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An opportunity for growth: Co-constructing the liberatory classroom
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted education, necessitating a reevaluation of teaching methodologies and priorities. This critical commentary offers feminist pedagogy as a framework for honoring students\u27 pandemic educational experiences and creating liberatory learning environments. Feminist pedagogy, rooted in the vision of an inclusive and liberatory classroom, challenges normative ways of viewing the world and encourages engaged teaching and learning. My experience as the parent of a high school student with ADHD during the pandemic influenced my teaching practice as a college professor. Through this experience, I learned to treat students more equitably, incorporating new teaching strategies, embracing flexibility, and shifting to a student-centered classroom. This paper argues that feminist pedagogy offers a path to embrace diversity, honor student voices, and facilitate self-advocacy
Deep Vein Thrombosis Diagnostic Device
Get PDFDeep Vein Thrombosis is one of the leading causes of death in hospitals worldwide due its ability to form in patients who are sedentary after receiving care. There is a need for a DVT diagnostic device that can be worn constantly in order to alert medical professionals if a thrombosis is forming, which is the basis of this senior project. The current solutions are time consuming, and look for thrombi after they have fully formed. The goal of this senior project is to design and construct a device to constantly monitor in-hospital patients for early stage DVT and alert hospital staff. In order for this device to be successful, customer requirements for both the patients, and the hospital staff, were outlined and documented to make sure their needs are sufficiently met. Turning customer requirements into engineering requirements resulted in measurable testing specifications, which will allow future device designs to be reviewed and improved. The scope of this project is to have a fully functioning prototype with some testing completed. If the device design is carried further, there is a lot of potential to be extremely influential in hospital settings. This device would be the only one capable of early detection of DVTs and would help keep patients safe and allow them to receive full care to make full recoveries
SAL-E: Responsive Space Pathfinder Mission
Get PDFThe main objective of the SAL-E mission is to grow the Cal Poly CubeSat Lab’s (PolySat) capabilities in rapid spacecraft design, as well as to provide the current generation of students with the opportunity to design, test, integrate, and communicate with a satellite. This summer we will be focusing on a few aspects of the spacecraft design and preparing our test facilities for Fall. Specifically, we will be ordering electronics boards that were designed in Spring, testing the boards as they arrive, developing software to interface with the payloads, begin integrated testing, updating the control system in our thermal vacuum chamber, and testing our vibrations procedures. Students participating in this multidisciplinary SURP will gain hands-on experience with a few aspects of the spacecraft design cycle while helping move SAL-E toward launch
Supporting Neurodivergent Students
Get PDFPrior work—a 2019 study by Schreffler, Vasquez, Chini, et al.—investigated the efficacy of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in supporting students with disabilities (SWD) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education (STEM). SWD are somewhat more likely than the general population to enroll in STEM majors, but for some disabilities, students are less likely to graduate with those majors. Nonetheless, the authors found a paucity of prior work involving the use of UDL for SWD in STEM. In addition to highlighting the need for future quantitative research overall, the authors noted that it would be interesting to investigate which UDL methods are most effective for SWD. For example, for certain executive functioning disorders or forms of neurodivergence, is it more appropriate to assign a greater number of lower-stakes assessments—providing multiple means to access information—or a smaller number of higher-stakes assessments—reducing the cognitive load of balancing a large number of deliverables? We aim to investigate this question of which UDL methods are most effective, beginning with the number of assessments, through a combination of data aggregation and qualitative interviews. Specifically, our research questions are: (1) How much variability is there in the numbers of summative and formative assessments used in CS courses? (2) What impact does a greater number of low-stakes assessments, or a greater ratio of formative to summative assessments, have for neurodivergent students and students with disabilities? (3) To what extent do these impacts differ across forms of neurodivergence or disabilities? We plan to gather data on what assessment patterns are presently used at Cal Poly, from some or all of the following sources: course syllabi from instructor web pages, campus-wide Canvas repository data (if available through CTLT), data on use of accommodations in Cal Poly STEM courses (if available through DRC). This data gathering process will provide us context for asking our research questions. The next phase, possibly in the term following the SURP project, will be to conduct interviews of faculty, students, or both
Characterization of High Albedo Ground Surface Treatments for Energy Harvesting by Bifacial Photovoltaic Power Plants
Get PDFBifacial photovoltaic (bPV) cells have higher solar efficiency than monofacial photovoltaic (mPV) cells due to having two sides of active layers. bPV cells also require less space to produce equivalent electricity, which is useful for solar farms that want to maximize energy output per unit area. Placing a sheet of highly reflective material on the surface beneath bPV cells further increases their efficiency due to increasing the amount of solar radiation that reaches the underside of the bPV cells. This study explores the effects of natural outdoor weathering, solar altitude angle, and accelerated exposure to UV radiation on the albedos of six candidate materials for periods greater than one month in San Luis Obispo, CA. The six materials are woven polyethylene (W-PE), polyethylene (PE), scrim-reinforced polyethylene (SR-PE), ethylene-propylene-diene monomer (EPDM), woven polypropylene (PP), and Mylar. Results from field testing show a correlation between high albedo and higher solar altitude angle, resulting in increased energy efficiency from placing ground materials under bPV cells. Of the candidate materials, PE was found to be the best material due to its consistent albedo (between 0.47 to 0.50) throughout the day. While PE had lower albedo compared to the other five materials, it only had marginally lower albedo at a significantly lower price compared to the other five materials when looking at albedo-adjusted cost. Its albedo, low cost, and relatively low mechanical property decay rate make PE the best choice among the candidate materials for use with bPVs
