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Understanding the State of Neuroinclusive Teaching
No full textWe build on prior work by others and by the PI investigating the needs and the state of support for neurodiverse students in STEM at the college level—beginning with the state of support at Cal Poly. Key questions we explore include institutional and peer support and belonging; neuroinclusive course design and the efficacy of syllabi; and the impact of low- versus high-stakes assessments on neurodiverse students. The project consists of three pillars: (1) theory—situating our research with respect to prior work; (2) empirical analysis—learning from the previous survey refining our research questions, and designing further experiments; and (3) institutional research—gathering information about the state of support for neurodiverse students at Cal Poly. For the student, this project will be an opportunity to engage with pedagogical theory as well as the state of research on neurodiversity; to assist in and shape the process of analyzing our data and possibly designing future experiments; and to help improve our understanding of institutional supports at Cal Poly by connecting with internal stakeholders. The work will consist of literature review, writing reading reflections and an experience report, as well as a data analysis component: analyzing patterns and drawing preliminary conclusions from previous quarters’ research
Building Pathways to Computer Science Careers for Latinx Students Through Multilingual Collaborative Block-Based Programming
No full textThe underrepresentation of Latinx students in computer science highlights the need for innovative and inclusive educational approaches. This project addresses challenges such as limited access to educational resources and the demand for multilingual learning tools by developing a co-located, collaborative, game-based programming environment. Designed for use on phones, tablets, and laptops, this tool supports English, Spanish, and Mixtec, facilitating broader engagement. By promoting peer collaboration and interactive learning, our approach challenges traditional notions of solitary programming and reinforces the idea that expertise is shared, fostering an inclusive and equitable learning environment
Sustainability Literacy in CENG, The Knowledge-Attitude Disconnect in Sustainability Education: Evidence from CENG Students
No full textHigher education institutions are increasingly incorporating the concept of sustainability into the curricula, but the evaluation of students\u27 level of sustainability knowledge is underdeveloped. The proposed research focuses on Cal Poly\u27s efforts to integrate sustainability principles within the engineering curricula and the impact on students\u27 knowledge. By analyzing existing data collected on the sustainability literacy of Cal Poly’s engineering students, this project aims to enhance teaching strategies and align them with the sustainability goals of both the College and the University. This initiative builds on work initiated last summer and seeks to better prepare engineering students to become future contributors to sustainable development by effectively embedding sustainability competencies within their educational programs
MarsAnywhere: Dataset and Cross-view Diffusion Model for Satellite-to-Ground View Synthesis with Mars Data
No full textSatellite-to-ground view synthesis aims to create a realistic ground view image from a corresponding satellite view image. This is a well-studied problem for street level imagery, with good results being achieved by using modern image synthesis techniques such as diffusion models. However, despite the public availability of satellite and ground level imagery on Mars, these techniques have yet to be applied to the domain due to difficulties in collating and processing the data into a usable form. We address this deficiency by creating a dataset consisting of ground view panorama imagery from the Perseverance rover, along with associated satellite view imagery and DEM data from HiRISE collected for Perseverance mission planning. We then apply a ControlNet based on Stable Diffusion 2.1 to the image data projected into the rover view. We also apply loss masking based on the conditioning image to help the model build associations between the project view and the target imagery. We compare these results on standard image reconstruction metrics to a mean baseline, SSIM=0.6035, FID=98.65, KID=0.02834. Our work lays the foundation for future developments in the area, targeting applications to education and rover planning. Source available at https://github.com/BenjaminHinchliff
Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering
No full textThis thesis proposes a framework to assist in developing educational activities targeting the longitudinal growth of sustainability skills, knowledge, and attitudes (cumulatively known as competencies), contextualized in a Toolkit for engineering educators. This framework is applied to three civil engineering classes in a teaching-oriented university to demonstrate potential applications and limitations. Sustainability integration in higher education institutions has been recognized as increasingly important as complex sustainability challenges continue to develop and arise. Sustainable education, a pedagogical framework and collection of educational methods, has been shown to produce students with the key sustainability competencies needed to address sustainability challenges and promote sustainable development. Engineers are uniquely suited to addressing sustainability challenges due to their role in developing critical technologies that underpin the functionality of our society. Literature regarding sustainable education methods and integration into higher education institutions was reviewed and consolidated, forming a Toolkit to assist educators to develop classroom materials, activities, and assessment
Williams’ Account of Positive Obligation and Speciesism: Extending Ashford’s Internal Argument against Williams
Get PDFIn Ethics and The Limits of Philosophy and elsewhere, Bernard Williams presents a formidable objection to utilitarianism. Dubbed the integrity objection, the worry is that utilitarianism is too demanding in requiring agents to abandon their projects in favor of complying with moral injunctions. Elizabeth Ashford (2000) has replied, in part, by arguing that Williams’ account of positive obligation (WPO) is similarly susceptible to exacting burdensome demands on moral agents, such as care for those in emergency situations (pp. 428-431). If these charges of over-demandingness apply to each theory, and if utilitarianism is seen as obligating agents to care for nonhuman animals, then one might ask whether Williams’ theory makes a similar demand concerning nonhuman animals. If WPO obliges moral agents to have concerns for, and have duties towards, threatened nonhuman animals, then WPO threatens Williams\u27 defense of speciesism (Williams, 2011b, pp.77-97). Thus, if WPO requires the inclusion of nonhuman animals into the moral community, then Williams’ critique of utilitarianism will conflict with his commitment to speciesism. Therefore, whether Williams has good reason to exclude nonhuman animals from WPO needs answering