Table 1
Demographics of each professor’s class.
| PROFESSOR | ENGINEERING DISCIPLINE | TOTAL NUMBER OF STUDENTS | PERCENTAGE FEMALE STUDENTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Davis | Mechanical | 23 | 39% |
| Pfeiffer | Mechanical | 23 | 30% |
| Wilson | Biomedical | 30 | 53% |
Table 2
Demographic information for each professor.
| PROFESSOR | YEARS OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE | RANK AT THE UNIVERSITY | GENDER | ETHNICITY | NATIVE LANGUAGE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Davis | >20 | Professor | Male | White | English |
| Pfeiffer | >8 | Assistant Professor | Male | White | German |
| Wilson | >5 | Assistant Professor | Male | Black | English |
| Professor Davis: | My niece was homeschooled, all through high school, and she started college last year, this is her sophomore year. And right away, the first thing she was talking to her parents about was the group stuff. She’s not used to it, and she doesn’t like it. You know because she’s just like, people don’t show up and people don’t…She’s very responsible and it’s always tough from the instructor’s standpoint because, you know we have team based senior project now, that started 15 years ago, but it came from industry, that’s what they want. |
| Student: | My high school’s actually really project-based learning. |
| Professor Davis: | So, you’ve done a lot of it already. But it is something we spend, you know, we do think about. And you’ll always, you know, a lot of your labs are going to be team based. |
| Professor Davis: | To me, it’s awesome that we have you guys declare as freshmen because we get to do this [class]. And we get to…I had two students doing a makeup lab last week, they’re both switching out of ME. |
| Student: | Really? |
| Professor Davis: | Students always think, “Oh, you’re going to try to talk me out of it.” No, it’s one of the reasons we do this. |
| Student: | It’s like a little like trial period, right? To see what it’s like. |
| Professor Davis: | Yeah. So one of them is going into industrial engineering. A lot of high school counselors and things don’t know about industrial engineering. It’s one that they graduate 130% of the students they bring in all the time, because they’re just a net importer, because people don’t pick it as freshmen, but it’s a great career. |
| Student 1: | So basically it’s a hand held stick that allows users to mouse again, like a computer mouse. Basically, it has a high friction pad here so when you press down the mouse and you move alongside with it. No problem. And the way you click the buttons is very simple, you just twist your forearm. You just pivot off of this. |
| Professor Davis: | [mimics hand twisting] So, click, click, so right and left would be… |
| Student 1: | Yeah. |
| Professor Davis: | Have you ever seen a foot mouse? |
| Student 2: | Wow, there’s such a thing? |
| Professor Davis: | Oh, yeah, yeah. They have them now, it’s tough, right? |
| Student 2: | That sounds so impractical. |
| Professor Davis: | You know, if you don’t have a hand. Actually, a lot of people get carpal tunnel problems from too much mouse use and so it’s not that they don’t have a hand. |
| Student 3: | Have you seen those mouses where it’s like a slide thing, and you go up. Like basically it’s a tube and there’s an outer thing [gestures with hand to describe shape] [Students and professor continue talking about different types of computer mouses.] |
| Professor Davis: | That is a cool idea with the [refers with gestures to glasses prototype student is wearing] to kind of let you know what’s coming from behind. |
| Student 1: | Like flashes [of light] on the sides. |
| Student 2: | And it’s like proximity so the light dims, depending. |
| Professor Davis: | It’s one of those you kind of go, maybe everybody wouldn’t mind having one? You’ve never cut someone off coming from behind you? [sarcastically]. |
| Student 3: | Skiing? Never [sarcastically]. |
| Professor Davis: | Never happens? [laughs] |
| Student 3: | Especially listening to music when I ski. The snowboarders, no offense, are the absolute worst about cutting people off because, it’s like nothing about you, it’s just literally how snowboards are built when you turn, you can’t see anything behind you. So that’s why skiers hate snowboarders cause you just like cut us off. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | What project are you doing? |
| Student 1: | We’re doing for deaf people, ski goggles that have sensors, so it alerts them to things like objects and obstacles. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Oh, that’s cool. |
| Student 2: | It’s kind of like with the car, how you have a blind spot monitoring. It’s like that. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Yep. Oh, that’s nice. Yeah. |
| Student 1: | And I feel like that would be useful for even like … I would use that when say it’s hard to hear. So we were thinking, sensors that just like measure relative speed, and alert you if someone’s going to like pass you. |
| Student: | So, if we already know which thing [design idea] we’re going to do specifically… |
| Professor Davis: | [interrupting student] No you don’t. |
| Student: | Do you want us to make three still? |
| Professor Davis: | You don’t have to make three prototypes, but I want you thinking about three ideas. So you want… how would you make it, what kind of materials? So you want to, you got enough time today to kind of think about three and basically you still have tomorrow to narrow down to one. And then you’ll really start detailing it out and try to do as much as you can. |
