Engineering Education Designing an Adaptive System (1995) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
III. ENGINEERING EDUCATION TODAY
III. ENGINEERING EDUCATION TODAY
Pages 19-39
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 19... ...
This research orientation in turn enriches the undergraduate curriculum and influences its character through lectures and textbook development by faculty who are at the frontier of their field of knowledge and through the use of graduate students as teaching assistants. Many schools have programs that also provide undergraduates with direct research experience.
|
From page 20... ...
D Allan Bromley, • A four-year undergraduate curriculum cannot provide Dean of Engineering, Yale University, Personal communication to the BEEd, engineering students with the same preparation for January 17, 1995 leadership as those who have enjoyed six or more years of higher education in preparation for other professions.
|
From page 21... ...
Okun concluded by saying, "Many ‘band-aid' solutions to these problems have been proposed and some acted upon, without much impact. Unless engineering educators are challenged to consider and adopt significant changes, I fear that engineers in the future will be technicians, in the service of a better educated and prepared leader ship drawn from other professions." Undergraduate Curriculum The one area in which change is needed most is the undergraduate engineering curriculum.2 It is now widely believed that for several decades too much emphasis was placed on engineering science (analysis)
|
From page 22... ...
• How can the curriculum, along with requirements for an engi neering degree, be structured so as to prepare students simulta neously for engineering practice and graduate study? The essential question is: What minimum combination of funda mentals; skills; and acquaintance with problem formulation and solu tion, the process of design, and the nature of professional practice is required to satisfy the description of an engineer pre sented in the BEEd's vision?
|
From page 23... ...
The Combined Research/Curriculum Development Program awards, as they are known, were each $400,000 over a three-year period, to be split evenly between research and curriculum development. One goal of these government-funded curriculum development programs is to produce portable curriculum modules that can be shared among engineering schools nationwide -- on-line or via videotape, text, television, and software -- thereby increasing the dissemination of high-quality educational materials and reducing the workload on faculty.
|
From page 24... ...
Each of the tracks should offer students the flexibility, in terms of knowledge or academic credits, to move to other tracks, and each should instill a knowledge of how to learn autonomously through exposure to distance learning and other media for obtaining continuous education. The BEEd emphasizes that a sound engineering education is just the beginning of a lifelong educational experience.
|
From page 25... ...
and adjunct faculty from industry on aspects of this fails, because I have set the target of "zero defects" and then provided the issue, might have value. means for all students to succeed." Teaching Styles and Methods Edward Lumsdaine, Dean of Engineering, A widespread tradition in engineering education has Michigan Technological University, been the "boot camp" approach, in which professors Personal communication to the BEEd, March 21,1994 typically have made little effort to help students over come the formidable demands placed upon them.
|
From page 26... ...
One approach now coming into greater use is "cooperative learning," an The advantages of classical education are instructional method that involves students working in • compulsion; teams to accomplish a common goal, under conditions • credit; that involve both positive interdependence (all members • some adaptivity and must cooperate to complete the task) and group account customization; ability (each member is accountable for the entire final • moderate attention factor; • some interactivity; outcome)
|
From page 27... ...
Second, larger class sizes and a concomitant increase in demand for specialized courses suggest the potential usefulness of these technologies. Third, accompanying the growing demand is a scarcity of faculty to teach undergraduate courses, given budget constraints and the increasing pressure on faculty to focus on securing research grants and conducting cuttingedge research.
|
From page 28... ...
Today, women receive about 15 percent of B.S. engineering degrees, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans -- who together make up 27.5 percent of the college-age population -- receive fewer than 8 percent of such degrees (NSF, 1992)
|
From page 29... ...
Recent indications are that retention is only about 35 percent for African Americans and Native Americans and 45 percent for Hispanics, compared with roughly 65 percent for all freshmen and nearly 100 percent for Asians (bearing in mind that retention figures probably err on the high side)
|
From page 30... ...
Although there has been an influx of non-white scholars from Asia and the Middle East, engineering faculties remain largely male. Many in the engineering community call for the engineering faculty of the future to be more diverse than that of today.
|
From page 31... ...
These incentives typically create a bias favoring research over undergraduate teaching while also discouraging mobility of faculty between academe, industry, and government. In effect, they may place a penalty on activities such as curriculum development, interactions with industry, outreach to precollege students, student advising, professional de velopment, and other professorial functions designed to "There is no fundamental dichotomy foster a more integrated academic community and a between research and teaching.
|
From page 32... ...
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology's high-visibility program of internal MacVicker Faculty Fellowships is one example; another is Stanford University's Hu manities and Sciences Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching, which includes a base salary augmentation in addition to a cash award.) Some schools have instituted a non-tenure track faculty option that does not require teachers to pursue scholarly research, but this approach is highly controversial.
|
From page 33... ...
In the post–World COLLEGIALITY AND TEACHING War II era in engineering schools, this collegiality has In a study of conditions within tended to be eroded by trends such as larger institutional departments at 20 colleges and size; competitive grantsmanship; a loss of clarity about universities, Massy et al.
|
From page 34... ...
The result is students struggling to keep up, contributing to a high rate of attrition. In particular, inadequate preparation limits the participa tion of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and other underrepresented minority groups, who lag their majority counter parts (and Asian Americans)
|
From page 35... ...
Schools that fail to offer the necesstudents to campus, where college sary courses, or that eliminate potentially capable stustudents can demonstrate equipment. dents by applying rigid criteria that do not allow for • Give college students credit for mentoring activities in working with individual variation in abilities or background, restrict middle/high school students." access unnecessarily.
|
From page 36... ...
Direct contact is the best way to dispel that remoteness and impart a realistic understanding of what engineers and engineer ing students actually do. A few engineering schools are carrying on activities with precollege students -- inviting them to visit, mentoring them, carrying design projects into K–12 schools as demonstrations, etc.
|
From page 37... ...
professionals continue to develop their knowledge and Incentives are not evident: only 5 capabilities over a lifetime of practice. This will require percent of the responding companies a commitment to lifelong learning, which needs, in turn, require employees to earn continuing education credits; only 13 percent the support of a continuing engineering education sysrequire employees to earn any other tem and the motivation to use it.
|
From page 38... ...
wireless equipment; and It is vital to instill in engineering students both the 4. interactive research facilities and skills needed to acquire continuous learning from vari research on interactive technologies.
|
From page 39... ...
ENGINEERING EDUCATION TODAY 39 Online University9 can be useful. Seminars presented by industrial representatives, such as adjunct professors, on their own experiences with continuous education and the value they have found in it could be quite effective as well.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.