The Intellectual Development of Science and Engineering Students. Part 2: Teaching to Promote Growth

As college students experience the challenges of their classes and extracurricular activities, they undergo a developmental progression in which they gradually relinquish their belief in the certainty of knowledge and the omniscience of authorities and take increasing responsibility for their own learning. At the highest developmental level normally seen in college students (which few attain before graduation), they display attitudes and thinking patterns resembling those of expert scientists and engineers, including habitually and skillfully gathering and analyzing evidence to support their judgments. This paper proposes an instructional model designed to provide a suitable balance of challenge and support to advance students to that level. The model components are (1) variety and choice of learning tasks; (2) explicit communication and explanation of expectations; (3) modeling, practice, and constructive feedback on high‐level tasks; (4) a student‐centered instructional environment; and (5) respect for students at all levels of development.     

Knowledge policies and universities in developing countries: Inclusive development and the “developmental university”

This paper links development approaches with innovation systems theory and social inclusion concerns. In exploring the relationship between development and knowledge, we propose a sequential analytical model that considers values, facts and policies as a coherent whole. This allows us to go deeper into the question of how policies for promoting the production and use of knowledge able to foster different facets of social inclusion can be formulated and implemented. We propose to call such policies “democratization of knowledge policies”; they are one of the means to achieve inclusive development. We provide examples of how these policies work in practice, and explore how the university, a vital part of any national innovation system, can play a role in the emergence and consolidation of the democratization of knowledge. Universities that embrace that role may be considered developmental universities. They fulfill it in great part by providing effective incentives to include in their research agendas the kind of problems whose solutions can lead to an enhancement of social inclusion. However, developmental universities cannot function in isolation. It is argued that their effectiveness depends on the rise of a sustained and strong demand that is able to put knowledge at the direct service of shared social goals, among which diminishing inequality is particularly important. The paper presents a case in Uruguay that illustrates an ongoing transformation towards a developmental university.     

Safety reliability evaluation when vehicles turn right from urban major roads onto minor ones based on driver's visual perception

Turning right has a significant impact on urban road traffic safety. Driving into the curve inappropriately or with improper turning speed often leads to a series of potential accidents and hidden dangers. For a long time, the design speed at intersections has been used to determine the physical radius of curbs and channelization, and drivers are expected to drive in accordance with the design speed. However, a large number of real vehicle tests show that for the road without an exclusive right-turn lane, there is not a good correlation between the physical radius of curbs and the turning right speeds. In this paper, shape parameters of the driver's visual lane model are put forward and they have relatively high correlations with right-turn speeds. Hence, an evaluation method about safety reliability of turning right from urban major roads onto minor ones based on driver's visual perception is proposed. For existing roads, the evaluation object could be real driving videos; for those under construction roads, the evaluation object could be visual scenes obtained from a driving simulation device. Findings in this research will make a contribution to the optimization of right-turn design at intersections and lead to the development of auxiliary driving technology.     

Design and other types of fixation

Design educators often comment on the difficulties that result from a premature commitment by students to a solution to a design problem. Similarly practitioners can find it difficult to move away from an idea they have developed or precedents in a field. In the psychology of problem solving this effect is called functional fixedness or fixation. It is not surprising that these effects should occur in design problem solving. However, while these types of issues have been discussed in the context of design, there has been little systematic evidence available about whether or not and under what conditions design fixation does occur. The paper reviews the results of a series of recent experiments which begin to address these issues. The results of the experiments are examined in terms of what insights they provide into the design process, what implications they have for design education and how they relate to the larger and more general area of human problem solving.     

