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Attending in-class paper demonstrations and performing experiments in solid mechanics courses are very effective ways for students to gain an understanding of the complicated concepts of mechanics. This paper explores a few applications of dogbone tensile tests, stress concentrations and crack kinking or mixed-mode fracture. Furthermore, this handy technique can be extended to other broader areas of mechanics education. Since only simple materials and supplies are used, copy paper, staples, scissors and a paper punching machine, students can repeat these typical mechanics experiments in future in other locations, such as in an office or at home. Therefore, this simple and effective technique can have a remarkable influence on the student's long-term career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cornerstone design courses offer engineering students the opportunity to experience a meaningful design project from the early undergraduate semesters. Although cornerstone design has been a reality for many years in several institutions, it is still not practiced in numerous regions and schools. This paper analyses the pilot implementation of a cornerstone design course in Brazil. The first-year cohort of 173 civil engineering students was divided into four classes, three of which took a standard lecture-based introduction to engineering course, while one class (43 students) experienced the cornerstone design course. The assessment was made both quantitatively, through a pre-post survey, and qualitatively, by analyzing students' reports, class observations, and interviews at various moments of the course. Quantitative results demonstrated that the pilot program had a limited impact. The cornerstone course was successful at some points (such as electrical components technical skills, prototyping, and motivation with engineering). However, its potential reported from the literature was not fully obtained. Based on the data gathered, a set of lessons learned from the experience was elaborated as a guideline for future cornerstone implementations. The paper contributes to the cornerstone design literature by reporting an in-depth analysis of a cornerstone course application in a diversified context and country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanics of materials courses are important and very challenging basic professional courses in civil engineering. The peer learning method is student-centered and has been widely applied in engineering education. This paper proposes many original insights into concrete ways to apply peer learning in a mechanics of materials course, which can provide guidance or inspiration for similar courses. A quasi experimental research method. final examination scores. psychological scales, and structured interviews were used to conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses on the benefits of peer learning to the undergraduate civil engineering students (N = 61). The results indicated significant differences between the experimental and control classes in terms of improved academic performance, psychological scores, and character. Specifically, the experimental class improved significantly in terms of final examination scores, deep approach. critical thinking, soft bullying, social avoidance, teamwork, etc. Thus, peer learning in a mechanics of materials course can effectively improve students' academic, character, mental health and satisfaction benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose teaching strategies grounded on an interdisciplinary teaching framework based on the holistic concept of soundscape ecology. The study explores the self-perceived level of understanding engineering and music students exposed to the same foundational course communicated and expressed before and after the course. Results showed that the teaching framework chosen provides a good umbrella for teaching technical, contextual and practical topics. Students seem to grasp better courses related to theory and context than practical activities involving detailed analysis and the use of audio software. Multifaceted topics such as sustainability and interdisciplinary were also difficult to grasp for most students. Compared results for music and engineering showed that, while engineering students showed a substantially more robust background in practical activities related to audio, music students were able to easily reach similar levels of knowledge of these topics by the end of the course. As a way of reducing this gap further, future versions of the proposed course should consider ways of blending engineering and music students in the same classroom environment to foster a greater level of collaboration and interaction among students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the iterative design of a novel cart/pendulum system for feedback control education. Because the system is inexpensive. students can be allowed to take it home. allowing them to interact with it at any time. In order for the system to enhance student learning, multiple hardware, software, and modeling issues had to be overcome. The final version of the project seems to enhance student learning and help students appreciate control theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student-teacher interaction is a vital part of course design, for this reason many instructors in higher education have established office hours to further ensure this interconnection. However, office hours are often limited by time and physical space, creating a less than optimal learning environment for students who already have many other time commitments. For this reason, attendance rates are often low. A solution to these constraints was posed with the concept of virtual office hours. This low-stakes environment addresses the attendance issue and allows students the flexibility of experiencing meaningful learning from anywhere they choose. This study reports on the student experience of virtual office hours, as compared to the traditional face-to-face office hours, offered in three engineering courses. Students varying from sophomore to junior levels were enrolled in one of three semester-long courses, two mechanical engineering and one electrical engineering. 154 students between the two disciplines were enrolled in a course offering virtual office hours. The implementation logistics of these virtual office hours, key details on interactions during the sessions, and content presentation are discussed in this paper. Goals of this study were: to identify how virtual office hours impact engineering students' learning, ascertain whether the sessions were an efficient use of time for both students and instructors, and to determine the differences between virtual office hours and traditional face-to-face office hours. The students' perspectives were acquired through surveys administered at the end of the semester-long implementation of virtual office hours. Data analysis of the survey responses revealed that the implementation of virtual office hours within these courses was beneficial for both the students and instructors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the formal accession to the Washington Accord, the cultivation of the ability to solve complex engineering problems has become the focus of China's undergraduate engineering education. Because complex engineering problems are innovative, it is necessary to study the effect of TRIZ teaching on the cultivation ofthe ability to solve complex engineering problems. However, there are few studies on the effect of TRIZ on the cultivation of ability to solve complex engineering problems. Taking China's civil engineering major as an example, based on the network questionnaire, this paper investigates the ability of 1532 junior and senior students to solve complex engineering problems at four universities. The findings were that the ability of the surveyed students to solve complex engineering problems needs to be improved, especially their ability in the areas of engineering design. problem identification and problem analysis. At present, the cultivation of systematic thinking in China's engineering education is also inadequate. Normative research, course teaching and graduation design were used to verify the effectiveness of TRIZ in training Chinese civil engineering students' ability to solve complex engineering problems. Based on the text analysis of students' course reports and graduation designs, combined with the results of students' self-assessment questionnaires and TRIZ expert interviews, the results indicate that TRIZ can effectively cultivate students' ability to solve complex engineering problems, especially problem identification, problem analysis and innovative thinking. This paper provides guidance for further exploring the cultivation of the ability to solve complex engineering problems and for the integration of innovative methods and professional education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that students' college experience and involvement in academic and non-academic activities are pivotal in determining what educational outcomes they attain in college. However, little is known about how high-achieving engineering students' college experience compares with the national norm. This paper investigates the extent to which the two groups differ in terms of the quality ofeffort expended, college environmental emphasis, and attainment ofthe desired educational outcomes. It is shown that high-achieving engineering students spend more time and invest more quality effort in academic tasks than the national norm. High-achieving engineering students also make more significant progress toward the desired educational outcomes than the national norm. The perception of high-achieving engineering students about their environment is not different from the national norm. This study corroborates the theory of involvement that educational achievement is directly related to engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Corona Virus-19 globally disrupted education severely in March 2020 and has continued through 2023. It has had far reaching impacts on engineering education and yet it provides an opportunity for researchers to understand this type of event's impact so that we can be well equipped for potential future disruptive events. This paper describes a novel study that used an online learning value and self-efficacy scale survey to collect data on perceived task value and student selfefficacy during a forced transition to online learning in a western university's sophomore level engineering mechanics course and a junior level hydraulic engineering course. This was an initial study that was investigating these constructs using the Online Learning Value and Self-Efficacy Scale. Data was additionally collected a year later with new participants in the same classes now taught in a traditional face-to-face fushion. Comparative results indicate that students who started in face-to-face classes preferred and felt they could do better in the face-to-face components more so than the online components, and that students who were earlier in their academic career were more likely to have higher ratings of selfefficacy in a forced online learning environment than students enduring the transition later in their academic career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing engineering students to topics of social responsibility and sustainability in the field of science and technology studies is internationally discussed, but there is little common consensus on best practices. Especially in large and mandatory engineering courses, initiating reflection processes among the students imposes difficulties on lecturers. The lecture "Engineering and Society" is attended each year by about 500 engineering students at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. Intended to familiarize engineering students with central theories and topics in the field of science and technology studies as well as sustainability and responsibility, the lecture creates a contrast to the highly technical engineering contents in these study programs. To increase the accessibility of these topics for students, a detailed teaching concept was developed by the authors which is reviewed in this paper. The paper proposes this approach for teaching sustainability and responsibility to engineering students in a large mandatory bachelor's course as well as raising awareness for their own responsibility while maintaining focus on the academic content of the lecture. The paper aims to answer the following research questions: How to teach sustainability and responsibility to engineering students in a large mandatory bachelor's course? How to raise awareness for personal responsibility as engineering students? Challenges and possible solutions related to the academic content of sustainability and responsibility are discussed based on evaluation outcomes and lecturers' experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores curriculum development within the laboratory component of a fluid mechanics course taught at the University of Iceland. The paper addresses various steps taken to improve the laboratory work component of the course, such as, shortening experiments, aligning the schedule of laboratory work exercises with lectures, and adding postlab discussions. University midterm and end of term surveys were not effective to measure the consequences of the changes, so an additional survey focused on laboratory work was made. In addition, a student focus group interview was held three years into the study to further confirm and deepen the findings on the effect of the changes made. All measurements indicate an improvement in the laboratory component by using the new schedule, in particular with the synchronization of lectures and experiments and with the addition of postlab discussions, where the results of all lab groups are compared and analyzed. Students reported increased satisfaction with the laboratory work, more appropriate workload, and better understanding of and learning from the laboratory work as compared to the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies show that contextualized measures of high school achievement - in other words, how well students performed relative to their high school peers - can help identify students who have the potential to succeed in college, and thus can serve as a key measure in holistic admissions. Building upon previous work, this study further examines whether contextualized measures of high school achievement may help identify students who have the potential to succeed in engineering programs, especially among traditionally underrepresented students in engineering (defined in our paper as low-SES students, underrepresented students of color, and women). Based on longitudinal data from a Midwestern state's Department of Education database, this study finds that contextualized measures of high school performance are significantly associated with students' college performance - for all students in engineering, as well as across our three subsamples of traditionally underrepresented students. These findings have important implications for incorporating contextualized measures of high school performance when making undergraduate admissions decisions in engineering programs, to help better identify applicants from traditionally underrepresented student populations in engineering. This is particularly crucial as admissions offices move toward more holistic and test-optional practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic student-level approach to assess the impact of problem-based learning on enhancing students' performance in an undergraduate Digital Logic Design course. The problem was assigned as a mini-project and chosen to strengthen the student's understanding of an advanced part of the course, namely the sequential logic design. The study included data from semesters where students were assigned projects and other semesters without projects. The proposed approach relies on dividing students into groups based on their academic performance level to study how the project impacts these groups' performance. A baseline performance metric was created at the beginning of the semester to classify the students into three groups. At the end of the semester, the students' groups were reassessed to capture performance changes. The results consistently showed improvement across all students' levels in the semesters where the project was conducted. While it is natural for students' performance to change between the beginning and the end of the semester, the results show that the percentage of students who improved their performance level has increased in semesters with a project compared to the semesters with no projects. Also, the percentage of students whose performance degraded by the end of the semester has decreased in the semesters with a project. These results were also supported by an independent student survey that confirmed the positive project impact on the students' grasp of sequential circuit