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This exploratory study compares how young people (ages 15-16) learn circuitry concepts and layout design principles important to electrical engineering using one of two educational circuitry toolkits: paper circuits and traditional solderless breadboards. Paper-based prototyping kits are representative of a trend that incorporates new materials and approaches to integrating arts into traditional STEM disciplines. Extending prior research on how non-traditional toolkits enhance learning of electrical engineering outcomes, including basic circuitry concepts (i.e., current flow, polarity, and connections), this study examines the material affordances and design choices of the kits that contribute to youth's understanding of more advanced circuitry layout design principles, including space allocation, placement of electronic components, and routing. Results indicate that paper circuits better afford the learning of layout design principles for printed circuit boards (PCBs) with large effect sizes. This study illuminates how the materials of educational toolkits uniquely solicit body- and material-syntonic patterns of activity, and thus differentially engage learners' powerful ideas around circuitry and design principles. This investigation encourages careful consideration of the material affordances of some toolkits over others for learning purposes.

This paper explores the transformative potential of Large Language Models Artificial Intelligence (LLM AI) in educational contexts, particularly focusing on the innovative practice of prompt engineering. Prompt engineering, characterized by three essential components of content knowledge, critical thinking, and iterative design, emerges as a key mechanism to access the transformative capabilities of LLM AI in the learning process. This paper charts the evolving trajectory of LLM AI as a tool poised to reshape educational practices and assumptions. In particular, this paper breaks down the potential of prompt engineering practices to enhance learning by fostering personalized, engaging, and equitable educational experiences. The paper underscores how the natural language capabilities of LLM AI tools can help students and educators transition from passive recipients to active co-creators of their learning experiences. Critical thinking skills, particularly information literacy, media literacy, and digital citizenship, are identified as crucial for using LLM AI tools effectively and responsibly. Looking forward, the paper advocates for continued research to validate the benefits of prompt engineering practices across diverse learning contexts while simultaneously promoting potential defects, biases, and ethical concerns related to LLM AI use in education. It calls upon practitioners to explore and train educational stakeholders in best practices around prompt engineering for LLM AI, fostering progress towards a more engaging and equitable educational future.

Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer-generated environment with noteworthy didactic applications in different educational levels and areas of knowledge. The study of the perceptions of the agents involved about the use of VR in lectures is a fruitful line of research because it has implications in terms of the measures to be taken to improve the training and competence of professors in its use. In this paper, a quantitative, descriptive, and correlational research is carried out on the assessments of a sample of 1638 Latin American university professors on both (i) the didactic use of VR and (ii) the influence of the professors' area of knowledge on these assessments. For this purpose, a validated questionnaire was used, the responses to which were subjected to statistical analysis. As a result, it was found that the ratings of VR are very high, but professors believe that their digital skills for its use are insufficient. In addition, the professors' area of knowledge significantly influences their ratings, being higher in the areas of knowledge in which professors have a better self-concept of their digital skills. Furthermore, gender gaps have also been identified in the answers given, which behave differently according to the area of knowledge. Finally, some conclusions, implications, and recommendations are drawn from the results obtained.

This paper reports on how the concept and technologies of GIS are included in the telecommunications engineering curriculum at the undergraduate level. The course of Fundamentals of GIS is described in detail. The usage of GIS software is necessary part of GIS technology education. In order to evaluate available GIS software, several criteria are defined. For this purpose, the authors used Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology according to the goal to find the most appropriate GIS software in education of telecommunications engineers. The following software tools are considered: GRASS, uDig, SAGA, Prune and OpenJUMP. Each proposed criterion was given relative importance through pair-wise comparison. Taking into account proposed criteria, uDig software tools showed the most promising results to be used for education of future telecommunications engineers.

Using administrative data from nearly 270,000 transfer-intending students who began at 70 community colleges across three state systems, this paper seeks to identify a set of metrics that will be useful to community college leaders as they formatively assess their colleges' efforts to improve STEM transfer outcomes. We find that a relatively simple set of STEM momentum metrics--notably Calculus and other non-math science and engineering coursework specified on statewide STEM transfer pathways, and to a lesser degree the pre-requisites to these types of courses--are reliable indicators of subsequent STEM transfer success across a wide-ranging set of state and institutional contexts, as well as across race/ethnicity and gender. However, community colleges have relatively low rates of completion of these key STEM courses, and disparities in completion of these courses by race/ethnicity and gender are common.