A Paradigm for Assessing Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge in Engineering Students

Conceptual and procedural knowledge are two mutually‐supportive factors associated with the development of engineering skill. The present study extends previous work on undergraduate learning in engineering to provide further validation for an assessment paradigm capable of quantifying engineering students' conceptual and problem‐solving knowledge. Eight students who were enrolled in an introductory thermodynamics course and four who were enrolled in the course sequel provided verbal protocol data as they used instructional software. They were compared to existing data from a cohort of eleven science and engineering majors who had not taken thermodynamics. The results replicated earlier findings showing more cognitive activity on computer screens requiring overt user interaction compared to text‐based screens. The data also indicated that higher‐ versus lower‐performing students, based on course grades, engaged in more higher‐order cognitive processing. There was no evidence that students gained deeper cognitive processing as they advanced through the engineering curriculum.     

Licensing early-versus late-stage technologies: The licensee perspective

Inward licensing of technology is an important route for firms to secure technological advances. With varying uncertainties and licensing opportunities along the innovation process, firms face challenges in deciding whether to license technologies during their early stages of development when they present opportunities as well as high uncertainty, or to wait until they have developed further towards commercialization, when they have lower technological uncertainty and are left with few opportunities. Building on studies of interfirm networks, we investigate how a firm's network structure and reputation affect such decisions. Our empirical analysis of licensing agreements in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries shows that firms tend to initiate licensing agreements during the early stage of technology development when their network structure is rich in structural holes. This tendency is higher when they are of good reputation. This research contributes to our understanding of how licensing agreements occur along the innovation process.     

First Steps in Understanding Engineering Students' Growth of Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge in an Interactive Learning Context

The development of procedural knowledge in students, i.e., the ability to effectively solve domain problems, is the goal of many instructional initiatives in engineering education. The present study examined learning in a rich learning environment in which students read text, listened to narrations, interacted with simulations, and solved problems using instructional software for thermodynamics. Twenty‐three engineering and science majors who had not taken a thermodynamics course provided verbal protocol data as they used this software. The data were analyzed for cognitive processes. There were three major findings: (1) students expressed significantly more cognitive activity on computer screens requiring interaction compared to text‐based screens; (2) there were striking individual differences in the extent to which students employed the materials; and (3) verbalizations revealed that students applied predominantly lower‐level cognitive processes when engaging these materials, and they failed to connect the conceptual and procedural knowledge in ways that would lead to deeper understanding. The results provide a baseline for additional studies of more advanced students in order to gain insight into how students develop skill in engineering.     

Numerical manifold space of Hermitian form and application to Kirchhoff's thin plate problems

For second‐order problems, where the behavior is described by second‐order partial differential equations, the numerical manifold method (NMM) has gained great success. Because of difficulties in the construction of the H ²‐regular Lagrangian partition of unity subordinate to the finite element cover; however, few applications of the NMM have been found to fourth‐order problems such as Kirchhoff's thin plate problems. Parallel to the finite element methods, this study constructs the numerical manifold space of the Hermitian form to solve fourth‐order problems. From the minimum potential principle, meanwhile, the mixed primal formulation and the penalized formulation fitted to the NMM for Kirchhoff's thin plate problems are derived. The typical examples indicate that by the proposed procedures, even those earliest developed elements in the finite element history, such as Zienkiewicz's plate element, regain their vigor. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Issues in the creation of organizations: initiation, innovation, and institutionalization.

Kimberly presents a case study of the birth and early development of an innovative medical school. When the school opened in 1971, the existing 86 medical schools all offered similar programs: two years of basic science training in lecture halls and laboratories, followed by two years of direct contact with patients in clinical settings. In the new school, students were taught didactically only during the first year. During the second year, each student was assigned to a community physician who acted as an advisor and who discussed with students those patients afflicted with the diseases the student was currently studying. Available evidence indicated that the school's innovative curriculum was favorably received by the students and that they performed as well as their peers on standardized year-end exams. The author found the case of this medical school to be of particular interest from an organizational viewpoint in that: (1) the early development of the school was shaped by the first dean's entrepreneurial activity, ambitions, visions, strengths, and weaknesses; (2) the uncertainty resulting from the school's novelty forced individuals to assume new roles and face unclear performance criteria; and (3) the transition of an innovative school to an institutionalized one was problematic because it modified the decision-making process. The author suggests that those things which lead to an organization's success during its early years are not the same as those that lead to longer-run success. He says that a new organization creates new norms, values, and procedures whereas the elements of an existing organization interact within an established culture. He concludes that organizational birth is a phenomenon about which relatively little is known, but which may be an important constraint on later development. A comparative analysis of the birth, life, and death of organization is advocated.     