| Professor Davis: | But I think the jelly, it, it creeps we call it. So, if you put a load on it, it’ll never stop moving. It’ll just keep going like this [demonstrates with hand]. |
| Student: | Got you. |
| Professor Davis: | There’s plenty of things that will work. Just say like an elastomer, some kind of elastic. But the jelly is, even plastics, all plastics do that [picks up piece of plastic from table]. If you put a high enough load on this, if you left this here overnight and come in tomorrow the displacement will be higher tomorrow than it was today. |
| Student: | Yeah? |
| Professor Davis: | Plastics creep. If the load was low enough, the creep would be so small you wouldn’t even be able to measure it, but if you put a high enough load on this, and you know we set it up in a ring and measure the displacement, when we come back tomorrow, it will have gone further. [continues with explanation about how they will learn more about this in future courses] |
| Student: | Is there a particular point that you would like us to get to? An end goal? |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Well, remember the end goal is you have your final prototype and to have your poster done. |
| Student: | So, work until we get to there? |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Correct. Improve and then think about what else can you do. It doesn’t mean you have to stick with that one idea. So, if that does identify color, maybe you can expand it, you know? Can think about: Are there other constraints? Using that, is that really comfortable in my hand? If it’s a box like that, do you want to have it more ergonomically shaped? So like I said, you have plenty of time to think, work about it, use the engineering design process, right? This is actually hands on doing it, kind of learning about it, learning about iteration, learning about the requirements, how do you evaluate that design. If you want to go further if you have more time, how would you market the device? |
| Student: | Sounds good. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Again, the sky is the limit. |
| Student: | Are we allowed to attach flame throwers to it? |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | You can, yeah, whatever, it’s completely up to you. Again, think outside the box, right? I mean, come up with crazy ideas and then evaluate and see what’s possible, right? So, this is usually how that works. Brainstorming phase, nothing’s off the table. |
| Student 1: | I have an idea. If you put a second rope connected to the handles, from the swing to the handles, then at every point the handle would be close enough that if you dropped it would still be easily droppable from the swing. |
| Student 3: | So are you saying like a mini string right here that holds it like that? |
| Student 1: | Yeah |
| Student 3: | So as it goes, it goes like that. |
| Student 1: | It would go with the swing. Because that would have |
| Student 3: | So then if they dropped it, they’d just have to pull on that little string. |
| Student 1: | Exactly. |
| Student 2: | What if we could make use of some crazy knot where we could like, in a small amount of space keep a large amount of rope, but then as you move it would just draw rope from that, you know what I mean? |
| Student 1: | So we have like a tension system? |
| Student 2: | So because if you’re only using like, if you need a short amount of rope but you still need the full range of motion of the swing, maybe you want to have some way of like keeping a large amount of rope in, you know what I mean? |
| Student 1: | Yeah. |
| Student 2: | Cause like if you’re using a short rope your swing’s not going to move. |
| Student 3: | Would you like to create that knot? […] |
| Student 2: | Isn’t that, can’t you do that? I’m not crazy, that’s got to be a thing. |
| Student 4: | I don’t think that’s a thing, that’s just like an infinity knot. |
| Student 3: | I love infinity knots, but they’re really difficult when you’re trying to swing. |
| Student 1: | I don’t know about a knot, but you could make a coil that was like spring loaded so that it would constantly pull on the one end. […] |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | So keep in mind right, if there’s friction, it will slow down the swing. |
| Student 2: | Right. |
| Student 4: | That’s what we’re doing, these are like little friction holders [points to prototype] |
| Student 3: | That’s so they can pull on the rope. |
| […Students argue over who can tie the knot…] | |
| Student 1: | I am not the knot guy. There could be a knot out there, but I wouldn’t know about it. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Well, you can go and google it, right? |
| Student: | We were also thinking about just a stand. With like a heavy base. But that’d be a lot of weight. I don’t know a way to circumvent that. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | So yeah, I see you have lots of ideas to build multiple prototypes to say, this is for clamping, this is for base, you know. And then you need to think about the weight, how much should it carry, right? Are we talking a pound or if you’re filling a gallon, you know? |
| Student: | I’d say at least, yeah. A gallon, how much is a gallon? 5 pounds? |
| Student: | Is 5 pounds good, or heavier? Ten pounds max? |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Well, you’re designing it, right? |
| Student: | I’m going to say 10 pounds. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | 10 pounds? |
