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This paper presents a comprehensive review of existing literature concerning the domains of accreditation and quality assurance in various sectors. Accreditation and quality assurance play vital roles in ensuring the credibility, transparency, and effectiveness of educational institutions, healthcare facilities, industries, and other domains. This paper synthesizes the findings of numerous studies, focusing on the conceptual frameworks, methodologies, and outcomes associated with accreditation and quality assurance processes. The review encompasses a wide range of perspectives, including historical context, best practices, challenges, and advancements in accreditation and quality assurance. Through a systematic analysis of these scholarly works, this paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of the evolving landscape of accreditation and quality assurance across diverse sectors and shed light on potential future research directions.

This paper addresses one of the major confusions in the study and practice of problem-based learning today, namely the use of the term "problem-based learning" to refer to both the small-group tutorial method pioneered by McMaster University and Maastricht University in medical education, and the problem-oriented project-work method developed in Denmark at the universities of Roskilde and Aalborg, which has gained prominence in recent years in the field of engineering education. This paper offers a comparison of the models using a thematic analysis of key elements of PBL, namely the nature of problems, the role of teachers, the nature of the educational process, and the underlying principles of the method, to conclude on a discussion of the causes of the confusion taking place today, and its potential ramifications for the study and practice of PBL in the future.

Langara College, as one of the leading undergraduate institutions in the province of British Columbia (BC), offers the "Applied Science for Engineering" two-year diploma program as well as the "Engineering Transfer" two-semester certificate program. Three project-based courses are offered as part of the two-year diploma program in Applied Science (APSC) and Computer Science (CPSC) departments: "APSC 1010--Engineering and Technology in Society", "CPSC 1090--Engineering Graphics", and "CPSC 1490--Applications of Microcontrollers", with CPSC 1090 and CPSC 1490 also part of the Engineering Transfer curriculum. Although the goals, scopes, objectives, and evaluation criteria of these courses are different, the main component of all three courses is a group-based technical project. Engineering students have access to Langara College's Makerspace for the hands-on component of their project. Makerspaces expand experiential learning opportunities and allows students to gain a skillset outside the traditional classroom. This paper begins with a detailed review of the maker movement and the impact of makerspace in higher education. Different forms of makerspace and the benefits of incorporating them on first-year students' creativity, sense of community, self-confidence, and entrepreneurial skills are discussed. This paper introduces Langara's engineering program and its project-based design courses. Langara's interdisciplinary makerspace, its goals and objectives, equipment, and some sample projects are introduced in this paper in detail. We then explain how the group-project component of APSC 1010, CPSC 1090, and CPSC 1490 are managed and how using makerspace improves students' performance in such projects. In conclusion, the paper describes the evaluation of learning outcomes via an anonymous student survey.

Power engineering certification in Canada comprises a hierarchical, graduated system available to both young and adult learners. This paper offers insight into the knowledge gap regarding factors influencing Canadian power engineers' decision to pursue advanced certification in the Provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, with implications for adult learning in the power engineering sector of Canada. Comprehension of factors that influence intentions for power engineering certification may illuminate barriers and enablers to adult learning and provide evidentiary knowledge to support a format that facilitates advancement of certification. The research methodology was quantitative correlational design in which linear and logistic regressions employing a modified Bonferroni equivalent alpha were utilised. An original survey was developed for the study and pilot tested for validity and reliability. The sample comprised 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Class power engineers in British Columbia and Alberta. The dependent variable (DV) was the power engineers' advancement intention. In the context of this paper, advancement intention is an influence leading to the inclination or reluctance to pursue promotion, succession, or advancement in employment. The independent variables (IVs) were time commitment, educational support, locus of control, time elapsed since previous certification, responsibility, and peer appraisal. Revealed in the results were positive, statistically significant relationships between the DV of advancement intention and three of the six IVs. Time commitment, responsibility, and elapsed time exert statistically significant effects on advancement intention (DV). The three remaining IVs that did not exhibit significant relationships with the DV were educational support, locus of control, and peer appraisal. This indicated that the IVs of educational support, locus of control, and peer appraisal did not significantly influence the DV when compared to the significant influences of time commitment, responsibility, and elapsed time on the DV. Comprehension of the influential factors regarding the intention of Canadian power engineers to pursue advanced certification may assist industry and academia with insight into the barriers and enablers to higher certification, and the correlation of decision factors with advancement intention.

