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Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
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92 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020
nologies; integration across disciplinary boundaries; assessment; and
faculty development.
Active, Experiential Learning Environments
Every coalition consistently advocated and implemented learning
environments and approaches in which students (1) were more actively
engaged than taking notes, (2) focused on problems, design challenges,
and artifacts in addition to concepts, and (3) often worked with other
students to understand and complete assigned tasks. Specific innova-
tions that illustrate these learning environments include first-year engi-
neering design courses that focus on design challenges; artifact dissec-
tion, in which students disassemble engineered artifacts; problem-based
learning environments, in which students start with a problem instead
of a concept; cooperative learning environments, in which students work
together to achieve learning objectives; and multidisciplinary design
projects that bring together students from different educational back-
grounds.
Student Teams
Every EEC consistently emphasized using student teams in many
different learning situations, including design projects and engineering-
science courses. However, many questions remain about how to assess
whether teamwork skills and team leadership skills were improved.
Instructional Technologies
Every EEC consistently advocated greater use of instructional tech-
nology in many different forms. A paper on this topic by Donald
Falkenburg, Project Director of the Greenfield Coalition, is included in
this Appendix (p. 69).
Integration Across Disciplinary Boundaries
Although the importance of students linking concepts across disci-
plines was not always recognized at the beginning of the EEC Program,
many EEC projects began to emphasize integration as the program
evolved. Numerous first-year integrated pilot programs were
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