design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online student assessments have gained popularity in the engineering education community in the past few years. McGraw-Hill Education (MGHE) Connect has been used extensively in higher education for online assessments. However, its efficacy in engineering education needs to be investigated. This study investigates the effect of using McGrawHill Education (MGHE) Connect online platforms on students' academic performance in a Mechanics of Materials (MoM) course. Evaluations from twelve sections (n = 367) were collected using past years' data, where conventional paper and pencil homework were adopted as a control group with MGHE Connect-based online homework intervention for synchronous and face-to-face MoM courses as the treatment group. The study examined the effects of MGHE Connect on homework score, cumulative score, grade and pass rate. Variations due to semesters, instructors, delivery type, and modality are analyzed using a mixed model to find the effect of the intervention. Moreover, this study assessed students' perceptions of the platform and its setup. The study findings showed 'immediate feedback' and 'multiple attempts' as the two major strengths, while the 'lack of access to the step-by-step solutions' and 'need to redo' as major weaknesses. There is a difference in homework grades, with the treatment group's median being higher; however, the study found no evidence to support the claim that MGHE Connect improved students' performance and grade. Students revealed that their satisfaction was significantly influenced by the setup preference of Connect. These outcomes provide insight into how homework should be set up to improve student satisfaction while maintaining academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergency remote teaching (ERT) was necessary as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world. Most ERT studies describe the experiences of students and instructors without a theoretical grounding. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the Cognitive, Behavioral, and Emotional Adaptability model (CBEAM) can be used to interpret instructors' experience with a significant disruption. Weekly CBEAM-informed surveys were administered to engineering instructors at a U.S. university in the seven weeks following the March 2020 switch to ERT. These surveys captured the activities that instructors (n = 39) engaged in to support their teaching, their emotions, and their challenges and successes. Descriptive statistics were used to examine instructors' experiences in terms of each dimension of the CBEAM across time. The instructors engaged in more self-teaching activities than organized workshops to aid their transition. Instructors' community-based interactions generally decreased over time, though final assessment concerns spurred conversations with support staff. Instructors' emotions were consistently more positive than negative. Successes and challenges centered on the student experience and course-related aspects. The CBEAM, with minor modifications, can be used to collect instructors' holistic experiences in other instances of change or disruptions to teaching and can give insight into the supports that instructors need. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The curriculum challenges presented to first-year engineering instructors at a Southwestern institution in the United States as well as the need to highlight the process of theory-building in engineering education motivated a team to conduct an umbrella research project related to the enculturation of engineering students. This umbrella project has generated six conference papers and this manuscript constitutes the last of the series focusing on the changes that students experience and perceive over time, once exposed to the first-year engineering curriculum, and how these changes inform a theory of enculturation. The research questions investigated how students perceive their enculturation, once they have progressed in their engineering programs, and how the results constitute a theory of enculturation. Eight sophomore and junior level engineering students of diverse backgrounds participated in semi-structured interviews and focus groups. Their perceptions were analyzed via quantitative and qualitative strategies of inquiry (i.e. content analysis and open coding) and the resulting themes and associated frequencies were examined to constitute a theory. Informed by prior enculturation studies, this research identified eight dimensions and five themes, thirteen units in total. These thirteen units were organized in extrinsic and intrinsic factors that characterize a theory of enculturation to engineering during the first-year experience and hypothesized on how these units operate to produce professional engineers. This theory of enculturation emphasizes the role of the support systems of schools of engineering which in turn provides a framework that instructors and administrators can utilize when planning or modifying these support systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blended Learning (BL) combines the advantages of both in-person and online learning while allowing students to affect their learning schedules and take responsibility. The capabilities of online education took worldwide interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the need to better understand online education's impact on educational achievements and how technical environments could provide learning experiences to replace face-to-face sessions at the campus. We examine the trends towards online learning on the recently published articles during the COVID-19 pandemic, comparing thorn to a learning survey conducted in the European Union in 2021. The study's objective is to identify the current trends and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on online education. This paper compares our findings from a systematic literature review against the trends observed from qualitative survey data collected from six European countries. Our mapping study identified several trends, such as that long-distance education had become a long-term strategy in higher education compared to the pre-COVID-19 era and that fully online education can be very exhausting for students, causing retention problems with those who need more skills for independent studies. The BL methods engage students and allow them to design their learning schedules. and after COVID-19, these methods are becoming long-term strategies for education. However, these approaches also require skills in the course design to ensure that other aspects and needs, such as social inclusiveness to motivate students, are sufficiently addressed due to the need for classroom interactions and peer support from shared campus experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present results of our exploratory study to explain students' experiences with the Icarus program. The program's goal was to provide students with a different space to develop sense of belonging. The research design is an exploratory case study. Data were collected quantitatively using a survey and qualitatively using semi-structured interviews. Results showed that students' primary motivation to join the teams program was to apply theory from class into real-world engineering problems and to work and engage with peers. In addition, students' experiences with learus aligned with the constructs desired for promoting sense of belonging. The program helped solve one of the issues in the School. an improvement in academics and student interactions. Students' experience with the program was positive, and they reported how it improved issues related to their academic program, their relationships with mentors, and their perceptions of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability will be a key challenge that future engineering graduates must consider when solving problems. This paper sets out the approach taken in the mechanical engineering discipline of Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin) to help students acquire and develop the requisite skills to integrate aspects of sustainability when tackling engineering problems. The approach, which has already been implemented across a number of different design and innovation modules, consists of two distinct phases. In the first, students are educated about sustainability and related issues. In the second phase, students are educated for sustainability and are taught to identify, define and solve problems so they can plan, develop and implement