Tenured and tenure-track faculty members at institutions of higher education, especially those at Research I institutions, are being asked to do more than ever before. With rapidly changing technology, significant decreases in public funding, the shift toward privately funded research, and the ever increasing expectations of students for an education that adequately prepares them for professional careers, engineering faculty are particularly challenged by the escalating demands on their time. In 1996, the primary accreditation organization for engineering programs (ABET) adopted new criteria that required, among other things, engineering programs to teach students to function on multidisciplinary teams and to communicate effectively. In response, most engineering programs utilize project teams as a strategy for teaching these skills. The purpose of this qualitative study of tenured and tenure track engineering faculty at a Research I institution in the southwestern United States was to explore the variety of ways in which the engineering faculty responded to the demands placed upon them as a result of the increased emphasis on project teams in undergraduate engineering education. Social role theory and organizational climate theory guided the study. Some faculty viewed project teams as an opportunity for students to learn important professional skills and to benefit from collaborative learning but many questioned the importance and feasibility of teaching teamwork skills and had concerns about taking time away from other essential fundamental material such as mathematics, basic sciences and engineering sciences. Although the administration of the College of Engineering articulated strong support for the use of project teams in undergraduate education, the prevailing climate did little to promote significant efforts related to effective utilization of project teams. Too often, faculty were unwilling to commit sufficient time or effort to make project teamwork a truly valuable learning opportunity because those efforts were not perceived to be valuable and were rarely rewarded. Few formal professional development opportunities were available and few incentives were in place to encourage other informal efforts to develop the necessary skills. Those who committed significant effort to project teams were challenged by concerns about team composition, student accountability and assigning individual grades for group teamwork.

Visual communication (VC) resources can be seen as playing an increasingly important role in delivery and learning systems in today s design and technology education. The performance of current tools and resources is the primary concern of this research, and particularly whether they take full advantage of VC when delivering technological information to industrial design (ID) and engineering design (ED) students. This thesis sought key principles behind the visual communication of technology (VCT) and its association to designing, creativity and innovation through a literature survey. The findings concluded that there were many such assertions made with little evidence concerning the associations suggested. Some guiding sources and key emerging principles (KEPs) for good VCT practices were established. A miniature-kite-designing exercise was conducted as a case study for the purpose of examining the links between VCT, designing and creativity and/or innovation. Kite-technological-information posters were used as the VCT tool for the kite-designing case. A comparative study of kite-designing was conducted in Malaysia to check the reliability of the study, and another validation study was carried out for the purpose of establishing the validity of the data gathering. Visual technological information (VTI) for kite design (or a kite-poster) was refined accordingly to the KEPs established from the literature review, and its visual impact was tested through the use of eye-tracking technology. Some selected current and historical visual tools, which have been used in design and technology communication and were recognised as having positive impacts were analysed and articulated in order to reveal a deeper understanding of the KEPs. These were further validated through eye-tracking of reading patterns of participants on those selected visuals. The perceptual responses toward those visuals were also recorded and analysed. A theoretical research framework was established to investigate VTI representation used in books by Ashby (1999) and Ashby and Johnson (2002), in new authors scholarly papers (METU, 2010), and of the author s analysis and redesign of some of those studied VTIs based on the KEPs emerging from the research. A questionnaire survey was conducted within a number of higher education institutions in 3 regions around the world in order to achieve reliable data gathering. This third case study was validated through experts discussion of the findings and related issues. Within these three case studies, a mixture of scientific (using the eye-tracker device) and conventional methods (questionnaires, interviews, discussion group and comparative studies), and also others methods such as design workshops, analysing existing resources, using own practice of design-and-redesign activities were conducted to provide quantitative and qualitative measurements to empirically validate the literature search. Evidence of links between VCT, designerly activities which involved knowledge, skills and values within the technological communication, and of facilitating creativity was obtained. Empirical evidence showed that VTIs were effective in communicating knowledge, skills and values; where the KEPs criteria had played essential roles in enriching the visual emphasis of VTIs. The redesigning exercise using the author s own practice, which articulated the KEPs through the redesign of the existing VTIs for the purpose of more effective VCT, again obtained significant evidence of visual effectiveness and easy understanding capability. Evidence from the analysis of 2 books on materials technology for ID and ED students, views from the 2 materials experts, and the literature review suggested that ID and ED students require difference types of representational models and graphical strategies of VCT in their learning. However, the empirical data from the research, which was supported by one of the materials experts, suggested that ID and ED students even with different cultural backgrounds did not require different VTIs or the use of different VCT strategies for effective communication.