Superhero themes have been increasingly used in the teaching of a range of topics including business, humanities and science in recent years. Typically, characters from existing popular media are adopted for the teaching activities. On the other hand, customised characters that are developed from scratch allow the educator to have more control of the characters' features so that the learning objectives can be achieved more effectively. In this work, new fictitious characters have been created as cases for students to perform their engineering materials selection assignment. The motivation for using the superhero theme was to increase the students' excitement in the assignment. This paper shares the approach taken and the teaching experience after running the superhero theme with two cohorts of students.

In many mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculums, there are topics that are vital to the students' future careers in the manufacturing and design workforce that are not taught in-depth. As one of those topics, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, or GD&T, is vital to companies who develop and manufacture products because it allows one to communicate with other team members in order to produce and inspect manufactured parts. GD&T is filled with intricate concepts that are hard to grasp without repetition and practice. An active learning intervention was developed and deployed in a mechanical engineering undergraduate class at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The active learning interventions were developed to assist students in learning basic manual inspection methods and communicating through a part drawing. The goal was for the students to obtain a foundational, hands-on understanding of GD&T and implement their learnings onto a part drawing and inspection plan. The results of this intervention were based on a Knowledge Assessment, self-reported Self-Efficacy Survey, and an Exit Survey. These assessments revealed that the GD&T intervention had a significant impact on the students' knowledgebase of the topic and their ability to perform identification and inspection tasks used in the workforce. This paper discusses the intervention structure and its potential applications for engineering education in the workforce.

This study investigated the influence of CThink4CS2 Module on computational thinking (CT) skills of form four chemistry students. The CThink4CS[superscript]2 Module integrated CT with the Engineering Design Process (EDP) in chemistry class. This study utilized quantitative research methods and quasi-experimental design. Quantitative data were collected using the Computational Thinking Skill Test (CTST) which consisted of algorithmic reasoning, abstraction, decomposition, and pattern recognition constructs. A total of 73 students were in the treatment group (n=39) and control group (n=34). Experimental data were described by means of descriptive analysis and inferential analysis employing two-way MANOVA analysis. The results of the analysis indicated significant differences in CT skills between groups; students in the treatment group demonstrated better results compared to those in the control group. The paper provides insight into the integration of CT and EDP as effective pedagogical strategies for inculcating CT skills.

First-generation college students (FGCS) in engineering bring a wealth of knowledge to their academic and social experiences in higher education, in contrast to deficit-based narratives that students are underprepared. By listening to FGCS' own experiences navigating higher education and using information literacy in their project-based work, librarians and educators can better understand students' funds of knowledge, social capital, and identities, as well as the institutional barriers that must be removed. This paper shares interview findings with (n = 11) FGCS and suggests implications for professional practice that are relevant to information literacy for design, project-based, or practitioner focused disciplines.

It is generally perceived that a substantial number of engineering faculty are still unaware of alternative educational methods, and many who are aware of them choose not to incorporate them into their approach to teaching. There are several likely reasons for this inertia, aside from the inevitable human resistance to change. The primary focus of imparting information is restricted to fulfilling the course requirements and, the upcoming term end examination. It is imperative to adopt a change from teaching to learning paradigm engaging the students in Higher Order Thinking Skills. Knowledge and technological advancements are changing the role of engineering and engineering faculty in the society. Engineering Education reforms need to focus on inductive teaching and stimulated learning. Students should be taught critical thinking skills and creative thinking skills to keep pace with the rapidly changing engineering profession. This paper reports the study done to test and explore the faculty awareness of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the cognitive domain and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and to evaluate question papers set by engineering faculty with respect to HOTS as proposed by Bloom's Taxonomy. Various active learning strategies to enhance critical thinking skills and creative thinking skills of the students are recommended for use by the faculty in their interactions with the students.

Engineering outreach programs often portray outreach educators as role models for youth. It is widely believed that introducing youth, especially girls, to potential engineering role models will broaden participation in engineering majors and careers. Based on interviews with and surveys of fourth- and fifth-grade girls participating in an engineering outreach program, we question whether youth are looking for career role models, and we challenge the assumption that youth will take up an adult as a role model simply because the adult is presented as such. We question what role these ''models'' play in the minds and lives of youth and argue that it may differ from what we expect. To be clear, we are not arguing that engineering role models are not important or not influential. Rather, we think it is important to gain a better understanding of how youth, particularly girls, view these potential engineering role models, which will allow us to optimize the significance of these adults to the youth participating in engineering outreach. [Paper presented at the American Society of Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore, MD.]