solutions to complex sustainability challenges/problems. Implementing this approach has raised questions, particularly in relation to helping students deal with conflicting requirements, understanding the limitations of their own knowledge, and the relationship between ethics and sustainability. Engineering educators will need to address such questions as they develop their approach(es) to sustainability education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Makerspaces are common in engineering programs around the country and around the world. As universities invest more into these spaces, researchers investigate more the impacts of making in the educational setting. As more students across more educational contexts get involved in making and makerspaces, there is a greater need for educators to gain a more wholistic understanding of the impacts of making on the academic environment. both positive and negative. [n this paper, we look at the critical relationship between makerspaces and academic performance at a unique university with a designcentric approach to engineeringeducation. This study presents three key findings: First, more involvement in making early in the curriculum is related to increased retention. Second, increased anxiety towards engineering design is connected to both lower retention and lower involvement in academic makerspaces. Third, GPA and makerspace activity are largely independent at this university where the engineering curriculum prescribes engineering students' engagement in making. As impacts of academic makerspaces are unfolding before us. these findings shed a positive light on their contribution to engineering education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction process is an ill-structured complex problem that needs to be designed based on multiple constraints. Typically, construction engineering students have dilliculties understanding the complexity of the process and treat the problem similar to well-structured problems. This paper has utilized a systems thinking framework to enhance construction engineering students' design thinking. This protocol takes into account critical aspects that students can address in their solutions. The protocol consists of six consecutive levels: each level should be built on the previous levels. Forty-eight construction engineering students participated in this study over five sessions. Student teams designed two construction projects, one with and one without using the introduced framework. They also reviewed and provided feedback on their peers' designs. The results show that the framework reduced the time for most students to reach a higher level of thinking. In addition, students were more successful in connecting different aspects of the project process by using the framework. Thus. it is expected that using the framework helps the students better understand the relationship among materials, systems, structures, and processes, which is the second most important competency for construction management students. Iii summary, this systematic framework shows potentials to speed up the transformation from novice to expert designers for construction students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing movement in engineering for students and practitioners to learn to embrace failure and develop resilience. The design process is inherently full of iteration and failures that can be leveraged as learning opportunities for students. This paper presents a preliminary study that introduces a sketching practice intended to provide students with opportunities to experience low-stakes failure and space to build their confidence in sketching. The study analyzes the resulting sketches for attributes such as line smoothness, accuracy/proportion. and understandability to identify potential links with sketch confidence and student perspectives on failure. 47% of students reported finding the sketching activity to be effective in making them feel more com fortable with failure. The study found that students' sketch smoothness showed signs of improvement during the course of the class and students' confidence in sketching increased. Additionally, the study found that women were initially more confident in sketching but men experienced greater growth in confidence over the course of the class and bridged that confidence gap. This gender difference persisted in sketching performance as well, as women scored higher in sketch smoothness and proportion/accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep modeling is a practice of representing ideas iii a way that is amenable to inquiry. In engineering, deep models often take the form of drawings or physical and digital prototypes. These models are created and used throughout a design process to discover, analyze, evaluate, and validate ideas about problems and possible solution approaches. This paper is an exploratory study into student perspectives about the nature and purpose of deep modeling. The study context is an interdisciplinary design sequence where students created a personalized Interdisciplinary Design Playbook as a means for documenting their evolving design knowledge. We pursued two questions through a situated knowing lens: (1) How do students describe the nature and purpose of deep modeling as a design practice what is it, why is it important, when is it useful, and how to do it? and (2) What associations do students make across these dimensions of knowing that reveal conditionalized logics for how and why deep modeling is meaningfully employed? By taking a situated knowing perspective, analysis focused on the conditions under which students perceive deep modeling practices can be employed in meaningful and relevant ways. We present three cases of rich narratives and representations, illustrate similarities and differences across cases, and discuss findings. We conclude by speaking to the benefits of our approach for understanding student learning - moving from the behaviors we see students doing towards the meanings these behaviors hold for students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the changes for a degree in Industrial Electronics and Automation Engineering at a Spanish university in the colifinements caused by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose was to find out the practices that the faculty university intuitively choose for use in teaching and evaluation, and to check if they were adequate in the emergency situation. The challenges faced by university faculty worldwide following the confinements caused by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic were enormous and have no precedence in the digital knowledge era. The study of the teaching transitions realized allow the university and all agents involved to better reinforce the strong points and to focus improvements on the weak points with the goal of better preparedness for future crises. Three aspects of the transition to online teaching are considered: the changes in the evaluation systems, the preferred modes (synchronous, asynchronous, or bichronous) and the tools most used. According to tile results, the evaluation systems enjoyed a level of stability that indicated institutional tools already existed providing online support for successful execution. The interaction between teacher and student dominated the basic training and compulsory course subjects, while asynchronous teaching was more apt for the elective subjects. Text-type teaching resources were chiefty used. While it was true more multimedia types could have been used, the suddenness of the changes as well as the uncertainty around their durations may have contributed to their incomplete development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of teaching can be reflected in the quality of homework that students produce. However. if students copy homework, teachers will be unable to evaluate their work accurately. At present, there are no effective means to objectively verify that homework copying has occurred, or to quantify its scale. In this paper, homework copying is studied through experiments and statistical analysis. An experimental group and a control group which are consistent in all possible influencing factors are selected. A customized exercise generation system (CES) is designed and applied to prevent homework copying in the experimental group. In contrast, the control group has no restrictions on copying homework. The answer sheets handed in by the two groups are graded according to a standardized process, and the correct rate for each question of the