Influential Structural Engineers: A Project in a Third-year Structural Analysis Course

A study of structural analysis is enhanced by an exposure to the pioneers in the field. Students can more fully appreciate the tools and techniques of structural analysis when given life through a study of those engineers who developed and used them. Of special significance in this age of powerful computer capabilities is the technological context within which many of the important engineers lived and made their contributions. This paper describes a special project undertaken in the second of a two course sequence in structural analysis during the Spring quarter, 1992, in the Department of Civil Engineering and Construction at North Dakota State University. The class of 65 students was divided into 13 groups of five students each. With some guidance, each group chose an engineer who made a significant contribution to modern structural engineering theory and/or practice. Each group was required to research the life and work of the chosen engineer and present an oral, in-class demonstration, experiment, or other visual illustration of a theoretical or applied concept that characterized a major contribution of the selected individual. In addition, each student was required to submit an independently written paper addressing one of a set of standard questions posed to all groups. The project encouraged the students to discover the unique engineering skills demonstrated by some of the great engineers who made important contributions to modern structural engineering practice. By integrating the stories of influential engineers and their achievements into a quantitative analysis course, the students experienced the technical material within a broader context, helping them to appreciate the practice of engineering as a living, human endeavor.     

开设<包装实验>课的可行性研究

文章针对我校包装工程专业在主要专业课的实验环课部分的现状及存在的问题，以高教课程体系改革及实践教学改革的要求为依据，提出对3门课的实验课进行整合，开设一门专业实验课《包装实验》的措施，从而使实验课体系更具系统性，有利于提高学生的实际操作技能。     

Teaching Awareness of Problem-Solving Skills to Engineering Freshmen

Carnegie Mellon recently introduced a new curriculum that requires each engineering freshmen to elect two introductory engineering courses in the first year. The goal is to expose students to engineering disciplines as well as to engineering methods early. As part of this curriculum, we developed an introductory chemical engineering course to teach problem-solving skills explicitly within the context of material balances. By surveying students who had as well as students who had not taken the course, we found evidence that the new course was effective in increasing students' awareness of their problem-solving strategies.     

Digital skills and extrinsic rewards in late career

Using data from a large-scale Annual Social Survey of Israel's CBS, the current study investigates the correlation between digital skills and extrinsic rewards among late career employees (ages 45 and older) in the Israeli context. Applying signaling theory, we conceptualize digital skills as signals of competence and suitability to the firm among older workers who have been employed a relatively short period of time in their current workplace. Using warranting theory we conceptualize digital skills as warrants among older workers who have been employed in their position for a longer period but nevertheless wish to demonstrate ongoing productivity. Digital skills were positively correlated with income among both groups of late career employees. These skills were also positively associated with exclusive fringe benefits from the workplace (i.e., company car, cellphone from work, and stocks or shares in the workplace) only among those who worked 5 years and more in the current workplace. The correlation between digital skills and standard benefits from the workplace (employer's payments to pension plan, study fund etc.) was insignificant among both groups of late employees.     

The Development and Assessment of a Course for Enhancing the 3‐D Spatial Visualization Skills of First Year Engineering Students

In January 1993, we received NSF funding to develop a pre‐graphics course for freshman engineering majors who are weak in 3‐D spatial visualization skills. A text and computer lab exercises utilizing I‐DEAS software were written specifically for this course. The course is 3‐credits (quarter system) with two hours of lecture and two hours of computer lab each week. It was offered at Michigan Technological University (MTU) for the first time during the 1993 Fall term and has been offered each fall since that time. The objective of the course is to provide the prerequisite spatial skills needed by students to succeed in their subsequent engineering graphics courses. Assessment for the course has been continuous. Recently, a six‐year longitudinal study was conducted to determine the overall success of this project. This paper will describe the project and the assessment findings from the longitudinal study.     

设计管理在新产品开发中的应用

介绍分析了设计管理的有关理论和新产品开发的流程、参与新产品开发的人员及设计师介入新产品开发的程度,重点对设计师与工程师的辩证关系进行了分析,从而对设计师和工程师的管理有了进一步的认识.希望设计管理能在新产品开发中得到更好的应用,从而提高新产品开发的效率和速度,进而提高企业的竞争力.     