Background: The experiences of students and professionals with disabilities are routinely excluded from scholarly and policy debates about equity in engineering. Emergent research suggests that engineering is particularly ableist, yet systematic accounts of the possible exclusion and devaluation faced by engineers with disabilities are largely missing. Purpose/Hypothesis: This paper asks, do engineers with disabilities have more negative interpersonal experiences in engineering classrooms and workplaces than those without disabilities? Utilizing a social relational model of disability, I hypothesize that engineers with physical disabilities and chronic and mental illness are more likely to experience exclusion and professional devaluation than their peers and, partly as a result, have lower persistence intentions. Data/Methods: The paper uses survey data from 1729 students enrolled in eight US engineering programs (American Society for Engineering Education Diversity and Inclusion Survey) and 8321 US-employed engineers (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Inclusion Study Survey). Analyses use regression, mediation, and intersectional approaches. Results: Consistent with expectations, engineering students and professionals with disabilities are less likely than their peers to experience "social inclusion" and "professional respect" at school and work. Students with disabilities are more likely to "intend to leave their engineering programs" and professionals with disabilities are more likely to have "thought about leaving their engineering jobs" compared to peers, and their greater risks of encountering interpersonal bias help account for these differences. Analyses also reveal intersectional variation by gender and race/ethnicity. Conclusion: These results suggest that engineering harbors widespread ableism across education and work. The findings demand more scholarly attention to the social, cultural, and physical barriers that block people with disabilities from full and equal participation in engineering.

Academic writing, particularly writing research articles, is an indispensable part of every major in higher education. Hyland (2004) argued that a valuable means of exploring academic writing, and comparing the rhetorical features and preferences of different discourse communities, is through the metadiscourse analysis of the text. The present study examines the differences in the use, type, and frequency of interactional metadiscourse markers in the introduction and conclusion sections of research papers across the two disciplines of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. To this end, 42 research articles (21 Mechanical and 21 Electrical Engineering) written by English native speakers were randomly selected from two major international journals. The current study made use of Hyland's (2005) model for analyzing the interactional metadiscourse markers used in the selected corpus, consisting of 41484 words. To analyze the data, the frequency, patterns of use, and type of interactional metadiscourse markers were elicited both through a manual corpus analysis and concordance package. Furthermore, to examine whether there is any significant difference in the use of metadiscourse markers in the introduction and conclusion sections of these papers, a Chi-square analysis was run. The results of the quantitative analysis revealed that although there were some minor differences in the frequency and type of these metadiscourse markers, there was no statistically significant difference across the disciplines, which can be attributed to the close nature of these fields. The findings of this study may render some pedagogical implications for ESP courses and especially writing research papers.

Although academic writing has been seen as an objective form of writing, recent studies have shown that it is a form of social interaction and not totally impersonal. In line with this view, Hyland (2002) stated that academic writing is also strongly linked with the manifestation of authorial presence across the text. Included in the interactional metadiscourse framework devised by Hyland (2005), self-mentions enable writers to express their beliefs, show attitudes, become a part of the community, and interact with their readers. Consequently, academic texts become more credible, accountable, and interactive by the manifestation of authorial presence through self-mentions. This paper analyses the use, distribution and discourse functions of self-mentions, the we-oriented authorial presence in particular. The corpus of the study consisted of 200 Results and Discussion sections from research articles (RAs) published in the field of engineering and technology, totaling approximately 270,000 words. Both manual and automatic analyses were employed to achieve more accurate results and the verbs most frequently collocated with an explicit authorial we presence were also analysed manually. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analyses clearly showed that the most frequent function used in Results and Discussion sections in the field was explaining a procedure with 723 instances (54.69%), and that the least frequent functions which writers employed were "describing themselves" and "making a claim/prediction," each with two instances (0.15%). The qualitative analysis showed that writers employed authorial presence to achieve different discourse functions (such as explaining a procedure, stating goals, describing themselves and making a claim or prediction), but preferred to avoid using more argumentative and interactional functions (describing themselves and making a claim or prediction), which can be strongly associated with the purpose of evading interaction with the readers.

