Bringing Theory and Practice Together in Engineering Classrooms: A Research Project to Develop Cost-Effective Instructional Material

美国工业界越来越强调，一个成功的工程师除了拥有强大的技术能力外，还必须了解深刻影响工程决策的非技术力量。 目前的工程教学方法没有充分发展学生的这些能力和理解。 这个多学科项目就是为了解决这个问题而提出的。 这个项目的目标是开发和测试大二课程的教学材料，将理论和实践结合在一起，在工程教室，发展学生的高层次认知技能，并具有成本效益。 对一个试点项目的教学方法和结果的审查表明，案例研究教学方法最适合实现这些目标。在这个项目的第一年，六个工程案例研究沿着与背景能力材料，教师手册，万维网网站，和视频将开发与行业合作。 在第二年，教学材料将在奥本大学测试三个季度。 材料的可重用性将通过在亚拉巴马A M，一个少数民族机构运行这门课程来测试。 使用这种教学方法的有效性将通过基于结果的模型进行评估，并与实验和比较组的研究设计。 在整个过程中，学生和教师的定量和定性数据将用于材料和方法的持续形成性评估。 与项目目标相关的成果指标将在总结性评价中进行分析。 该项目的传播方面将涉及出版教学材料、更新万维网网站以及在学术和实践期刊上发表论文。 该项目围绕主动学习方法构建，有可能在工程教育中产生革命性的变化，从而满足行业将理论和实践带入课堂的需求。

American industries are increasingly emphasizing that a successful engineer must, in addition to possessing strong technical capabilities, understand the non-technical forces that profoundly affect engineering decisions. The current engineering teaching methodologies do not adequately develop these capabilities and understandings of the students. This multi-disciplinary project is being proposed to address this problem. The goals of this project are to develop and test instructional material for a sophomore course that will bring theory and practice together in engineering classrooms, develop the higher-level cognitive skills of the students, and be cost effective. A review of instructional methodologies and results from a pilot project showed that the case study method of instruction is the most suitable for achieving these goals. During the first year of this project, six engineering case studies along with background competency materials, instructor's manuals, WWW sites, and videos will be developed in partnership with industries. During the second year, the instructional materials will be tested at Auburn University during three quarters. The reusability of the material will be tested by running this course at Alabama A&M, a minority institution. The effectiveness of using this instructional methodology will be evaluated by an outcomes-based model and also with an experimental and comparison group research design. Throughout, quantitative and qualitative data from the students and faculty will be used in the ongoing formative evaluation of the materials and methods. Outcome measures related to project goals will be analyzed in the summative evaluation. The dissemination aspect of this project will involve publishing the instructional materials, updating the WWW site, and publishing papers in academic and practitioner journals. This project, built around active learning methods, has the potential to make a revolutionary change in engineering education, thereby fulfilling the demand s of industry to bring theory and practice into classrooms.