{"id":121240,"date":"2026-07-28T10:05:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T10:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/121240\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T10:05:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T10:05:17","slug":"two-aerospace-engineering-faculty-members-recognized-with-asee-top-paper-awards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/121240\/","title":{"rendered":"Two aerospace engineering faculty members recognized with ASEE top paper awards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \"Penn<\/p>\n

Penn State aerospace engineering faculty Mark Maughmer (left) and James Coder (right), who earned two national ASEE awards for research on ChatGPT’s role in engineering education, pose for headshots.\u00a0 Credit:\u00a0Penn State College of Engineering directory.<\/p>\n

July 27, 2026<\/p>\n

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. \u2014\u00a0Associate Professor\u00a0James\u00a0Coder<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Professor\u00a0Mark Maughmer<\/a>,\u00a0both\u00a0faculty members\u00a0in the Department of Aerospace Engineering,\u00a0and doctoral candidate in the College of Education Julie\u00a0Coder\u00a0were\u00a0co-authors of a paper that was\u00a0recognized at the\u00a02026 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0with\u00a0both the Best Paper Award in the Aerospace Division and the Best Professional Interest Council (PIC)\u00a0V Paper Award.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The paper,\u00a0\u201cEvaluating Generative AI-Assisted Studying in an Undergraduate Aeronautics Course<\/a>,\u201d\u00a0was honored for its contributions to engineering education and was selected from papers presented at the annual conference, which brings together engineering educators and researchers from around the world to share innovations in teaching,\u00a0learning\u00a0and curriculum development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Best Paper Award recognizes outstanding scholarly contributions within ASEE’s Aerospace Division, while the Best PIC V Paper Award honors exceptional papers presented within Professional Interest Council V, which focuses on advancing engineering education through innovative instructional approaches and educational research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The research explored how generative AI tools like ChatGPT can support students studying challenging aerospace engineering concepts.\u00a0The researchers analyzed more than 175 interactions between ChatGPT and a simulated undergraduate learner to assess both the technical accuracy of the responses and whether the AI encouraged meaningful learning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While ChatGPT often provided clear, accessible explanations, the study found that it sometimes favored quick answers over deeper conceptual understanding. The AI\u00a0frequently\u00a0overlooked important visual and mathematical elements, offered overly reassuring feedback that could give students false confidence and generated practice materials that lacked the precision needed for complex engineering coursework.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe findings highlight the need for a more thoughtful approach to integrating generative AI in engineering education,\u201d Coder said.\u00a0\u201cRather than replacing teaching assistants, tutoring or other learning supports, AI tools should be used with guidance that helps students critically evaluate their outputs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Penn State aerospace engineering faculty Mark Maughmer (left) and James Coder (right), who earned two national ASEE awards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61374,61375,580,2488,157,61372,61373],"class_list":["post-121240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-openai","tag-aerospace-engineering","tag-best-paper-award","tag-chatgpt","tag-conference","tag-openai","tag-penn-state-college-of-engineering","tag-penn-state-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}