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Três pontos são consensuais entre os profissionais que trabalham com o tema trânsito no Brasil. Primeiro, a educação para o trânsito é absolutamente imprescindível para reduzir a grande acidentalidade no trânsito do país e transformar o espaço público de deslocamento em um espaço de melhor convívio social. Segundo, a educação para o trânsito não tem sido tratada com a importância que deve ter. Terceiro, é necessário aperfeiçoar os conteúdos programáticos relativos à educação para o trânsito no ensino fundamental. Neste trabalho é defendida a transversalidade como processo pedagógico na educação para o trânsito no ensino fundamental e proposto um ajuste complementar de conteúdo programático a ser adotado nas várias disciplinas em todos os períodos do ensino fundamental, com a incorporação de elementos da engenharia seguindo a visão dos alunos detectada no projeto Rumo à Escola. A metodologia geral do trabalho encontra-se fundamentada em pesquisa teórica e em atividade de pesquisa de campo. A tese é fundamentada, sobretudo, nas informações levantadas nas pesquisas de campo realizadas no projeto Rumo à Escola, desenvolvido pelo DENATRAN em parceria com a UNESCO, nos trabalhos efetuados pelo Prof. Reinier Rozestraten e nas diretrizes da legislação educacional e de trânsito brasileira. / Three points are consensual by professionals with the theme of traffic in Brazil. First, traffic education is absolutely essential in order to reduce the great number of traffic accidents in the country and transform public roadways into socially friendly spaces. Second, traffic education has not been treated with the importance it should have been treated. Third, it is necessary to perfect the programmatic content related to traffic education in elementary teaching. This paper defends the transversality as a pedagogic process for traffic education in elementary teaching and proposes a complementary adjustment to programmatic content to be adapted by the various disciplines in all periods of elementary teaching, with the incorporation of elements of engineering following the vision of the students detected in the \"Off to School\" (Rumo à Escola) project. The general working methodology is based on theoretical research and in field research activith. The thesis is based, above all, on information gathered in field research done in the \"Off to School\" project, developed by the DENATRAN (National Department of Transit) in partnership with UNESCO, on the work of Prof. Reinier Rozestraten, and on the guide lines of brazilian educational and transit legislation.

Três pontos são consensuais entre os profissionais que trabalham com o tema trânsito no Brasil. Primeiro, a educação para o trânsito é absolutamente imprescindível para reduzir a grande acidentalidade no trânsito do país e transformar o espaço público de deslocamento em um espaço de melhor convívio social. Segundo, a educação para o trânsito não tem sido tratada com a importância que deve ter. Terceiro, é necessário aperfeiçoar os conteúdos programáticos relativos à educação para o trânsito no ensino fundamental. Neste trabalho é defendida a transversalidade como processo pedagógico na educação para o trânsito no ensino fundamental e proposto um ajuste complementar de conteúdo programático a ser adotado nas várias disciplinas em todos os períodos do ensino fundamental, com a incorporação de elementos da engenharia seguindo a visão dos alunos detectada no projeto Rumo à Escola. A metodologia geral do trabalho encontra-se fundamentada em pesquisa teórica e em atividade de pesquisa de campo. A tese é fundamentada, sobretudo, nas informações levantadas nas pesquisas de campo realizadas no projeto Rumo à Escola, desenvolvido pelo DENATRAN em parceria com a UNESCO, nos trabalhos efetuados pelo Prof. Reinier Rozestraten e nas diretrizes da legislação educacional e de trânsito brasileira. / Three points are consensual by professionals with the theme of traffic in Brazil. First, traffic education is absolutely essential in order to reduce the great number of traffic accidents in the country and transform public roadways into socially friendly spaces. Second, traffic education has not been treated with the importance it should have been treated. Third, it is necessary to perfect the programmatic content related to traffic education in elementary teaching. This paper defends the transversality as a pedagogic process for traffic education in elementary teaching and proposes a complementary adjustment to programmatic content to be adapted by the various disciplines in all periods of elementary teaching, with the incorporation of elements of engineering following the vision of the students detected in the \"Off to School\" (Rumo à Escola) project. The general working methodology is based on theoretical research and in field research activith. The thesis is based, above all, on information gathered in field research done in the \"Off to School\" project, developed by the DENATRAN (National Department of Transit) in partnership with UNESCO, on the work of Prof. Reinier Rozestraten, and on the guide lines of brazilian educational and transit legislation.

