Undergraduate Student Competitions

This study explored student competitions for undergraduate engineering and engineering technology students to determine which institutions consistently win and what factors support their winning, and to obtain some insights into the benefits for students. Forty‐four student competitions for engineering and technology students were identified, and the first, second, and third place institutions from 2001 to 2003 were tabulated. Although one institution would often win a particular competition, no institution was a consistent winner for all competitions. Advisers of winning institutions reported that their institutions won consistently because of a dedicated faculty advisor and/or the close alignment of the competition with the institution's curriculum. Also important are a tradition of winning, the quality of the students, and (for hands‐on competitions) the availability of resources. Additional research is needed to determine if student competitions increase student learning.     

Considering Context: A Study of First‐Year Engineering Students

High‐quality engineering design requires an understanding of how the resulting engineered artifact interacts with society, the natural environment, and other aspects of context. This study examines how first‐year engineering undergraduates approached two engineering design tasks. We focused on how much students considered contextual factors during problem‐scoping, a critical part of the design process. As part of a larger, longitudinal study, we collected data from 160 students at four U.S. institutions. Students varied in their consideration of each design task's context, and women's responses were more likely to be context‐oriented than men's. Overall, context‐orientation was positively correlated between the two design tasks, despite differences in data collection and analysis. Having found that beginning engineering students, particularly women, are sensitive to important contextual factors, we suggest that efforts to broaden participation in engineering should consider legitimizing and fostering context‐oriented approaches to engineering earlier in the curriculum.     

Innovative First Year Aerospace Design Course at MIT

Students at MIT typically take major‐specific courses beginning with their second year of studies. For the first year students eager to begin their aerospace education and to help those students unsure about selecting aerospace engineering as their major field, the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics offers an elective course, Introduction to Aerospace and Design. The course makes use of the new opportunities offered by the World Wide Web and provides students a real engineering experience through the hands‐on, Lighter‐Than‐Air (LTA) vehicle design project. The course teaches the basic concepts of aeronautics, includes lectures on design, and gives an overview of astronautics. The flexibility inherent in the World Wide Web allows us to accommodate the needs of students who require a review of the fundamentals in addition to in‐ class lecture material and the needs of others who desire to learn advanced material beyond what is presented in lecture. A Web‐based Discussion Forum greatly facilitated interaction among students, resulting in better vehicle designs and a friendlier classroom environment. The course culminates in an LTA vehicle design competition in which teams of five to six students design and build radio‐controlled blimps measuring up to 5 meters in length. The vehicles are flown around the perimeter of a basketball court with the objective of carrying a maximum amount of payload in a minimum amount of time. The students are introduced to real‐world engineering practice through oral presentations of their preliminary designs and critical designs in front of a faculty jury. Towards the end of the course, the students are required to submit a design portfolio showing how their LTA vehicles took shape via their individual and team efforts. The students are permitted to examine previous designs and improve upon them, yielding better vehicles every year. Results from a survey indicated that the freshmen felt much more comfortable working on technical problems with no clear answers as well as designing and building a device from an assortment of given parts.     

Using a Nationwide Internet‐Based Bridge Design Contest as a Vehicle for Engineering Outreach

The West Point Bridge Design Contest is a nationwide competition intended to increase middle school and high school students' interest in engineering. Unique among national engineering competitions, it entails no cost to participants, is entirely Internet‐based, and is achievable by any student with a Web‐enabled computer. By leveraging information technology, a project team of just three people has provided an engaging engineering design experience to over 30,000 students in the past two years. The project receives financial and promotional support from the American Society of Civil Engineers and private industry. Feedback from contestants and teachers indicates that students' interest in engineering is positively affected by their participation in the contest.     

Biases in Interpersonal Communication: How Engineering Students Perceive Gender Typical Speech Acts in Teamwork

This research investigates differences in how engineering and non‐engineering men and women perceive common speech acts in team settings. Participants completed surveys asking them to rate the speakers of three male typical and three female typical speech acts. Male engineering students were significantly harsher than other groups on female typical speech acts in which the speaker conceded weaknesses, even if this concession was for strategic purposes such as trying to help another teammate “save face.” This bias against female typical speech was consistent regardless of the speaker's gender, suggesting that students were reacting to speech patterns rather than to biological gender. These findings provide hope that women may be able to help manage perceptions of their everyday team interactions by avoiding statements that imply weaknesses, even if such speech is normal in other situations.     

