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We describe findings from a research partnership involving a global airline manufacturing company (The Boeing Company), and learning scientists and aeronautical engineers from the University of Washington. Our starting point for the partnership focused on an 8-hour introductory composites course that was designed for company employees. In phase one, learning scientists observed the company's course development activities and the course as taught by company experts. In phase two, we collaboratively designed and implemented a quasi-experimental study comparing two approaches to teaching. One involved lectures with PowerPoint slides. The second, a "challenge-based" learning approach, combined a set of composites-relevant challenges with individual, small-group, and large-group collaborative inquiry. Comparisons between these methods showed greater interaction among participants in the challenge-based group. In addition, the challenge-based group performed significantly better on posttest items requiring integration and synthesis of concepts. Increased interactivity in the challenge course provided opportunities for participants to articulate connections among concepts and may have contributed to the challenge participants' better synthesis of learned concepts. This work highlighted the benefits for learning scientists of collaborating with industry partners to explore learning in workplace settings, as these settings provide illuminating contrasts to the structures of teaching, learning, and assessment found in schools. (Contains 2 tables, 4 figures and 1 footnote.)

This article features a "Triad" partnership of a group of Snohomish County organizations representing education, government and industry. Recognizing the need for a training and workforce development effort to address the aerospace manufacturing employers' needs, Triad views themselves as the pivotal cornerstone for deployment of complex learning solutions to today's technical workforce. These Triad constituents are combining efforts to increase the availability of trained workers skilled in the latest technologies of advanced materials and computer aided design who can successfully apply those tools within high-performance, culturally diverse work team environments. The Triad partnership works to attract new and incumbent workers to the manufacturing field through targeted strategies offering an array of training options. These disciplines include advanced materials (e.g. composites), advanced manufacturing processes (e.g. lean manufacturing), the latest computer-aided design modeling techniques and enterprise teaming at a global level. The training content for these disciplines, and related delivery mechanisms, will provide a "best practice" for the advanced manufacturing industry. (Contains 4 figures.)

Engineers in industry are increasingly called on to work with teammates located in multiple geographic locations (virtual teams). Engineering education has an interest in helping students learn how to best collaborate in these types of situations. Four years of multi-university, multi-disciplinary engineering capstone projects are investigated and related literature is thoroughly examined to demonstrate which collaboration tools, at different stages of the product development process, meet the needs of virtual team members for communication tasks. Student engineering design teams with team members located at various locations should, during the early, middle, and late stages of the product development process, emphasize the use of collaboration tools that will best meet the needs of each stage. In the early stages, teams should emphasize rich communication mediums, such as in-person kick-off meetings. In the middle stages, tools which allow team members to perform their individual work while staying in-sync with their remotely located teammates, such as web conferencing and shared data editing tools, become important. In the late stages, as the team shifts from digital work to physical work, tools such as texting and in-person meetings become more necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the notion of big data and its potential to transform learning and educational ecosystems. He focuses on research and development efforts that can provide direct value to learners and discusses the one paradigm-shifting research issue. It cites the latency between collecting data from students and the ability to translate these data into actionable intelligence as a significant barrier to writing about the basic tenets of big data in engineering education.