工程监理委托代理关系中激励约束 与参与约束的研究

基于委托－代理理论对工程监理委托－代理关系中的激励约束与参与约束进行若干拓展研究,与参 与约束（IR）相比,激励相容约束（IC）更为重要,一个机制不满足激励约束,那将是一个无效机制。业主想要 提高工程监理制度的运作效率,就必须通过相应的激励措施诱使工程师努力工作,使“道德风险”得以抑制, 为我国工程监理制度的健康发展提供了有益的启示。     

The United States Patent System: An Essential Role in Engineering Design Education

The patent system has long been a neglected tool in the education of American engineers. Four propositions are presented which support the notion that an understanding of patents should be an integral part of the education of every engineer who practices in the United States. The essay lays a philosophical and historical foundation explaining the role of the patent system in a competitive free‐market society, and how it influences the behavior of those who seek to innovate. An upper‐level design course offered at The George Washington University, which heavily utilizes the patent literature and provides a foundation for understanding the role of patents in American industry, is discussed in detail. Ethical dilemmas facing engineers in the heat of competition are analyzed in the course, and the essay discusses some of these. This essay concludes with a discussion of why the role of patents in engineering education should increase in the twenty‐first century.     

The Theme Course: Connecting the Plant Trip to the Text Book

A plant trip provides subjects for team projects and lecture examples in a sophomore chemical engineering course, thus becoming a unifying “theme” for the course. The “theme” structure is intended to improve student mastery of course material by helping students relate different course topics to one another via real equipment and processes. Here, performance in a subsequent junior chemical engineering course by students from the “theme course” is compared with performance by students who took the sophomore course in a traditional lecture‐homework‐exam format. Theme course graduates claim better retention of concepts from the sophomore course, though their scores on exam questions testing their knowledge, comprehension, and application of these concepts did not differ significantly from that of students from the traditional course. Theme course graduates did earn higher grades in the junior course, due to better performance on exam questions requiring higher level skills such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Students were enthusiastic about the course structure, and expressed excitement about learning from “real life.” Thus the “theme” structure results in early student success in the skills necessary for engineering design, and generates student enthusiasm for engineering.     

Personal and Professional Enrichment: Humanities in the Engineering Curriculum

The Drexel E4 approach to engineering education has evolved from emphases on teamwork and course integration to include an emphasis on faculty development through the Personal and Professional Enrichment component. One of the four components of the curriculum which are described elsewhere, the Personal and Professional Enrichment Program, encompasses a short orientation course and the year long Humanities sequence. The orientation course, taught by all the team members, provides a forum for faculty as well as students to discuss personal and educational goals. It also provides faculty with a social arena which has become important in developing and maintaining the strong sense of community the team shares. The faculty have profited from talking about themselves as individuals, as much as the students who have discovered professionals as role models—concerned citizens and parents, and lifelong learners. Students are introduced to engineering as a profession that requires not only technological skills but also an awareness of ethics, of the need for lifelong learning, and of the importance of Humanities. It is important to note that the technical faculty teach the introductory course and thus themselves attest to the value of humanistic concerns throughout the entire program. Continuing the integration of goals as well as subjects, the Humanities curriculum includes the traditional sequence in reading, writing, and research skills with an emphasis on technical writing, visuals and oral presentation skills. Meritorious texts are chosen to highlight humanistic concerns about the impact of technology so that students recognize the engineers' obligation to the world we all share. By enhancing communication skills, developing an awareness of audience and expanding their imagination, students gain confidence in expressing creative and responsible attempts at solving engineering problems.     

Evaluation of the motorcycle rider course

A sample of 516 persons who had taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's motorcycle rider course within the prior three years and a control group who had not taken the course completed a questionnaire about their riding exposure, violations and accidents, as a means of evaluating the effects of the course. The major findings were: (a) when controlling for age and years licensed, those who took the course did not have a lower accident rate than the control group; (b) there were no differences in the violation rates between the groups; (c) the cost of damage to the motorcycles per million miles was not less for those who took the course; and (d) the estimated cost of medical treatment of injuries per million miles was not significantly less for the group which took the course; but, (e) the mean cost of damage to the motorcycles was less for those who took the course; and (f) the mean medical cost per accident was less among those who took the course than the control group. The latter may be attributable to the finding that (g) those who took the course made more use of protective clothing, such as helmets, than the control group, and to other exposure factors affecting the severity of the accidents.     

Parental and offspring assessment of driving capability under the influence of drugs or alcohol: Gender and inter-generational differences

The current study set to examine whether there are inter-generational and gender-based differences between family members self-assessing their ability to drive under normal conditions and while under the influence of either alcohol or drugs. Participants were 135 young-adults and both their parents, consisting 45 family triads, who received self-assessment questionnaires relating to their driving skills in various road scenarios. Each family triad was randomly assigned to one of three groups: either requested to base the assessments on normal driving conditions, or under the influence of either drugs or alcohol, thus forming a control group, and two experimental groups (alcohol and drugs), respectively.The findings indicate the assessments of both the alcohol and drugs groups were more severe than those of the control group. The alcohol group assessments were less strict than the drug group assessment (non-significantly). Inter-generational differences indicated that the parents’ driving-skills assessments were lower than those of their offspring, corresponding with previous findings (Elkind, 1967, Finn and Bragg, 1986).A significant within-subject interaction has been found between the respondent's gender and familial relations regarding the self-assessment of driving skills: male respondents assessed better driving skills compared to the self estimates of both parents (which did not significantly differ). In contrast, female respondents’ estimates did not differ from their fathers’ and both fathers’ and daughters’ estimates were significantly higher than that of the mothers in each family.     

