Engineering education

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

Sustainable engineering education in the United States

Abstract: Sustainable engineering is a conceptual and practical challenge to all engineering disciplines. Although the profession has experience with environmental dimensions of engineering activities that in some cases are quite deep, extending the existing body of practice to sustainable engineering by including social and cultural domains is a significant and non-trivial challenge. Nonetheless, progress is being made, as a recent study undertaken by the Center for Sustainable Engineering in the United States demonstrates.

Engineering Curricula in Early Education: Describing the Landscape of Open Resources.

Abstract: National debate about K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has given rise to questions about appropriate materials for engineering education from prekindergarten through grade 12 Introducing engineering in the early years entails recognition of the need for teachers to understand its content and poses the challenge of preparing teachers to incorporate engineering education into their practice Teacher preparation has historically included seeking information in books, journals, and magazines, and the professional development offered by universities, school districts, and other educational entities continues to provide the majority of formal options accessed by teachers However, the advent of the Internet has expanded the ways that teachers undertake professional development and how they prepare to present new content An online search for open source preschool through grade 12 (P-12) engineering materials revealed a wide variety of Web sites and online documents that included curricula, lesson plans, and descriptions of activities Narrowing the search to the P-3 level revealed that the pedagogically and content-reliable sources available are limited in number and may be difficult to identify among the plethora of information This study begins to describe the current landscape of open-access Internet materials in the field of early STEM with emphasis on engineering The authors offer a guide-in-progress for selecting material for teachers and parents interested in introducing their young children to engineering The authors also address emerging pedagogical fidelity and engineering content issues

Active learning in engineering education. A review of fundamentals, best practices and experiences

Abstract: Universities and international organizations are adopting and promoting Active Learning strategies, respectively. Reasons are varied, including that this approach has proven to prepare competitive students who are skilled to address the main problems of society once they enter the labor market. Active Learning is a student-centered-learning approach that involves the learner directly in the process. It consists of letting students be the main actors of the learning process by performing meaningful activities and critically thinking about what they are doing. In this research, a review of Active Learning is performed. The focus is on presenting concepts and practices central to Active Learning that leading universities are deploying, universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, North Carolina State University and Aalborg University. Also, the authors describe in this paper a case from their experience with Active Learning techniques in specified areas of engineering education at Tecnologico de Monterrey. Results indicate that this approach supports the development of in-demand competencies such as Teamwork, Problem-solving and Analysis. In addition, students’ performance and retention rates are improved. In the engineering field, students can acquire and practice different technical skills under supervision. Active Learning is a very flexible approach that can be integrated in a gradual manner by any organization. The authors have constructed this research to be a useful guide to Active Learning practices. It can support engineering professors and people interested in knowing or adopting this approach for improving their students’ results.

Adapting Engineering Education to Industry 4.0 Vision

Abstract: Industry 4.0 is originally a future vision described in the high-tech strategy of the German government that is conceived upon information and communication technologies like Cyber-Physical Systems, Internet of Things, Physical Internet, and Internet of Services to achieve a high degree of flexibility in production (individualized mass production), higher productivity rates through real-time monitoring and diagnosis, and a lower wastage rate of material in production. An important part of the tasks in the preparation for Industry 4.0 is the adaption of the higher education to the requirements of this vision, in particular the engineering education. In this work, we introduce a road map consisting of three pillars describing the changes/enhancements to be conducted in the areas of curriculum development, lab concept, and student club activities. We also report our current application of this road map at the Turkish German University, Istanbul.