Due to the efficiency, sustainability, and advances in firefighting technologies, the allowable height for wood buildings was increased from 4 to 6 storeys in 2015 and will be further increased to 12 storeys in the 2020 edition of the National Building Code of Canada, as a result of the advent and application of mass timber products. To match the development in the industry and the increasing need in the market for highly skilled timber engineers, structural timber design curricula at the university level must evolve to train the next generation of practitioners. At most Canadian universities, structural timber design courses are mainly provided in civil engineering departments. In this study, 31 accredited civil engineering programs in Canada were reviewed for structural wood design content at undergraduate and graduate levels based on two surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. In the 2018 survey, the percentage of structural timber design content was estimated and compared with other engineering materials (e.g., steel, concrete, and masonry), and a similar survey was repeated in 2020 to determine if any significant changes had occurred. In early 2021, two complementary questionnaires were sent to the instructors of timber-related courses across the country to collect quantitative information, including enrollment statistics, percentage dedicated to timber design in combined material courses, and potential topics deemed critical to support the design of modern timber structures. Based on the responses provided, and also on the availability of resources and the research ongoing, the content for five advanced-level courses is proposed to address the needs of the timber design community. The findings presented in this paper will assist the timber industry, government agencies, and educational institutions in effecting potential changes to university curricula to educate the next generation of timber design professionals who will possess the necessary skills and knowledge to meet the challenges in designing modern mass timber structures.

Student performance evaluations are a traditional method for assessing a student's skills during a work-integrated learning (WIL) experience. While these assessments provide students with feedback on the development of their skills, little documentation of student performance exists after the WIL experience. This paper explores the role of microcredentials in evidencing student competence in a particular skill through two studies conducted at the University of Waterloo. First, students and employers were surveyed to investigate their perceptions of microcredentials. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted with students who had the opportunity to earn a microcredential based on their performance in their co-operative education (co-op) work term and in the professional development courses that accompany their work term. Findings suggest that awareness of microcredentials remains limited. In terms of their value, there is evidence consistent with Bourdieu's theory of capital. Microcredentials appear to signal value to employers and students through the credential itself. However, aligning with human capital theory, microcredentials appear most valuable when they demonstrate both knowledge acquisition and competency. Finally, the value of obtaining a microcredential appears to motivate students to exert greater effort towards content mastery.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and operations research (OR) have long been intertwined because of their synergistic relationship. Given the increasing popularity of AI and machine learning in particular, we face growing demand for educational offerings in this area from our students. This paper describes two courses that introduce machine learning concepts to undergraduate, predominantly industrial engineering and operations research students. Instead of taking a methods-first approach, these courses use real-world applications to motivate, introduce, and explore these machine learning techniques and highlight meaningful overlap with operations research. Significant hands-on coding experience is used to build student proficiency with the techniques. Student feedback indicates that these courses have greatly increased student interest in machine learning and appreciation of the real-world impact that analytics can have and helped students develop practical skills that they can apply. We believe that similar application-driven courses that connect machine learning and operations research would be valuable additions to undergraduate OR curricula broadly.

This paper analyzes the curriculum of engineering leadership offerings in Canadian universities. We operationalize an adapted version of Lattuca and Stark's (2011) academic plan framework to analyze key documents of engineering leadership offerings embedded in the engineering curriculum in six different universities. In the process, we generate relevant categories for comparison that are specific to engineering leadership curricula, leading to a preliminary taxonomy for leadership education in a professional field. Using the process and taxonomy developed, findings show a range of purposes, content and sequencing, with a common core of instructional processes and resources. We also explore how accreditation, labour markets, internal resources and relationships shape curriculum decisions. This paper highlights changing trends in engineering education related to leadership skill development and provides insights for professional education more broadly on the influences and practical implementation of these changes.

Engineering education has traditionally focused on the development of technical skills and knowledge. Nowadays, the need for educating engineers in non-technical skills, such as reflective thinking, is being recognised internationally. This paper proposes that socio-cultural impacts of technology be studied together with the technology itself through the integration of social awareness modules into advanced technical courses, providing a venue for students to exercise their reflective thinking skills in the context of technologies that are of interest to them. The paper presents an exploratory study of the essays of senior year engineering students on the socio-cultural impacts of computer vision technologies. It provides insights on the themes that are of interest to the students and on the students' strengths and weaknesses relating to their reflective thinking abilities. Similar modules would apply well to other advanced courses in the engineering curriculum, to help contextualise technology and enhance the reflective abilities of engineering graduates.