| Student: | Ten pounds is big. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Yes. |
| Student: | [to teammate] Research how much a typical serving size of pasta is. |
| Student: | Actually, I’ll be right back. I’m going to go fill this [cup they are using in their prototype] with water and see how much that weighs. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | So how did it work out with the water? |
| Student: | We didn’t get to exactly balance it. |
| Student: | It wasn’t really the weight that was the problem, it was flipping side to side. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | So, it was not stable basically? |
| Student: | Yes. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Ah, OK. |
| Student: | I guess we’re going to, I guess in our final design we’re going to design something to lock it. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Yeah, that’s a good idea, yeah. See by experimenting around, you get more ideas to improve it. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | So, what is your idea? Or ideas you want to pursue right now? |
| Student: | One of the ones that we singled out is a wheelchair mount on a longboard. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Oh, OK. |
| Student: | So it would allow users to like roll up onto the board then it would lock into place. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | Mm-hmm |
| Student: | And it’d be electric, so they control like acceleration and braking. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | OK. |
| Student: | And then there’d be like quick release buttons on the side to unlock and pull it off. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | OK, cool. Yeah well you have the stuff here [to prototype with], right? You can cut the cork, you have little wheels, toothpicks whatever, yeah. |
| Student: | Absolutely. |
| Professor Pfeiffer: | OK, good. |
| Student: | I just wanted to like get your sort of like opinion on like the scope of these ideas. The first one is like a targeted chemotherapy. Because chemotherapy kills a majority of the cells. So this would be like marking the cancer cells and then targeting those specifically. The second one would be targeted treatment of bacterial [pause], with antibiotics that could mutate at the same rate as the bacteria. The last one would be an early diagnosis and cure for Huntington’s disease. |
| Professor Wilson: | I think those are good. |
| Student: | Those are pretty, Where it’s more, some of them are more like conceptual. |
| Professor Wilson: | Like diagnostics, it’s like diagnostics, but you’ll talk about how you’re going to diagnosis it. |
| Student: | Right. So these are good scopes? |
| Professor Wilson: | Yeah, yeah. That’s fine |
| Professor Wilson: | The high risk is class 3. And there’s a different pathway for that. But remember there were two different pathways. We had generally exempt, we had generally this pathway and we had this key word, do you remember this key word? [writes word on whiteboard] We had that key word that was in there. |
| Student: | 510K |
| Professor Wilson: | 510K, that’s exactly right. And then we had, you know we’ve gone 5 minutes in the class without an acronym, so we have to have one, right? [laughs] So class 3, is what? |
| Student: | PMA |
| Professor Wilson: | PMA. OK. Pre-market approval. |
| Professor Wilson: | She had a very novel idea. And hopefully, it’s useful and not obvious, right? Because then… |
| Student: | Patent. |
| Professor Wilson: | She can get a patent … And she actually has, she did get a patent, so it did meet those three criteria. And what it is, it allows a physician to do remotely, to have the ability to hear heart sounds and to actually do an inner ear examination at the same time, so it’s a combination otoscope/stethoscope. And it’s virtual. So this was a team that worked on it. Some of the students are gone. Some students are here [at the university]. [pulls up slide for “Indications for Use”] Why is this important? We talked about this. What is this? Why does the House Calls Mobiles need this? |
| Student: | You need to say to the FDA what your device does and who you tested it on and then how, which age, which type of people would it benefit, you could use it for. |
| Professor Wilson: | Yeah. This is her contract with the FDA. It’s stating what the product does. Who it’s going to be used on. What its requirements need to be. Maybe where it can’t be used and it has all this information here. So, this is her indications of use statement. So that’s the first thing the team developed for her. [continues talking about FDA requirements] |
| Professor Wilson: | I think that’s a good idea. The thing that’s really good about these is hopefully you’ll keep them and you’ll keep these ideas when you take [other class names]. Because one of the things I’m working with right now, I’m working with real sponsors that are outside and I think I told you that one of the sponsors is back in [place name] and we’re developing a novel in vitro feralization tool with some graduate students and so there’s positions that we can get to help and I think the beauty of kind of what you saw with senior design [points to slides] and these ideas is they’re not academic projects. They’re real projects. It’s good and it’s bad because there’s some pressure, it’s not just a class now. You know, so it’s good and it’s bad that they become real. |
| Student: | There’s consequences. |
| Professor Wilson: | Yeah, I think it’s good and it’s bad, but for the most part there’s more good than bad that comes from it. |