two groups is calculated. Subsequently, we studied the relationship between "the difference of the correct rate between the two groups" and "homework copying". Results indicate that there is a significant difference in the overall mean of the correct rate between the experimental group and the control group, and the existence of homework copying is highly plausible. To quantify the homework copying scale, we propose a method to calculate the homework copying scale of each question in the experiments. Then. the factors that influence homework copying, particularly the question difficulty, are studied and a relationship between the difficulty of a question and its scale of homework copying is obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a new model was employed for probabilistic prediction of overall performance of engineering students. The model employs formative assessment results to estimate the summative assessment mark of an individual student. In the present study. statistical evaluation ofpredictions was conducted using data of seven (7) examination events involving 441 students studying bachelors and master's degrees of civil engineering programmes. The other key variables of the data comprised different class sizes, and heterogeneous classes containing students of varied academic performance levels. It was found that the model gave realistic predictions with a good to excellent level of accuracy. The range for summative performance results of students whose formative assessment marks fall between 50 to 70%, can be accurately estimated. The model may be used to inform policy frameworks targeted at promoting students' performance and throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift of contemporary product design from being mono-disciplinary to transdisciplinary requires educational institutions to develop new educational methodologies to ensure their students are fully prepared for the new career and life-long challenges. This paper is a part of the study entitled Transdisciplinary Design Education for Engineering Undergraduates, which goal is to enhance engineering education by developing transdisciplinary teaching methodology and establishing a common engineering design process. This paper presents detailed results from the cognitive game task, based on the Bloom's Taxonomy Cognitive Domain and a general engineering design process, developed to access the design thinking of engineers. The general design process and its stages, application of Bloom's Taxonomy and a list of action verbs, and transdisciplinary teaching approach are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem based learning is a student-centered pedagogy that often develops some of the skills required of engineering graduates, and an inquiry based laboratory might be an appropriate platform for its implementation. The study described in this paper focused on an inquiry based electronics laboratory offered to junior electrical engineering students at a leading college in Israel. It is the first course where students are exposed to problem based learning and experience how engineers work. In light of the course's unique characteristics, the study examined whether a change in the students' academic motivation has occurred as a result of the course. Fourteen electrical engineering students participated in the study which utilized quantitative and qualitative tools. The study found a decrease (small effect) in the students' relative autonomy index, which had been caused mainly by a decrease in their intrinsic motivation and an increase in their external regulation. This change could be explained by the findings, according to which, the students' need for competence was not met during the course. Possible causes for this lack of fulfillment are the difficulties experienced by most students to adjust to independent learning and to cope with the complexity of the problems studied on the course. Such difficulties are known in the literature as associated with problem based learning, and the paper offers various ways to overcome them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-cost desktop learning modules (DLMs) were created to aid in student comprehension of a variety of engineering concepts. The DLMs are hands-on apparatuses that can be used to represent the theories behind the many process units seen in the industry. Activities associated with these modules may be used as a supplement to lecture materials. DLMs have initially been found to be effective within a classroom setting. Furthermore, intensive awareness has been gained through presenting results in reputable journals and conferences. However, the pedagogy associated with DLMs will not reach its full potential without translating to or propagating within the creator and outside institutions. To examine the translatability and disseminability of the DLMs, the modules were implemented in the chemical and mechanical engineering courses at several universities. In this paper, student assessment results from those beta implementations are discussed in light of several learning theories including Bloom's taxonomy and cognitive load theory. Moreover, the various aspects of DLMs including ease of use, flexibility, and complexity were evaluated by an expert panel composed of professors who teach transport phenomena-related courses to meet the adoption criteria of a new teaching/leaming method. Results indicate that, regardless of the variation in the learning environment and implementation procedures, DLMs are useful for understanding key fluid mechanics and heat transfer concepts. Furthermore, the majority of the experts surveyed for this study are in favor of incorporating DLMs into the classroom. Based on these results, we expect DLMs will gain widespread interest and will be useful across curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the important advances in engineering ethics education, key problems with mainstream engineering ethics instruction have not been completely addressed. One critical aspect that has been overlooked in engineering education literature is the role of imagination in our moral deliberation. The lack of attention to one's values, background and experiences, treating mind and body as two separate entities, and downplaying the role of imagination as merely an emotional regulator, contribute to neglect for imaginative rationality one may engage in dealing with moral problems. We designed and implemented an ethics discussion session as part of the professional development activities in a National Science Foundation's Research Experiences for Undergraduate (NSF REU) program, in which we prioritized imagination as an essential character of moral reasoning and deliberation. In this paper, we describe the theoretical perspectives, the innovative ethics curriculum, and evaluation methods. Finally, we conclude with the results and reflection on the connection between the conceptual foundation and instructional choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Now more than ever before, there is a need for engineering solutions to global environmental problems. Towards this need, we see an increase in efforts towards incorporating sustainability into engineering education and particularly in engineering design education. Despite this work, there remains the need to investigate the influence of these interventions on students' individual differences, especially their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability. Such an investigation is important as these individual differences could influence students' ability to relate to sustainability-focused issues and act upon them. Consequently, our goal in this paper is to investigate this research gap by exploring the relationship between students' individual differences - specifically, their trait empathy and attitudes towards sustainability and their reflections on a sustainable design workshop in relation to a semester-long design project. Towards this goal, we conducted an exploratory study with 40 first-year engineering students from a large public university in the northeastern United States. The main findings from this study indicate the positive impact of participating in the sustainable design workshop on students' attitudes and intentions towards sustainability in addition to their perceived positive experiences with the workshop. These findings could inform future efforts towards devising pedagogical interventions that encourage a sustainability-focused mindset among engineering students, through engineering design