The Development of Adaptive Expertise in Biomedical Engineering Ethics

This paper is an investigation of the How People Learn (HPL) Legacy Cycle's ability to expand adaptive expertise across the developmental span of high school and college. Participants included high school and college students. Pre‐test data indicated younger students (high school and first‐year college students) were less knowledgeable about the science of stem cells than older students (second‐, third‐, and fourth year college students), and all students were low in adaptiveness. Post‐test data showed that younger students achieved parity with the more advanced students in basic scientific knowledge. The younger students also became highly adaptive by the post‐test, but the older students did not advance beyond their pre‐curriculum levels. We hypothesize that the older students began the intervention with more preconceived notions about stem cells, and thus were less able to think and analyze flexibly within that framework.     

Ethics and the Development of Professional Identities of Engineering Students

How do undergraduate students in engineering conceive of themselves as professionals? How can a course on engineering ethics affect the development of an undergraduate student's professional identity? In this project, students responded to questions about the characteristics and responsibilities of professional engineers. The results indicate that students learn about professionalism primarily from relatives and co‐workers who are engineers, and rarely from technical engineering courses. Even before they study engineering ethics, students put honesty and integrity on par with technical competence as an essential characteristic of engineers. In the course, students benefit from cases of actual incidents and from classroom activities that encourage diverse perspectives on moral problems. By analyzing cases in groups and by hearing different perspectives, students build self‐confidence in moral reasoning. By the end of the course, some students understand professional responsibility not only as liability for blame but in a capacious sense as stewardship for society.     

Assessment of an Engineering Ethics Video: Incident at Morales

A new engineering ethics video, Incident at Morales, was assessed with two different instruments: the standard Defining Issues Test and a short ad hoc survey. According to pre‐tests and post‐tests with the Defining Issues Test, viewers of the video increased the sophistication of their moral reasoning skills. According to the survey, viewers changed their opinions about the most important responsibilities of engineers and about meeting environmental regulations when working overseas. From these results, it appears that the video is an effective approach to teach engineering ethics.     

Ethical Validation: Reframing Research Ethics in Engineering Education Research To Improve Research Quality

Background

Prior to undertaking studies involving human subjects, engineering education researchers are required to consider the ethical implications of their work by obtaining approval from an ethical review board.

Purpose/Hypothesis

Recent research suggests that some unintended consequences of this procedure are that it externalizes and inflexibly formalizes ethical considerations, and limits researchers’ readiness to systematically identify and consider ethical questions that arise while conducting research.

Design/Method

We used a collaborative inquiry approach to examine such ethically important moments that emerged in two of our interpretive research projects. We drew on Walther, Sochacka, and Kellam's framework for interpretive research quality as the departure point for our shared sense‐making process.

Results

Our explorations revealed two insights that connect research ethics to research quality in novel ways. First, we found that the quality of our work improved when we critically explored the intersections between our motivations and intentions for investigating particular research topics and broader cultural agendas and assumptions. Second, we found that when we actively sought to do justice to the participants, co‐investigators, and readers of our research, we were afforded with opportunities to increase the quality of our work, in sometimes quite unexpected ways.

Conclusions

We synthesized the findings from our collaborative inquiry into a process‐oriented model for ethical validation, which we propose as a sixth construct to our prior five‐construct framework for interpretive research quality.     

Effectiveness of an Internet‐Based Graduate Engineering Management Course

This research provides engineering educators analytical evidence as to the effectiveness of Internet‐based course instruction. The research examined the University of Missouri‐Rolla's Internet‐based Advanced Production and Operations Management course, with a focus on determining the effectiveness of the Internet‐based education tools used. Over 100 students in five Internet‐based classes and one traditional, in‐class control group were given three sets of surveys, learning style assessments, a course pre‐test, and a course final examination. Multiple conclusions were drawn from this study based on analyses of the data collected. First, the Internet‐based students performed equally as well as the control group as measured by the difference between pre‐test and post‐test scores. Second, the Internet‐based students were found to have had exaggerated time requirement expectations for taking a course in the Internet environment. Third, the students rated the effectiveness and satisfaction positively for the Internet classroom format. Initially, the Internet‐based students were skeptical of electronic lectures but their experiences were positive.     

The Four‐Domain Development Diagram: A Guide for Holistic Design of Effective Learning Experiences for the Twenty‐first Century Engineer

The twenty‐first century challenges engineering educators to design learning experiences to strategically and holistically target students' development, including cognitive, psychomotor, social and affective domains. We propose a guide for the design process. The Four‐Domain Development Diagram (4DDD) is a synthesis of learning theory and empirical data. This guide maps the relationships among the major factors that influence learning and presents them in the form of a causal loop diagram, a tool used by systems dynamicists to show how changes in important factors affect other factors within the system. In this paper, we present the theoretical and empirical basis of the 4DDD. We also describe how the 4DDD can be used as a design guide for instructional changes that promote more effective learning experiences for the broader cognitive, social, affective, and psychomotor development required of today's engineering graduate.     

