required in
the design brief for the accelerator, this system
needed extra linkages to accomplish this ratio.
There were kill switches added into the design on
the brake pedal, and adjustable mount was made so
the pedal could be moved for shorter drivers,
however the design was a little too heavy, so the
base was modified to dramatically reduce weight.
I found the whole CAD2 unit to be fantastic, not
only did I really enjoy the subject, it improved
my problem solving and design knowledge. This
project made students start from scratch with a
design problem, very similar to what would be
given in an engineering firm, then we were
required to return with a design, an oral
presentation to describe our progress and a full
report showing the work carried out, the
research, costing, bill of materials etc. These
are vital elements required by engineers and will
be important to me in my career, this knowledge
will be dearly useful for my future as an
engineer, as lateral thinking is required to
solve problems in a simple but effective way.
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Portfolio engineering design

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My example of proficiency in engineering design
is the "pontoon" code I have written for the
Motorola 68HC11 microprocessor. To develop this
program required considerable knowledge of the
workings of this chip and the machine language
required to achieve these results. It required
writing the code in a basic language, debugging
it, converting the language into machine code and
finally downloading the machine code onto the
microcontroller so it could run the code and
provide the desired result. These results came
from studying a number of texts and the
coursework presented in SEE 215. Engineering
Design Proficiency - the problem presented is
solved comprehensively and efficiently in a
maintainable format with minimal resources. To
write good proficient code a programmer is
required to fulfil several steps (methodology).
The first step is to develop requirements that
will ensure the objective is reached, then to
construct a flowchart around these requirements,
ensuring logical flow and preventing repetition,
and finally for the program code to be written.
Proficiency in writing this code is paramount
because the chip has minimal resources especially
in reference to memory. Therefore in order to
meet the projects objectives the code needed to
be concise. This required a comprehensive
knowledge of the coding language to help reveal
the simplest and smallest solution.
Unfortunately I was not able to find the
flowchart I constructed for this particular
program to demonstrate the way it was developed
to ensure proficiency. However it is evident from
its structured layout Its comprehensive comments
(ensuring the program code can be followed easily
and updated if needed), and its compact format
also show that this program was built with
optimisation and accessibility in mind. Having
fulfilled this criterion, it can be seen that
proficiency in engineering design has been
achieved.
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Portfolio communicate effectively
During the summer break 2005/2006 I participated
in a vacation employment program with Xxxxx,
website http//www.Xxxxx.com/. Xxxxx is
Australias largest manufacturer of polyethylene
and petrochemicals. During my three months there
I was involved in two projects Project
planning for the removal of a polyethylene
extruder and installation of a new larger
extruder. Design of an adaptor sleeve for an
agitator that fits to a mixing vessel This
document will discuss my role in the project and
how I effectively communicated with other team
members and management. The project involved the
removal of a 15 inch polyethylene extruder and
the installation of a new 18 inch extruder. My
role was to plan how the project would be
executed and produce a Gantt chart that shows all
the tasks and in what order they will be done in.
My previous experience as a fitter and tuner gave
me a good understanding of the durations needed
to perform some of the tasks. My role involved a
lot of communication with civil and mechanical
contractors who were to perform the installation
as well as the other Xxxxx engineering team
members involved with the project. Meetings were
held at regular intervals to keep every team
member up to date of the project status and at
these team meetings I would take notes and
arrange to catch up with other team members such
as Electrical Instrumentation to get there task
duration estimates which were out of my area of
expertise. I would also detail progress of the
project plan at these meetings. Towards the end
of my vacation employment and the week previous
to the installation of the new extruder I did a
presentation of the project and what my role was
to Xxxxx management and engineering staff. The
presentation was for approximately 15 minutes and
was conducted using a Power Point Presentation.
Following the presentation questions were taken
and answered or referred to someone else. It was
important for me to make the presentation as
visual as possible so that the audience could
understand the project better as a lot of people
in the audience were not involved in the project.
To make it as visual as possible photos were
used. The presentation was conducted successfully
and I received a lot of good feedback afterwards
and was also offered a graduate position with the
company. Attached is the Power Point Presentation
that I put together. Also attached is my poster
presentation for my final year project. I have
also attached a Word document that I had to write
for the HR department who wanted to know what we
were doing during our vacation employment so they
