Technology in Engineering Education: What Do the Faculty Know and Want?

There currently exists a great interest in integrating technology into the engineering curriculum. The Southeastern University and College Coalition for Engineering Education (SUCCEED) has identified this topic to be one of four “focus areas” for the coalition, and is committed to supporting the effective use of technology in enhancing the learning and teaching environment. We report here the results of a survey of engineering faculty at the coalition universities to identify the training needs and present levels of experience with various technologies. The most surprising finding is that, despite the wide differences in the Coalition's colleges of engineering, the survey results are similar for all campuses. This implies that the results may be widely applicable to other universities. Generally, we found that the faculty's interest in receiving training in a specific technology is highly correlated with a low skill level for that topic, as expected. Of the ten potential workshop topics, those in highest demand include:

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Improving First‐Year Engineering Education*

In September of 1998, the College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMD) piloted an innovative, integrated, first‐year curriculum. It dramatically changed 31 credits across two semesters. The program was modeled after several previous successful undergraduate experiments at other universities such as those in the NSF Foundation Coalition and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The new program at UMD included This paper describes the new curriculum, some of the practical considerations in its design, and the way it has functioned. Significant improvements demonstrated after one year of operation include

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Engineering in Context: An Empirical Study of Freshmen Students' Conceptual Frameworks

Calls for curricular reform in engineering include teaching engineering principles in the broader context of society. In this paper, we empirically investigate how freshmen students perceive the broader societal context of science and technology. We explored the questions:

• ? What is the framework of knowledge and attitudes of engineering freshmen on science, technology and society (STS) issues?
• ? How different are their frameworks from those of students in other majors?
• ? We used a structured, open-ended interview methodology to elicit knowledge about two STS issues: “human energy needs” and “global climate change.” Our sample consists of ninety-two students. Each student was interviewed about one topic. First, we found that there was no difference in the attitude expressed about technology by engineering students and students who are not engineering majors. Both groups think science and technology solve problems more often than they create problems. Second, we found that, although the difference is not large, engineering students consistently mentioned more concepts than students with other majors, and they mentioned these concepts more often. Qualitatively, the specific concepts mentioned by the two groups were almost identical for both topics. The engineering students mentioned more technological concepts and students in other majors mentioned more societal concepts for the human energy needs topic. In summary, the knowledge and perceptions of STS issues of freshmen engineering students and students who are not engineering majors are largely similar. This suggests that common, interdisciplinary STS courses are a good approach for providing general technological literacy for both groups.

     

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.     

A Survey of Engineering Education Outside the United States: Implications for the Ideal Engineering Program

Undergraduate engineering programs in fourteen countries are surveyed to determine the status of engineering education outside the United States and to analyze the implications for the ideal engineering program of the future here in the United States. The items surveyed include the number of years required to obtain an engineering degree, title of the engineering degree, high school preparation for engineering programs, cost of education, completion rates for engineering degrees, entrance requirements, mathematical requirements, and support for laboratory work. The most notable aspects of engineering education outside the United States are:

• ? Stronger high school preparation and requirements in mathematics and science
• ? Longer period of time required for an engineering degree
• ? Advanced level of mathematics required in engineering programs
• ? Low cost of education

It appears that in most countries engineering education is more intense and rigorous than in the United States. In formulating the ideal engineering program of the future we must be sensitive to competing programs in the rest of the world.     

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.     

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.     

Effects of Faculty Interaction and Feedback on Gains in Student Skills*

Previous research has identified several variables that affect students' course satisfaction and gains in learning outcomes. The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with insights about the relationships between faculty‐student interaction and students' perceptions of selected skills and attitudes. This study specifically examined the relationships between engineering faculty teaching practices, classroom climate, and students' perceptions of their gains in communication skills, problem‐solving skills, occupational awareness, and engineering competence in a curriculum emphasizing engineering design activities. Data were gathered from more than 1,500 students taking the first‐year design course offered at 19 campuses of the Penn State system over a period of two years. The results suggest that faculty interacting with and providing constructive feedback to students were significantly and positively related to students' self‐reported gains in several design and professional skills. These relationships remained after controlling for student demographic characteristics and campus location. Recommendations regarding specific teaching practices are provided.     

