AC 2007-639: KEEPING ERROR IN CLASS ALL SEMESTER David Devine, Indiana University-Purdue University-Fort Wayne © American Society for Engineering Education, 2007 Keeping Error in Class All Semester

The topic of error in measurements is fundamental to the study of elementary surveying. Textbooks used for such courses often include this topic in the first chapters of the book. Students may not always consider the error involved with measurements, particularly using modern advanced surveying techniques, unless the course is conducted in a manner that develops this premise. The theme of error in measurements is developed through the entire semester of the course by not only traditional means common in many surveying courses and but also new assignments and activities. The current textbook used in the course covers the subject matter in the second chapter. An active classroom exercise is used to bring the experience of the subject matter into the classroom when covering this chapter. Laboratory exercises for the course still utilize the steel tape. Thus, error corrections for temperature can be used to reinforce the concept of error. An Internet investigation assignment is used to get students to search beyond the class textbook and reinforce the types of error that occur with EDM and GPS equipment. Level survey work both in the classroom and laboratory always involve “closing the circuit”. Finally, near the end of the course, latitudes and departures exercises are used to bring distance measurement together with directions and subsequent computation and balancing the latitudes and departures by the compass rule. The reinforcement of error in measurements permits this theme to stay with the subject matter of the course all semester long. The knowledge of error in surveying measurements can be an aspect of meeting a TAC-ABET program objective of quality. Students who take subsequent courses in surveying will certainly study error in measurements in more detail. However, students who only take the elementary surveying class will have the theme emphasized repeatedly during the semester and thus they also will recognize that error occurs in all measurements and be able to interpret data with this knowledge