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.

     

基于数理评价方法的挖掘机色彩意象设计

目的针对国内挖掘机色彩设计的盲目性和无规律性,提出了基于数理评价的矿用挖掘机色彩意象设计方法。方法首先分析了挖掘机色彩意象的定位以及挖掘机色彩的发展趋势,然后利用数理分析方法建立邓氏关联度的数学模型,对数据进行编程计算,最后通过数值分析的结果选取最优方案。结论实验表明,该方法可将抽象的色彩意象转化为精准的数值,方便设计师作出科学判断,也使挖掘机厂家在挑选方案时清晰明了。     

Developing a Systems Approach to Engineering Problem Solving and Design of Experiments in a Racecar‐Based Laboratory Course

A capstone mechanical engineering laboratory course is being implemented at the University of South Carolina that develops the student's abilities to analyze complex mechanical and thermal systems, to design experiments, and to develop their professional skills. The course is based upon an integrated sequence of laboratory experiments on a Legends‐class racecar. This vehicle is chosen as the system of study because it provides opportunities for the students to apply the spectrum of their mechanical engineering knowledge. It's also exciting to the students. As the students progress through the series of experiments, they are increasingly involved in experimental design (selecting sensors, sensor locations and experimental operating conditions). The course culminates in a truly open‐ended design of an experiment of their choosing. This course development project is supported by the National Science Foundation's Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement Program, the NSF's Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program, and the University of South Carolina. This paper describes the work in progress.     

A Comparative Evaluation of World Wide Web-Based and Classroom Teaching

This paper investigates the hypothesis that the World Wide Web (WWW) presents a new opportunity to interactively present and disseminate curricula. The WWW appears to have the flexibility needed to let students order the material and choose the presentation format that best suit their preference. The objective of this paper is twofold: to develop a general web-lecture structure that provides such flexibility, and to compare its efficacy with a classroom style lecture. The average grade performance of the students receiving web instruction was higher than for those receiving traditional classroom instruction. An achieved significance level of 0.063 provides reasonably strong evidence to reject the hypothesis that the two groups performed equally. Analysis of web-lecture use patterns revealed that the web-group students spent roughly the same amount of time on-line as the classroom group spent in lecture. However, the web group typically covered the materials in three short 30 minute sessions as opposed to one 90 minute lecture. Different students in the web group showed different preferences for either video or text-with-image presentation of materials. In a focus group, web students indicated that they valued the ability to pace their learning and review materials as needed. The positive results of this preliminary study raise the question of how teaching could change to exploit information technology and provide more effective and economical engineering education. Primary learning might take place individually through a medium such as the WWW, thus liberating classroom time for experiential activities.     

How spiders hunt heavy prey: the tangle web as a pulley and spider's lifting mechanics observed and quantified in the laboratory

The spiders of Theridiidae''s family display a peculiar behaviour when they hunt extremely large prey. They lift the quarry, making it unable to escape, by attaching pre-tensioned silk threads to it. In this work, we analysed for the first time in the laboratory the lifting hunting mechanism and, in order to quantify the phenomenon, we applied the lifting mechanics theory. The comparison between the experiments and the theory suggests that, during the process, spiders do not stretch the silk too much by keeping it in the linear elastic regime. We thus report here further evidence for the strong role of silk in spiders'' evolution, especially how spiders can stretch and use it as an external tool to overcome their muscles’ limits and capture prey with large mass, e.g. 50 times the spider''s mass.     

