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This issue enters in our third volume. It contains nine papers that cover a wide range of topics of interest to the broader engineering education community. Each documents an “advance” that has been cleverly developed and evaluated. To entice you to delve into this issue, a bit about each of the papers.
First off, Matt Liberatore and two colleagues describe “You Tube Fridays” = a most creative way that students select videos, relative to the course – in this case, its thermodynamics – and then solve problems based on the videos. They have developed a database of videos and questions that can be used to reinforce such key concepts as energy balances and phase behavior.
Next, is a paper from Suk Meng “Aaron” Goh, a faculty member at Curtin University of Technology Sarawak (Malaysia). Malaysia is making a strong push to improve its engineering education and become a player on the world scene. Aaron’s paper uses a game – Star Power – to address a number of professional skills. Although typically used in sociology courses, Aaron documents how it can be adapted to engineering education, and the learning of these important skills.
Tablet PCs are an enticing engineering education tool. Catherine Amelink, Glenda Scales and Joe Tront all from Virginia Tech demonstrate how they can be used to impact student learning behavior. They document that the frequency of student use of Tablets is directly related to increased student engagement in their engineering coursework, making a case for more informed use of this and other electronic tools in the classroom.
A second paper on the use of technology in the engineering classroom is provided by Amy Orange and her colleagues. They show that the use of video problem solutions and course blogs are not only positively received by students, but also are quite beneficial to student learning.
A talented group of Chemical Engineers at Rowan University have developed a large problem set that introduces concepts of pharmaceutical engineering to students. This is of particular interest to me, since we have been approached by Pitt’s School of Pharmacy to explore offering an option in pharmaceutical engineering to our undergraduates. We will be reading this paper quite carefully; others, especially if there is a pharmacy school, might want to do the same.
The paper by Rupa Iyer and Melinda Wales is of interest for a number of reasons, one of which it comes from the Technology side of engineering. In particular, they describe the modular, interdisciplinary biotechnology laboratory curriculum that they have developed and which could fit into a variety of courses. They describe how they use a pesticide degrading bacterium as an anchor organism to build up a progressive series of exercises, focused on the biotechnology life cycle.
A team from four universities has developed active learning modules (ALM), in this case aimed at improving student learning in a number of difficult areas through the application of finite element analysis. Their ALMs cut across subject areas in Biomedical, Electrical and Mechanical Engineering. The modules have been found to be a successful step in improving learning of challenging engineering concepts.
Luciano Barroso and Jim Morgan present a creative way of introducing vibrations into a civil engineering dynamics course. By doing this, students are able to not only study, but see real applications of the course material, something we all strive to do. There course also focuses on developing a series of ABET skills – teamwork, problem solving, use of computer technology – as well as critical thinking, all of which could be transferred to other courses, besides structural engineering.
Last, but certainly not least, James Hanson and Patrick Brophy from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology describe the critical incident technique (CIT) – a cognitive method for obtaining valuable information from experienced professionals. They document how to conduct a successful CIT study.
Please look over these articles, and, as usual consider submitting a paper to either a regular issue or one of our special issues. Next up will be our special issue on P-12 education guest edited by Tamara Moore and Larry Richards.
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