Preparing Students for Careers in Material Handling

This report summarizes the proceedings of a roundtable discussion of materials handling educational issues by a panel consisting of practitioners in the materials handling industry. The objective of the discussion was to: (i) understand how practitioners apply their engineering expertise to industrial problems, (ii) identify critical skills and attributes required of practicing materials handling engineers, and (iii) determine how ties between universities and the practicing community could be strengthened to prepare material handling students for successful careers in the material handling industry. The discussion was centered around five issues related to the above objectives. The panel felt that a vast majority of the materials handling problems faced by practitioners fall in the operational analysis category. Simulation modeling, group problem solving, project management and simple operational analysis based on fundamental mechanical and electrical engineering principles appear to be the primary analytic methods used for problem solving. Graduating engineers entering the materials handling field must possess strong communication, interpersonal and analytical skills, be able to organize and lead a project successfully, and exhibit a high degree of creativity. Because the role of a materials handling engineer will often be that of an internal consultant, they must be able to lead and work effectively in multi‐disciplinary teams. Increased automation on the shop‐floor and globalization of the business world demand that the engineer have a strong multi‐disciplinary background. Materials handling students in the nation's universities must be familiar with various equipment types including their functionality, applications, strengths and weaknesses, have a firm grasp of the analytical and simulation based problem solving tools, and be able to take the “big picture,” systems approach in problem solving. Classroom instruction must include project and case based learning and coverage of theoretical topics. While the former is important for students to be able to solve practical problems, the latter is valuable for imparting analytical skills and creativity. Increased collaboration between the industry and universities will help prepare successful materials handling engineers.     

Characteristics of Freshman Engineering Students: Models for Determining Student Attrition in Engineering

Nationwide, less than half the freshman who start in engineering graduate in engineering, and at least half of this attrition occurs during the freshman year. Clearly, the freshman year is critical for both academic success and retention of engineering students. Such success depends not only on the knowledge and skills learned during this first year, but also on the attitudes individual students bring with them to college. Hence, if these attitudes can be measured before beginning college, we can develop more targeted programs for reducing attrition and improving academic success. Further, by measuring changes in student attitude over the course of the freshman year, we can develop better methods to evaluate engineering education programs. To learn more about these attitudes and how they impact upon retention, we undertook a three-year research effort. First we identified attitudes incoming students have about the field of engineering, their perceptions about the upcoming educational experience, and their confidence in their ability to succeed in engineering. These attitudes were then related to performance and retention in the freshman engineering program. To accomplish this, a closedform survey was developed, tested and administered to the 1993–94 and 1994–95 freshman engineering classes. This study demonstrated that student attitudes can provide an effective means for evaluating aspects of our freshman engineering program, particularly those relating to issues of attrition. Specifically, students who left the freshman engineering program in “good academic standing” had significantly different attitudes about engineering and themselves than those possessed by other comparison groups: students who stayed in engineering and students who left engineering in “poor academic standing.” We developed regression models to predict attrition and performance in our freshman engineering program using quantified measures of student attitudes. Implementation of the models has allowed freshman advisors to better inform students of opportunities that engineering offers, to devise better programs of study that take advantage of students' varied interests, and to set retention goals that are more realistic.     

Personal and Professional Enrichment: Humanities in the Engineering Curriculum

The Drexel E⁴ approach to engineering education has evolved from emphases on teamwork and course integration to include an emphasis on faculty development through the Personal and Professional Enrichment component. One of the four components of the curriculum which are described elsewhere, the Personal and Professional Enrichment Program, encompasses a short orientation course and the year long Humanities sequence. The orientation course, taught by all the team members, provides a forum for faculty as well as students to discuss personal and educational goals. It also provides faculty with a social arena which has become important in developing and maintaining the strong sense of community the team shares. The faculty have profited from talking about themselves as individuals, as much as the students who have discovered professionals as role models—concerned citizens and parents, and lifelong learners. Students are introduced to engineering as a profession that requires not only technological skills but also an awareness of ethics, of the need for lifelong learning, and of the importance of Humanities. It is important to note that the technical faculty teach the introductory course and thus themselves attest to the value of humanistic concerns throughout the entire program. Continuing the integration of goals as well as subjects, the Humanities curriculum includes the traditional sequence in reading, writing, and research skills with an emphasis on technical writing, visuals and oral presentation skills. Meritorious texts are chosen to highlight humanistic concerns about the impact of technology so that students recognize the engineers' obligation to the world we all share. By enhancing communication skills, developing an awareness of audience and expanding their imagination, students gain confidence in expressing creative and responsible attempts at solving engineering problems.     

