Design, implementation and evaluation of a virtual laboratory for Computer Engineering Education

Broad consensus has been reached within the Education and Cognitive Psychology research communities on the need to center the learning process on experimentation and concrete application of knowledge, rather than on a bare transfer of notions. Several advantages arise from this educational approach, ranging from the reinforce of students learning, to the increased opportunity for a student to gain greater insight into the studied topics, up to the possibility for learners to acquire practical skills and long-lasting proficiency. This is especially true in Engineering education, where integrating conceptual knowledge and practical skills assumes a strategic importance. In this scenario, learners are called to play a primary role. They are actively involved in the construction of their own knowledge, instead of passively receiving it. As a result, traditional, teacher-centered learning environments should be replaced by novel learner-centered solutions. Information and Communication Technologies enable the development of innovative solutions that provide suitable answers to the need for the availability of experimentation supports in educational context. Virtual Laboratories, Adaptive Web-Based Educational Systems and Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning environments can significantly foster different learner-centered instructional strategies, offering the opportunity to enhance personalization, individualization and cooperation. More specifically, they allow students to explore different kinds of materials, to access and compare several information sources, to face real or realistic problems and to work on authentic and multi-facet case studies. In addition, they encourage cooperation among peers and provide support through coached and scaffolded activities aimed at fostering reflection and meta-cognitive reasoning. This dissertation will guide readers within this research field, presenting both the theoretical and applicative results of a research aimed at designing an open, flexible, learner-centered virtual lab for supporting students in learning Information Security.

Evaluation of an engineering education.

Mode of access: Internet.

International evaluation of current and future requirements for environmental engineering education

The field of environmental engineering is developing as a result of changing environmental requirements. In response, environmental engineering education (E3) needs to ensure that it provides students with the necessary tools to address these challenges. In this paper the current status and future development of E3 is evaluated based on a questionnaire sent to universities and potential employers of E3 graduates. With increasing demands on environmental quality, the complexity of environmental engineering problems to be solved can be expected to increase. To find solutions environmental engineers will need to work in interdisciplinary teams. Based on the questionnaire there was a broad agreement that the best way to prepare students for these future challenges is to provide them with a fundamental education in basic sciences and related engineering fields. Many exciting developments in the environmental engineering profession will be located at the interface between engineering, science, and society. Aspects of all three areas need to be included in E3 and the student needs to be exposed to the tensions associated with linking the three.

International journal of engineering education

This work presents an analysis of the assessment tools used by professors at the Universitat Politécnica de Catalunya to assess the generic competencies introduced in the Bachelor’s Degrees in Engineering. In order to conduct this study, a survey was designed and administered anonymously to a sample of the professors most receptive to educational innovation at their own university. All total, 80 professors responded to this survey, of whom 26% turned out to be members of the university’s own evaluation innovation group (https://www.upc.edu/rima/grups/grapa), GRAPA. This percentage represents 47% of the total GRAPA membership, meaning that nearly half of the professors most concerned about evaluation at the university chose to participate. The analysis of the variables carried out using the statistical program SPSS v19 shows that for practically 49% of those surveyed, rubrics are the tools most commonly used to assess generic competencies integrated in more specific ones. Of those surveyed, 60% use them either frequently or always. The most frequently evaluated generic competencies were teamwork (28%), problem solving (26%), effective oral and written communication (24%) and autonomous learning (13%), all of which constitute commonly recognized competencies in the engineering profession. A two-dimensional crosstabs analysis with SPSS v19 shows a significant correlation (Asymp. Sig. 0.001) between the type of tool used and the competencies assessed. However, no significant correlation was found between the type of assessment tool used and the type of subject, type of evaluation (formative or summative), frequency of feedback given to the students or the degree of student satisfaction, and thus none of these variables can be considered to have an influence on the kind of assessment tool used. In addition, the results also indicate that there are no significant differences between the instructors belonging to GRAPA and the rest of those surveyed

E-Learning 2.0 in hydraulic engineering education

In this contribution the experiences with e-Learning 2.0 applications by using a Wiki for the education in hydraulic engineering are shown. Up to now important information for the students has been prepared by the instructor. For this project the students were asked to collaborate and search on their own for the information they needed. Therefore a Wiki-system was used. For the engineering practice a self dependent realisation of tasks is an important requirement which students should be prepared for. With the help of online communication there should be shown the possibilities for students for working together in an interdisciplinary team. The positive experiences as well as the results of the evaluation of this project plead for a continuation of the application of e-Learning 2.0 for education. The comparison of results of tests without using Wiki and with using Wiki shows a qualitative tendency of better marks. In this contribution we present the application of Wiki in hydraulic engineering but the results can also be used for other engineering disciplines.

Promotion of professional skills in engineering education: strategies and challenges

Basic engineering skills are not the only key to professional development, particularly as engineering problems are everyday more and more complex and multifaceted, hence requiring the implementation of larger multidisciplinary teams, in many cases working in an international context and in a continuously evolving environment. Therefore other outcomes, sometimes referred to as professional skills, are also necessary for our students, as most universities are already aware. In this study we try to methodically analyze the main strategies for the promotion of professional skills, mainly linked to actuations which directly affect students or teachers (and teaching methodologies) and which take advantage of the environment and available resources. From an initial list of 51 strategies (in essence aimed at promotion of different drivers of change, linked to students, teachers, environment and resources), we focus on the 11 drivers of change considered more important after an initial evaluation. Subsequently, a systematic analysis of the typical problems linked to these main drivers of change, enables us to find and formulate 12 major and usually repeated and unsolved problems. After selecting these typical problems, we put forward 25 different solutions, for short-term actuation, and discuss their effects, while bearing in mind our team’s experience, together with the information from the studies carried out by numerous teaching staff from other universities.

