Founded in 1995, the mission of the Learning Factory at the Pennsylvania State University has been to integrate real-world, hands-on design/build experience into the engineering classroom through industry-sponsored capstone design projects. While the Learning Factory began like many other capstone design programs, a new college-wide capstone model emerged over the past five years to enable interdisciplinary design teams across multiple departments. First 3, then 4, 5, 8, and now 12 engineering majors regularly collaborate in what has become the largest industry-supported and college-wide capstone design program in the nation. Now more than 70% of the capstone design teams involve students from two or more disciplines, with some teams consisting of 4–5 different engineering majors. At the same time that we improved our ability to work across disciplinary boundaries, many entrepreneurs and start-up firms became aware of our capstone design program, and we found ourselves working with more and more of them on projects involving concept development and prototyping. In fact, the more interdisciplinary the program became, the better we could meet their needs, which often required input from 3 or more engineering disciplines as well as non-engineering disciplines. As a result, the number of capstone design projects sponsored by “real” entrepreneurs and start-ups has increased eight-fold over the past five years: from 5 projects in 2007/08 to over 40 projects in 2011/12. We discuss the factors that contributed to this growth, including industry-friendly intellectual property and non-disclosure agreements, a low-cost sponsorship model, a multidisciplinary capstone design section that satisfied the ABET requirements among all participating departments, and student interest in making a significant and immediate impact on their industry-sponsored project. The risks and challenges of working with start-ups and entrepreneurs is also discussed, namely, managing sponsor’s expectations, working with non-technical sponsors, clarifying project scope, avoiding project creep, and emphasizing the educational experience over project outcomes. Recent start-up successes are discussed along with a student entrepreneurial team’s capstone project prototype that lead to a successful fund-raising campaign on Kickstarter.
In this volume, the first synthesis of work on cognitive interference, leading researchers, theorists, and clinicians from around the world confront a number of important questions about intrusive thoughts and suggest a challenging agenda for the future.
Social support research has suffered from a constricted range of methodological approaches and poorly developed theory. A more theory-driven approach would not only be conceptually valuable, but would also provide impetus for the methodological improvements needed for empirical advances. The time has come for a diversity of approaches that ultimately can be integrated so as to reflect the complex phenomena currently being explored under the rubric of social support. This article discusses these points, reviews current concepts of social support, and illustrates a theoretical approach that emphasizes the individual's perceptions concerning support. According to this approach, perceiving the world as supportive makes exploration and reasonable risk taking more likely and, at the same time, reduces the likelihood of experiencing high levels of anxiety and self-preoccupation.
Why do people get the scores they receive on aptitude and intelligence tests? Why do employees differ in their attainments on the job? It would be convenient if the explanation of performance involved nothing more than the operation of purely intellective ability, and traditional cognitive processes. Unfortunately, there is growing evidence that this type of explanation is often indequate. People also bring to task performance situations distinctive sets of needs, motivations, and dispositions that influence their perceptions of the situations and how they approach them. To the extent that these types of individual differences are related to performance they should be included in research designs and the planning of educational programs. This paper describes a program of research on the relationship of text anxiety to cognitive interference and performance under both neutral and stress-arousing conditions.
Abstract Evidence is growing that perceived social support, more often than actually received support, is an important contributor to health and personal adjustment. Perceived support may also play a role in performance. People high in social support report experiencing less cognitive interference than do those with lower levels of perceived support. This article describes two concepts that are linked with perceived support and that relate to skill development and performance: (1) the sense of support and (2) the sense of acceptance. A description of the ways in which these concepts influence exploratory behavior, reasonable risk-taking, the sense of personal control and performance level is provided. Examples of applications of this analysis to sports are given and the need for research on the supportive aspects of coaches' behavior and team cohesion is identified. "It is not so much friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us." Epicurus 13th Century B.C.