The incorporation of digital learning and teaching tools has been recognized as presenting an opportunity to maximize access, quality, and inclusion, especially when it comes to international education. Unanticipated events, such as the COVID 19 pandemic, can result in profound disruptions to teaching and learning, and the use of these tools can provide mitigation to these disruptions. This paper reports on the design and study of an InVEST global virtual team (GVT) program that incorporates global competency training modules (GCMs) and leverages digitization to engage engineering students across multiple locations deeply in global collaborative work -- a skillset that is critical for 21st-century engineers. Study results showed the GCMs were effective in helping students develop the global competencies necessary for international virtual collaboration. We also highlight challenges and provide recommendations for practice.

One of the key steps when developing pathways between baccalaureate and diploma programs is comparing learning goals between the programs. This paper presents application of a seven-dimensional framework (cognitive process, transferability, depth of analysis, interdependence, question novelty, scaffolding and communication) to analyze the implicit learning outcomes in 11 of Ontario's post-secondary programs in engineering and engineering technology. We collected 319 calculus questions (179 from six technology programs and 140 from five engineering programs) and 205 physics questions (122 from two technology programs and 83 from four engineering programs). Content specialists assessed each question in the first four of these dimensions, and instructors from the participating institutions scored random questions from their own disclosed questions on the remaining dimensions. Analysis of scaffolding in physics questions showed that engineering questions mostly required the students to choose from or synthetize a range of approaches while technology questions often required the students to use a specific approach. The study found that technology programs focused more on discipline-specific physics concepts and their applications than physics courses in engineering. Calculus questions from both sectors mostly required application of mathematical concepts in non-contextualized scenarios or a general engineering context, with no significant difference in question novelty, scaffolding and level of communication. From a credits perspective, these results suggest that direct credit for bidirectional transfers may be warranted, and that small bridging learning modules targeting missing outcomes may be able to support efficient transfer pathways.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a consistent and systematic integration framework of sustainable development (SD) in a civil engineering (CE) curriculum, given the connection between the two. Curriculum integration is a challenging project and requires the development of certain protocols to ensure success. Design/methodology/approach: This paper thus proposes a framework for the systematic integration of SD through the lenses of life cycle approach and associated tools to attain effective curriculum integration. The proposed framework suggests the following five steps: mapping the curriculum, setting learning targets, developing an action plan for the assessed program, implementing the action plan and assessing the final performance. Findings: This framework was applied to the CE curriculum at Sherbrooke University. To assess its success, a student satisfaction survey was conducted, and teachers' feedback was obtained; the results showed 85 per cent positive responses. The authors show how this study allowed the CE curriculum to be properly updated and brought in line with today's engineering profession requirements with regard to SD. Originality/value: The integration focuses on the application of life cycle approaches and tools such as environmental life cycle assessment and life cycle costing on CE content. Additionally, the presented approach can be easily adapted to other engineering curriculums and, to a certain extent, to other non-engineering curriculums.

This paper investigates the impact of entrepreneurship on cooperative job creation in a large North American post-secondary institution. The data-driven analysis is enabled by two unique datasets: a list of companies started by the institution's engineering students and faculty, and a database of the institution's cooperative education (co-op) placements. Over the past 10 years, companies started by the institution's engineers have created at least 9,000 co-op placements for the institution's students, paying a total of at least $115 million in salaries (Canadian dollar; CAD$). Furthermore, students working for these companies were more likely to receive high performance evaluations than their peers and were more likely to be satisfied with the cooperative experience. Finally, students who went on to start companies did not always take entrepreneurship courses or excel academically, but they were rated highly by their workplace supervisors.