Electrical and optical modulation on ferroelectric properties of P(VDF-TrFE) thin film capacitors

Modulating the ferroelectric properties of P(VDF-TrFE) polymers both electrically and optically could open up new opportunities for their applications in non-volatile memories and sensors. Here by using the Nb:SrTiO₃ semiconductor as electrode compared with metal Au electrode, we report on the modulation of ferroelectric properties of P(VDF-TrFE) thin film capacitors both by electric field and UV light. A ferroelectric hysteresis loop shift together with the asymmetric switching behavior has been observed when using semiconducting electrode, which could be explained by the band alignment model based on interfacial charge screening. On the basis of band bending near the ferroelectric/semiconductor interface, we could further modulate the ferroelectric switching behaviors reversibly by UV light illumination. Our research provides a new route to engineer the ferroelectric properties of P(VDF-TrFE) polymer thin film capacitors, promising their applications in optoelectronic devices.     

Thinking Preferences of Engineering Students: Implications for Curriculum Restructuring

The thinking preferences of engineering students at the University of Toledo have been assessed in a longitudinal study, using the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). The scores and profiles reveal thinking preferences in four different ways of thinking and “knowing”: A = analytical-logical-quantitative, B = sequential-organized-detailed, C = interpersonal-sensory-kinesthetic, and D = innovative-holistic-conceptual thinking. With the HBDI, we have a tool that can assess the effects of curriculum restructuring. Data from 1990–1993 fall freshmen classes and 1991–1994 spring senior classes have been evaluated, where the 1994 seniors are the first group for which freshmen data are available. Conclusions drawn from the results are: 1) Overall, there has been a shift from “plug-and-chug” quadrant B thinking to increased “creative” quadrant D thinking, because more students with strong quadrant D preferences are being developed and retained, primarily due to the new creative problem solving course. 2) Avoidance of quadrant C thinking (teamwork skills) is persisting and creates classroom climates that are uncomfortable for some students, a high percentage being females. Students are not developing the teamwork and interpersonal thinking skills demanded by industry. 3) A majority of students are still being cloned in the A-dominant profile of the faculty. Students who have developed independent ways of practicing right-brain thinking and all students who were involved in creative problem solving as class assistants became more whole-brained or right-brained. Quadrant C and D thinking activities must be integrated into the curriculum each term for students to develop their full potential and reinforce the whole-brain thinking skills introduced in the first-year creative problem solving course.     

Does increased confidence among novice drivers imply a decrease in safety? The effects of skid training on slippery road accidents

Finnish driver training was renewed in 1990 with the inclusion of a compulsory skid training course in the curriculum. The study evaluated the renewal's effect on accidents in slippery road conditions. A questionnaire was sent by mail to 41000 novice drivers who were randomly selected from the official register of driving licences. It included questions on driving exposure and the accidents the drivers had been involved in during 6-18 months following licensing. The rate of return was 74.7%. Half of the drivers had received their licence in 1989 and had, therefore, not received any skid training. The other half had received their licence in 1990 after the introduction of the skid training course. The results showed no effects of the renewal on slippery road accidents for either male or female drivers. Another questionnaire was sent to 1300 old and new curriculum drivers immediately after licensing and a second time 1/2-1 year later, both with questions about skills, worries and perceived risks regarding driving in slippery conditions. The new curriculum drivers showed higher confidence in their skills and they were less afraid to drive in slippery conditions than the old curriculum drivers. This increase in confidence as a result of skid training is discussed. It is argued that high confidence in one's personal skills does not necessarily imply negative safety. The crucial factor is how these skills are used, and for what purpose.     

The development of professional skills using a product developmentscenario

Personal and professional development is now recognised as an important feature in the education of an engineer. The paper describes a scenario based on a `ghost company' that has been successfully used to develop these skills in students. It involves team working between two geographically remote sites using such techniques as video conferencing, e-mail and the Internet. Evaluation of the work has taken place and the results are presented with suggestions for further work     

Enhancing students' learning while developing their communicationskills

Today there is a need for undergraduate courses in engineering and technology to include work on key skills, particularly communication skills. This article describes how a distance-learning course at the Open University incorporated communication skills. It shows that assignments which encourage students to integrate their work on communication skills with their work on technological topics can also encourage students to enhance their learning skills