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Engaging Engineering Students through Environmental Data Science

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

COED: Skills for Moving from Computing Student to Professional

Tagged Division

Computers in Education Division (COED)

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43312

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/43312

Download Count

134

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Paper Authors

biography

Mary Kay Camarillo University of the Pacific Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-9522-5127

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Dr. Mary Kay Camarillo is an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA. She has a PhD in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California, Davis and is a licensed Professional Engineer in California (Civil). Prior to working in academia, Dr. Camarillo worked in the consulting industry, designing and overseeing construction of water and wastewater infrastructure. Her research interests include environmental impacts of energy production, water reclamation and reuse, biomass energy, and urban adaption to climate change. In engineering education she conducts studies on how to best integration technology and data analysis into engineering courses.

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biography

Elizabeth Basha University of the Pacific

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Elizabeth A. Basha is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of the Pacific. She received a S.M. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in multi-agent robotics, environmental monitoring, and engineering education.

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Abstract

In a world that is increasingly monitored, data management and analysis skills are valued and necessary in engineering. Despite the apparent advantages of a data-savvy workforce, engineering students often have negative attitudes and experiences with programming and data analysis. To improve these skill sets in engineering students, a course on environmental data analysis was developed and taught to a group of engineering graduate students (mostly civil engineering majors). The course relied on R and Excel and used R packages such as those in the tidyverse as well as modeling packages (e.g., fitdistrplus) and discipline-specific packages for accessing environmental data (e.g., DataRetrieval and cder). Real-world data sets were used in the examples and assignments: students analyzed data related to air pollution, climate, reservoir storage, water quality, and river flow. Students worked on importing data sets, data cleaning and wrangling, visualization, geospatial analyses, and modelling. Best practices integrated into the course included good and bad examples of data management, pair programming, live coding, worked examples with labeled subtasks, use of templates for assignments, and project-based learning. Student attitudes and experiences were monitored using surveys at the beginning and end of the term. Polls were conducted to assess specific teaching and learning strategies. The course structure provided a good opportunity for student collaboration and engagement. Environmental data analysis using data mining approaches and real-world data sets was a good way to engage students in programming and analysis, and to prepare them to work in an increasingly data-rich engineering workplace.

Camarillo, M. K., & Basha, E. (2023, June), Engaging Engineering Students through Environmental Data Science Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43312

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