1. National efforts to better train and educate engineers for the engineering workplace in the 21st Century: to better prepare engineers to face multidisciplinary problems and product design in competitive industries and improve their skills in teamwork and communication.
2. Efforts to improve how engineers build robust understanding, design, and problem solving skills and how to improve the integration and application of their knowledge of math, science, physics and chemistry, to complex engineering problems and analyses.
3. Advances in instructional technology motivate the need to understand the role and impact of instructional technology on engineering instruction

Goals

Students taking the course will:

Gain an understanding of the current state of engineering education and educational reform efforts in engineering. Identify how instructors typically teach engineering problem solving and hard topics like learning open-ended design, engineering judgment, and teamwork skills.

Gain an understanding of current curricula in engineering that attempts to integrate understanding. Identify how current instructional media, instructional methods, teaching styles foster student understanding and problem solving.

Learn various theoretical perspectives used by engineering education researchers to better understand the nature of learning in engineering.

Conduct a small study in the context of an undergraduate engineering course. (In Spring 97, the emphasis will be on a freshman design course Ñ ME39C: Multidisciplinary Case Studies in Engineering Design).

Students taking the class for 3 units will also explore gender issues and issues associated with engineering-driven K-12 curricular reform.

Course Credit and Class Hours

Requirements

Readings. Students will be asked to take turns leading a discussion on the reading assignments.

Mini-teaching assignments. This course will be taught in conjunction with ME39C: Multimedia Case Studies in Engineering Design. The students of ME 39C will work in teams to create a case study of multidisciplinary engineering product design which will be communicated through the use of the World Wide Web. Embedded in ME39C are many of the education issues which will be covered in this discipline course. ME39C will serve as an experimental lab for ED290C. Students in ED290C are expected to be participant observers in ME39C and analyze the class relative to the ED290C class readings. In addition ED290C students are to identify a specific theme and/or issue of engineering education they want to focus on from the readings and co-instruct on this issue to the students of ME39C. The instruction can take the form of discussions, class activities, etc. which will provide relevant instruction and learning of the selected educational issue. For example, some issues could be: what are and how do we develop team work skills?, how do we best organize and utilize information obtained on the web?, application of dissection techniques with a case study courseware, etc.

Course project. The course project can include developing and testing innovative engineering curricula, designing a user study of engineering courseware, designing assessments, participating in quality review of engineering courseware or developing a descriptive case study documenting how students find solutions to a complex engineering problem. The projects should focus on the knowledge that would be considered Ôdiscipline based expertiseÕ. Other projects are possible with prior approval by the instructor. The course project can build on the mini-teaching assignment.

Card Keys

You are required to have a card key for the Macintosh Laboratory (MacLab) in 3116 Etcheverry Hall. The card keys will be available the second week of class from Joey Cruz in 2115 Etcheverry Hall for $25 ($15 is a refundable deposit, $10 set-up fee). The Card Key will allow you to access Etcheverry Hall Entry Doors, 3116 and 2111 Etcheverry Hall 24 hours a day. Take appropriate safety precautions when working in Etcheverry Hall between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m.

You are required to have an e-mail account and MacLab Server account both of which will be issued in the second week of class.

Grading

20% Class Participation

30% Mini Teaching Assignments

50% Course Project

Prof. Alice M. Agogino