Faculty Reactions to Teaching Engineering Design to First Year Students

In 1993, as part of a major revision of our first year curriculum, the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia introduced a new course on Engineering Design. In this paper, we will briefly describe this course, its purpose, goals, content, and methods. However, our primary purpose is to describe the reactions to this course among the faculty who have been called upon to teach it. We observed a high turnover rate among the faculty for this course and wanted to determine the reasons for it. A survey was distributed to all current and past instructors. The attitudes and backgrounds of these faculty influence their evaluations of this course and their willingness to teach it again.     

The Intellectual Development of Science and Engineering Students. Part 2: Teaching to Promote Growth

As college students experience the challenges of their classes and extracurricular activities, they undergo a developmental progression in which they gradually relinquish their belief in the certainty of knowledge and the omniscience of authorities and take increasing responsibility for their own learning. At the highest developmental level normally seen in college students (which few attain before graduation), they display attitudes and thinking patterns resembling those of expert scientists and engineers, including habitually and skillfully gathering and analyzing evidence to support their judgments. This paper proposes an instructional model designed to provide a suitable balance of challenge and support to advance students to that level. The model components are (1) variety and choice of learning tasks; (2) explicit communication and explanation of expectations; (3) modeling, practice, and constructive feedback on high‐level tasks; (4) a student‐centered instructional environment; and (5) respect for students at all levels of development.     

A Teaching Workshop for Engineering Faculty

A quality engineering education is of utmost importance to undergraduate students seeking an engineering degree. Providing a quality education to these students is the responsibility of engineering faculty. The Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Utah State University (USU), in cooperation with the officers of the student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), has developed a series of six lessons focusing on teaching skills and faculty performance in the classroom. This series of lessons, known as the “Undergraduate Teaching Workshop”, is an effort to improve the teaching of the department faculty, and thereby the undergraduate education of its students. The lessons that make up this workshop range from student concerns to the use of learning resources and equipment. This paper discusses the workshop format and the experience we had with the workshop as it was conducted within our department.     

Faculty Perspectives Regarding the Undergraduate Research Experience in Science and Engineering

This study examined the perceptions of 155 science and engineering faculty at a mid‐size university with a very extensive undergraduate research program. The faculty thought the undergraduate research experience provided important educational benefits to the students, in good agreement with results from a recent alumni survey. The faculty who supervised undergraduates for a longer period of time and who modified their research program to accommodate undergraduates perceived a greater enhancement of important cognitive and personal skills. Undergraduate research was also believed to provide important mentoring and teaching experience for graduate students who worked with undergraduate research assistants.     

Utilizing Instructional Consultations to Enhance the Teaching Performance of Engineering Faculty

Although many kinds of data can be used to guide instructional consultations, research comparing the efficacy of such data is scant, especially in engineering. In this study, multiple modes of assessment were used to evaluate the impact of consultations informed by different kinds of data. This study illuminates two key aspects of instructional consultations: (1) their efficacy varies depending on the kind of data used to guide them, with student feedback from a Small Group Instructional Diagnosis (SGID) having the largest positive impact, and (2) the instructional consultant plays a key role in helping both interpret the available data and identify strategies for improvement. These findings suggest three implications for practice: (1) whenever possible, SGID‐based consultations should be offered systematically and proactively for engineering faculty, (2) data for other kinds of consultations should be tailored to the needs of the individual instructor, and (3) instructional consultants should be available to collaborate with faculty to enhance their teaching, thereby building an engineering culture that actively supports teaching and learning.     

Motivation of Engineering Students to Participate in Teaching Evaluations

This study employs expectancy theory to evaluate some key factors that motivate students to participate in the teaching evaluation process. The results show that engineering students generally consider the improvement of teaching to be the most important outcome of teaching evaluations, followed by the improvement of course content and format. Making the results of evaluations available for students' decisions on course and instructor selection ranked third, while the least important use was influencing a professor's tenure, promotion, and salary raise. Students' motivation to participate in teaching evaluations is also impacted significantly by their expectation that they will be able to provide meaningful feedback.     