This study compared two groups of students being instructed in various methods of problem solving over a two-week period. The control group was instructed using the standard Career and Technology Education (CTE) Introduction curriculum on using brainstorming to solve problems. The treatment group was instructed using a structured problem solving method developed to help focus problem solving on finding a solution that satisfies the conditions. Students were selected from 7th grade students at a suburban middle school in Utah. The independent variable in this study was the type of problem solving instruction received. The dependent variables of interest were the fluency of producing solutions (S), number of inventive solutions (I) produced while problem solving. Additional variables of interest include student's perceived competence (c) while problem solving and students perceived usefulness (u) of problem solving in their lives. A pre-test and a post-test consisting of open-ended problems were utilized to assess the fluency of solutions (S) and the number of inventive solutions (I). A modified Fennema-Sherman attitude questionnaire was utilized to assess student's perceived competence (c) and perceived usefulness (u). The findings indicated that students who are taught a structured problem solving method produce a statistically significant (p-value of .033) greater number of inventive solutions when compared to students not instructed in this method. These students also appear to focus their problem solving by producing less total solutions (s) but a greater portion of these solutions is inventive. Other findings include data that supports the idea that dedicated problem solving instruction increases students perceptions of their own abilities to problem solving. Both control and treatment groups experience a statistically significant increase in their perceived competence in problem solving (p-value of .430 and .382 respectively).

Hands-on laboratory experiences are a key part of all engineering programs. Currently there is high demand for online engineering courses, but offering lab experiences online still remain a great challenge. Remote laboratories have been under development for more than 20 years and are part of a bigger category, called online laboratories, which includes also virtual laboratories. Development of remote laboratories in academic settings has been held back because of the lack of standardization of technology, processes, operation and their integration with formal educational environments. Remote laboratories can be used in educational settings for a variety of reasons, for instance, when the equipment is not available in the physical laboratory; when the physical laboratory space available is not sufficient to either set up the experiments or permit access to all on-site students in the course; or when the teacher needs to provide online laboratory experiences to students taking courses via distance education. This dissertation proposes a new approach for the development and deployment of online laboratories over online platforms. The research activities performed include: The design and implementation of an architecture of a system for Smart Adaptive Remote Laboratories (SARL) integrated to educational environments to improve the remote laboratory users experience through the implementation of a modular architecture and the use of context information about the users and laboratory activities; the design pattern and implementation for the Remote Laboratory Management System (RLMS); the definition and implementation of an xAPI-based activity tracking system for online laboratories with support for both centralized and distributed architectures of Learning Record Stores (LRS); the definition of Smart Laboratory Learning Object (SLLO) capable of being integrated in different educational environments, including the implementation of a Lab Authoring module; and finally, the definition of a reliability model to detect and report failures and possible causes and countermeasures applying ruled based systems. The architecture proposed complies with the just approved IEEE 1876 Standard for Networked Smart Learning for Online Laboratories and supports virtual, remote, hybrid and mobile laboratories. A full set of low-cost online laboratory experiment stations were designed and implemented to support the Introduction to Logic Design course, providing true hands-on lab experience to students through the a low-cost, student-built mobile laboratory platform connected via USB to the SARL System. The SARL prototype have been successfully integrated to a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and a variety of configurations tested that can support privacy and security requirements of different stakeholders. The prototype online laboratory experiments developed have contributed and been featured in IEEE 1876 standard, as well as been integrated into an Industry Connections Actionable Data Book (ADB) that was featured in the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2017. SARL is being developed as the infrastructure to support a Latin American and Caribbean network of online laboratories. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Easy Exam is web-based educational software which allows professors to take and students to give exams. This project focuses on making an effortless process for professors to make an exam, to grade exams for all students, and to create class statistical analysis reports about all exam-taking students. At the end of the exam, students can see their report with analytics based on topics in the exam. This web-based software will help students to identify their weaknesses and strengths. So, students can focus on their weaknesses and improve their knowledge. Furthermore, this software will help the professors to identify which students are weak in which sections in their studies. So, professors can focus on those areas and make their student understand more. This project works on multiple choices questions. However, this project has extensive unique opportunities and abilities that will be covering many different types of questions such as programming questions in the future stages of this project.

