Refining Certain Basic Concepts Used in Mechanical Engineering

Proposals are formulated and justified for refining individual concepts used in setting-up theory and enshrined in normative documents.     

管理科学与工程学科概念及其体系研究

从管理科学与工程学科产生与发展的影响因素入手,考证学科形成与发展的历史轨迹,尝试建立现代管理科学与工程学科的概念定位及其完整的学科体系,并确立学科在现代科学系统中的地位.     

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.     

Decision Making in the Engineering Classroom

This paper outlines the exploration of an analogy between the developmental stages of engineering education and the stages of moral development of an individual as synthesized by Kohlberg. This exploration is used to discuss the components of education necessary to educate the “post-conventional engineer.” The exploration is relevant to understanding the historical or evolutionary stage of engineering as a profession in order to set a framework for engineering education. This analysis raises some of the issues for incorporating decisionmaking into engineering education. The paper also proposes some simple classroom techniques that can aid in developing the dimensions of social responsibility as part of the engineering classroom and decisionmaking.     

A Dramatic Method to Demonstrate Concurrent Engineering in the Classroom

Conceptualizing concurrent engineering is an easy task for students, usually. However, they find it difficult to understand the forces preventing concurrent engineering from being supported. In fact, concurrent engineering can seem like common sense, until students experience this exercise. After the exercise, students often have a much greater appreciation for the difficulties and the degree of advantage posed by the use of concurrent engineering.     

Incidental Writing in the Engineering Classroom

Currently, most of the writing that students do in engineering classes is formal writing, such as laboratory or design reports, produced at the end of the design process. Although appropriate for communicating the results of this process, formal writing tends to be less effective at helping students master the design concepts presented in the class. A potentially more beneficial form of writing is “incidental writing,” informal writing that students do throughout the course of the design process. Students enrolled in an engineering class developed under an NSF-funded program at the University of Washington kept journals throughout the class. Analysis of the journals indicated that incidental writing enables students to communicate with instructors, and improves not only the students' writing skills and comprehension of class material, but also their problem-solving abilities and ability to monitor their thinking and learning strategies.     

Reverse Engineering and Redesign: Courses to Incrementally and Systematically Teach Design

A variety of design‐process and design‐methods courses exist in engineering education. The primary objective of such courses is to teach engineering design fundamentals utilizing repeatable design techniques. By so doing, students obtain (1) tools they may employ during their education, (2) design experiences to understand the “big picture” of engineering, and (3) proven methods to attack open‐ended problems. While these skills are worthwhile, especially as design courses are moved earlier in curricula, many students report that design methods are typically taught at a high‐level and in a compartmentalized fashion. Often, the students' courses do not include opportunities to obtain incremental concrete experiences with the methods. Nor do such courses allow for suitable observation and reflection as the methods are executed. In this paper, we describe a new approach for teaching design methods that addresses these issues. This approach incorporates hands‐on experiences through the use of “reverse‐engineering” projects. As the fundamentals of design techniques are presented, students immediately apply the methods to actual, existing products. They are able to hold these products physically in their hands, dissect them, perform experiments on their components, and evolve them into new successful creations. Based on this reverse‐engineering concept, we have developed and tested new courses at The University of Texas, MIT, and the United States Air Force Academy. In the body of this paper, we present the structure of these courses, an example of our teaching approach, and an evaluation of the results.     

微观材料学的两个基本方程和三个基础概念

本文应用逻辑学、系统分析、物理学的进化论述了微观材料学中三个基础概念——结构 (S)、环境 (e)、性能 (性质 ) (P) ,以及它们所组成的两个基本方程 :P=f(e,S)和 S={ E,R} ,式中 E为系统中组元的集合 ,R为组元间关系的集合。比较了因果关系的各种学说 ,扩展第一方程 ,增加了第四个基础概念——揭示事物秘密的“过程”;应用数量学、生物进化论等讨论无生物、生物及人类各种过程的目的。这些论述 ,为《材料学的方法论》的广泛应用 ,打下理性基础。     

Using an English Tutor in the Engineering Classroom

In an attempt to improve the written communication skills of engineering students, a technical writing expert was engaged as a writing tutor. The tutor worked solely with the students in a required, four-credit undergraduate water resources course. The tutor critiqued the students' grammar in laboratory reports and cover letters that were required as a part of project submittals. After making written comments on paper, the writing expert met with individual students to discuss writing improvements in detail. The engineering professor also commented on grammar, but it was the tutor who was responsible for ten percent of the grade on laboratory reports and projects. The results of the process, including a student survey, are discussed.     

