The 2009 Premier Award for Excellence in Engineering Education Courseware was awarded today to two groups for the courseware SIMSE submitted by Emily Navarro and colleagues, and CATME/Team-Maker submitted by Matthew Ohland and colleagues.

The award was presented at the Premier Award Ceremony at the Frontiers in Education Conference, held this year in in San Antonio, Texas. The award-winning courseware was distributed on CD ROM at the FIE Conference and is also available online.This year’s panel of judges comprised a diverse cross-section of experts in engineering education and interactive media. Sponsors of the award program are John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Microsoft Research, Autodesk  and TechSmith.

SimSE is a game-based educational software engineering simulation environment that allows students to practice “virtual” software engineering processes in a graphical, interactive and fun setting. The direct, graphical feedback enables students to learn the complex cause and effect relationships underlying software engineering processes. During the game, the student takes on the role of the project manager and directs engineers to perform typical process tasks. SimSE helps bridge the gap between the conceptual knowledge about software engineering that is presented in lecture but that often times is not fully explored or practiced in assignments or projects. SimSE includes a customizable modeling environment that allows instructors to create new scenarios, application domains, organizations and cultures. SimSE has been used worldwide and has been found to be an educationally effective tool that increases students’ understanding of software engineering process concepts. Professor Emily Navarro was joined by professor André van der Hoek, both from the University of California at Irvine, in developing this award winning courseware.

The Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME)/Team-Maker is an integrated and well-tested system that helps manage teams in engineering courses. Team-Maker is a tool for forming teams using instructors’ criteria, which helps instructors save time and effort in creating balanced teams. The Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) collects and analyzes self and peer evaluations of team members’ contributions, which provides faculty the feedback they need to manage teams in the classroom. CATME also provides students with tools that help them perform well on a team by providing incentives to contribute to the team, feedback about their performance, and suggests steps to improve their performance. CATME/Team-Maker are built upon a sound theory of teamwork that has been well tested both in terms of validity and reliability, and have been demonstrated to help students learn and perform better. Matthew W. Ohland, Purdue University was joined by a team of developers in accepting the award including: Lisa G. Bullard and Richard M. Felder, North Carolina State University; Cynthia J. Finelli, University of Michigan; Richard A. Layton, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology; Misty L. Loughry, Georgia Southern University; Hal R. Pomeranz, Deer Run Associates and Douglas G. Schmucker, Zahl-Ford, Inc.

The Premier Award competition, hosted by the NEEDS/Engineering Pathway digital libraries, is open to a wide range of submissions of “high-quality, non-commercial courseware designed to enhance engineering education.”  The Premier Award program has been underway for 13 years and has honored 24 winners over this time. More details on the Premier Award and current and previous winners can be found on the Engineering Pathway at: http://www.engineeringpathway.org/ep/premier/

The Engineering Pathway is a portal to high-quality teaching and learning resources in applied science and math, engineering, computer science/information technology and engineering technology, for use by K-12 and university educators and students. Engineering Pathway is the engineering education “wing” of the National Science Digital Library (NSDL).