Engineering education

About: Engineering education is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 24293 publications have been published within this topic receiving 234621 citations.

Engineers Learn “Soft Skills the Hard Way”: Planting a Seed of Leadership in Engineering Classes

Abstract: Today’s competitive global market and changing work environment demand that engineers possess “soft skills” in addition to technical skills, and they must be able to understand project goals and have the ability to accomplish them with available resources. Currently, engineers learn leadership and management skills while working—learning “soft skills the hard way.” In order to meet the demands of this changing world, engineering programs are challenged to come up with innovative ways to teach classes so that graduates are prepared to take on the challenges twenty-first century engineers face. This article provides a summary of engineering leadership and its relationship to engineering education, problem-based learning, and service-learning pedagogies as they relate to engineering education, and an example of implementing these pedagogies in an engineering course.

What has to be learnt for sustainability? A comparison of bachelor engineering education competences at three European universities

Abstract: In a period of harmonisation of the higher education system in Europe, a question is if also learning about sustainability at the universities is converging and what advantages this may have. This paper is an effort to present and advance the work on describing desired sustainability competences for engineering Bachelor graduates in three technical universities (Chalmers in Sweden, DUT in The Netherlands and UPC-Barcelona in Spain) using the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) descriptors. The paper also sheds light on whether there is conformity or not in desired sustainability competences (or in how sustainable development (SD) competences are handled) at the three universities. For universities outside the EHEA, this paper gives hints on the type of sustainability competences that will be required from their first-cycle graduates should they want to continue with second-cycle studies within the EHEA. The results show that the three universities follow a similar pattern in the classification of the competences (Knowledge and understanding, Skills and abilities, and Attitudes) and that there are minor divergences with respect to the list of competences and the levels of learning that Bachelor students should have when graduating. Definition of competences is an area that needs development, and this paper is part of a learning process for the three universities. This study shows that there is improvement potential for all three universities when it comes to being explicit and exact in the description of the desired SD learning.

The Revolt of the Engineers: Social Responsibility and the American Engineering Profession

Abstract: Awarded the Dexter Prize of the Society for the History of Technology."A thoroughgoing study of the engineering profession, emphasizing, and rightly so, its accommodation to business institutions. It is a book that is suggestive, challenging, and instructive."--Technology and Culture."First-rate."--American Historical Review.

Why They Leave: Understanding Student Attrition from Engineering Majors

Abstract: A large number of students leave engineering majors prior to graduation despite efforts to increase retention rates To improveretention rates in engineering programs, the reasons why students leave engineering must be determined In this paper, we reviewthe literature on attrition from engineering programs to identify the breadth of factors that contribute to students’ decisions toleave Fifty studies on student attrition from engineering programs were included in the primary part of this literature review Inthe second half of the work, an additional twenty-five studies that focused on methods of increasing student retention, wereexamined Six broad factors driving students to leave engineering were identified by examining the attrition literature: classroomand academic climate, grades and conceptual understanding, self-efficacy and self-confidence, high school preparation, interest andcareer goals, and race and gender Evidence from the retention studies suggests that successful efforts to increase retention act onone or more of these factors A clear gap in the literature is that of economics: the costs associated with losing students, and thecosts associated with implementing retention strategies, are virtually unmentioned