could publish it in the company newsletter.
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Portfolio communicate effectively
Nahavandi and Ferguson (2000) define
communication as the flow of energy between
people resulting in a mutual understanding. In
this report Ill be reflecting on my past
experiences with oral and written presentations.
My spoken English communication skills and
experiences began when I attended a coarse run by
Toastmasters International. Toastmasters is
movement that, through its member clubs, is
dedicated to helping people improve their
communication skills so they become better
speakers and leaders (Toastmasters International
2006). Through my undergraduate course at Deakin
University, Ive been involved in numerous oral
and written presentations. For example in SEE325
Robotics and Applications I submitted a paper
called Electrical Safety Considerations when
Designing Robot Systems. In addition, I
performed an oral presentation on the key
elements of the paper. The presentation, with
electronic visual aids, was filmed and submitted
to Deakin University. For SEJ343 Design and
Project Methodology, I participated in a project
to design and develop a personal computer
Monitor Lifting Stand with a group of six
engineering students from different streams. The
project included an oral presentation of the
design, with each member presenting his/her
contribution to fellow students and lecturers.
Each member developed their own visual aid slides
for their segment and then collated them towards
the final draft. At work I have been involved
in presenting various product training courses to
fellow employees and engineering clients. In
particular, I run a course for industrial
electrical maintenance staff on faultfinding
proprietary motion controllers. Visual aids such
as electronic slides and demonstration units
assist trainees understand the course content.
Toastmasters has taught me the basics of public
speaking and thinking clearly in awkward
situations. The paper taught me the fundamentals
of writing, especially the structure and
referencing. My experience with oral
presentations has shown me to strive towards
presenting clearly with minimum use of hand notes
and adhering to the time constraints. The group
work enhanced the notion of communicating
effectively with other engineers to achieve a
common objective. Presenting training courses in
the workplace has driven my skills into the
professional realm. Even though daunting at
first, the thrill of the listener grasping your
topic or idea is very rewarding.
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Portfolio personal
Time management is planning the usage of our time
with activities. This is to ensure that
activities that require less attention do not
supersede important ones. This in turn brings
peace of mind at the end of the day. The time
management is important for engineers as it plans
their workload at the start to the end of their
work and pursued to other duties. Last minutes
work and not following the schedule planned are
never good strategies as it could lead to a
persons goals not being achieved on time or not
at all. The time management contributes a lot of
importance to our work, and our daily life as
well. The time management can abolish the
expenditure of excess time by assigning
appropriate time to mission and this will ensure
project are will not deserted at the end. The
time management will also make a person
independent as he is in control his own life and
activities. For every activity listed, an
approximation of how much time needed is compared
to its value.
The time management helps me to develop a time
table since the day I enrolled to Deakin
University. The time that I have allocated for
the assignments and my oral presentations has
facilitated the on time submission without any
delay. I have also allocated some time to
concentrate on my final year project. As the
supervisor has instructed earlier, a Gantt chart
was constructed with a list of all my activities
proposed to complete the project. As of now,
through following the Gantt chart, I have already
completed a portion of my final year project
according to schedule. This proves that time
management is very extremely crucial in order to
complete my project on time without any hassle.
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Portfolio personal
Effective university study and managing a
professional career demand good time management,
especially to maximise results and strike a
balance with family/social life. I have learnt
that developing a clear plan that identifies
tasks to be completed with associated completion
times and then recording and measuring against
this initial plan is an effective time management
aid. For example, for my university studies I
combine each units assignment work activity and
due dates along with the normal week to week
study on to one Excel spread sheet (added as
evidence). I then regularly update the sheet,
which calculates approximately how far behind or
in front I am at that point. A quick glance at
the sheet also shows what areas I should place a
higher priority on in the shorter term or
indeed when I need to allocate additional study
time to get through a busier period. Using my
simple time management tool does require a little
additional work to set up and maintain however,
its return is well worth the over head in terms
of being better organised and less stressed.
Progressing large projects at work certainly
requires a higher level of management. Typically
this management includes task identification,
estimation of work required for each task, and
since major milestones are often set, working
back from these events by identifying activity
predecessors is often useful. I use Microsoft
