Page 111 - Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century

Educating the Engineer of 2020: Adapting Engineering Education to the New Century
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11338.html

94 EDUCATING THE ENGINEER OF 2020

by engineering faculty members, and systemic reform will require cul-
tural change. However, defining the nature of cultural change and,
therefore, faculty change, as well as initiatives to promote cultural
change, proved to be elusive.

The Dissemination Challenge

Based on the EEC experience, the traditional means of disseminat-
ing research results (e.g., conference papers, journal articles, etc.) are
insufficient to catalyze systemic reform for several reasons. First, whereas
the intended audience for a discipline-specific research publication is
researchers actively involved in work in the same or closely related areas,
the intended audience for a publication by one or more EEC is the
entire engineering education community. However, only a small per-
centage of engineering faculty members regularly read engineering edu-
cation publications. In addition, even those who do, read only a small
percentage of the articles published. As a result, the EECs discovered
that a large percentage of the engineering education community was
unaware of the work they had done or the results they had achieved,
even years after the results had been presented several times. Second,
each publication tended to document work that had been done and the
results in a particular institutional context. Most traditional publica-
tions did not include directions for implementation of the approach in
other contexts or provide resources for faculty members who might want
to adapt a particular EEC project.
As problems with traditional dissemination mechanisms were real-
ized, the EECs tried more innovative approaches, three of which are
described below: websites; workshops; and summaries. Project web sites
are excellent repositories of information about the work of the coali-
tions, and faculty members searching for particular information can
find useful resources at one or more of the coalition web sites. However,
these web sites only provide information to faculty members actively
searching for resources related to innovations in engineering education.
In addition, navigating and finding the desired resources at a coalition
web site can be challenging.
Several coalitions developed interactive workshops that could be
held on campuses, at national conferences, such as those of the Ameri-
can Society for Engineering Education, Frontiers in Education, and

Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.