Background: This study addresses gender differences in early career experiences in engineering by examining entry-level jobs of Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) graduates in Canada. Purpose/Hypotheses: The study explored how gender shapes entry into this male-dominated occupation in the context of the contemporary knowledge economy. I tested four hypotheses: (H1) There are no gender differences in job search duration and pay for BEng graduates in Canada; (H2) women experience longer job search durations than men and less pay than men; (H3) women's job searches are shorter with less pay than men; (H4) women's job searches are shorter and with the same pay as men's. Design/Method: The study uses data from Statistics Canada National Graduates Survey (2013), feminist theories, and the Cox proportional hazard (CPH) model. Results: I found that in the context of the knowledge economy, gender is a significant predictor of labor market outcomes during early career stages for Canadian BEng graduates. Hypotheses H1 and H2 were not supported. I identified partial support for Hypothesis H3 and complete support for H4. In particular, I found that women were hired sooner than men for their first engineering jobs and were paid the same salary as their male counterparts. Conclusions: Based on this study's results, I argue that early career experiences in engineering occupation continue to be defined by the gender of graduates. This paper offers several potential research areas in the field of engineering education.

Global software engineering education (GSEE) is aimed at providing software engineering (SE) students with knowledge, skills, and understanding of working in globally distributed arrangements so they can be prepared for the global SE (GSE) paradigm. It is important to understand the challenges involved in GSEE for improving the quality and experience of educators and students. This paper reports the findings of an empirical study on the socio-cultural aspects of GSEE. A case study was conducted involving 14 participants from ten different universities in eight countries. The data was analyzed using grounded theory's open coding procedure. The key contributions of this paper are the identification and description of seven dimensions of socio-cultural distance that caused several significant challenges in the courses: 1) language differences; 2) concept of time; 3) attitude toward grades; 4) assumptions about national culture; 5) differences in autonomy; 6) influence of the course lecturer; and 7) work habits. Recommendations from this paper that are expected to benefit GSEE educators and students include: cross-cultural orientation of students prior to the course; use of various strategies to support better comprehension of different English accents (e.g., speaking slowly, replaying recorded video messages, and text chatting); and educators familiarizing themselves and their students with the relevant GSE and GSEE literature.

This paper describes a case study of two pure mathematicians who flipped their lecture to teach matrix determinants in two large mathematics service courses (one at Stage I and the other at Stage II). The purpose of the study was to transform the passive lecture into an active learning opportunity and to introduce valuable mathematical skills, such as debate, argument and disagreement. The students were told in advance to use the online material to prepare, which had a short handout on matrix determinants posted, as the lesson would be interactive and would rely on them having studied this. At the beginning of the lesson, the two mathematicians worked together to model the skill of professional disagreement, one arguing for the cofactor expansion method and the other for the row reduction method. After voting for their preferred method, the students worked in small groups on examples to defend their choice. Each group elected a spokesperson and a political style debate followed as the students argued the pros and cons of each technique. Although one lecture does not establish whether the flipped lecture model is preferable for student instruction, the paper presents a case study for pursuing this approach and for further research on incorporating this style of teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects.

In this paper, we take a new look at the problem of analyzing course evaluations. We examine ten years of undergraduate course evaluations from a large Engineering faculty. To the best of our knowledge, our data set is an order of magnitude larger than those used by previous work on this topic, at over 250,000 student evaluations of over 5,000 courses taught by over 2,000 distinct instructors. We build linear regression models to study the factors affecting course and instructor appraisals, and we perform a novel information-theoretic study to determine when some classmates rate a course and/or its instructor highly but others poorly. In addition to confirming the results of previous regression studies, we report a number of new observations that can help improve teaching and course quality.

New institutionalism predicts a global convergence in how higher education is organized. This convergence might be expected to intensify in professional education given accreditation requirements of professional bodies. Engineering presents an opportunity to study how international mobility agreements facilitate the development and normative diffusion of global norms in accreditation. This paper investigates how changing logics of accreditation influence the academic organization of engineering schools in Canada. Using three case studies of Canadian universities, we show how regulative and normative institutional pressures influence decisions by engineering schools to take visible action to demonstrate their conformity to global norms, while still pursuing local missions. Our findings contribute to understanding the complex mediation processes between professions and universities, and they represent a critique to dominant rationalist perspectives on quality assurance mechanisms in higher education.