In this paper, we report ethnicity trends in student participation and experience in high school science and engineering fair (SEFs). SEF participation showed significant ethnic diversity. For survey students, the approximate distribution was Asian-32%; Black-11%; Hispanic-20%; White-33%; Other-3%. Comparing the SEF level at which students competed from school to district to region to state levels, we observed that black students made up only 4.5% of the students who participated in SEF beyond the school level, whereas students from other ethnic groups were more equally represented at all levels. The lower percentage of Black students resulted from a combination of lower overall participation in SEF and lower percentage of those students who did participate to advance to SEFs beyond the school level. Students who advanced to SEFs beyond the school level frequently received help from scientists, coaching for the interview, and were not required to participate in SEF. Black students received the least help from scientists, were least likely to receive coaching for the interview, and were most likely to be required to participate in SEF. They also were most likely to receive no help from parents, teachers, or scientists. Asian and Hispanic students (63.8% and 56.8%) indicated a greater interest in careers in science and engineering (S&E) compared to Black and White students (43.7% & 50.7%). In addition to career interest, the most important experiences that correlated with students who indicated that SEF increased their interests in S&E were getting help from the internet, books and magazines; getting help fine tuning the report; and overcoming obstacles by doing more background research, making a timeline, and perseverance. Black students did not report a positive effect of any of these strategies but experienced time pressure as more of an obstacle than did other students. Our findings identify a wide range of student experiences associated with positive SEF outcomes that could be enhanced for all students but especially Black students. More involvement of scientists in helping students who participate in SEFs would be particularly valuable.

Developing a knowledge of design and construction technology and engineering is often overlooked in favour of 'digital' technology such as tablets and computers. By taking children outdoors into nature, removing tablets and computers as well as artificial and synthetic materials and replacing them with only what nature provides, children become attuned to developing STEM knowledge through play with natural materials. This knowledge often develops through teacher support and at times by default, as children experience the constantly changing landscape of the natural environment. The development of children's understandings of 'nature's' technology and engineering provides an opportunity for further investigation of nature-based early childhood education and care settings. Through research conducted at four Australian bush kindergartens, this paper presents data from photographs, interviews and observations undertaken of twelve teachers and over one hundred and twenty children. It responds to the research question, how do early years learners develop their understanding of technology and engineering by engaging in nature-based learning? The research was undertaken using ethnography, a useful method in nature settings as the approach enables a deep understanding of how children develop their understandings of applying technology and engineering over time. The data demonstrate the benefits preschool children can gain from learning and being 'in' and 'with' nature and the important role bush kinders play in supporting children's technological and engineering literacy. Findings reveal that through their participation in bush kinder, children can develop technological and engineering knowledge.

In this article, the authors explain how they leveraged the popularity of the "Star Wars" franchise to introduce a task steeped in popular culture as a fun way to engage their students in investigating complex mathematics that have real-life connections to careers in toy design and engineering design in general. The authors share various aspects of the multiday lesson to highlight the students' deep mathematical reasoning. The article starts with the introduction of the task, in which the authors challenged students to sketch a 2D prototype droid using paper and pencil, followed by creation of their 3D prototype using technology. The lesson includes the students computing the "cost" of the action figure they created.

The paper examines the attractiveness of graduates from Indian Polytechnics (PTs). The attractiveness is examined from the perspective of actors who have a demand for the graduates, namely companies and engineering colleges. To understand the reasons for their assessment of attractiveness, this study uses the concept of institutional logics (ILs) to unveil the inherent reasons behind the stakeholders' perception of attractiveness. To understand the stakeholders' ILs, interviews were undertaken in nine companies and 10 colleges in Mumbai and Delhi. The findings make clear that the companies' and colleges' assessments of the attractiveness of PT graduates are very different, reflecting their own ILs. Companies assess the attractiveness as limited due to the lack of employability of PT graduates. In contrast, colleges view graduates far more positively, as the weaknesses described by companies have less of an impact on them.

