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

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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.