Strain rate effects in concrete structures: The LCPC experience

This paper presents, first, a synthesis of the research work carried out at LCPC on the dynamic behaviour of concrete structures, and second, the studies which remain to be performed in response to professional needs.

The main advances of this research can be summarized as follows:

• -For strain rates less or equal to 1 s^?1, an increase in material strength is related to viscous phenomena due to the presence of free water in the nanopores of concrete hydrates. This increase is independent of the water/cement ratio of the concrete. For strain rates equal to or greater than 10 s^?1, inertia forces are mainly responsable for increasing strength.
• -Two numerical modellings are being implemented in the finite-element code CESAR-LCPC: the first is a visco-elastoplastic degrading model with viscous hardening; the second is a discrete probabilistic viscous cracking model. These models take into account the physical mechanisms observed and analyzed during the experimental studies.

Further experimental and theoretical studies of the dynamic behaviour of the rebar/concrete interface appear as a priority for the future.     

Introducing Cooperative Learning through a Faculty Instructional Development Program

Cooperative Learning was officially introduced in the College of Engineering at San Jose State University in 1995 with a two‐day workshop. The Faculty Instructional Development Program in the college maintains interest in the subjsect and provides support for instructors who use Cooperative Learning, through workshops and informal discussions (Conversations on Teaching). This paper discusses the effectiveness of the program in introducing, promoting, and implementing Cooperative Learning among the faculty and students in the college of engineering. A variety of performance criteria have been used in this assessment, some faculty‐centered and some student‐centered. The results indicate that although a relatively small percentage of faculty have chosen to adopt Cooperative Learning as a teaching tool in their courses, the impact on student attitudes and learning is significant, making the effort worthwhile.     

Conceptual Difficulties Experienced by Trained Engineers Learning Educational Research Methods

This paper describes conceptual difficulties that may be experienced by engineering faculty as they become engineering education researchers. Observation, survey, and assessment data collected at the 2005 NSF‐funded Rigorous Research in Engineering Education workshop were systematically analyzed to uncover the five difficulties encountered by engineering faculty learning to design rigorous education studies: (1) framing research questions with broad appeal, (2) grounding research in a theoretical framework, (3) fully considering operationalization and measurement of constructs, (4) appreciating qualitative or mixed‐methods approaches, and (5) pursuing interdisciplinary collaboration. The first four can be understood in terms of disciplinary consensus; they represent explicit steps in education research that are implicit in technical engineering research because there is greater consensus of methods and standards. This work better frames the issue of rigor in engineering education research by clarifying the fundamental differences that prevent application of traditional engineering standards of rigor directly to engineering education research.     

New center of diversity

MEMS @ MIT is a newly created center that is intended to bring together a diverse group of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Fig. 1

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Fig. 1. MIT’s Killian Court, designed by architect William Welles Bosworth, showing the Great Dome under which runs the famous ‘Infinite Corridor’.

and to provide an industrial interface to organizations that seek to interact with the center.The MIT MEMS research program has been in existence for more than 20 years and has seen a steady growth in the number of researchers and faculty. Today, there are more than 20 faculty doing MEMS research at MIT, with approximately 120 students and staff who come from seven different academic departments. The annual contract research volume of this group is well in excess of $12 million. In creating this center, the faculty are recognizing the substantial value that arises from the coordination of activities, as well as the benefits of focused interactions with organizations that seek to commercialize the research.     

Integration of Engineering Education and Research: Perspectives from the NSF Civil and Mechanical Systems 1998 CAREER Workshop

In 1998 approximately 100 CAREER awardees, NSF staff, and invited speakers from government, industry, and universities assembled at an NSF sponsored two‐day workshop on the “Integration of Engineering Research and Education.” The workshop provided an opportunity for awardees to discuss effective teaching strategies, methods for evaluating educational activities and initiatives, and the linkages between institutional support and the long‐term success of new faculty members. In this educational brief, we discuss how educational practices, mentoring, industrial collaboration, and the role of the institution can affect the long‐term success in developing integrated research and education activities.     

