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.     

Manufacturing: A Strategic Opportunity for Engineering Education

This paper examines the importance of the manufacturing enterprise and the need for manufacturing education. The objective is to present a case for the expansion of manufacturing‐related education as a strategic opportunity for engineering education. A brief history of engineering education is presented, as well as an exploration of the current ABET criteria for various engineering disciplines. Approaches for achieving manufacturing‐related education are presented noting that Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering are often most closely associated with manufacturing. Surveys of industry reveal the need for manufacturing education and identify preferred approaches. If manufacturing is to be included as part of a mechanical engineering program, there are a number of possible approaches. Of all the new technologies that will impact engineering education, none is larger than the Internet. The number of manufacturing educational programs in the United States is growing substantially. New manufacturing programs are encouraged along with review of educational content in traditional engineering disciplines‐especially the related discipline of mechanical engineering. Analysis leads us to believe that manufacturing represents a strategic direction and opportunity for engineering education to pursue.     

Pedagogies of Engagement: Classroom‐Based Practices

Educators, researchers, and policy makers have advocated student involvement for some time as an essential aspect of meaningful learning. In the past twenty years engineering educators have implemented several means of better engaging their undergraduate students, including active and cooperative learning, learning communities, service learning, cooperative education, inquiry and problem‐based learning, and team projects. This paper focuses on classroom‐based pedagogies of engagement, particularly cooperative and problem‐based learning. It includes a brief history, theoretical roots, research support, summary of practices, and suggestions for redesigning engineering classes and programs to include more student engagement. The paper also lays out the research ahead for advancing pedagogies aimed at more fully enhancing students' involvement in their learning.     

Striving for Balance: A Hundred Years of the American Society for Engineering Education

This paper provides an overview of the history of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) from its founding in 1893 to the present. The authors see two major continuities in the organization's hundred year history: the search for methods of improving classroom instruction and the pursuit of national recognition as the spokesman for engineering education. An organization concerned with classroom teaching draws its strength from the ranks of teaching faculty; an organization seeking national visibility must draw its leaders from administrators, especially deans. ASEE's history is viewed as an continuing effort to balance these two broad purposes within a single organization.     

Of green monkeys and failed affordances: A case study of a mechanical engineering design course

This article reports on an ethnographic study of a mechanical engineering design class. The findings are based on participant observation of one student design team of three students as they designed, tested and built an engineered solution to a problem over a period of ten weeks. The paper describes the curricular efforts to provide social and material affordances both for learning and doing design, and the failure of students on the observed team to take up those affordances. It offers explanations for failure within a framework of conflicting classroom views and pedagogic issues. It discusses the implications of the observed student behavior for design education in general, and mechanical engineering design, in particular.     

e‐Lab: An Electronic Classroom for Real‐Time Distance Delivery of a Laboratory Course

The Internet continues to demonstrate its versatility as a learning tool in the realm of higher education. As courses in everything from art history to engineering are offered on the Internet, we are experiencing a transition from traditional textbook and lecture teaching method to the virtual classroom. Yet, effective distance delivery of engineering laboratory courses remains a challenging problem. This paper introduces a new approach to deliver a senior‐level laboratory course at a distance in real‐time. The enabling technology is the combination of an interactive TV system and the Internet. The paper presents details of the laboratory setup and five sessions. Data collected for the past two years are analyzed statistically to assess student learning and achievement of learning objectives of each laboratory. Results of the analysis as well as surveys indicate that the e‐Lab created an effective learning environment.     

The Impact of Cultural Norms on Women*

Women student engineers' and professors' classroom experiences, especially their everyday interactions with men student engineers and professors, can be negative. This ethnographic study of the discourse used by professors and students during a sophomore design class demonstrates that some women's difficulties are the result of cultural features of engineering that are only rarely open to redefinition by women. In spite of many engineering educators' sincere commitments to improving women's experiences in engineering education, these cultural features diminish the successes of reform-minded engineering education. I detail how discourse in whole-class and teamwork settings indicated the cultural norms of engineering talk and how this discourse reinforced traditional practices that were only rarely open to revision. Also, I comment on the use of ordeals in this classroom. My findings suggest that engineering education must change before inclusion of women is realized. In particular, I suggest the changes needed are complex and include 1) more communication about the ways that cultural norms impact women and other marginalized groups, 2) forums where participants can speak openly without fear of retaliation, and 3) attention to changing those policies and practices that send narrow messages about who engineers are and what engineering might be.     