工科院校愉快式双语教学方法探微

文章讨论了工科类院校运用愉快双语教学的最佳方法和手段,并就如何创造最佳的环境来激发学生,使他们既掌握专业知识又能培养学习英语的兴趣作了有益的尝试.     

Engineering Design in Industry: Teaching Students and Faculty to Apply Engineering Science in Design

In a typical engineering curriculum students and faculty rarely have the opportunity to take a real problem, extract its essence, apply an analysis, and then make design decisions based on this analysis. This extractive link between fundamentals and design is particularly critical to a smooth transition from engineering study at the university to engineering practice in industry. Historically, universities have taken the responsibility for rigorous theoretical and technical training in subjects that include the basic sciences and fundamentals of engineering, while industry has been responsible for making engineering graduates contributors to specific tasks important to the company and its core competency. In this division of training, however, no one teaches students how to apply fundamental engineering principles to practical problems. To make matters worse, faculty often ignore engineering relevance of basic theory and the students then reject these fundamentals; in both cases engineering performance suffers. One solution to this missing bridge is being developed in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in the form of the “Engineering Design in Industry” program.     

强化工程意识与工程图样绘制能力的工程图学教学探讨

结合作者在企业长期工作积累的经验,对强化工程意识与工程图样绘制能力的工程图学教学进行了探讨,通过化整为零、见缝插针的教学方式,将与工程图样绘制相关的工程实践知识作为补充内容,安插在相应的章节,以开拓知识面的形式进行介绍,然后在装配图绘制等实践教学环节中,鼓励学生将学到的工程实践知识运用到零件构型设计与工程图样绘制之中,培养学生工程图样绘制的工程背景意识,为将来绘制出符合工程实际要求的工程图奠定基础.     

Numerical Methods in Engineering and Science

In our daily lives, we often need to identify individuals whose longitudinal behavior is different from the behavior of those well-functioning individuals, so that some unpleasant consequences can be avoided. In many such applications, observations of a given individual are obtained sequentially, and it is desirable to have a screening system to give a signal of irregular behavior as soon as possible after that individual’s longitudinal behavior starts to deviate from the regular behavior, so that some adjustments or interventions can be made in a timely manner. This article proposes a dynamic screening system for that purpose in cases when the longitudinal behavior is univariate, using statistical process control and longitudinal data analysis techniques. Several different cases, including those with regularly spaced observation times, irregularly spaced observation times, and correlated observations, are discussed. Our proposed method is demonstrated using a real-data example about the SHARe Framingham Heart Study of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. This article has supplementary materials online.     

Enabling Engineering Performance Skills: A Program to Teach Communication,Leadership, and Teamwork*

A minor in Engineering Communication and Performance is being created at the University of Tennessee in conjunction with the engage Freshman Engineering Program. This minor provides engineering undergraduate students with formal training and a credential in complementary performance skills necessary for success in today's workplace. This interdisciplinary program is designed to improve the ability of engineering graduates to work on teams, to be effective communicators, to be socially adept, and to be prepared for leadership roles . Five courses compose the minor. Three of these courses are new and custom‐prepared for engineering students, while the other two may be selected from a limited list of courses that provide in‐depth training on supervision, cultural diversity, and interpersonal interaction. This multi‐disciplinary program takes a novel approach in the subject matter presentation and in the method of coaching students to use these skills. In the custom courses, students receive instruction and are placed in mini‐practicums. To complete the minor, students participate in a full practicum in a social service setting. This paper discusses assessment; course development; program basis and development; strategies for implementation of this new program; integration between engineering, counseling psychology, and human services; and student, faculty, and industry response to the program. The collaboration makes this program transportable to other institutions as it is dependent on having institution expertise in the disciplines of counseling and human services rather than having engineering educators with expertise in these fields. Our experience with establishing this collaboration will also be discussed.