Interdisciplinary Capstone Project

European Journal of Engineering Education, 2003

Routledge eBooks, 2023

This paper aims to present some experiences adopted in a cooperative computer engineering course in order to maintain its quality and improve the students' learning process. The first practice is related to the introduction of the class council, a quality process which involves at least three meetings between professors and students (representing the class opinion) to plan the activities in the academic period, solve problems related to the course and jointly evaluate the results of this practice. The most relevant subjects are chosen to be discussed in an under-graduation annual workshop involving all professors and students to think about the future of the course. The second practice considers the usage of the continuous assessment process, focused on the student's learning. Some nontraditional assessment activities are shown as alternatives for traditional exams. Both experiences of the class council and the continuous assessment have produced good results in the computer engineering course through its application during the last seven years.

Engineering education in the department of Information Technology at the University of Turku, Finland, follows the CDIO framework. In this paper, we examine the first evolution of the Introduction to Engineering course. The course is based on the CDIO standard no. 4, and it is the very first course for the engineering students when they commence their studies. The background and structure for the course as well as its intended learning outcomes will be presented. Key research questions are how the students and the teaching team have understood the course’s learning outcomes, and how the teaching team has been able to adopt the learning outcomes into the course structure. The research material has been gathered from the two consecutive courses during December 2012 – December 2013. The research material comprises of study journals and feedback that was collected after the course. The questions used in both surveys and study journals were based on intended learning outcomes and partly on CDIO standard no. 4. The results from this longitudinal research shows that the evolution of the course is going to the right direction. The most promising results arise from the group work, which was changed from big groups into smaller ones: from 8 to 9 students per group to 4 students per group. According to the research results, it is important that also in the following Introduction to Engineering courses the substance and knowledge of embedded electronics and software (i.e., programming) is kept and further developed. The key issue for future courses is to further integrate the disciplinary knowledge with other learning areas such as design thinking, problem solving, communication skills, group work and societal understanding of the importance of engineering.

European Journal of Engineering Education, 2015

Engineering education plays an essential role in the pursuit of a more sustainable and equitable world. These two challenges imply training engineers to conceive and develop better goods and services with less, renewable resources (sustainability) for serving a large growing world population (equity), as denoted by the US National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies (2008). How to better train engineering students in a globalised, fast-evolving, and technology-dependant world is the goal of engineering education research. During the past 100 years, a number of challenges in engineering education have been tackled by a worldwide community of researchers, either motivated by the emergence of new technologies contributing to or requiring a redefinition of engineering curricula or by the input of educational sciences with suggestions for new approaches to teaching & learning (Froyd, Wankat, and Smith 2012). In all these shifts, innovation played a key role: either by improving a given aspect without compromising all remaining aspects (evolution) or by introducing a radically new aspect, often borrowed from other knowledge areas, allowing to improve a number of aspects at the same time (revolution). The USA has shaped the landscape of engineering education for the past century, with associations like the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) now celebrating more than 120 years of existence. In contrast, Europe and Latin America have only embraced this movement in more recent decades, with associations like the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), the International Society for Engineering Pedagogy (IGIP), and the Brazilian Association for Engineering Education (ABENGE), being created in 1973, 1972, and 1973, respectively. More recently, the Portuguese Society for Engineering Education (SPEE) was formally created in 2010, in an endeavour to motivate, coordinate, and foster contributions from Portuguese researchers to the Engineering Education field. This guest editorial is one particular result of that endeavour. It is structured as follows: Section 1 presents the very short history of SPEE, while also describing the antecedents of its 1st International Conference (CISPEE); Section 2 describes the rationale, aims, and layout of CISPEE, plus the process that led to the present special issue; Section 3 details the contents of the special issue and also of the special section, within a regular issue of the EJEE, containing a smaller number of contributions that required some additional editing efforts from their authors; and, finally, Section 4 concludes the guest editorial.

2001

In this paper we first provide the background of an undergoing project for enhancing the technological creativity. Next, we summarize the student responses of last year, especially their learning difficulties, in order to look for directions of improvement for the course. With the evaluation collected for last year as a base, we re-design the activity of case study to help student speculate about the possible explanations of a real-life problem. Next, we supplement the activity of mind-mapping to encourage students to learn divergent thinking skills and be able to select one path for further implementation through the integration of technical concepts of design. The goal of the improved course content is to link the classroom activities more effectively to the theory being taught and to appeal to students' diverse interests. The overall perception of the improved curriculum was determined using a Likert rating scale, while students' feedback was collected using open-ended ...