Inter and multidisciplinarity in engineering education

After reviewing the concepts of trans, inter and multidisciplinarity, the paper discusses the relevance of inter and multidisciplinary approaches to engineering education at undergraduate level, specially taking into account the continuing tendency for specialization of engineering degree curricula. This tendency is substantiated by a detailed analysis of the evolution in the last 30 years of the Mechanical Engineering degree syllabus at Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP). A 2-year multidisciplinary project developed at FEUP is presented as a case study. This project involved students and faculty from five Departments of FEUP, as well as from other institutions, in the joint exploration of practical engineering problems.     

Development of an Air Quality Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Interdisciplinary curricula, such as environmental engineering, are faced with the challenge of developing unified sets of courses for students from a variety of academic backgrounds. In addition to providing a rigorous technical education, engineering education should foster development of the professional skills that students need in the future, such as laboratory, computer, communication and teamwork abilities, and independence and creativity. This program improvement project integrated traditional lectures with carefully designed assignments, experiments, and demonstrations to teach principles of air quality in environmental engineering. Computer simulations helped students develop a better intuitive understanding of fundamental air quality phenomena. Field trips served to illustrate applications of classroom concepts, and an instructional laboratory was developed to teach students the essential techniques of air quality monitoring. The classroom and laboratory were also used as a supportive environment in which students learned professional skills applicable to graduate studies or professional employment. Students wrote “journal articles,” complete with peer review and revisions as part of a term project. Laboratory projects were used to introduce students to the techniques of writing proposals, and a professional style “class conference” gave students practice in making scientific presentations.     

Classroom Captioning for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students

The objective of this paper is to introduce the engineering community to classroom captioning for deaf and hard of hearing students. This technology enables an in-class stenographer to transcribe instantaneously classroom discussions into full-length text using an electronic stenowriter, a laptop computer, and real-time captioning software. Four years of personal experience has demonstrated that classroom captioning enables students to grasp effectively both verbal and visual modes of a lecture near-simultaneously. This capability can position deaf and hard of hearing students on a near-equal playing field with hearing students in the classroom. The ongoing success of classroom captioning can be demonstrated by the phenomenal growth of this program at Purdue University, which started in Fall of 1992 with a single deaf engineering graduate student and stenographer for one course. Over the past three years, Purdue has provided services for an average of 10–20 deaf and hard of hearing students per year utilizing two stenographers in 45–55 courses each year.     

Tracking Classroom Teaching and Learning: An SPC Application

The importance of measuring performance in higher education has long been understood by all stakeholders, including teachers, students, administrators, and researchers. However, the majority of indicators used for this purpose focus on educational outputs (e.g., graduation rates) and outcomes (e.g., final examination scores), rather than processes that create such outcomes and outputs. The problem with this focus is that the output and outcome data usually become available far too late in order to effectively respond to a problem. Because the process of knowledge transfer is an important function of educational organizations, tracking this process while it actually happens represents an on-going, rather than a post-mortem measurement strategy, and can help in the detection of existing and impeding troubles in the teaching and learning processes. This paper illustrates a model for measuring classroom performance which makes use of Statistical Process Control (SPC) in combination with classroom assessment techniques (CATs). The purpose of the model is to measure both the teacher's contribution to increasing student knowledge and the student learning outcomes. Examples of SPC charts that were used to monitor teaching and learning performance in an undergraduate engineering management course are given, together with an analysis of the obtained results. Recommendations and guidelines for an effective and efficient application of the model are provided, including an implementation algorithm, suggestions for CAT design, and a discussion of some important statistical issues. The paper is concluded with several considerations for future research.     

Usage scenarios for design space exploration with a dynamic multiobjective optimization formulation

In a recent publication, we presented a new strategy for engineering design and optimization, which we termed formulation space exploration. The formulation space for an optimization problem is the union of all variable and design objective spaces identified by the designer as being valid and pragmatic problem formulations. By extending a computational search into this new space, the solution to any optimization problem is no longer predefined by the optimization problem formulation. This method allows a designer to both diverge the design space during conceptual design and converge onto a solution as more information about the design objectives and constraints becomes available. Additionally, we introduced a new way to formulate multiobjective optimization problems, allowing the designer to change and update design objectives, constraints, and variables in a simple, fluid manner that promotes exploration. In this paper, we investigate three usage scenarios where formulation space exploration can be utilized in the early stages of design when it is possible to make the greatest contributions to development projects. Specifically, we look at formulation space boundary exploration, Pareto frontier generation for multiple concepts in the formulation space, and a new way to perform targeted boundary expansion. The benefits of these methods are illustrated with the conceptual design of an impact driver.     

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.     