Dilemmas in Framing Research Studies in Engineering Education

There has been considerable debate about the need for more empirical, evidence based studies of the impact of various interventions and practices in engineering education. A number of resources including workshops to guide engineering faculty in the conduct of such studies have emerged over recent years. This paper presents a critique of the evolution of engineering education research and its underlying assumptions in the context of the systemic reform currently underway in engineering education. This critique leads to an analysis of the ways in which our current understanding of engineering, engineering education and research in engineering education is shaped by the traditions and cultural characteristics of the profession and grounded, albeit implicitly, in a particular suite of epistemological assumptions. It is argued that the whole enterprise of engineering education needs to be radically reconceptualized. A pluralistic approach to framing scholarship in engineering education is then proposed based on the principles of demonstrable practicality, critical interdisciplinarity and holistic reflexivity. This new framework has implications for engaging and developing faculty in the context of new teaching and learning paradigms, for the evaluation of the scholarship of teaching and for the research-teaching nexus.

Engineering education research - the UK perspective at a time of change

Engineering education in the United Kingdom is at the point of embarking upon an interesting journey into uncharted waters. At no point in the past have there been so many drivers for change and so many opportunities for the development of engineering pedagogy. This paper will look at how Engineering Education Research (EER) has developed within the UK and what differentiates it from the many small scale practitioner interventions, perhaps without a clear research question or with little evaluation, which are presented at numerous staff development sessions, workshops and conferences. From this position some examples of current projects will be described, outcomes of funding opportunities will be summarised and the benefits of collaboration with other disciplines illustrated. In this study, I will account for how the design of task structure according to variation theory, as well as the probe-ware technology, make the laws of force and motion visible and learnable and, especially, in the lab studied make Newton's third law visible and learnable. I will also, as a comparison, include data from a mechanics lab that use the same probe-ware technology and deal with the same topics in mechanics, but uses a differently designed task structure. I will argue that the lower achievements on the FMCE-test in this latter case can be attributed to these differences in task structure in the lab instructions. According to my analysis, the necessary pattern of variation is not included in the design. I will also present a microanalysis of 15 hours collected from engineering students' activities in a lab about impulse and collisions based on video recordings of student's activities in a lab about impulse and collisions. The important object of learning in this lab is the development of an understanding of Newton's third law. The approach analysing students interaction using video data is inspired by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, i.e. I will focus on students practical, contingent and embodied inquiry in the setting of the lab. I argue that my result corroborates variation theory and show this theory can be used as a 'tool' for designing labs as well as for analysing labs and lab instructions. Thus my results have implications outside the domain of this study and have implications for understanding critical features for student learning in labs. Engineering higher education is well used to change. As technology develops the abilities expected by employers of graduates expand, yet our understanding of how to make informed decisions about learning and teaching strategies does not without a conscious effort to do so. With the numerous demands of academic life, we often fail to acknowledge our incomplete understanding of how our students learn within our discipline. The journey facing engineering education in the UK is being driven by two classes of driver. Firstly there are those which we have been working to expand our understanding of, such as retention and employability, and secondly the new challenges such as substantial changes to funding systems allied with an increase in student expectations. Only through continued research can priorities be identified, addressed and a coherent and strong voice for informed change be heard within the wider engineering education community. This new position makes it even more important that through EER we acquire the knowledge and understanding needed to make informed decisions regarding approaches to teaching, curriculum design and measures to promote effective student learning. This then raises the question 'how does EER function within a diverse academic community?' Within an existing community of academics interested in taking meaningful steps towards understanding the ongoing challenges of engineering education a Special Interest Group (SIG) has formed in the UK. The formation of this group has itself been part of the rapidly changing environment through its facilitation by the Higher Education Academy's Engineering Subject Centre, an entity which through the Academy's current restructuring will no longer exist as a discrete Centre dedicated to supporting engineering academics. The aims of this group, the activities it is currently undertaking and how it expects to network and collaborate with the global EER community will be reported in this paper. This will include explanation of how the group has identified barriers to the progress of EER and how it is seeking, through a series of activities, to facilitate recognition and growth of EER both within the UK and with our valued international colleagues.

Software languages engineering: experimental evaluation

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Informática

Blended learning and student time-use in engineering education

Aiheen laajempi artikkeli on julkaistu konferenssi-CD:llä.

Conference Proceedings. Assessing Language and (Inter) cultural Competences in Higher Education. Evaluation des compétences langagières et (inter) culturelles dans l’enseignement supérieur

This epublication contains papers that were presented at the conference “Assessing Language and (Inter) cultural Competences in Higher Education” which took place at the University of Turku (Finland) on 30.8.1.9.2007. The online proceedings may be downloaded and used provided the source is acknowledged.