Faculty Perceptions of Academe's Evaluation System

This study examined faculty views of the academe's reward system. The study sought to investigate faculty perceptions of the current evaluation system and “how it should be.” Five hundred six engineering faculty at seven universities responded to a questionnaire regarding the methods used to evaluate teaching, the amount of emphasis placed on research, service and teaching and the flexibility of the present system. The results indicate that faculty perceive discrepancies between the current system and what they prefer. They tend to favor a more flexible system that rewards not only research but also teaching and service activities. Open-ended comments focused on including broader measures of research activities in the evaluation process and improving the quality of teaching. It is hoped that these findings can serve as a model for many institutions considering changes in the faculty reward system.     

A Low-Cost,Innovative Methodology for Teaching Engineering Through Experimentation

Combining LEGO® Dacta building blocks with LabVIEW^TM software produced a highly successful, low-cost (less than $500 per station excluding computer) alternative method of teaching engineering through hands-on experimentation. Dubbed LEGO® Data Acquisition and Prototyping System (or LDAPS), this combination of tools provides a highly capable workbench for students, yet brings a new level of creativity and fun into teaching engineering at the college level. In this paper we present the methodology and describe one class where it is currently in use. Student, faculty, and staff response to the class was very positive, partly due to the popularity of hands-on engineering and partly because LEGO® blocks allow the students to exercise their creativity and innovation. The strength in the LDAPS methodology lies in the power of the LEGO® bricks and the LabVIEW^TM software. LEGO® motors, sensors, and bricks are almost infinitely configurable, making each experiment unique. LabVIEW^TM is a powerful, visual programming language in which students can perform advanced signal processing with relatively few programming skills. We are currently extending this methodology to teach engineering to liberal arts majors as well as precollege students.     

High‐Performance Hierarchical Black‐Phosphorous‐Based Soft Electrochemical Actuators in Bioinspired Applications

Bioinspired methods allowing artificial actuators to perform controllably are potentially important for various principles and may offer fundamental insight into chemistry and engineering. To date, the main challenges persist regarding the achievement of large deformation in fast response‐time and potential‐engineering applications in which electrode materials and structures limit ion diffusion and accumulation processes. Herein, a novel electrochemical actuator is developed that presents both higher electromechanical performances and biomimetic applications based on hierachically structured covalently bridged black phosphorous/carbon nanotubes. The new actuator demonstrates astonishing actuation properties, including low power consumption/strain (0.04 W cm^?2 %^?1), a large peak‐to‐peak strain (1.67%), a controlled frequency response (0.1–20 Hz), faster strain and stress rates (11.57% s^?1; 28.48 MPa s^?1), high power (29.11 kW m^?3), and energy (8.48 kJ m^?3) densities, and excellent cycling stability (500 000 cycles). More importantly, bioinspired applications such as artificial‐claw, wings‐vibrating, bionic‐flower, and hand actuators have been realized. The key to high performances stems from hierachically structured materials with an ordered lamellar structure, large redox activity, and electrochemical capacitance (321.4 F g^?1) for ions with smooth diffusion and flooding accommodation, which will guide substantial progress of next‐generation electrochemical actuators.     

Novel approach for fabrication and characterisation of porosity-graded material

A novel continuously graded material that is based on a porosity-graded structure was successfully synthesised via a cold pressing-vacuum sintering-dissolution process (SDP) of powder metallurgy technology. Microscopic observations and the Archimedes method were used to confirm the newly synthesised porosity-graded material, the mechanical properties and the modulus. The results show that the density continuously increased from 1.4 to 2.7?g?cm^?3, and there was no obvious interfacial transition layer. In addition, the hardness and elastic modulus were obtained from nanoindentation tests and display a stepwise feature along the gradient direction. Moreover, we found that the fractography changes from typical ductile fracture to ductile and cleavage fracture with an increase in the porosity.

Highlights

• A porosity graded material has been successfully synthesised by powder metallurgy.

• The density continuously transit from 1.4 to 2.7?g?cm^?3, and it has no obvious interfacial transition layer.

• The stepwise feature of density and modulus shows great potential in the shields of spacecrafts.