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Higher education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines has been in a turbulent period for several decades. Pressures for reform include declining STEM student enrollments, high attrition rates from STEM curricula, and the rise of powerful alternative teaching strategies shown by cognitive science and educational research to promote learning and curricular retention better than traditional teaching methods do. In addition, research has shown that online and face-to-face courses on average produce comparable learning outcomes, and hybrid courses that combine the best features of both are more effective than either face-to-face or online courses by themselves. Motivated by these and other pressures, many faculty members have adopted the new teaching methods, and distance education had become widespread well before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic forced most educators at all levels to teach online. As might be expected, however, many faculty members and administrators have resisted change, arguing that the traditional approach has always worked well and needs no major revision. Before the pandemic, most STEM courses were still being taught using the traditional methods, and many course instructors are eager to return to them. These different responses to calls for education reform have led to heated debates among university instructors and administrators regarding how STEM curricula and courses should be designed, delivered, and assessed, and the role technology should play in all three functions. This essay outlines two competing paradigms on each of these issues--the traditional paradigm, which has long dominated STEM education, and the emerging paradigm, which has become increasingly common in the last 30 years but is still not predominant at most universities and colleges. The essay concludes with speculation about the eventual outcome of the competition.

A new chemical engineering faculty member can get a significant career head start by team-teaching the material and energy balance course with a mentor--an excellent instructor who has taught that course many times. The experience gives the mentee modeling and guided practice in research-validated teaching practices, and substantially reduces the burden in time and effort of his or her first new course preparation. This paper summarizes benefits and costs of this mentoring model and offers recommendations for making its implementation effective.

The article focuses on ineffective teaching and suggests teaching strategies based on cognitive science

The authors suggest that students fail tests due to ineffective studying strategies such as rereading texts, notes and old test problem solutions and/or studying mainly the night before the exam, and recommend a varied retrieval practice to improve students' test performance.

The article offers the teaching method which uses handouts with gaps when catching up the class schedule that have fall behind for a week and the three things to remember such as the lecturing on the material, the using of active learning to fill in the gap, and giving it as an homework exercise.

The article discusses the flipping approach in a classroom in which students who encounter new material outside class applies them later in class, as compared to the opposite order in the traditional method. Topics covered include the good and bad ways of using flipping in a classroom, and insights for consideration before flipping one's class. Also noted is the importance of keeping students actively engaged in the applied learning approach.

The article discusses several powerful teaching strategies for chemical engineering educators. Topics covered include asking students to brainstorm, troubleshoot in courses, and training students to critically think about possibilities that expert scientists and engineers think about. Also mentioned is urging students to send links to videos and pictures that show course-related concepts.

The article discusses a number of academic myths. A total of five myths are discussed including myths about evaluation of teaching, about curriculum design and pedagogy, and evaluation of students, about research and teaching, and about faculty recruitment. The importance for engineering professors to make assumptions is mentioned.

The article presents predictions made by the author about engineering education in 2024. Predictions discussed include increased likelihood of students working on assignments or projects in cluster groups or viewing a video or simulation or multimedia tutorial on tablet or laptop computer, migration of math primarily to graduate and undergraduate honors courses and its replacement with critical and creative thinking training, and more massive open online courses (MOOCs).