Evaluation of factors affecting speed perception in a driving simulator

The present study was conducted to determine the effects of different variables on the perception of vehicle speeds in a driving simulator. The motivations of the study include validation of the Michigan Technological University Human Factors and Systems Lab driving simulator, obtaining a better understanding of what influences speed perception in a virtual environment, and how to improve speed perception in future simulations involving driver performance measures. Using a fixed base driving simulator, two experiments were conducted, the first to evaluate the effects of subject gender, roadway orientation, field of view, barriers along the roadway, opposing traffic speed, and subject speed judgment strategies on speed estimation, and the second to evaluate all of these variables as well as feedback training through use of the speedometer during a practice run. A mixed procedure model (mixed model ANOVA) in SAS® 9.2 was used to determine the significance of these variables in relation to subject speed estimates, as there were both between and within subject variables analyzed. It was found that subject gender, roadway orientation, feedback training, and the type of judgment strategy all significantly affect speed perception. By using curved roadways, feedback training, and speed judgment strategies including road lines, speed limit experience, and feedback training, speed perception in a driving simulator was found to be significantly improved.

Subverting the subject position : toward a new discourse about students as writers and engineering students as technical communicators

There is ample evidence of a longstanding and pervasive discourse positioning students, and engineering students in particular, as “bad writers.” This is a discourse perpetuated within the academy, the workplace, and society at large. But what are the effects of this discourse? Are students aware faculty harbor the belief students can’t write? Is student writing or confidence in their writing influenced by the negative tone of the discourse? This dissertation attempts to demonstrate that a discourse disparaging student writing exists among faculty, across disciplines, but particularly within the engineering disciplines, as well as to identify the reach of that discourse through the deployment of two attitudinal surveys—one for students, across disciplines, at Michigan Technological University and one for faculty, across disciplines at universities and colleges both within the United States and internationally. This project seeks to contribute to a more accurate and productive discourse about engineering students, and more broadly, all students, as writers—one that focuses on competencies rather than incompetence, one that encourages faculty to find new ways to characterize students as writers, and encourages faculty to recognize the limits of the utility of practitioner lore.