Estimation of alcohol for nonrespondents in roadside breath surveys

This paper addresses the problem of missing data due to refusals in roadside breath surveys. To correct for bias thus introduced, estimation procedures have been developed that incorporate judgments made by interviewers concerning each driver's degree of intoxication. Such judgments are made on initial contact, ideally before there is any knowledge of whether the detainee will be a donor or a refuser. Subsequent knowledge of results from donors is then used to develop weights for application to refusers. Development of these weights depends on choice of assumptions about contingent probability relationships among three variables: Blood alcohol concentration, judged degree of intoxication, and the decision to respond or to refuse. One of the possible alternative assumptions is applied to the data from the U.S. 1973 National Roadside Survey, and the results are contrasted with those of the survey's author, who chose a different assumption.     

“Engineering” Student Success: How Does it Happen and Who is Responsible?

Despite increasing interest in strategies for enhancing academic performance, several factors limit the ability of engineering students and professors to collaborate in improving the way students approach learning. Evidence indicates that it is worthwhile overcoming these limitations in order to facilitate change. There is a great deal of valuable information available about study skills training as well as evidence that this training results in better academic performance. Moreover, research on motivation suggests that professors can play a key role in helping students make improvements in their study behavior. This paper provides recommendations for helping students recognize the benefits of changing the way they study and for motivating them to participate in study skills training.     

On the relevance of non-standard theories of uncertainty in modeling and pooling expert opinions

Wu, Apostolakis and Okrent¹ have recently analyzed the current status of emerging alternatives to classical probabilistic methods in the modeling and pooling of expert opinions in safety analysis of engineering systems. They have pointed out some difficulties faced by these theories, due to their relative lack of maturity. This paper pursues the investigation so as to clarify some aspects of belief functions and possibility theories, and also to point out the need for further research. A comparison between the mathematical models of expert opinion pooling offered by Bayesian probabilities, belief functions and possibility theory is carried out. It is proved that the Bayesian approach that these authors advocate suffers from the same numerical stability problems as possibilistic and evidential rules of combination in the presence of strongly conflicting information due to their strong structural similarities. The problem of dependence between experts is briefly addressed. The other main point of this paper is that a single combination rule cannot reasonably address all situations where expert opinions must be pooled. It is suggested that the framework of possibility and evidence theories offers a more flexible framework for representing and combining subjective uncertain judgments than the one of subjective probability alone although some progress is required to reach the maturity of the Bayesian theory.     

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.     

英语写作教学中的语言输入

文章对英语专业写作教学中的语言输入问题进行了探讨。通过问卷调查所获得的数据进行统计分析，试图了解目前英语写作教学中语言输入的现状，洞察学生对各种输入形式的期望和反馈。基于问卷统计分析的结果，提出了一些可行的输入形式。     

国内外儿童产品设计研究进展: 现状、热点与趋势

国内外儿童产品设计研究经历了长期的体系建设和理论积累，为了更好地促进儿童产品设计的发展，现对其进行较为全面的整理与总结。利用陈超美博士开发的可视化文献分析软件CiteSpace，以CNKI数据库及Web of Science核心合集数据库作为国内外数据检索来源，分析国内外儿童产品设计总体概况、热点主题和研究趋势。国内外儿童产品设计研究文献数量均呈上升趋势，逐步从单一产品扩展到复杂系统。国内研究热点主要关注用户体验、情感化、儿童心理学、交互设计及感性工学，国外则重点关注包容性、无障碍、参与式、游戏化和服务设计。国内研究前沿趋势更多地涉及情感化与医疗健康安全，国外则集中在游戏化、医疗健康、发展障碍和读写能力。未来儿童产品设计在研究内容上应更趋于多元化，并加强跨学科合作，研究对象上更多地聚焦特殊儿童群体，研究方法上需将量化和质性研究结合起来，以完善儿童产品设计的理论知识体系。