Using critical race methodology as a methodological framework, this paper explores how 16 Black men PhD scientists and engineers describe their undergraduate and graduate school choices and how race and racism influenced these processes. Our analysis yielded two descriptive themes focused on counterspaces for Black men in science and engineering (S&E). Implications for higher education researchers and practitioners, and S&E faculty interested in supporting the persistence of Black men pursuing and completing S&E postsecondary degrees are offered within. This paper contributes to the literature by investigating the connections between racism, counterspaces, and undergraduate and graduate choices of Black men pursuing S&E.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been particularly challenged by the COVID pandemic, the climate crisis, war and political tensions including the fuel price crisis. Strategic responses to crisis including cost-cutting as retrenchment in the short run, debt financing to preserve the status quo and exit. However, perhaps the most positive is to innovate for renewal. The paper considers how working with an approach to futures and foresight learning, three different SMEs during the COVID pandemic and beyond formed action learning groups and were able to find future opportunities from which innovation ideas for action in the present could be undertaken. The paper considers the meaning of innovation including what Revans saw as an 'Innovation Paradox' as a gap between invention and innovation. In SMEs, the importance of informal innovation and an innovation orientation are identified. The meaning futures and foresight learning is considered and the focus on the identification of new opportunities for products and services, delivered by a process of action learning. Findings from three SMEs are presented from meetings that took place during 2021 to 2022, when COVID restrictions were partly in place. They show how each programme begins with opportunity questions for the future which then lead to ideas after a consideration of trends and patterns. Further methods of futures thinking are presented which allow further ideas to be developed for innovation. In each case, ideas are selected for business planning after approval. Discussion of the findings considers the importance of futures and foresight learning combined with action learning for SMEs to become more strategic, future-oriented and creative in seeking opportunities for innovation.

Language planning and teaching practices have recently shifted towards designing syllabi and curricula based on learners needs. Therefore, this study aims to determine the language needs of engineers, which will serve as the foundation for developing a course plan that aims to develop the speaking and writing skills of future engineers. This paper is anchored on the concept of Needs Analysis (NA), which refers to the activities that are involved in collecting information that will serve as the basis for developing a curriculum that will meet the needs of a particular group of students. One hundred and two engineers answered a survey questionnaire, and six of them were interviewed. The survey revealed that the engineers' writing needs include writing emails, business letters, technical reports, memos, and project proposals, while their speaking needs include communicating with their colleagues and superiors face-to-face and through telephone, presenting research papers, and delivering lectures in seminars and training workshops. Further, based on the interview results, the engineers said that they need more training to enhance their skills in writing business letters and business proposals. They suggested simulation activities to improve their oral communication skills during training. The engineers emphasized that they witnessed one's professional success as being highly dependent on oral and written communication skills.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the constituent parts of learning in the manufacturing work context and understand why these parts are key in the learning of the employees. Design/methodology/approach: The data was collected from two sources: a literature review of the Information Systems literature to establish an initial picture of what learning in relation to digital technologies entails and in-depth interviews with engineers in the automotive industry whose knowledge-intensive work is exposed to substantial digital transformation. Findings: The authors first identified three constituent parts for learning--change, reflection and deliberation. When the authors cross-checked the initial findings through in-depth interviews with the engineers, it was found that these three themes trigger learning through three different mechanisms, that is, balancing newness, finding point of reference and organizing actively. Thus, the findings of this paper extend beyond a categorical identification of what constitutes learning to also illustrate why learning entails these constituent parts. Research limitations/implications: This paper implies that progressive learning requires active organizing of learning stages. The data is limited to the review of the Information Systems field. The authors have also only focused on the automotive industry as the representative sector in the manufacturing industry. Practical implications: Applying the model of progressive learning can be a primary way to actively plan and organize learning opportunities for employees. This is key for supporting learning culture in organizations that are exposed to continuous and disruptive changes. Social implications: A significant part of social sustainability is based on sustainable employability and feelings of contentment at work. This paper is an attempt to highlight how sustainable employability can be achieved by providing effective learning opportunities at work. Originality/value: The originality of this paper emerges from two sources. First, the authors conducted the literature review and in-depth interviews by devising innovative methods because of the challenges of identifying when (informal) learning has occurred at work. Second, the authors owe the in-depth interviews to the first author's extensive familiarity with the automotive industry and the knowledge and rapport acquired through her prior longitudinal research on the engineers' work. It was this background that allowed the authors to find out when these engineers were about to leave the firm because of discontent about their competence development.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold: to identify and map contemporary research on advanced technology implementations for problem-solving purposes in the manufacturing industry, and to further understand the organizational learning possibilities of advanced technology problem-solving in the manufacturing industry. Design/methodology/approach: This paper outlines a scoping review of contemporary research on the subject. The findings of the review are discussed in the light of theories of contradicting learning logics. Findings: This paper shows that contemporary research on the subject is characterized by technological determinism and strong solution-focus. A discussion on the manufacturing industries' contextual reasons for this in relation to contradicting learning logics shows that a Mode-2 problem-solving approach could facilitate further learning and expand knowledge on advanced technology problem-solving in the manufacturing industry. A research agenda with six propositions is provided. Originality/value: The introduction of advanced technology implies complex effects on the manufacturing industry in general, while previous research shows a clear focus on technological aspects of this transformation. This paper provides value by providing novel knowledge on the relationship between advanced technology, problem-solving and organizational learning in the manufacturing industry.