Drexel's E4 Program: A Different Professional Experience for Engineering Students and Faculty

In 1988, Drexel began a project which involves a comprehensive restructuring of the lower division engineering curriculum. The program provides an early introduction to the central body of knowledge forming the fabric of engineering, the unifying rather than parochial aspects of engineering, experimental methods, the computer as a flexible, powerful professional and intellectual tool, the importance of personal communications skills, and the imperative for continuous, vigorous, life-long learning. The subject matter is organized in four major components replacing and/or integrating material in thirty-seven existing courses in the traditional curriculum. The theme of all activities is a central focus on the students as emerging professional engineers and the faculty as their mentors from the very beginning of their education. To date, 500 students and 50 faculty have participated in the project. Preliminary results of evaluations are encouraging. Retention rates and achievement levels are high. Performance tests indicate that most students develop excellent levels of computer and laboratory skills. Their written and oral presentations demonstrate achievement of superior levels of communication skills. Personal interviews and evaluations indicate that student response is quite positive and they place a high value on faculty participation in a team effort. Both faculty and students indicate that this different experience has given them an insight into the importance and scope of the engineering profession and a sense that its practice can be exciting, rewarding and enjoyable.     

Generic Skills Teaching in Materials Science and Engineering

University education has been very effective in preparing graduates to be discipline experts but there has been an increased emphasis on students becoming more generalist in their abilities. This paper examines the opinions that instructors and students have about the teaching of generic skills in a School of Materials Science and Engineering in Australia. In interviews, both groups demonstrated a limited understanding of what constituted generic skills, but classroom observation found broad evidence of a range of such skills being taught and practiced. We conclude that it would be an advantage for the students, and their subsequent employers, if instructors worked to make the teaching and practice of generic skills more explicit in their course materials.     

Improving the Academic Environment for Women Engineering Students Through Faculty Workshops

In this paper we examine the low numbers of women represented in engineering curricula and some of the factors that help to explain their under representation. We examine some of these factors including: isolation, not seeing the relevance of highly theoretical basic courses, negative experiences in laboratory courses, classroom climate and lack of role models. An outline is presented for two engineering faculty workshops, con ducted at the University of California-Davis, designed to help faculty members understand these issues and develop new strategies for overcoming factors that discourage their female students. Evaluation results are presented along with a series of recommendations for planning, implementing and evaluating these types of workshops.     

Introducing Engineering and Science Students to Entrepreneurship: Models and Influential Factors at Six American Universities

This paper reports on how traditional science and engineering students are being taught entrepreneurship at six American universities. Each participating institution follows one of three models, which differ with respect to location within the university, organizational structure and approach to attracting students. Teaching, new venture creation and, to a lesser degree, research are the most common goals driving the technological entrepreneurship initiatives at these universities. The most universal assets are internal champions and interest on the part of alumni and current students, while the lack of elective credits in the engineering curriculum is a common barrier.     

Conceptualizing Engagement: Contributions of Faculty to Student Engagement in Engineering

The concept of student engagement, now prominent in the engineering education and higher education communities, has a long intellectual history. Yet only recently has attention focused on the role that faculty play as designers of educational environments to support student engagement. Drawing from examples and data from the Engineering Change study (which evaluated the impact of the new EC2000 accreditation standards on engineering programs and student learning), the Academic Pathways Study of the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education, and studies underway at the United States Air Force Academy, we explore the role of faculty, as the institutional agents who are most proximal to the student experience, in developing, facilitating, and sustaining high levels of student engagement.     

Industrial Experience: Its Role in Faculty Commitment to Teaching

Using national survey data for full-time faculty in engineering and the natural sciences, this paper examines whether previous work experience in industry affects faculty attitudes and behaviors toward teaching and research. The results show that across type of institution and irrespective of seniority, faculty with industrial experience spend a greater percentage of their time on teaching above and beyond their work assignment, are more likely to teach undergraduates, are less likely to think about changing jobs to spend more time on research, and are less likely to believe that publishing should be the primary criterion in promotion and tenure decisions. These results suggest that efforts to enhance the value of teaching in engineering and the natural sciences cannot be addressed solely through efforts to reform the attitudes of existing faculty. Instead, adding experience in industry as an important criterion in hiring new faculty may be fundamental to changing the existing culture and to placing greater emphasis on teaching.     

