Planning, delivery and evaluation of information literacy training for engineering and technology students

Information literacy has become an important skill for undergraduate students due to societal changes that have seen information become a valuable commodity, the need for graduates to become lifelong learners, and the recognition that information literacy is an underpinning generic skill for effective learning in higher education. This paper describes a sequence of activities and technologies designed to help students learn and practice information literacy skills. These activities have been purposefully designed and integrated into a first-year engineering and technology study unit as a core syllabus element. A formal evaluation of aspects of these activities was planned and undertaken in semester one 2003.

Information literacy for a sustainable career in engineering and technology

Information literacy has become an important skill for undergraduate students due to societal changes that have seen information become a valuable commodity, the need for graduates to become lifelong learners to remain effective across their working lives, and the recognition by many stakeholders that information literacy is an underpinning generic skill for effective learning in higher education. Important elements in the design and delivery of information literacy training include the collaborative process between library and academic staff, the need to link generic information literacy skills into the specific discipline context of the students, and catering for a wide diversity in the student body including off-campus students. This paper describes a sequence of activities designed to help students learn and practice information literacy skills that have been purposefully designed and integrated into a first-year engineering and technology study unit as a core element of the unit syllabus.

Conceptions of teaching with integrity online in higher education: a case in the field of engineering

The viewpoints of academic teaching staff take centre stage in the analysis of the changing conceptions of what it means to act with integrity when teaching online. To teach with integrity in contemporary online-supported environments in higher education is not necessarily to teach the same as if one would in teaching regularly face-to-face in the classroom. The paper argues that to teach with integrity online is to teach differently. With integrity both enhanced and in some respects diminished in teaching online, the apparent contradiction can only be resolved through developing conceptions of what teaching with integrity means in the contemporary world of higher education. Implications are drawn in the context of teaching extended and wholly online units in the field of engineering.

Integration of information literacy training into engineering and technology education

Information literacy has become an important skill for undergraduate students due to societal changes that have seen information become a valuable commodity, the need for graduates to become lifelong learners, and the recognition that information literacy is an underpinning generic skill for effective learning in higher education. This paper describes a sequence of purposefully designed activities to help students learn and practice information literacy skills that were integrated into a first-year engineering and technology study unit as a core element of the unit syllabus. A formal evaluation of these activities was planned and undertaken in semester 1 2003.

Engineering of small-molecule gels based on the thermodynamics and kinetics of fiber formation

In this chapter, we will give an overview of our work on manipulating the micro/nano structure and macroscopic properties of SMGs. Firstly, it will cover the analysis of the thermodynamics of fiber formation in SMGs and the classification and characterization of the topological and micro/nano structures of fiber networks, followed by the analysis of the formation kinetics of these networks. The criteria of engineering of the SMGs will be summarized according to the latest understanding of the formation mechanisms of fiber networks. On the basis of this understanding, approaches that have been developed to engineer the micro/nanometer structures and macroscopic properties of typical SMGs will be presented.

Cloud-linked and campus-linked students’ perceptions of collaborative learning and design based learning in engineering

The aim of this paper is to analyse and present cloud- link as well as campus-linked students’ perceptions of collaborative learning and design based learning in engineering. Project oriented design based learning (PODBL) is a learning and teaching approach, where students learn through design activities while being driven by project(s). PODBL enhances cloud-linked and campus-linked students’ ability to acquire career essential skills that fulfill future industry needs. A paper-based survey is used to recognise a cohort of students' experience of collaborative learning and design based learning in engineering. The paper-based survey was given to 30 students from an engineering discipline. The quantitative analysis of the survey results shows that more than 50% of the students view collaborative learning to have a large benefit in design-based learning.

Software engineering for multi-tenancy computing challenges and implications

Multi-tenancy is a cloud computing phenomenon. Multiple instances of an application occupy and share resources from a large pool, allowing different users to have their own version of the same application running and coexisting on the same hardware but in isolated virtual spaces. In this position paper we survey the current landscape of multi-tenancy, laying out the challenges and complexity of software engineering where multi-tenancy issues are involved. Multitenancy allows cloud service providers to better utilise computing resources, supporting the development of more exible services to customers based on economy of scale, reducing overheads and infrastructural costs. Nevertheless, there are major challenges in migration from single tenant applications to multi-tenancy. These have not been fully explored in research or practice to date. In particular, the reengineering effort of multi-tenancy in Software-as-a-Service cloud applications requires many complex and important aspects that should be taken into consideration, such as security, scalability, scheduling, data isolation, etc. Our study emphasizes scheduling policies and cloud provisioning and deployment with regards to multi-tenancy issues. We employ CloudSim and MapReduce in our experiments to simulate and analyse multi-tenancy models, scenarios, performance, scalability, scheduling and reliability on cloud platforms.

A note on multivariate non-normal process capability analysis using "mvtnorm" library in R

In this note we examine using Genzbretz and Miwa algorithms to improve estimation of proposition of non-conformance in multivariate normal distributions. This estimation is required in the procedure outlined in Abbasi and Niaki (Int J Adv Manuf Technol 50(5-8):823-830, 2010) to determine process capability index of multivariate non-normal processes.