Sentiment analysis (SA) is widespread across all fields and has become one of the most active topics in education research, and there is a growing body of papers published. So far, however, there has been little discussion about comprehensive literature reviews in SA in education. Therefore, this study aims to review the high-qualified scientific literature of SA in education and reveals the future research prospects of SA based on the reviewed papers. After systematically searching five online bibliographic databases, 41 relevant articles were located and included in the study. Results show that most studies focus on higher education, and more studies adopt smaller datasets. SA is actively employed in the learning domain of engineering and technology, and teachers/educators are the primary stakeholders considered of studies. Further, utilizing hybrid approaches for SA research is predominant, more studies have refined the granularity of sentiment categories in education. Finally, four major SA research topics, including designing SA methods/systems, investigating learners' satisfaction/attitude/concerned topics, evaluating teachers' teaching performance as well as examining the relationship among sentiment, behavior, performance, and achievement, were identified and discussed deeply. Accordingly, several implications and research issues for SA in education research are provided.

The dominant public discourse regarding the recruitment and retention of teachers is one that is often framed in terms such as 'crisis'. Data from the Department for Education, the National Audit Office and bodies such as the Education and Training Foundation highlight challenges in filling vacancies across each part of the education sector. This is particularly acute in subject areas relating to Science, Engineering and Technology (SET). This paper analyses discourses relating to teacher training amongst tri-service personnel in the English context. Sources from publications such as FE Week and CTP (Career Transition Partnership) are addressed. In doing so, the paper compares educational and military sources in order to examine how the representation of a civilian teaching career varies between the two. This is about adding to the wider societal narrative regarding the ways in which military to civilian transition can be aided by the reframing of skills and experience acquired during military service.

Virtual Reality (VR) provides an immersive and engaging experience that facilitates the teaching and learning of abstract concepts. This paper describes the design and implementation of the VR 360° (VR360) component of the Virtual and Augmented Reality for Structures (VARS) mobile application. This study used VARS to teach basic structural systems to 109 project and facilities management undergraduates. Based on a questionnaire survey, most students agreed that VARS VR360 helped them achieve learning outcomes. Furthermore, the study found that physics background and cybersickness did not influence the perceived effectiveness of the application, but authentic context and immersiveness are important design elements. The contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) the development of a VR360 mobile application for teaching basic structural systems concepts to non-engineering students; (2) the demonstration of how VR360 can be an effective medium for improving the teaching of structural systems to non-engineering students; (3) the identification of critical design elements and factors that influence the perceived effectiveness of VR360 educational technology.

This paper presents an application of the Kalman filter in signal processing in instrumentation systems when the conditions of the environment generate a large amount of interference for the acquisition of signals from measurement systems. The unwanted interferences make important use of the instrumentation system resources and do not represent useful information under any aspect. A simulation is presented using the Matlab tool, which remarkably facilitates the information processing so that the corresponding actions are taken according to the information obtained, taking advantage of the current resources offered by the embedded systems and the required measurements are obtained with enough accuracy.

In this study, an instructional programme was designed and implemented with preschool teachers to teach them about integrated STEM education. This paper focused on how this instruction changed teachers' perceptions of engineering. The study aimed at exploring what the teachers learned about engineering, one of the STEM disciplines, throughout their exposure to this programme. Thirty teachers participated in the study. Data was gathered via a drawing test and participants' diaries. For the analysis of the drawing test, a numerical coding system developed by Thompson and Lyons (2008) was used. Thematic content analysis was used for the qualitative analysis of the drawing test and the analysis of participant diaries. It was indicated that professional development experience enhanced pre-school teachers' perceptions of engineering. It was found that this programme helped teachers realise their deficiencies in relation to their engineering perceptions of engineering and rectify them. It was found that this professional development experience had positive effects on learning content knowledge in a specific engineering discipline and supporting positive feelings towards engineering.

