2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

How to engage engineering students in teaching linear elasticity through entrepreneurially minded bio-inspired projects

Presented at Entrepreneurship & Engineering Innovation Division (ENT) Technical Session 1: Robotics and Bio-Inspired Projects

Based on numerous surveys, it is found that engineering students feel disengaged when learning mathematically intensive engineering subjects, e.g. mechanics courses. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how to engage engineering students using entrepreneurially-minded bio-inspired projects in teaching linear elasticity of engineering materials, a mathematically intensive course. The student participants are asked to conduct a literature review on several applications of bio-inspired architecture materials, current development of bio-inspired architecture materials and challenges of these materials, how the development of bio-inspired architecture materials was influenced by biological inspiration, and incorporate humanities and arts into design. At the last stage of this subject, the students are asked to write photovoice reflections about what they have learned from this bio-inspired project. The study then analyzes students’ photovoice reflections and thematic analysis is conducted for discovering patterns within the reflection results. The results from this work shows that the bio-inspired project can instill entrepreneurial mindset among students, enhance students’ creativity by combining art and STEM, sharpen students’ professional skills, and consequently dramatically engage students when teaching mathematically intensive engineering subjects. With the details related to instructor’s intervention and lessons learned in this project, other engineering instructors can easily re-create in the classroom.

Authors
  1. Dr. Jeffrey Jianfeng Ma Saint Louis University [biography]
  2. Dr. Lisa Bosman Purdue University at West Lafayette (PPI) [biography]
  3. Dr. Maged Mikhail Purdue University Northwest [biography]
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