A Qualitative Study of a Course Trilogy in Biosystems Engineering Design

Engineering design encompasses professional competencies that complement a solid understanding of engineering science fundamentals, theories, and methods. Engineering schools are increasing their efforts to integrate design into the curriculum, and this paper critically analyses one initiative at a research‐intensive Canadian university, where a three‐course sequence (Design Trilogy) forms the design education backbone in the undergraduate Biosystems Engineering program. Data collection consisted of focus groups with students and one‐on‐one interviews with instructors and industry cooperators. The findings yielded authentic understandings of teaching and learning engineering design, many areas of common perceptions between participant groups, congruence with design concepts in the literature, and areas where students' perceptions and experiences did not correspond to instructors' intentions. Teaching implications include the importance of instructors' transparency and integration in teaching and the need to explicitly prepare students for a different kind of learning experience in the Design Trilogy.     

An Investigation of the Presence and Development of Social Capital in an Electrical Engineering Laboratory

Social capital consists of resources embedded in social networks that are purposefully mobilized through personal interactions. This project examined the factors that affected the development of social capital in an electrical and computer engineering laboratory. Data were collected through participant observation over the course of a term, interviews with students, and a survey. Interview and observational data were analyzed to determine themes or patterns in behaviors and actions that indicated the presence of social capital and affected the development of social capital in this setting. The open‐ended nature of the laboratory assignments and the complexity of a learning tool called TekBot? required students to access information. The lack of relevant information from the teaching assistants, internet, and laboratory assignment handouts required students to mobilize information from each other to succeed. Multiple methods of data collection validate the result that specific factors encouraged the development of social capital in this laboratory.     

生态伦理视角下的包装设计策略研究

如今人与自然的矛盾愈发凸显,生态系统失衡、资源危机等挑战接踵而至,可持续发展观应运而生,成为时代命题,也是时代目标。包装设计自然应当顺应时代需求,站在生态伦理视角重新思考其发展路径。针对包装中“过度包装”、“用材浪费”等有悖可持续发展要求的现象,从生态伦理视角出发,探究生态环保包装设计策略。引入生态伦理学理论,总结包装设计潜藏的生态伦理挑战,说明绿色生态包装设计的必要性与可行性,结合案例分析并阐述其设计策略,归纳出绿色生态包装设计的基本原则与设计方法。从生态伦理视角审视包装设计,有助于设计者建立生态环保意识与责任意识,了解包装设计的时代需求;同时跳脱出传统思维模式,对包装设计进行优化与创新。     

A Comparison of Group Processes,Performance, and Satisfaction in Face‐to‐Face Versus Computer‐Mediated Engineering Student Design Teams

Industry often requires engineers to work in teams. Therefore, many university engineering courses require students to work in groups to complete a design project. Due to the increasingly global nature of engineering, opportunities for students to navigate the issues of distance, time, culture, language, and multiple perspectives associated with virtual teams are becoming particularly desirable. To understand students' experience with virtual teams in a graduate course on principles of lean manufacturing, a group of researchers at a midwestern university compared the project performance, selected group processes, and satisfaction of students randomly assigned to face‐to‐face and computer‐mediated communication design teams. Students in both the face‐to‐face and computer‐mediated communication design teams performed equally well on the final project, and reported similar patterns in group processes with a few exceptions. Students in face‐to‐face design teams were more satisfied with the group experience than those in the computer‐mediated communication design teams; however, all reported an overall positive experience.     

Using Writing Assignments to Improve Self‐Assessment and Communication Skills in an Engineering Statics Course

This study explores the use of writing as a tool for metacognition in the engineering classroom. We used the “explain‐a‐problem” type of assignment in the Engineering Statics course for four terms. The objectives associated with the assignments were grouped under student self‐assessment, student communication, and administration. Performance on each of four grading criteria for each assignment was tracked throughout the terms. The data indicate that explain‐a‐problem does help students achieve the self‐assessment and communication objectives, although the impact on overall course performance was not as significant as hoped. The assignment evolved to the point that the administrative objectives were also met.     

静电防护工程的研究与进展

静电放电已成为信息化时代的公害之一,它不仅是危险场所的点火源、引爆源,而且是信息化设备的电磁干扰源。章在论述静电放电危害、静电放电的特点、作用机理和形成静电危害基本条件的同时,报道了我国在静电检测与静电防护工程研究方面的成果与进展,提出了“信号自屏蔽－电荷耦合”测试原理、真实静电感度测试方法、织物电位测试方法和人体静电动态电位测试技术,建立了电火工品静电发火数理模型、“静电危险场所”等级划分标准和分类防护措施、预测静电危害的逻辑关系图和静电防护的一般原则与对策。章介绍了部分实验数据和该领域当前研究的热点问题及发展趋势。     

并行工程在企业产品开发过程中的应用

沈阳机床股份有限公司与美国ＥＤＳ公司共同合作对产品开发过程进行了管理咨询，经评诂、展望、设计、试点和铺开等阶段弛产品开发过程。根据在企业试点、铺开过程中取得的经验，并结合我国机械制造业的产品开发现状，对产品开发过程中应用并行工程主要方法和将要出现的问题及解决办法进行描述和分析。