This paper reflects on the work-integrated learning (WIL) program in an undergraduate Construction Engineering and Management (CEM) department in Indonesia. Given the industrial revolution that has transformed the construction industry into Construction 4.0, concrete steps are needed to bridge the needs of industry for professional workers who are aware of Construction 4.0 concepts. This study aims to develop a WIL model adjusting to Construction 4.0 concepts. A case study of the internship experience that has been conducted for four consecutive years was used to develop the model. This observation was reinforced by a questionnaire survey aimed at students, workplace supervisors and lecturers to evaluate the effectiveness of the internship program in achieving the learning outcomes. The results of this analysis coupled with the findings from the integrative literature review were used to develop a Construction 4.0 WIL model.

Engineering has been considered as a useful context for successful implementation of STEM education. However, teachers have limited opportunities to develop a sound understanding about engineers and engineering, which is necessary for developing students' engineering practices and design skills. In this case study, the main purpose wasto examine 18 preservice science teachers' initial and final views about engineers and engineering in an undergraduate engineering-focused STEM course. Before and after an eight-week implementation including three engineering design activities, data were collected by the adapted version of Views on the Nature of Engineering Questionnaire and reflection papers. Findings revealed four categories: (1) views about engineers and engineering, (2) views about engineering design process, (3) views about the factors that affect engineering, and (4) views about science versus engineering. Based on the codes a scoring rubric was developed to categorize PSTs' views as uninformed, partially informed, and informed. Results showed that PSTs' views become more informed in each category. However, their views were still found as partially informed in some of the categories which shows the need for more emphasis on future research. The changes in their views were discussed with possible reasons and recommendations were provided for further studies.

In the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), problem-solving skills are part of science and engineering practices for K-12 students in the United States. Evaluating these skills for the youngest learners is difficult due to the lack of established measures. This paper reports on our process of developing an observation instrument to measure preschool children's learning and their application of problem-solving skills, namely, the steps of the engineering design process (EDP). The instrument, Engineering Preschool Children Observation Tool (EPCOT), was intended to evaluate the frequencies of problem-solving behaviors and use of EDP-related vocabulary by observing preschoolers engaged with the Seeds of STEM eight-unit curriculum in the classroom. In this paper, we describe the development process and revision of EPCOT, its current constructs, and present descriptive findings from using the tool in a pilot study with sixteen classrooms: eight intervention classrooms who received the entire curriculum, and eight comparison classrooms who received only the eighth unit of the curriculum (to enable comparison). We found that, out of 34 possible behaviors across the problem-solving process, children in all classrooms engaged in 31 unique problem-solving behaviors, suggesting that preschool children are indeed capable of meaningfully engaging in solving problems. We also observed a trend that children who were exposed to more of the curriculum (the intervention group) produced more novel vocabulary words than those in the comparison group, who tended to repeat vocabulary words. Since EPCOT was developed in alignment with state and national standards, we believe it has the potential to be used with other early childhood engineering/problem-solving curricula.

Mentzer and Becker (2011) and Becker and Mentzer (2012) demonstrated that high school students engaged in engineering design problems spent more time accessing information and spent more time designing when provided with Internet access. They studied high school students engaged in an engineering design challenge. The two studies attempted to apply the same research methodology as was used in previous work by Atman to facilitate comparison between high school students and experts. The 2011 study included Internet access, but the 2012 study did not. Their work showed that with Internet access, students spent an average of 137 minutes engaged in designing a playground and students allocated 47 minutes (35%) to information access. Without Internet access, similar students from the same schools on the same design problem spent an average of 92 minutes of which, 10 minutes (10%) was dedicated to information access. With limited computer access or limited time to enable students to access a computer in some classrooms, the research questions guiding this study are: (1) What information do high school students spend time accessing during an engineering design challenge? How much information comes from paper-based resources as compared to the Internet?; and (2) How much time do they spend accessing information? What is the balance of time spent accessing information from paper-based sources as compared to the Internet? Findings and implications of this research on student learning are discussed. Recommendations for future research are also offered. (Contains 5 tables and 1 figure.)