Seamless Transition from Academia to Real-world (STAR): A Collaborative Partnership to Producing Industry Ready Graduates

该项目旨在弥合行业劳动力需求与传统工程教育计划之间的能力差距。该团队正在开发一个模型，让学生在现实世界中的工业问题，将有一个基本的工程概念，在所有四年的机械工程计划的直接影响。他们正在确定可以分解为子问题的问题，并将其映射到核心课程组中教授的一组选定的关键概念。这些案例问题是在虚拟公司框架下提出的。学生在过程的不同阶段将他们的工作发布在虚拟公司存储库中，以便教师，行业合作伙伴和其他学生可以查看解决方案和程序，并提供定期反馈。 这使学生能够学会评估自己和同龄人的工作。 行业专家与学生会面，从现实世界的角度讨论解决方案的利弊。由于问题跨越多门课程，学生需要培养综合从不同课程获得的知识的能力，以制定完整的解决方案。 该团队正在提供他们的材料，以便其他程序，根据他们与工业合作伙伴的联系，可以直接使用在这个项目下开发的案例问题，定制案例问题以满足当地工业的需求，或者采用通用模型并开发自己的案例问题。 在一名独立、合格的个人的指导下，评价工作采用准实验方法，通过前后测试和一个比较组来检查项目效果。 更广泛的影响包括与工业界的密切联系、材料和成果的传播，以及特别关注代表性不足群体的个人的参与

The project aims to bridge competency gaps between industry workforce needs and what is provided in a traditional engineering education program. The team is developing a model in which students work on real-world industrial problems that will have a direct bearing on fundamental engineering concepts in all four years of the mechanical engineering program. They are identifying problems that can be broken down into sub-problems and mapped to a selected set of key concepts taught in clusters of core courses. These case problems are being presented under a virtual company framework. Students post their work in the virtual company repository during different stages of the process so that the instructor, industry partners, and other students can view the solutions and procedures and provide periodic feedback. This is enabling students to learn to assess their own work and that of their peers. Industry experts meet with students to discuss the pros and cons of the solutions from a real-world perspective. Since the problems span multiple courses, students need to develop the ability to synthesize knowledge acquired from different courses in order to develop complete solutions. The team is making their material available so that other programs, depending on their connections with industrial partners, can directly use the case problems developed under this project, customize the case problems to meet local industry needs, or adopt the general model and develop their own case problems. The evaluation effort under the direction of an independent, qualified individual, is using a quasi-experimental approach with a pre-post test and a comparison group to examine the project effects. Broader impacts include the strong connection to industry, the dissemination of materials and results, and a special focus on the involvement of individuals from underrepresented groups