Achieving the Right Balance: Properly Integrating Mathematical Software Packages into Engineering Education

The art of engineering involves developing models of the world and acquiring information with which to design solutions to meet the needs of society. Historically, engineering educators have spent significant time applying mathematical techniques to analyze these models. Decades ago, the slide rule and electronic calculator transformed the way basic mathematical operations were performed. Today, the digital computer is similarly impacting the way more complex analytical techniques are applied. Specifically, mathematical software packages are introducing revolutionary changes to engineering problem solving and design. This paper considers the appropriate role of mathematical assistant software packages in engineering education. Recommendations to properly focus teaching effort within the classroom are provided.     

Applying educational research to design education

This paper is a brief review of recent trends in educational research, with some comments on applying research methods in the context of design education. The recent trends in educational research are identified as being linked with classroom practice, and include case studies, action research and phenomeno-logical methods. Some examples are given of these types of educational research. The paper concludes with suggestions for classroom-based research that teachers themselves can do.     

Quantitative,Qualitative, and Mixed Research Methods in Engineering Education

The purpose of this research review is to open dialog about quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research methods in engineering education research. Our position is that no particular method is privileged over any other. Rather, the choice must be driven by the research questions. For each approach we offer a definition, aims, appropriate research questions, evaluation criteria, and examples from the Journal of Engineering Education. Then, we present empirical results from a prestigious international conference on engineering education research. Participants expressed disappointment in the low representation of qualitative studies; nonetheless, there appeared to be a strong preference for quantitative methods, particularly classroom‐based experiments. Given the wide variety of issues still to be explored within engineering education, we expect that quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches will be essential in the future. We encourage readers to further investigate alternate research methods by accessing some of our sources and collaborating across education/social science and engineering disciplinary boundaries.     

Basic Engineering Software for Teaching (“BEST”) Dynamics

Engineering dynamics is the study of motion, but textbooks and chalkboards, the traditional classroom teaching tools, cannot show that motion. Mechanical models are helpful, but relatively inflexible; they are qualitative, not quantitative. Since July 1992, personnel from the University of Missouri-Rolla have been developing and classroom testing “BEST”* (Basic Engineering Software for Teaching) Dynamics with the goal of improving the teaching and learning of engineering dynamics. About forty-five different problem simulations, representing a selection of typical kinematics and kinetics problems for both particles and rigid bodies, have been completed. These problems enable the user to vary inputs to view a wide variety of configurations and behavior. Students using “BEST” Dynamics have reported improved ability to visualize motion, and somewhat improved problem solving ability. Recent work has focused on adding, to some of the problems, “Solutions” which give detailed support in writing and solving equations. This paper will introduce the reader to “BEST” Dynamics and its classroom use. It will also provide some philosophical commentary on the applicability of instructional software to the problem-solving-oriented engineering classroom.     

关于理论分析指导照相工业工程实践的重要意义

本文是《整体同步技术开发程序的通则》的续篇。通过对现代照相工业发展历程的研究,尤其对其重要新工艺与新技术开发过程的不同阶段所遇到的问题和所得的实际成就的综合分析,在本文探索了“理论分析指导工程实践”的重要意义。其中包括：工业技术开发,改造与创新。并在本文中,列举在不同实践与应用中的三个方面实例。     

Systematic Design of a First-Year Mechanical Engineering Course at Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University offers a first-year course titled Fundamentals of Mechanical Engineering to introduce undergraduate students to the discipline of mechanical engineering. The goals of the course are to excite students about the field of mechanical engineering early in their careers, introduce basic mechanical engineering concepts in an integrated way, provide a link to the basic physics and mathematics courses, and present design and problem-solving skills as central engineering activities. These goals are met through a combination of real-world engineering examples, classroom demonstrations, and hands-on experience in assignments and laboratories. Over the eleven semesters that this course has been taught, teams of first-year students have designed and assembled energy conversion mechanisms using miniature steam engines and Meccano sets to drive a mobile vehicle or to generate electricity for lighting a bulb. This paper describes the systematic process used to design this course and emphasizes this process of carefully integrating lectures with classroom demonstrations, laboratory experiments and hands-on projects to encourage students' active learning.     

Qualitative Methods Used in the Assessment of Engineering Education

This article clarifies key concepts that undergird qualitative research, which is being used increasingly as engineering educators improve classrooms, programs, and institutions. The paper compares quantitative and qualitative research, describes some qualitative data collection strategies used in engineering education, addresses methods for establishing trustworthiness, and discusses strategies for analyzing qualitative data. Also included are illustrative examples of recent engineering education research that features qualitative data analysis and mixed‐method (quantitative and qualitative) approaches.