New Curriculum Reforms in a Geological Engineering Program

Recent curriculum revisions to the geological engineering program at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada have led to a more streamlined program incorporating modern engineering education practices. Following a carefully designed program philosophy, the emphasis in the core curriculum changes through the entire four‐year program in three progressive stages, from the acquisition of knowledge, to integration and analysis, and finally to synthesis and design. This is reflected in an increased concentration of mathematics and basic science courses in first and second year, engineering science courses in third year, and engineering design courses (capstone courses) in fourth year. Two tools which concisely illustrate the course curriculum and curriculum content are: (1) the flow sheet, which can contain a wealth of information, such as showing linkages between courses (e.g. how upper‐level courses can build on lower‐level courses through course prerequisites), the timing of various courses, courses taught within the home department (vs. other departments), and courses taught by professional engineers; and (2) the ternary phase diagram, which is a quantitative method of displaying engineering content within individual courses or an entire program and can clearly show patterns and trends in curriculum content with time. Such tools are useful for academic engineering programs which may have to undergo an accreditation review and are readily adapted to any other engineering fields of study. Other engineering elements woven throughout the program include strong interactions with professional engineering faculty, the use of student teams, enhanced communication skills, and exposure to important aspects of professional engineering practice such as engineering ethics and law. To ensure that the curriculum is kept current and relevant, formative evaluation instruments such as questionnaires are used in all years of study, and are also sent to recent graduates of the program. External reviews of the revised program have been positive, indicating that the program goals are being achieved.     

An Analysis of Motivation Constructs with First‐Year Engineering Students: Relationships Among Expectancies,Values, Achievement,and Career Plans

Background Researchers have identified many factors affecting undergraduate engineering students' achievement and persistence. Yet, much of this research focuses on persistence within academia, with less attention to career plans after graduation. Furthermore, the relative influence of expectancy‐versus value‐related beliefs on students' achievement and career plans is not fully understood. Purpose (Hypothesis ) To address these gaps, we examined the relationships among the following motivation constructs for female and male first‐year engineering students: (a) expectancy‐related constructs that included engineering self‐efficacy (i.e., a judgment of one's ability to perform a task in engineering) and expectancy for success in engineering (i.e., the belief in the possibility of success in engineering); (b) value‐related constructs that included identification with engineering (i.e., the extent to which one defines the self through a role or performance in engineering) and engineering values (i.e., beliefs related to engineering interest, importance, and usefulness); (c) engineering achievement; and (d) engineering career plans. Design /Method Participants included 363 first‐year engineering students at a large state university. The students completed an online survey instrument in the first and second semester of their first year. Results Students' expectancy‐ and value‐related beliefs decreased over the first year for both men and women. Men reported higher levels for expectancy‐related beliefs than women. Expectancy‐related constructs predicted achievement better than the value‐related constructs, whereas value‐related constructs predicted career plans better for both men and women. Conclusions Expectancy‐ and value‐related constructs predicted different outcomes. Thus, both types of constructs are needed to understand students' achievement and career plans in engineering.     

Advancing Engineering Education in P‐12 Classrooms

Engineering as a profession faces the challenge of making the use of technology ubiquitous and transparent in society while at the same time raising young learners' interest and understanding of how technology works. Educational efforts in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (i.e., STEM disciplines) continue to grow in pre‐kindergarten through 12th grade (P‐12) as part of addressing this challenge. This article explores how engineering education can support acquisition of a wide range of knowledge and skills associated with comprehending and using STEM knowledge to accomplish real world problem solving through design, troubleshooting, and analysis activities. We present several promising instructional models for teaching engineering in P‐12 classrooms as examples of how engineering can be integrated into the curriculum. While the introduction of engineering education into P‐12 classrooms presents a number of opportunities for STEM learning, it also raises issues regarding teacher knowledge and professional development, and institutional challenges such as curricular standards and high‐stakes assessments. These issues are considered briefly with respect to providing direction for future research and development on engineering in P‐12.     

Faculty Use and Impressions of Courseware Management Tools: A National Survey

Technology in the classroom is changing the way faculties instruct and students learn. Understanding how faculty members perceive and use technology for learning is important for improving the educational process because instructor perceptions can potentially be a hindrance to the use and implementation of technology. This paper describes the results of a survey that investigated faculty Internet usage for instructional purposes as well as their perceptions of courseware management and Web‐publishing tools. The survey targeted a random sample of engineering faculty at ABET‐accredited universities. The survey results show that while many faculty members are using both Web‐publishing tools and courseware management tools for delivering educational content, they use these tools for only a small subset of pedagogical activities.     

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.     

From the Earth to the Moon: A Freshman Seminar

The seminar course for first‐year undergraduate students, From the Earth to the Moon, deals with both technical and non‐technical aspects of space flight, with particular reference to lunar voyages. The goals of the course are to establish a framework for understanding technology and its applications, to present fundamental principles of science and program management, and to motivate students to learn more about the many facets of engineering. As such, the course introduces numerous issues of systems engineering in a broad context, presenting not only science, technology, and mathematics but also the reasons that these subjects are important. Typically, all of the students in the course have studied physics and/or calculus in high school, though half plan to major in the humanities. Thus, the course has dual roles in exposing liberal arts students to details of technology and engineering students to societal impacts of technology.     