This paper draws draw on conceptualisations of language as heteroglossic to examine whether and how multilingual practices and plurilingual pedagogies are enacted as instructional strategies in two multilingual English-medium universities in western Canada. Multilingual educational contexts have the potential to comprise 'translanguaging spaces' [Li, W. (2018). Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. "Applied Linguistics," 39(1), 9-30. doi:10.1093/applin/amx039], wherein educators and students mobilise a range of semiotic resources for teaching and learning purposes. From a monolingual paradigm, such practice is often seen as interference or deficit; however, from a multilingual paradigm, this practice is seen as legitimate and unrestricted, with students free to use their linguistic resources as they wish to their own benefit. To conceptualise and analyse engagement with multilingual practice, we draw on Cenoz and Gorter's [(2017). Minority languages and sustainable translanguaging: Threat or opportunity? "Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development," 38(10), 901-912. doi:10.1080/01434632.2017.1284855] distinction between 'spontaneous' and 'intentional' translanguaging. To assist faculty to observe, act and reflect on implementation of plurilingual pedagogies, we propose a three-dimensional matrix comprising axes of (1) faculty- and student-initiated; (2) planned and spontaneous engagements with plurilingualism; and (3) plurilingualism as either a scaffold or a resource for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

This paper reports on the analysis of three years research of undergraduate cooperative work term postings and employer and employee evaluations. The objective of the analysis was to determine the factors affecting student and employer success and satisfaction with the work-integrated learning experience. It was found that students performed better and found co-op placements with an increasing emphasis on leadership in their senior years; however, students rated their first employer the highest. Furthermore, senior students were more successful than junior students in work placements abroad, and extended work terms at the same employer did not increase student satisfaction.

Contribution: A semester-long, open-ended design project was implemented to promote intellectual development of first-year students while reinforcing event-driven/procedural programming principles. This paper describes this approach, and an evaluation strategy using Perry's model for intellectual development. The results show that students can reach the relativism stage of Perry's model in their first year of studies. Background: Students must move beyond a dualistic worldview to be engineers. Felder and Brent provided a list of recommendations to promote this type of intellectual development in students; active learning strategies strongly align with these recommendations. While active learning is common in programming courses (sometimes taking the form of project-based learning), they are typically tightly controlled by the instructor, and limited in scope (both in time and complexity), potentially reducing their impact on students. Intended Outcomes: This course and term-long project provided students a supportive environment in which to develop their decision-making skills, and promoted their intellectual development through Perry's stages related to software design. Application Design: Aligned with Felder and Brent's recommendations and Kuh's High Impact Practices, a course was built to: 1) teach students procedural programming, with 2) a focus on software design and open-ended problem solving, while maintaining 3) a supportive environment for skill acquisition. Findings: A mixed methods study showed the majority of students align themselves with the relativism stage of intellectual development at the end of the course. This study also illuminated the decision-making processes of teams of students in a first-year software design course.

A summer academy is held for grade 9-12 high school students at the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, every year. The academy, dubbed the Da Vinci Engineering Enrichment Program (DEEP), is a diverse program that aims to attract domestic and international high school students to engineering and sciences (and possibly recruit them). DEEP also provides them with the opportunity to experience the university setting. This paper discusses the organization of DEEP and presents the details of a DEEP course developed to introduce students to electrical engineering. This course is designed for junior (grades 9 and 10) students and includes lectures, hands-on activities (both in a team and individually), and a field trip. The survey results, collected as both formative and summative feedback, indicate the success of the course. This paper also provides recommendations for future offerings of the course. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures and 1 footnote.)

At the tertiary level today, courses on design thinking can be found in diverse programs in and beyond the realm of traditional design disciplines. Across Canada, design thinking courses feature in communication, culture and information technology, and business and engineering. This paper reports findings from a study that investigated the following question: What is design thinking and how is it being taught? The study surveyed different approaches adopted in five post-secondary programs. Specifically, it examined course emphases, class structures, assignments and other components, in the hope of drawing a matrix from which to analyze their strengths and weaknesses and to examine what they have in common. (Contains 3 endnotes and 2 tables.)

Our full-year capstone design course, "Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Design Methodology and Application," focuses on both design methodology and design application. We redesigned the course to more effectively prepare students for the "application" aspect of design. The approach was essentially to implement a short inquiry-based learning exercise that was augmented by web-based teaching modules. This blended learning approach gave the students an immediate sense of team dynamics and project management skills necessary to complete this short exercise (and their year-long project). This paper discusses the design, testing, application and results of this two week design project and focuses specifically on mindmapping freeware. There will also be a discussion of how this project will be made accessible via an e-learning engineering design portal, which houses many projects such as the one described above. [The authors have included a bibliography.]