Project to help schedule project activities, I
have submitted an example schedule from last year
as an example.
As a Tactical Coordinator on the AP-3C Orion long
range maritime patrol aircraft, I am very
familiar with defining team goals and managing a
crew of twelve to fourteen people to achieve
them. My pre-flight briefing always outlines what
objectives are set for the crew both as a whole
and for each crew position. During flight I
normally provide updates to the whole crew every
15 minutes or so to ensure the whole team
understands the current situation and priorities.
In this way the whole team feels they understand
the task enough to contribute their ideas, often
increasing the effectiveness of the team as a
whole. I have learnt through my engineering
studies and professional work that time
management is essential in achieving and
maintaining high productivity. I have also found
that setting team goals and continually updating
them allows the team to be much more effective as
a whole.
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Portfolio computer
Since I have joined the Deakin University study
program, I have gained so much knowledge. This
consists in the theoretical and practical. To me,
both of it is equally important as they are the
required skill which essential in the next
chapter of my working life next time. On the
account of this, the computing skill has to be
exceptionally good in order to survive in this
competitive world. Computing does not only
consist of software alone. It includes some
hardware as well. It means that the hardware have
to be able to interface with the data signaling
which has been provided by the data base at the
computer. It is important that the program have
to be able to cope with the simulation which
required in order testing the functionality of
any project before hardware is build. The
computing skill has to be understood in depth as
the project progress. Schematic Diagram and the
Circuit Layout shown above prove that the ability
of understanding of the computing skill is
crucial in order to build a project. Besides
that, computing skill includes the implementation
of the paper work and preparing the presentation
slides as well. The Progress Report (Microsoft
Words) and the Gantt Chart (Microsoft Project)
can be used to throw up a thesis. Not to forget,
the Microsoft Power Point and Corel Draw is
important as well. These 2 software are use for
making slides which can be used for the Project
Presentation and Poster as well. It is well
know that the communication and information
sharing is very important in order to complete a
certain project efficient and preserve valuable
time. That is why the email and Messenger is
provided in order to provide this functionality.
There are many providers. For example, they can
be Yahoo Inc., Microsoft MSN, and Google and so
on. The following are my skills that I have
gained in Computing ? Software programming
(Basic Programming, C) ? Microsoft Visual
Basic ? Microsoft Project ? Microsoft Power
Point ? CorelDraw Graphic Suite X3 ? Protel 99
SE ? Matlab Student 5.3 ? Eagle Layout Editor,
And so on.....
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Portfolio computer
For an engineer, the fluency in current computer
based word processing is vital for documentation
and also good in graphic design helps them to
present the idea to the audience both technical
and non technical in a clearer view. For me, I
have a fluency in word based processing such as
Microsoft Words (Shown in Figure 2) for
documentation, Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet (shown
in Figure 1) and also Microsoft Power Point
Presentation (Shown in Figure 3). All of the
stated above enhance me to make my oral
presentation to my supervisor and fellow students
(MS PowerPoint), present a graph figure to prove
a theory found (MS Excel) and documentation of my
thesis during undergraduate studies (MS
Words). As we all know pictures and graphics
speaks a thousand words. Therefore for an
engineer to present an idea, all they need to do
is present them in graphic form. There are a few
graphic software that Ive learned and able to
deliver some model by using them. They are namely
3D Drawing using Google Sketch Up (Figure 4), PCB
Layout and schematic design using Protel 99
(Figure 5), Circuit Simulation using MultiSIM
7(Figure 6), and simulation of source code using
8051IDE Simulator (Figure 7). The 3D-Drawing
using Google Sketch Up enhances me to present my
idea in a 3D view where I present my idea of my
final year project in dept to my audiences. The
layout of my project is drawn by this software as
referred to Figure 4. Ive used the Protel 99
software to model my PCB Layout and schematic.
Figure 5 shows the PCB Layout of my circuit name
Control Panel. In this software all I need is to
draw the schematic and the entire program can
route the PCB layout for me. This will then ease
my workload and result obtained is up to the
requirement. MultiSIM 7 is used to simulate my
result of the stepper motor as shown in Figure 6.
From this simulation I can verify my results
obtained from the experiment with the result
obtain from the simulation. Circuit needs to be
drawn in order to simulate the result using
MultiSIM 7. 8051 IDE Simulator is used to
simulate the Pentium Assembly Language and if the
error in the source code that Ive written the
appropriate error will be flagged in that
particular register. Ive used this simulator to
track the error during designing the software for
the 8051 microcontroller as shown in Figure 7.
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Portfolio creativity and innovation
Creativity is the ability to make or otherwise
bring into existence something new, whether a new
