A "Bottom-Up" Approach to Interdisciplinary Engineering Education in Nanotechnology

该项目通过开发设计和实施高度跨学科，特别是纳米技术的教育内容的有效方法，解决了现代化工程课程的当代需求。这是一项规划工作，旨在试行"自下而上"的跨学科教学方法。纳米技术需要所有基础科学和许多不同工程学科的广泛知识，但其更深层次的内容需要高度专业化的专业知识。因此，这一战略的实质是使具体专题的专家能够采用自下而上的方法编写具体专题的内容，并通过一个互补的"自上而下"框架加以平衡，该框架覆盖整个组织，以提供结构和一致性。在这种规划工作的情况下，组织一级是圣何塞州立大学的工程学院。可交付成果将表现为（1）三个不同工程部门的三个现有课程中的增强内容模块，（2）共享共同在线交付结构的简短学习模块的灵活在线图书馆，以及（3）整个学院范围内的模块演示文稿，以纳入教师反馈并促进持续增长。这项试验工作还为更广泛地实施这种自下而上的方法提供了宝贵的规划知识，其中的基本概念可以扩展到包括科学和/或应用科学艺术学院。&第一个优点是通过利用学科专家的专业知识，为工程专业学生开发最丰富和最合适的技术内容。这将新兴的和当代的纳米技术知识带入学生的学习环境。另一个主要优点是，在高于个别教师领导个别班级的水平上，创造了一个多学科和部门间合作的模式。将简短的学习模块结构化为在线工具，进一步促进了一致性，灵活性和可持续性。这一努力的更广泛影响将是广泛采用这种模式进行自下而上的内容开发和同行对同行的教师学习。这不仅对纳米技术，而且对任何跨学科的学术主题都有潜在的影响。它特别适合与生物信息学等其他快速发展的领域保持同步。我们自下而上的方法也是一种构建内容复杂性的方法，特别是在大学环境中，可能没有全面的“纳米技术专家”本身。然而，让教师们共同努力，从他们相关的专业领域创造和开发自下而上的作品，为提供和传播现代知识提供了一个同行丰富的机制。

This project is addressing a contemporary need for modernizing engineering curricula, by developing effective methods of designing and implementing educational content for highly interdisciplinary subjects, nanotechnology in particular. It is a planning effort for piloting a "bottom-up" approach to interdisciplinary teaching and learning in this field. Nanotechnology requires very broad knowledge of all basic sciences and many different engineering disciplines, yet its deeper substance requires focused expertise in highly specialized topics. Therefore, the essence of this strategy is to enable subject-specific experts to develop subject-specific content using a bottom-up approach.The bottom-up approach will be balanced by a complementary "top-down" framework that reaches across a broad organizational level to provide structure and consistency. In the case of this planning effort, the organizational level is the College of Engineering at San Jose State University. The deliverable outcomes will be manifested as (1) enhanced content modules in three existing courses from three different engineering departments, (2) a flexible online library of short learning modules that share a common online delivery structure, and (3) a college-wide presentation of the modules to incorporate faculty feedback as well as promote sustained growth. This pilot work also provides valuable planning knowledge for broader implementation of this bottom-up approach, wherein the fundamental concepts could be extended to include Colleges of Science and/or Applied Sciences & Arts, for example.The intellectual merit is two-fold. A first merit is to create a means of developing the richest and most appropriate technical content for engineering students, by leveraging the specialized knowledge of subject experts. This brings emerging and contemporary knowledge of nanotechnology into the student learning environment. The other primary merit is to create a model for multidisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration at a level that is higher than individual instructors leading individual classes. Structuring short learning modules into online tools furthermore contributes consistency, flexibility, and sustainability.The broader impact of this effort would be to enable widespread adoption of this model for bottom-up content development and peer-to-peer faculty learning. This has potential impact not only for nanotechnology but for any interdisciplinary academic subject. It is particularly well-suited for keeping pace with other rapidly-evolving areas such as bioinformatics. Our bottom-up approach is also a way of building content sophistication especially in university environments that may have no comprehensive "nanotechnology experts" per se. Having faculty work together to create and develop bottom-up pieces from their related specialized fields, however, provides a peer-enriched mechanism for providing and propagating modern knowledge.