Integrated Teaching of Experimental and Communication Skills to Undergraduate Aerospace Engineering Students

The joint teaching of an undergraduate Experimental Projects Lab and a Communications Practicum is discussed. Written and oral assignments developed, shaped, and peer reviewed as part of the communications practicum, are used to satisfy the written and oral requirements for the experimental projects subject. The joint structure serves to educate students in a variety of aspects of professional practice including solving open-ended problems, system-level integration of disciplinary coursework, project development and planning, oral and written communication, peer review, and teamwork. The paper describes the unique features of this educational strategy, and represents a progress report following a three-year experimental implementation of the new course format. Assessment of the effectiveness of the courses is presented based on student evaluations and comments from the instructors. A high level of satisfaction with this new model is expressed, suggesting that both the quality of the research performed and the students' ability to transmit an understanding of that research to others have been enhanced.     

The Role of Collaborative Reflection on Shaping Engineering Faculty Teaching Approaches

Over the last several years, engineering faculty and learning scientists from four universities worked in collaboration to develop educational materials to improve the quality of faculty teaching and student learning. Guided by the How People Learn (HPL) framework, engineering faculty worked in collaboration with learning scientists to develop learner‐centered, student‐focused instructional methods. In consultation with learning scientists, engineering faculty carried out educational inquiry in their classrooms aimed at investigating student learning and enhancing instruction. In this paper we discuss the extent to which faculty engaged in these collaborative endeavors and how their teaching approaches differed as a result of their level of engagement. Study findings reveal the role that collaborative reflection plays in shaping teaching approaches. Results from this study provide insights for researchers and other practitioners in engineering and higher education interested in implementing engineering faculty development programs to optimize the impact on teaching.     

Assessing General Creativity and Creative Engineering Design in First Year Engineering Students

Creativity is a vital tool for innovation in engineering. Psychology and engineering faculty developed the Creative Engineering Design Assessment (CEDA) because existing tools are limited. This measure was administered with general creativity measures in 63 engineering (57 males, six females) and 21 non‐engineering (six males, 15 females) students in five week intervals. Inter‐rater reliability showed high consistency overall and between the test and retest administrations. Only engineering males and females significantly differed on the retest. Engineering students with low, medium, and high creative engineering design did not statistically differ in their general creativity, not domain specific to engineering; however, only high scorers were significantly higher on the retest from the other groups. Future research is needed with larger samples.     

面向现代工程中两种设计方法的工程制图教学改革

阐述了现代工程中并存的两种设计方法,即以二维为主、三维为辅的设计方法和数字化的三维设计方法。结合目前人才市场的需求,提出了面向两种设计方法的工程制图教学改革的思路,叙述了具体的改革方案。在二维教学的基础上,突出三维设计思想,形成了画法几何、计算机绘图、几何造型和机械制图有机结合的现代工程制图教学体系,进行了初步的教学实践,取得了良好的教学效果。     

我国制造业应如何有效实施精益物流

在介绍了我国制造业的发展现状和存在问题的基础之上,阐述了精益物流的内涵和特征,并针对如何通过有效实施精益物流来推动我国制造业实现跨越式发展这一极具重要意义的命题,进行了系统而全面的探讨.     

Women Faculty in Engineering: Changing the Academic Climate

This paper presents selected results from a unique conference “Facing Issues: Women Faculty in the Structural Engineering Professions,” with supporting documentation from literature. The conference was held in April, 1993 and was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Division of Civil and Mechanical Systems. Gender-specific issues that were of interest to the female faculty and professional engineers who attended the conference are reviewed and discussed. These issues are bias, lack of professionalism shown toward women faculty, isolation, visibility/invisibility, patronization, faculty spouse issues, and other women not acknowledging women engineers. Suggestions and recommendations on how to increase the number of women recruited and, more importantly, retained on engineering faculties are offered to women faculty, colleagues and supervisors of women faculty, university administrators, and funding agencies.