solution to a problem, a new method or device, or
a new artistic object or form, while an
innovation is the successful exploitation of
the new idea. (ukIDEA, 2006). Thus it is clear
to see that innovation doesnt exist without
creativity. In this reflective piece I will take
an example of a group project I was involved in
to illustrate my abilities to use creativity to
produce an innovative product. In my first year
of my engineering degree a team of six people
including myself were given the chance to design
a method to harvest olives. At the time, research
found that there were only two main methods to
harvest olives firstly to use a mechanical
harvester or using secondly to use a handheld
rake. Both methods showed large undesirable
characteristics, because the mechanical harvester
was found to damage the olive trees and the fruit
and also required level ground to operate, while
the rake required large amounts of manual labor
and once the olives had been picked they had to
be collected in some way. To come up with a
creative idea, the team created a survey to send
out to olive growers to identify the information
about their crop including their preferred method
of harvest, they amount of trees they have and
the amount of fruit they expect to pick each
season. After correlating the results and
undergoing our own research, the team was able to
brainstorm on the survey results gathered and the
olive harvesting methods already available to
come up with the final design direction The final
design direction using a rake-like approach and
each member of the group was sent away to design
and come up with their own creative ideas. After
meeting again with the team and each of us
presenting our creative ideas, one of my ideas
was voted the highest design and with slight
modifications a final design was produced. The
evidence included in this report shows the
original sketches of my creative and innovative
design, which used a rake-and-suction collection
system to harvest the olives. This method still
involved raking the trees but time and effort was
reduced when it came to collecting the olives as
the suction system (that used the PTO on the back
of a tractor) collected the olives immediately
and didnt damage the trees nor olives as much as
the mechanical harvester. Hence the team was able
to create an affordable and practical solution to
olive picking.
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Portfolio creativity and innovation
In a recent project I used several creative
thinking techniques to stimulate my thoughts and
aid in the solution generation process. The
attached evidence includes a brainstorming
activity I did while designing a premixer. This
exercise was surprisingly useful and gave me many
good ideas and highlighted which aspects of the
design were of the most importance. The benefit
of creative thinking exercises is that even when
I seem to be suffering from writers block, it
stimulates the thought process and can produce
some clever ideas that may not have been thought
of previously because the focus remained on
existing concepts. The application of these
exercises in the work place would be crucial to
exploring all avenues and producing a superior
solution. Another interesting problem solving
technique is TRIZ. It is defined as the theory
of inventive problem solving and can be thought
of more as an enhancement technique. My group
and I used this method to improve certain aspects
of a car hoist, to simplify the design and
produce alternative solutions. This system can
be applied to almost any machine, process or
problem and works by suggesting ways for solving
technical contradictions. I am not yet
proficient in this method but I can certainly see
the benefits from the application to engineering
industry.
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E-portfolio evaluation
(60.8 n48) (71.4 n50)
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Deakin AUQA audit 2005

• that Deakin University communicate to students
  more effectively the nature and aims of the
  Deakin Advantage the then current name of the
  suite of Deakins graduate attributes and assist
  them to document the discipline-specific and
  generic skills they are developing throughout
  their course.
• (AUQA, 2005, p. 19)

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E-portfolio evaluation
(60.8 n48) (71.4 n50)
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E-portfolio frequency of usage
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E-portfolio ease of use
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E-portfolio most useful aspects
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A couple of quotes

• Ithought the portfolio was an excellent idea,
  as I hadnt realised how much I have achieved
  until I did it. It will help me immensely in
  putting together a resume.
• Made me feel like I am working towards
  something, and havent been wasting time.

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Conclusions

• A trial of an online student portfolio as a means
  of engaging undergraduate engineering students
  with the concept of graduate attributes was
  undertaken
• The awareness of issues relating to graduate
  attributes rose dramatically from the beginning
  of the semester

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Conclusions

• The online portfolio system has helped some
  students better appreciate the entirety of their
  work during their studies, and how it relates to
  tangible outcomes like employability
• These results suggest one strategy that can be
  used to raise awareness and student engagement
  with graduate attributes

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• Thank you for your time