Revolutionizing Roles to Reimagine Integrated Systems of Engineering Formation

目前的工程教育系统在两个根本性的关键方面失败了。首先，那些有愿望和能力成为有成就、有生产力的工程师的学生正在以惊人的数量放弃这门学科。其次，毕业的学生往往没有为他们选择的职业的现实做好准备，以惊人的速度转行。科罗拉多州立大学的一组教育工作者提出了一种新的组织模式，将本科电子和计算机工程（ECE）学位视为一个综合系统，打破高等教育结构固有的障碍，实施新颖的教学方法，让所有背景的学生都能看到他们的知识和联系对专业实践的效用。在教学层面，新方法结合了工程教育的严谨性和灵活性，通过建立学习和实践社区来提高学生的学习效率和内容知识整合。在组织层面，转型方法旨在激励教师在整个课程中协同编织重要的知识和应用线程，同时利用一种连接不同锚定概念的新学习模式。无论是通过研究、实验室还是实践项目来展示内容的相关性，欧洲经委会的教师都将作为一个多方面的团队工作，确保每个教育组成部分都考虑到大局，同时灌输对学科的深入了解。科罗拉多州立大学的做法有望扭转工程教育的人员流失趋势，并为不同背景的积极进取的学生填补工程道路。这些学生将掌握基本的工程知识，同时准备好并兴奋地将他们的知识应用于现实世界。教学和组织创新为工程部门的变革和可持续变化提供了广泛的框架，这对于培养未来的专业工程师是必要的。此外，该方法还建立了一个由大学、社区学院和行业合作伙伴组成的社区，以广泛参与有效的教与学。科罗拉多州立大学的方法将推动新的工程劳动力产生卓越的想法，产品和服务，最终为国家的经济活力和全球竞争力做出贡献。科罗拉多州立大学提出的模式结合了工程教育的变革创新，产生了一个以严谨和灵活为特征的包容性环境。新方法利用基于“纳米课程”概念的模块学习工作室，并强调知识整合——这是一种以教育学为基础并得到教育研究支持的学习模式。科罗拉多州立大学的努力将跨越整个本科电气和计算机工程经验，特别关注中间两年的关键技术核心。虽然特定领域的学习模块已经存在多年，但这些模块通常是对核心课程的补充，通常不涵盖对理解抽象主题至关重要的基础科目；它们也不会将锚定概念拼接在一起，为现实世界的应用程序奠定基础。新方法的关键是它的纵向知识整合，它将用于连接基本概念，并使用学生熟悉的应用程序（例如，智能手机，数码相机和高速互联网）说明主题的实用性，与认知科学的研究建议一致。此外，新方法的教学创新伴随着工程部门内部角色的组织重新定义——基于既定的行为科学原则，结合为该项目专门开发的严格评估和研究方法。研究结果将推动工程教育和组织发展框架的理论发展，同时也为科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教育的变革干预提供实际案例研究示例。此外，将组织科学原理成功地移植到高等教育中，可以为高等教育与其他组织（如私营企业中的组织）进行比较提供有效的证据。

The current engineering educational system fails in two fundamentally critical ways. First, students who have the desire and aptitude to become accomplished and productive engineers are abandoning the discipline in startling numbers. Second, students who graduate are frequently not prepared for the realities of their chosen profession and are switching careers at alarming rates. A team of educators at Colorado State University propose a new organizational model that looks at the undergraduate electrical and computer engineering (ECE) degree as an integrated system, breaking down the barriers inherent in higher education structures and implementing novel pedagogical approaches that allow students of all backgrounds to see the utility of their knowledge and connections to professional practice. At the pedagogical level, the new approach combines rigor and flexibility in engineering education to improve student efficacy and content knowledge integration through building communities of learning and practice. At the organizational level, the transformational approach aims to energize faculty to collaboratively weave important knowledge and application threads throughout the curriculum, while utilizing a new learning model that connects disparate anchoring concepts. Whether demonstrating the relevance of content through research, labs, or hands-on projects, the ECE faculty will work as a multifaceted team, ensuring that every educational component gives consideration to the big picture, while simultaneously instilling a deep knowledge of the discipline. Colorado State's approach is expected to reverse the attrition trend in engineering education and fill the engineering pathway with motivated students of diverse backgrounds. These students will have the mastery of fundamental engineering knowledge, while being ready and excited to apply their knowledge to real-world applications. The pedagogical and organizational innovations provide a broad framework for transformative and sustainable changes in engineering departments, which are necessary to produce professional engineers of the future. Moreover, the approach builds a community of universities, community colleges, and industry partners for wide participation of effective teaching and learning. CSU's approach will propel a new engineering workforce that generates superior ideas, products, and services, ultimately contributing to the nation's economic vitality and global competitiveness. Colorado State's proposed model incorporates transformative innovation in engineering education that yields an inclusive environment that is characterized by rigor and flexibility. The new approach utilizes learning studios with modules that build on the concept of "nanocourses" and emphasizes knowledge integration - which is a learning model that is well grounded in pedagogy and supported by education research. CSU's efforts will span the entire undergraduate electrical and computer engineering experience, with special attention to the critical technical core of the middle two years. While area-specific learning modules have been in existence for years, such modules are usually supplements to the core curriculum and do not typically cover fundamental subjects vital to comprehending abstract topics; nor do they stitch together anchoring concepts to lay the groundwork for real-world applications. Key to the new approach is its: latitudinal knowledge integration, which will be used to link fundamental concepts and illustrate the utility of topics using applications students are familiar with (e.g., the smartphone, digital camera, and high-speed internet), consonant with research recommendations from the cognitive sciences. Furthermore, the pedagogical innovation of the new approach is accompanied by organizational redefinition of roles within an engineering department - based on established behavioral science principles coupled with rigorous evaluations and research methods specifically developed for this project. The research findings will advance theoretical development of engineering education and organizational development frameworks, while also providing practical case-study examples of change interventions for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Furthermore, successful porting of organizational science principles to higher education may provide validity evidence that higher education can be compared to other organizations, such as those found in private industry.