education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Project management is part of the Engineering curricula worldwide. Frequently, project management courses are goalcentered in the pursue of a balance in the triple constrain formed by quality, cost and schedule. However, ethics, social responsibility and sustainability play a crucial role on the development of projects since their success relies on compliance with laws, regulations and local culture and values. This paper presents an in-depth analysis on the treatment of ethics, social responsibility and sustainability according to two widely-used project management standards, Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBoK) and Individual Competence Baseline for Project, Program & Portfolio Management (ICB). We design an analytical framework to carry out a desk research to these two project management standards. Particularly, we count the number of times of appearance, present the definition, if any, determine the appearance in the different knowledge areas and process groups for PMBoK and in the different competences for ICB, and identify the proposed techniques or tools for ethics, social responsibility and sustainability management. The findings of the research demonstrate that ICB treats the three concepts more in deep than PMBoK. PM BoK refers more often to ethics and only proposes one tool for sustainability. ICB introduces the concepts throughout the standard, with repeated references to their significance. Nevertheless, the detail that standards provide can be further elaborated. As a result, we also suggest improvement proposals that could enhance the important role of these topics for students and practitioners involved in project management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) in Hereford UK is a higher education start-up established to deliver a new age of engineering education. Because humanity's pressing problems are inherently interdisciplinary, NMITE's first degree, the Master's in Integrated Engineering (MEng) integrates conventionally separate strands of engineering and goes still further - integrating engineering with other disciplines such as arts, humanities, business, and ethics. The intentional and strategic process by which the course content was developed enabled the creation of an ethics curriculum that maps onto and is embedded within each of the MEng's 27 engineering modules. NMITE's ethics curriculum has several distinctive components including an ethics spine approach that is scaffolded according to stages of ethical learning development and is embedded in problem-based learning pedagogy. This paper will describe the ethics interventions within NMITE's MEng curriculum and will present autobiographic and self-reflective data from a pilot study of trial learners that contributed to an iterative process of improvement and acted as a guide to decision-making. NMITE's thorough and robust approach to embedding ethics within and throughout its Master's in Integrated Engineering has the potential to enable engineers to promote social responsibility and sustainability, to fulfil their public duty, and to engage in lifelong learning and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents and analyses how the generic outcome "Ethical, environmental and professional responsibility" is achieved in the bachelor's degree in civil engineering at Universität Politècnica de Valencia (Spain). The analysis is based on the study of activities and evidences generated when assessing this outcome, interviews with responsible lecturers for courses developing this generic outcome and opinions from final year students. The aim of the study is to determine whether the activities carried out during the bachelor's degree ensure that students have been trained enough to achieve the two proficiency levels of this generic outcome. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations established to ensure that all graduated students achieve this essential learning outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the paradigm of teaching and learning has changed, with a plethora of research being conducted in this field, but all these changes and research have scarcely affected the lecturer training programmes. This paper presents a lecturer training programme implemented in a technical university and based on the competencies that lecturers should possess. To this end, we have conducted research to determine which competencies are essential and if our lecturers consider them important or are reluctant to acquire them. The programme is also designed to bring all the acquired techniques into the classroom and apply them to the student learning process. A further factor for the success of such training programmes is that lecturers should find them useful, not only for improved student performance, but also for their future professional careers, especially in an environment where promotion is dependent on papers published and grants obtained, and where education itself becomes a secondary objective. Our training programme started two years ago and since then has achieved all these goals, thereby creating a new network of lecturers committed to engineering education research and innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, initial training courses for lecturers are widespread in universities. However, there are not enough research papers that analyze their impact and effectiveness. This paper focuses on the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid's case. In order to assess if the teaching training received takes effect in the lecturers' daily work, the study has collected data about 198 participants that have finished the Initial Training tor University Teaching program. 115 of them answered a survey (adapted from Freixas et al.) analyzing the factors of their training transference. Participants acknowledged the learning value obtained during the program, indicating that they have implemented it in their own teaching practice. They perceive their students' interest, who encourage them to introduce the methodological innovations learnt during their training. On the other hand, they do not perceive support from their departments. They detect lack of support (within the degrees and departments) as well as the lack of provided resources as the main barriers. The weight of tradition on how lecturers face teaching is relevant, restricting the possibilities for changes. Results show very limited institutional recognition to the effort invested in their own training. Nevertheless, participants keep optimistic expectations about the positive assessment of the received training for their teaching career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The teaching of innovation to engineers is often fraught with challenges and misgivings, as the definition of innovation itself, often confused with invention and research and development, is still a subject of research in the fields of science, engineering and management. In this paper, we offer the results of a novel graduate-level engineering course that attempts to develop among its students the ability to identify, define and manage innovation within a project-based and multidisciplinary context, and in a manner that is stakeholder-centric. We present in this paper for the first time a Universal Innovation Framework that offers a practical and distinctive approach to the teaching and management of innovation that foregrounds societal impact as opposite to technical prowess. Preliminary results show a significant impact of the course on student understanding and perception of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a study in the framework of Building and Construction Engineering Degree. The aim of our proposal is to discuss if the academic activities comprising the Final Degree Project (FDP) are correctcd, balanced and adapted in order to maximize the acquisition of the competences identified by the professional sector through two rounds of quantitative surveys (data also presented in this paper). Due to the economic and construction crises and the decreasing number of students in this sector, it is essential to ensure that future professionals are trained in a specific way to meet the current needs of the sector. Based on our assumption, the data obtained in the surveys, and the analytic approach of the main academic indicators, we propose new relations and FDP evaluation methods that would align the student's curriculum with the current professional needs. The obtained results reveal the need of changes in the current FDP structure in order