提高“信息工程”专业英语教学质量的“三个超越”

文章从教材选取、课堂教学、教师队伍建设三个方面探讨了信息专业英语教学实践中的一些实际问题，并提出了一些解决问题的办法。     

Ethic of Care: Guiding Principles for Engineering Teaching & Practice

Engineering draws guidance from many disciplines for its teaching and practice. The evolution of engineering as a response to societal and personal needs has created, together with technical challenges, ethical dimensions akin to more service-oriented professions. Several frameworks of ethics have been suggested to incorporate and address these dimensions. In this paper, the ethic of care is singled out due to the natural analogy between engineering and care: they both respond to a need and are oriented towards action. The suitability of care to provide guiding principles is supported by highlighting the distinguishing features that make the ethic of care especially relevant to engineering. Finally, it is shown through examples that the benefits from applying principles of the ethic of care vary from helpful reminders to valuable insights and guidelines in teaching and practicing engineering.     

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.     

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.     

包装工程专业团队协作毕业设计指导模式的探讨与实践

根据包装工程类应用型本科毕业设计存在的问题,提出包装工程专业协作式毕业设计教学模式,引入全程质量监控的工作思路,规范毕业设计管理。通过毕业设计实践教学,探索以工程为背景、以综合素质和工程能力培养为目标的协作式毕业设计教学新方法,从而提高包装工程类应用型本科毕业设计的质量。     

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.     

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.     

Engineering Design Processes: A Comparison of Students and Expert Practitioners

In this paper we report on an in‐depth study of engineering design processes. Specifically, we extend our previous research on engineering student design processes to compare the design behavior of students and expert engineers. Nineteen experts from a variety of engineering disciplines and industries each designed a playground in a lab setting, and gave verbal reports of their thoughts during the design task. Measures of their design processes and solution quality were compared to pre‐existing data from 26 freshmen and 24 seniors. The experts spent significantly more time on the task overall and in each stage of engineering design, including significantly more time problem scoping. The experts also gathered significantly more information covering more categories. Results support the argument that problem scoping and information gathering are major differences between advanced engineers and students, and important competencies for engineering students to develop. Timeline representations of the expert designers' processes illustrate characteristic distinctions we found and may help students gain insights into their own design processes.     

A Web-Based Instructional Module for Teaching Middle School Students Engineering Design with Simple Machines*

The current work describes an instructional module that emphasizes integrative design using six simple machines: the lever, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the inclined plane, the screw, and the gear. The emphasis of this module is to have students investigate the underlying scientific and mathematical properties of the “machines,” and then integrate this knowledge to design creative solutions to problems. This simple machines module makes use of an original web-based multimedia learning environment as well as off-line, hands-on building activities with the LEGO^TM Technic I set. The current instructional module was used in a pilot study in an Introduction to Engineering class, and we include preliminary results from this study.     

The Creative Experience in Engineering Practice: Implications for Engineering Education

This research came about as an outgrowth of mounting concern among industrial leaders about the impact of traditional engineering education on the creative potential of future engineers. As there is little agreement on creativity or how to teach it, we chose to begin the study without assuming a theoretical stance about engineering creativity. Instead, we started with a search for first-hand information about creativity and the creative process experienced by working engineers. This phenomenological research paradigm is a way to describe a complex, dynamic experience without prior assumptions, the results of which can then be used to generate theory or develop a structure directly from the data. This approach has similarities to an expert system development, in which the knowledge and skills of an expert are gathered and processed to develop an understanding of the system or phenomenon. Eight professional engineers from the southeastern United States were selected by peer nomination as examples of (expert) creative engineers. They were trained in different areas of engineering (eg. chemical, mechanical, industrial) and worked in organizations ranging from large international consulting firms to small regional businesses. These subjects were interviewed about their experiences in doing creative work and their thoughts about the creative process, including the impact of relevant educational experiences. These interviews were audio-recorded and subjected to a phenomenological data analytic procedure, which extracted the experiential themes and educational issues. The experiential themes involved in the creative process of working engineers clustered as

• ? Desire and fulfillment (motivation),
• ? Autonomy and support (environment),
• ? Openness and knowledge (tools), and
• ? Engrossment and connection (process).

This paper discusses the implications and application of these themes for curricular innovation in engineering education.     

Technology and the Engineering Method for Non-Engineering Students

This paper describes the structure, material, and techniques used in a course that introduces non-engineering students to the tasks and tools of the engineering profession. The primary components of the course include differentiation between engineering and science, heuristic and computational problem solving, experimentation, conservation principles, and a design experience.     

Introducing Middle School Students to Engineering Principles Using Educational Bridge Design Software

In an effort to motivate middle school students to consider future careers in engineering, an educational outreach program was developed and implemented during National Engineers Week. The outreach program concentrated on bridge engineering and was presented within one day to the entire eighth grade student population of the local public school system. The program began with a presentation on careers in engineering with a particular emphasis placed on bridge engineering. Fundamental engineering concepts used in bridge design were then explained. The students used these concepts to design a single‐span truss bridge using an educational bridge design software program. Finally, a bridge design competition was held in which the students attempted to optimize the design of their bridge.     

建环专业工程设计类课程的教学探讨

工科工程设计是促进学生综合能力提高的一个极为重要的教学环节,因此在工程设计类课程的教学中必须注重对学生创新精神和实践能力的培养,注重不同专业课程之间的相互衔接,使学生体会到专业知识的整合性。从本专业《锅炉与锅炉房设备》课程教学中存在的问题出发,探讨了在高等教育中培养、提高教师工程素质的途径;在课堂教学中如何实施有效的教学改革,实现较好的教学效果;培养大学生创新素质和实践能力的主要措施。     

工程制图课程的工程性改革实践

在教学内容上,分析了现代工程图学的教学要求,提出了工程制图课程新的教学体系.在教材上,以贯彻国家标准为出发点,重新组织了相关教学内容.在教学过程中,强调了制图课程的工程性,调动了学生学习工程知识和进行工程实践的积极性.     

Developing an Environmentally Friendly Engineering Ethic: A Course for Undergraduate Engineering Students

An undergraduate course designed to develop a new, environmentally-friendly, engineering ethic is described. The various components of the course are: individual and societal values clarification, the current state of the environment, critical and creative thinking skills development and conflict resolution. For each component, the rationale is given along with activities and evaluation of the unit.     

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.     

三峡下游引航道工程基础开挖监理实践

介绍了监理工程师对爆破作业实行全方位、全过程控制 ,并在工作实践中不断总结经验 ,优化爆破参数 ,在质量和安全控制方面取得的显著效果。     

On the Use of Students for Developing Engineering Laboratories

This paper describes a unique and innovative approach that solved the dual problem of starting up a new engineering instructional laboratory in a timely manner, and for teaching engineering students advanced skills in Automatic Data Collection. Students enrolled in a special pilot course were used to develop and startup an Automatic Data Collection laboratory. These students were assigned individual Automatic Data Collection technologies of interest and given total responsibility for the successful startup of the laboratory. The organization and structure of the course modeled the typical team oriented project development efforts in industry. Feedback from students showed the course to be better than a typical lecture/laboratory/demonstration type course in the following ways: 1) students believed they had greater amount of contact with equipment; 2) their experience on the project was more realistic than more traditional courses; 3) they believed they gained a more thorough understanding of the technology under study; and 4) they believed they improved their professional skills making them more marketable to potential employers. With respect to the laboratory itself, startup time was reduced from an estimated 18 months to 14 weeks with the help of the student teams.