25th Annual Conference of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education : Engineering the Knowledge Economy: Collaboration, Engagement & Employability, 2014

BACKGROUND Technological, economic, and social changes will reshape undergraduate engineering education, but there is little consensus on its future. IEEE created a Curricula and Pedagogy Committee (CPC) and charged it with forecasting the future of engineering education in general and specifically to make recommendations regarding roles that IEEE will play in preparing for and crafting that future. The IEEE CPC used scenario planning to consider possible trends in engineering education and is opening its thoughts to public scrutiny. The IEEE CPC developed a survey to compare scenarios that it developed with patterns formed from respondents' views of the future. PURPOSE The CPC Committee functions as a research team seeking to learn (1) what is the current state of practice in higher education programs in fields of interest for IEEE?, (2) how are engineering programs forecasting practices that need to be in place to meet the needs of the profession in 10 years?, and (3) what services and collaborations might transform current practice to meet those needs? DESIGN/METHOD A survey was developed by the IEEE CPC. To examine how engineering programs might innovate and adapt, the survey included questions about current and future instructional practices and uses of instructional technologies. To examine values and competencies of engineering academics, the survey included questions that addressed skills that students have now and those they should have in the future as well as the roles that evaluation of teaching played in evaluating faculty members. The survey was deployed in July-August 2014 to individuals who (1) teach undergraduate students, (2) administer a degree program (i.e., Department Chairs and Heads), (3) serve as a top-level administrator over all engineering degree programs (i.e., Deans), and (4) work professionally in engineering. The results were compiled by IEEE Strategic Research and reported to the CPC for analysis. RESULTS This paper describes the demographics of the 2176 survey respondents. In addition, it reports on responses to the survey about teaching and quality versus quantity of engineers. An encouraging finding is that there is agreement among all types of respondents on the strategic priority of quality over quantity of engineers. CONCLUSIONS The congruence of our findings with expectations voiced by others, particularly in the area of teaching methods, indicates that the survey has validity and suggests that fields of interest to IEEE match the aggregate behaviour of engineering described in other work. The general congruence of responses across diverse respondents regarding the strategic priority of quality over quantity suggests that the field may be moving towards the more promising future scenarios. Results from the survey provide insight into the extent to which academics and industry professionals are expecting and contributing to the possible futures described in the scenario planning, which in turn provides insight as to how to prepare for whatever the future holds.

2014

Engineering education in the department of Information Technology at the University of Turku, Finland, follows the CDIO framework. In this paper, we examine the first evolution of the Introduction to Engineering course. The course is based on the CDIO standard no. 4, and it is the very first course for the engineering students when they commence their studies. The background and structure for the course as well as its intended learning outcomes will be presented. Key research questions are how the students and the teaching team have understood the course’s learning outcomes, and how the teaching team has been able to adopt the learning outcomes into the course structure. The research material has been gathered from the two consecutive courses during December 2012 – December 2013. The research material comprises of study journals and feedback that was collected after the course. The questions used in both surveys and study journals were based on intended learning outcomes and partly ...

2022

At present, we are the inhabitants of a fast world. Hence, our lifestyles are becoming very speedy day by day. These turbo ways of life are mainly the consequence of the establishment of engineering science and knowledge. Engineering is the amalgamation and implementation of scientific knowledge, technical data, experience, and managerial skills. Besides, it's a creative path through which imagination comes to reality. Analytically, engineering activities have shifted our society from conventional cycles to airships, glass fiber-based airplanes, rockets, submarines, electric cars, and counting. In addition, engineering actions transfer the cotton or polyester-based textile fabrics to bulletproof vests, flameproof apparel, and astronauts-wear. Besides, plastic-type polymers have become sports cars, artificial joints, and building structures. Engineering education, knowledge, and its implementation are the playmaker for creating new vibrations in our lives. It is engineering education that has paved the way to Industry 4.0. This influential engineering education and knowledge are not only a syllabus or subject. It's a curriculum containing multidisciplinary courses of theoretical contents, extensive lab work, field visits or fieldwork, group discussion, project management, cost management, managerial skills, and leadership. The final engineering products or services are impossible to achieve successfully and efficiently if any curriculum requirements remain partial or absent. The perfect "Engineering Environment" (a term we have used in this review paper) is a mandatory requirement to achieve engineering success. Many difficulties are approaching in delivering engineering education to harvest active and well-organized engineers. These problems are all over the world but are more noticeable in developing countries. Different issues such as politics, bureaucracy, and misplacement of unfit people, self-interest, weak management, and shortage of budgets are hindering engineering education and services. Even in many countries, the government is responsible for downward engineering education and knowledge. In this review paper, we have tried to put a subtle eye on the challenges of engineering education and the engineering environment. We have also discussed the ways to go in advance.

Proc. Inter. Conf. on Engng. Educ

 "Globalization" means that there are fewer resources and more competitors. It also defines new rules of the game. We must think locally and act globally. In the new Creative Economy, the most important force of the present change is the growing power of ideas. Ideas like germs and viruses are infectious. This is the exactly the university environment that must be protected, nurtured, and funded. Furthermore, synergy and ideas from multidisciplinary activities must be encouraged by tearing down old divisions between colleges, schools, departments and alike. Global Engineering Education must prepare the future human resources for a rapidly changing environment, driven by the accelerated rate of technical innovation and opportunities; engagement in lifelong learning; and collaboration across geographical, cultural and time domains. What is essential are teamwork, and creative problem solving skills. We are challenged by the fact that engineering knowledge becomes obsolete quickly making new professions appear and others disappear.