This paper discusses the use and impact of formative feedback and scaffolding to develop outcomes for complex problem solving in a required first-year course in engineering design and practice at a medium-sized research-intensive Canadian university. In 2010, the course began to use team-based, complex, open-ended contextualised problems to develop problem solving, communications, teamwork, modelling, and professional skills. Since then, formative feedback has been incorporated into: task and process-level feedback on scaffolded tasks in-class, formative assignments, and post-assignment review. Development in complex problem solving and modelling has been assessed through analysis of responses from student surveys, direct criterion-referenced assessment of course outcomes from 2013 to 2015, and an external longitudinal study. The findings suggest that students are improving in outcomes related to complex problem solving over the duration of the course. Most notably, the addition of new feedback and scaffolding coincided with improved student performance.

Thermodynamics is a fundamental foundation of all engineering disciplines. A vast majority of engineering undergraduate programmes contain one or more courses on thermodynamics, and many engineers use thermodynamics every day to analyse or design energy systems. However, there is extensive anecdotal evidence as well as a wide range of published literature indicating that students often struggle to understand thermodynamic principles. In an effort to understand students' attitudes and perception of thermodynamics, including their expectations, experience and frustrations, an investigation was conducted. Following a review of the literature on the teaching and learning of thermodynamics in engineering, a survey questionnaire was developed and administered to close to a 1000 students in 17 thermodynamics classes at 13 universities in 7 countries. Survey results were analysed using statistical methods. This paper presents the findings of this investigation.

Globalisation has inspired a wide assortment of curricular initiatives within engineering education in the USA and Europe. This interest could be categorised in multiple directions--international exposure, service learning, or critical understanding and praxis. In Canada, however, there has been far less consideration for integrating globalisation within the engineering curriculum. The recent episode of reform initiated by the Canadian Board of Engineering Accreditation could usher in changes on this front. Situating the development of a course titled "Development and Global Engineering" within these broader conceptual and organisational impulses, this paper will illuminate a pathway towards understanding globalisation, especially within the Global South, through a comprehension of complexity and informality.

The phenomenon of women's underrepresentation in engineering is well known. However, the slow progress in achieving better gender equality here compared with other domains has accentuated the "numbers" issue, while the quality aspects have been largely ignored. This study aims to shed light on both these aspects via the lens of mentors, who are at the coalface of guiding female engineers through their education and subsequent careers. Based on data collected from 25 mentors (8 men and 17 women from 8 countries), the paper explores their experiences of being mentors, as well as their views on recommended actions for nurturing female engineers. The findings reveal that the primary motivation for becoming a mentor was personal for men and women. Many mentors from countries with relatively lower female labour participation rates perceive their roles as guarantors of their mentees' successful future career paths, and a similar trend can be found in mentors in academia. The study underscores the need for invigorating mentors' roles in order to secure a more equitable future for engineering education.

This paper explores Canadian engineering employers' perceptions of and experiences with internationally educated engineers (recent immigrants to Canada) employed in their organisations for varying lengths of time. Qualitative data were collected from employers using focus group methodology. Findings reflected employers' observations of culturally different behaviours and characteristics in their internationally educated employees, employers' reactions to cultural differences ranging from negative attributions to tolerance, and the implementation of largely "ad hoc" intra-organisational strategies for managing cultural differences in employer--employee relationships. Findings exposed the lack of corporate intercultural competency in the Canadian engineering profession. Equity and gatekeeping implications are discussed.

This article looks at a series of university linkages between Canadian and Chinese universities that were supported by the Canadian International Development Agency as a result of a development agreement signed in 1983 between the two governments. It first reviews relevant theoretical literature on higher education in a global context, and discusses the methodology adopted for the study. Then it provides an overview of a major program of collaboration in management education between 1983 and 1996, presenting views of leaders and participants on both sides. The next section overviews parallel linkages in the areas of education, engineering, agriculture, and medicine over the period from 1988 to 2001, and draws on the literature around university partnerships to identify factors that led, in some cases, to long-term sustainable relationships, but not in all. The final section of the paper reviews two major culminating linkages in environment and law, and suggests that these may have significant lessons for current and future cooperation between Chinese and Canadian universities in a new era of global geo-politics.