to give more importance to certain learning activities identified as essential at the professional level. With our proposal, we will improve the FDP evaluation, and the student competences acquisition, in order to adapt them to the professional needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design has been called one of the defining characteristics of engineering, and it has been long-argued that design is equally social and technical in practice. The field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) has a research tradition of exploring the interwoven social aspects of technical fields like engineering design. We borrow a concept from STS--the notion of intermediary objects -to better understand first-year engineering design teams and explain how prototypes mediate technical skill development and social relationships. An intermediary object is both a conceptual framework and an analytic tool that enables researchers and educators to identify critical aspects of design coordination. In this paper, we compare two differently organized sections of a first-year engineering design course as a way to highlight the importance of prototypes in mediating these technical and social relations. It is not until these two courses are compared side-by-side that we uncover the critical importance of prototypes as intermediary objects. Based on this comparative case analysis, we argue that prototypes are pivotal intermediary objects that aid in students' development of their engineering skills and pathways toward becoming an engineer. This paper contributes to the field of engineering education by connecting traditions from STS and exploring how the creation of prototypes impacts design education. In doing so, we provide some immediate recommendations for organizing engineering design courses, and we indicate future research on understanding the role of prototypes in design education and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capstone design courses often provide authentic learning opportunities and real-world responsibility at the conclusion of students' undergraduate engineering education, helping prepare them for their career and life trajectories after graduation. Cultivating the broader capstone design ecosystem can further enrich students' learning, expand student connections, and facilitate acquisition of the Engineer of 2020 attributes. This paper presents a framework and associated strategies for a capstone design ecosystem that extends across the capstone design course, across the engineering department, across the institution, and across the alumni community. The paper discusses implementation of the proposed ecosystem approach as a case study supplemented by student testimonials and survey results from students and alumni regarding impact. Capstone educators are encouraged to try these strategies, in part or in whole, within their own institutions so as to improve capstone design experiences and better prepare students for engineering in 2020 and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we discuss the result of piloting a methodology for Engineering Final Year Projects (FYP) assessment that takes into consideration professional skills acquisition. The FYP is structured around three milestones; skills are assigned to each milestone according to the tasks required in each phase, and a list of indicators have been designed for every phase. The criteria are specified in a rubric and are made available to students. The FYP implementation includes evaluation methods and a homogeneous assessment throughout the project development in order to provide students with valuable project implementation support, to facilitate the project organization, to improve the quality of projects and thereby to reduce the academic drop-out rate. The proposed methodology has been implemented and piloted at the Barcelona School of Informatics, and the conclusions can easily be generalized to any other Engineering degree. This paper presents the results of the FYP for 1,569 students. The average percentage of students finishing FYP in previous degrees was 65% on average, whereas in the case of the Bachelor Degree in Informatics the percentage rose to 90% with the methodology proposed in this paper. In addition, 95% of these students finished their FYP in less than one year, compared to only 65% who finished it in less than one year in previous Degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, China has called for an economic shift from the concept of "Made in China" to "Created in China", which has driven growing attention on how to foster creative engineers in China. This paper will provide a literature review and analysis aiming to answer two research questions: (1) how can we combine the concepts of creativity, engineering work, engineering education, and their interactions into one theoretical framework? And (2) according to the proposed framework, what are the potential strategies we can suggest to foster creative engineers in Chinese universities? Accordingly, this paper firstly discusses a three-dimensional framework based on an analysis from a literature review involving knowledge, behavior, and culture. Secondly, we suggest a series of potential pedagogical strategies aiming to foster creative Chinese engineers by: (1) taking a social constructivist approach to creative learning; (2) developing the laboratory a place of creative work; and (3) making the university campus a creative culture. Therefore, this paper contributes to bridging creativity, engineering education, and Chinese learning culture from a systematic perspective, which also has implications for other contexts around the world, both theoretically and practically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concept mapping is a powerful graphical technique for helping learners organize knowledge and visualize connections and relationships between relevant concepts. The present study is an investigation of student experiences with concept mapping in a foundational undergraduate engineering course titled Engineering Dynamics. A total of 165 undergraduate engineering students from two recent semesters participated in the present study. This paper provides representative examples of student-generated concept maps. Student comments collected at the end of each semester were analyzed using content analysis. Students provided positive feedback, for example, concept mapping helped students make connections between concepts; reviewed what students had learned; visualized, understood and organized concepts; saw the bigger picture of dynamics; and thought more clearly about concepts. Students also provided negative feedback, for example, concept mapping was busy work, did not help in understanding concepts, was a small percentage of credit of the final course grade, and students had other ways to learn concepts. The results reported in this paper are useful for engineering educators and researchers to develop a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of concept mapping in teaching and learning engineering courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In understanding undergraduate students' success in college, their choice of career path must be fully understood. Different paths are appropriate for different students, and even a student may not fully grasp what will work best for them. Understanding the mechanisms behind a successful choice in college major is important for several reasons. Retention is necessary for the continued health of engineering programs. One of the earliest steps in this career path is selecting a major. Research has been done investigating major selection across all majors, and even focusing on STEM careers. This research has frequently overlooked the broad variety present in engineering majors with very limited research conducted that distinguishes between one engineering major and another. This paper seeks to address this absence by surveying engineering students from several different majors at three different institutions. The d ata for this paper was gathered using surveys of first year engineers at three dissimilar institutions. The survey data examined were open-response questions. These questions asked students to describe how they viewed specific engineering career paths. It is the goal of analyzing these responses to gain better insight into the student perception of various engineering majors. The data was coded through an inductive coding process. This coding process resulted in nine unique codes. The codes were analyzed to allow broader trends to