Quality Assurance in Engineering Education: A Comparison of EC‐2000 and ISO‐9000

This paper explores similarities and differences between the new ABET accreditation criteria (EC‐2000) and a well‐established quality assurance standard in industry (ISO‐9000 series). The premise of the paper is that an appreciation of EC‐2000 as a tool for quality assurance will lead to greater faculty interest and participation in accreditation‐related activities. Some suggestions are also provided for effective implementation of EC‐2000.     

Ethics Teaching in Undergraduate Engineering Education

This paper asks how undergraduate engineering education supports students' ethical development, broadly defined, in a diverse sample of U.S. engineering schools and offers an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of those efforts. The paper draws on observational case studies that were based on site visits to undergraduate mechanical and electrical engineering programs at seven universities or engineering schools in the U.S. It begins by proposing professional codes of ethics in engineering as a useful framework for thinking about the goals for student learning in the area of ethics and professional responsibility. The paper then discusses how and to what degree these goals are being addressed in the case study schools, with additional context provided through reference to published research in the field. The paper concludes with recommendations for strengthening the teaching of engineering ethics and professional responsibility.     

Integrating Ethics & Engineering: A Graduate Option in Systems Engineering,Ethics, and Technology Studies

This paper describes an engineering graduate option in Systems Engineering designed to overcome some of the effects of specialization and compartmentalization by building a link between technical and ethical training. Students in this option produce case studies that emphasize ethical issues in the design process. The goal of the program is to turn out ethical professionals who are able to reflect on the moral implications of technology. The proposed approach uses realistic or real‐hypothetical hybrid case studies as a type of vicarious mentoring, and, when supplemented with readings in ethical theory and codes, may serve as a starting point for a deeper understanding of behavioral dilemmas. The developers of this approach are a multi‐disciplinary team from the Engineering School and the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia. The paper describes how the graduate option is structured and provides data on student outcomes.     

Understanding the Role of Self‐Efficacy in Engineering Education

The engineering professor's role is dualistic in the sense that not only must s/he create an academic environment conducive to the acquisition of course content but must also prepare students to become practicing professionals. This dualism requires that the professor both motivate good study habits as well as build within students the confidence that they have the requisite capability to perform actual engineering. Self‐efficacy, simply defined as one's self‐judgment concerning capability, has been shown to be an important mediating factor in cognitive motivation. This paper describes the motivating role of the professor, theories of motivation, the role of self‐efficacy in motivation, and guiding principles that can be used to enhance self‐efficacy in engineering students. These principles can serve as guidelines in designing instructional delivery strategies that motivate engineering students to engage in behaviors conducive to becoming value‐added practitioners.     

Engineering Cooperative Education: A Statistical Analysis of Employer Benefits

This article describes the methods and results of research conducted using a survey of cooperative education directors to statistically test conclusions drawn from previously conducted studies. The perspective of employers of engineering cooperative education students is examined. Benefits to employers and problems experienced by employers that support engineering cooperative education are identified and analyzed for their statistical significance. The problems experienced by employers is a new perspective that has not previously been discussed by other cooperative education studies.     

Professional Practice: A Topic for Engineering Research and Instruction

Professional practice is considered as a much broader topic for inclusion in engineering curricula than traditionally associated with engineering design. Practicing engineers require a working knowledge of several non-engineering disciplines and must interact with people of a variety of backgrounds within a variety of organizational contexts. Engineers must develop the skills of problem solving and decision making for circumstances much broader than generally used in the engineering class room. Professional engineering practice in this broad context can be the subject of legitimate research and instruction. Case research methods are applicable to the exploratory study of engineering practice and the development of a knowledge base important to designing engineering curricula. Case instruction provides one method of dealing with topics at the boundaries of the engineering disciplines and in developing decision making skills that are fundamental to engineering practice. It is concluded that the engineering education community should explore new frameworks for research, instruction and the associated scholarship that address professional practice issues.     

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.