This paper presents results of a study conducted with undergraduate students involved in either problem- or project-based curricula (Medicine and Engineering, respectively) at the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. The objective of the present research was to measure the impact of these innovative curricula on students' engagement and persistence in higher education. Our research question was: What determinants better predict students' engagement and persistence in innovative curricula such as PBL? Nine variables were examined as potential predictors of both factors (engagement and persistence). Results showed a variation in variables predicting engagement and persistence, with the most significant predictor being stress related.

If we aim to enhance the interest of students in engineering and therefore produce the best engineers, it is essential to strengthen the pipeline to high school education. This paper discusses several outreach activities undertaken by the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa (UO), Ottawa, ON, Canada, to help the transition between high school and engineering education and to make students aware of the engineering profession. At the heart of these activities is mechatronics education, which demands an interdisciplinary approach, connects to fundamental math and science concepts, and promotes collaborative project-based learning (PBL). Connected to this focus, a multifaceted program of outreach activities has been initiated. The program includes creation of design-simulate-and-build projects by engineering and high school students, as well as an interactive presentation program whereby engineering students connect with high school students through the sharing of projects that they create in their engineering courses. The survey results indicate that for the high school students, these programs promote students' awareness of engineering and how the mathematics and science they take in school connects to engineering concepts. For the engineering students, they are provided with a meaningful context within which to share their projects and explain their own understanding of engineering principles. (Contains 4 tables.)

Educational institutions pay careful attention to the design of program curricula, which represent a framework to meet institutional goals and missions. Of course, the success of any institution depends highly on the quality of its program curriculum. The development of such a curriculum and, more importantly, the evaluation of its quality are complex and time-consuming processes. This traditional approach requires many cumbersome manual iterations, making it a long and error-prone process. To overcome these problems, this paper proposes a new curriculum support engine as an alternative approach. The proposed curriculum support engine is a Web-based application that helps in designing any program curriculum in real time. The engine incorporates several important features, allowing the verification of the proposed curriculum coherence and the generation of statistics necessary for academic and accreditation purposes. Useful viewing and editing tools are also provided. The proposed curriculum support engine is flexible and allows additional criteria that the curriculum designer can specify to be incorporated. In particular, the engine covers the Accreditation of Canadian Engineering Programs (CEAB), the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), and the Commission of Academic Accreditation of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of UAE (CAA-UAE). (Contains 10 figures.)

The nuclear engineer emerged as a new form of recognised technical professional between 1940 and the early 1960s as nuclear fission, the chain reaction and their applications were explored. The institutionalization of nuclear engineering--channelled into new national laboratories and corporate design offices during the decade after the war, and hurried into academic venues thereafter--proved unusually dependent on government definition and support. This paper contrasts the distinct histories of the new discipline in the USA and UK (and, more briefly, Canada). In the segregated and influential environments of institutional laboratories and factories, historical actors such as physicist Walter Zinn in the USA and industrial chemist Christopher Hinton in the UK proved influential in shaping the roles and perceptions of nuclear specialists. More broadly, I argue that the State-managed implantation of the new subject within further and higher education curricula was shaped strongly by distinct political and economic contexts in which secrecy, postwar prestige and differing industrial cultures were decisive factors.

Chemical process simulation is one of the most fundamental skills that is expected from chemical engineers, yet relatively few graduates have the opportunity to learn, in depth, how a process simulator works, from programming the unit operations to the sequencing. The University of Calgary offers a "hands-on" postgraduate course in Chemical Engineering that gives students an opportunity to learn about how a simulator works, by building their own, fully functioning process simulator. This paper describes the organisation of the course, construction of a chemical process simulator using VBA, as built into Microsoft [R] Excel as the programming platform, the assessment of student progress and finally, and it evaluates the course format from both the instructor and the student point of view.

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In this rapidly changing age, with virtually all information available on the Internet including courses, students may not find any reason to physically attend the lectures. In spite of the many benefits the online lectures and materials bring to teaching, this drift from the traditional (norm) face-to-face lectures is also creating further barriers, such as difficulty in communicating and building personal relationships, between students and instructor. In this paper we carry out a study that presents and analyzes factors that motivate students to attend a (1) face-to-face instruction in-class versus an (2) online class. This study is based on an anonymous and voluntary survey that was conducted in the School of Engineering at University of Victoria, BC, Canada. This paper presents and shares the detailed results and analysis of this survey that also includes some interesting and useful comments from the students. Based on the results, analysis and comments the paper suggests methodologies of how to improve face-to-face in-class instructions to make them more relevant to the current global information age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]