surface. The results of this analysis have shown that no t only do students in different engineering majors view these disciplines differently, but also that students at these different institutions view engineering differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial skills are fundamental to learning and developing expertise in engineering. This paper describes a new virtual and physical manipulatives (VPM) technology that this research team recently developed to enhance undergraduate engineering students' spatial skills. This technology consists of ten manipulatives spanning a variety of levels of geometrical complexity. Each manipulative is authentic due to its real-world engineering applications that were chosen to stimulate student interest iii engineering. A computer program was developed to connect virtual and physical manipulatives, allowing students to receive spatial training anytime, anywhere through the Internet. Quasi-experimental research, involving an intervention group (n = 37) and a control group (n = 34), was conducted. Each group completed a pre- and post-test using the same assessment instrument that measured students' spatial skills. Normality tests were conducted. The results show that the data involved in the present study did not have a normal distribution. Thus, nonparametric statistical analysis was performed, including descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, and Mann-Whitney U tests. The results show that the mean value of normalized learning gains is 41.2% for the intervention group, which is 33% higher than that for the control group (8.2%). A statistically significant difference exists between the intervention and control groups in terms of normalized learning gains (P < 0.01). The new VPM technology developed from the present study has a medium effect size (0.34) on improving students' spatial skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineering designers use computer-aided design (CAD) tools to generate complex digital representations of product concepts, an increasingly important step in the product development process. With the advent of cloud computing, CAD has seen a recent transformation towards increased collaboration capabilities. Cloud-CAD enables high levels of collaboration, version management, and the potential for easier iteration. This technological capability opens new ways of working with CAD, and engineering design research has made initial progress in understanding how designer behaviour and design output may be affected by the change. The existing experimental studies lay the groundwork for what we might expect to discover when we observe the use of cloud-CAD in a natural industrial setting. However, the educational implications of this new tool have not been fully explored. In particular, cloud-CAD is conducive to collaboration, an increasingly important yet challenging skill for students to develop. This paper presents the results of a series of exploratory interviews with engineering designers who have experience using modern cloud-CAD for their work. Using grounded theory, we identify consistent themes related to the way designers use these tools. From these findings, we generate both recommendations for the engineering education community and areas of future work. We argue that to maximize engineering trainees' potential. we must update our teaching to reflect the full affordances of the latest technologies. like CAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hackathons and hackathon-like events are gaining significant popularity as extra-curricular events among engineering undergraduate students. While not always explicitly promoted as such, these events provide participants with exposure to, and experience in design. Not surprisingly then, the hackathon format is slowly starting to be used as a novel design pedagogy in engineering, increasingly in curricular settings. In this paper we review several examples of hackathons as a teaching tool in engineering design education and provide a qualitative evaluation on their effectiveness. We further discuss the educational potential and limitations of hackathons and identify several related research directions in engineering design education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the implementation of a short duration, design-build-test project for first and second year students where teams were tasked with creating a functioning scanning tunneling microscope. The activity was scaffolded to ensure students could handle the demands of such a complex activity, while making sure that all students could experience some measure of success through specific tasks. This "Engineering Design Day" activity sought to provide experience in engineering design early in students' academic careers as a means to improve their design self-efficacy, show them connections with their classroom learning, and provide an authentic opportunity to work in teams. To evaluate the activity, the Engineering Design Self-Efficacy Instrument was given to students before taking part in the activity, and again at the end of the semester to assess whether there was any growth in student self-efficacy in conducting engineering design. The results showed a statistically significant increase iii student confidence and motivation in conducting design, and in their expectations of success at design, while there was no change in their anxiety regarding design. Through examining responses, students enjoyed the activity, they were able to practice working in a team and they were engaged with the design process throughout. These results show that design activities of shorter duration than a typical course project may lead to positive change in students engineering design self-efficacy beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online laboratories have changed the way of assessing students' laboratory work (lab work). Traditionally, students' lab work is mainly assessed by their reports after the experiments, with their attendance considered as well. However, whether the students are actually engaged in experiments and how they perform their assignments are difficult to be traced individually, especially for the case of a large number of students. In this paper, a multi-criteria method for assessing students' lab work based on online laboratory is proposed. Different from the hands-on labs, the online labs are able to trace and store more students' activities automatically. Apart from the quality of the lab reports, the experimental data collected from the database of the online laboratory as well as the snapshots of experimental steps are also considered. Therefore, judging criteria of lab work assessment can be extended to a higher standard, improving the assessment of student learning with much more objectivity based on lab work related information rather than lab reports only. The paper takes Wuhan University (WHU) as a case study, where students in engineering are using Networked Control System Laboratory (NCSLab) as a tool to conduct experiments for their laboratory sessions. Generalized from the practical teaching, the new assessment method is proved to be useful to judge students' performance during the online experimentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the expectation that engineering students ought to be prepared to adapt to a continuously evolving workplace environment to solve the complex problems of the future, engineering educators ought to also adapt and provide innovative learning environments that support not only technical agility, but also psychological agility to support the development of our students. Senior design and capstone courses serve as ideal contexts to support engineering students with this preparation. This paper describes how a senior design course was transformed not in content, but in the classroom values/culturc, reward structures, and the learning environment to encourage mastery learning though effort contingencies, grit and perseverance, collaboration, and empowerment. Designed as a pre-test post-test control group design, a set of psychological constructs (grit, sense of belonging, achievement goal orientation, self-efficacy, impulsivity) were administered to a treatment group and a control group to investigate effects of the educational innovations. Effect sizes reveal moderate to high practical significance comparing the treatment and control groups. Psychologically-grounded strategies and important implications for all engineering educators are detailed in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]