National Dissemination of Multimedia Case Studies that Bring Real-World Issues into Engineering Classrooms

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Engineering students are increasingly being asked by potential employers to demonstrate "soft" skills (such as problem solving and business skills) in addition to their "hard" technical skills. Reflecting these expectations, the Accreditation Board for Engineering Education (ABET) has defined a set of accreditation criteria (3a-k) which identify 11 outcomes expected of engineering graduates. The Laboratory for Innovative Technology and Engineering Education (LITEE) team at Auburn University obtained funding from the NSF and, working with industrial partners, has developed multimedia case studies to address these expectations. These case studies make it possible for students to visualize the problem posed in the case study and work in teams as they play the roles of concerned engineers and managers. In class presentations, students present solutions to the problem and defend them. Evaluation data shows that implementing LITEE case studies in classrooms improves the higher-level cognitive skills of students, stimulates teamwork, and satisfies the majority of the ABET 3a-k criteria. Experience gained from disseminating the case studies through the earlier NSF CCLI grants, as well as reports from others, shows that there are many significant challenges in introducing multimedia case studies into engineering classrooms. Some of the challenges are: changes in the role of the instructor, apprehension about using innovative materials, difficulties in evaluating and testing students, and training students to engage in effective team work. The goals of this project will be to provide faculty members with hands-on experience of working in teams, explain case study teaching strategies, connect STEM theories to the real-world problems discussed in the case studies, and demonstrate how the LITEE case studies can help meet the ABET accreditation criteria. A partnership with a group of 17 engineering/technology faculty members and 1 high school teacher, 2 experts in engineering education, and a few industry engineers/managers has been formed. These partners will play a key role in validating the concept and value of disseminating LITEE case studies to students and training other faculty members. In this project, the partners will work with LITEE through a national conference and two regional workshops. One outcome of the project is that about 25 of the faculty members will adapt and implement LITEE case studies in their classrooms. The second outcome of the project will be to bring real-world problems to classrooms and thus stimulate interest to pursue engineering education for over 750 students. This project will improve the way students learn important STEM principles by integrating soft and hard skills, provide students with real-life, comprehensive experiences in engineering, make the curriculum more interesting, and enable engineering educators to successfully meet many of the ABET accreditation criteria.