Airbus Airframe – New Technologies and Management Aspects

Airframe innovations in all relevant technological fields are important for the development of high performance airframes best to satisfy the market needs. The Airbus “intelligent” airframe is optimized in terms of new materials and advanced design, and implements smart structures technologies step by step. Hence, the competition between technologies (metal vs. composite) is leading to a hybrid airframe solution in the latest Airbus aircraft. This ensures that the best mature innovative technology is used for each specific application. Airbus is in the leading position for application of advanced technologies and has accumulated broad experience in all airframe technologies with all types of structural materials. In order to meet the current and future challenges and to incorporate worldwide best state‐of the‐art technological solutions, cooperation with external suppliers and strategic partners is essential. Increasingly decentralized engineering and manufacturing co‐operations – at an international level – lead to challenging aircraft program and technology management. Therefore, Airbus is intensifying its cooperation with research facilities, equipment, material and structure suppliers based on new Airbus ‐ Supplier cooperation philosophies.     

The Relationship Between Department Rank and College Rank in Engineering Graduate Program Rankings Conducted by U.S. News and World Report

College rankings conducted by various popular magazines have generated both considerable interest and controversy. In this work, we present statistical analyses of thirteen years of U.S. News and World Report graduate program “reputation” rankings for engineering colleges and their constitutive departments, using them to reveal the relationship between department rank and college rank. Two important trends are substantiated in this study. First, we confirm statistically that some colleges with a relatively small number of top‐five ranked departments place higher in the college rankings than some colleges with a significant number of top‐five ranked departments. Second, we observe that college rank is much more closely related to department rank for some disciplines than others, providing additional resolution beyond our earlier work.     

Developing and Assessing Students' Entrepreneurial Skills and Mind‐Set*

A primary goal of The Pennsylvania State University's new Engineering Entrepreneurship (E‐SHIP) Minor is to build students' life skills so they can succeed within innovative, product‐focused, cross‐disciplinary teams. The E‐SHIP Minor is designed for undergraduate students majoring in engineering, business, or IST (Information Sciences and Technology) who aspire to be innovation leaders for new technology‐based products and companies. This paper outlines five E‐SHIP program components to meet this mission: the core courses for the minor, E‐SHIP competitions in which students exhibit their products and ideas, the E‐SHIP Event Series, student organizations to support out‐of‐classroom entrepreneurial interest, and team projects for local industry and Penn State researchers. Penn State's engineering entrepreneurship program is reviewed, summarizing both quantitative and qualitative assessment data to date, previewing future assessment plans, and providing a summary of lessons learned during the development and implementation of this program.     

The Effect of a First‐Year Integrated Engineering Curriculum on Graduation Rates and Student Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study

This paper reports on the long‐term results of a two‐year experiment conducted in the 1994–1995 and 1995–1996 academic years in which a group of “average” engineering students was recruited for a first‐year program that integrated curricula and fostered a learning community. Students who participated in the Connections program graduated at a significantly higher rate than their peers and reflected retrospectively that the program had a strong positive effect on their college careers.     

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.     

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.     

The Influence of Computer‐based Model's Race and Gender on Female Students' Attitudes and Beliefs Towards Engineering

Background This study explored the use of interface agents, anthropomorphic, 3D‐animated computer characters that provide teaching or mentoring within a computer‐based learning environment, to encourage young Black and White women to pursue careers in engineering. Purpose (Hypothesis ) We hypothesized that computer‐based models that matched young women in terms of their race and gender would be the most effective in positively influencing their interest, self‐efficacy, and stereotypes about engineering. Design/ Method Eighty African American undergraduate female students in Experiment 1, and 39 White undergraduate female students in Experiment 2 interacted with a computer‐based agent that provided a narrative designed to encourage them to pursue engineering careers. The study employed a 2 × 2 between subjects factorial design (agent gender: male vs. female and agent race: Black vs. White). Results Across both studies we found that race and gender influenced the effectiveness of the agent for several key outcome measures. Computer‐based agents who matched the participants with respect to race and gender tended to be the most effective in improving the women's responses to engineering‐related fields. Nevertheless, the White male agent was actually significantly more influential than the White female agent for female Black participants. Conclusions Personalizing interface agent characteristics to match the target population can increase the effectiveness of a persuasive message to encourage young women to pursue engineering. Such an approach may contribute to the growth and inclusiveness of fields such as engineering.