The engineering link project: Learning about engineering by becoming an engineer

There has been a greater emphasis over the past few years of encouraging high school students to take up engineering as a career. This is due to a greater need for engineers in society, particularly in areas that are suffering a skills shortage. Both the engineering profession and universities across Australia have moved to address this shortage, with a proliferation of engineering outreach activities and programs the result. The Engineering Link Group (TELG) began the Engineering Link Project (ELP) over a decade ago with a focus on helping motivated high school students make an informed choice about engineering as a career. It also aimed at encouraging more high school students to study maths and science at high school. From the start the ELP was designed so that the students became engineers, rather than just hear from or watch engineers. Real working engineers pose problems to groups of students for them solve over the course of a day. In this way, students experience what it is like to be an engineer. It has been found that the project does help high school students make more informed career choices about engineering. The project also gave the students real life and practical reasons for studying sciences and mathematics at high school. © 2005, Australasian Association for Engineering Education

The good and the bad: Acquisition of likes and dislikes in affective learning

Affective learning, the acquisition of likes and dislikes, was investigated in two experiments using verbal ratings and affective priming as indices of affective change. In both experiments, neutral geometric shapes were paired with pleasant or unpleasant pictures in a picture-picture conditioning procedure to acquire positive and negative valence. Experiment 1 found the acquisition of positive valence; however, this valence change was lost after extinction training. Experiment 2 used more salient pictures as unconditioned stimuli. Positive and negative valence was acquired during paired presentations and retained across extinction training. The results of Experiment 2 are consistent with dual process accounts, which claim that evaluative conditioning is distinct from Pavlovian conditioning because it is resistant to extinction.

Online help systems: Learning while working

Most widely-used computer software packages, such as word processors, spreadsheets and web browsers, incorporate comprehensive help systems, partly because the software is meant for those with little technical knowledge. This paper identifies four systematic philosophies or approaches to help system delivery, namely the documentation approach, based on written documents, either paper-based or online; the training approach, either offered before the user starts working on the software or on-the-job; intelligent help, that is online, context-sensitive help or that relying on software agents; and finally an approach based on minimalism, defined as providing help only when and where it is needed.