Computer simulation and animation (CSA) has been receiving growing attention and wide application in the engineering education community. The goal of this dissertation research was to improve students' conceptual understanding and procedural skills for solving particle dynamics problems, by developing, implementing and assessing 12 interactive computer simulation and animation learning modules. The developed CSA learning modules integrate visualization with mathematical modeling to help students directly connect engineering dynamics with mathematics. These CSA modules provide a constructivist environment where students can study physical laws, demonstrate mental models, make predictions, derive conclusions, and solve problems. A mixed-method research was conducted in this study: quasi-experimental method (quantitative), and survey questionnaires and interviews (qualitative and quantitative). Quasi-experimental research involving an intervention group and a comparison group was performed to investigate the extent that the developed CSA learning modules improved students' conceptual understanding and procedural skills in solving particle dynamics problems. Surveys and interviews were administrated to examine students' learning attitudes toward and experiences with the developed CSA learning modules. The results of quasi-experimental research show that the 12 CSA learning modules developed for this study increased students' class-average conceptual and procedural learning gains by 29% and 40%, respectively. Therefore, these developed CSA modules significantly improved students' conceptual understanding and procedural skills for solving particle dynamics problems. The survey and interview results show that students had a positive experience with CSA learning.

Information Technology (IT) systems have become essential components of our society. These IT systems have an internal structure called the system's architecture. This architecture directly affects the system's performance and ability to meet business objectives. The people who design this structure are called IT Architects. Investigating the capabilities that distinguish highly-skilled IT Architects contributes to IT knowledge and practice and supports improving the design of systems' architectures as well as the selection and development of IT Architects. This thesis examines some of the capabilities that distinguish highly-skilled IT Architects and applies the resulting understanding to the education of post-graduate IT students. By investigating selected capabilities of highly-skilled IT Architects, how this group of IT Architects differ from their colleagues with respect to highly-valued capabilities and how these capabilities could be taught, we clarify both a professional and an educational basis for improvement. The research has a three stage, multi-method design. The initial stage, undertaken in 2004, consists of interview-based qualitative research with fourteen practicing IT Architects to understand the characteristics of highly-skilled IT Architects. The interviewees were chosen through personal relationships and subsequent snowball sampling and through the interviews and subsequent analysis, we identify eight capabilities, four personality traits and a range of experience that is valuable for highly-skilled IT Architects. These results support prior research that identified the importance of communications and business knowledge while extending the range of valuable characteristics for the IT Architect role. The next quantitative stage surveys 82 practicing IT Architects and 97 other IT professionals using four psychological measures; the Cognitive Style Inventory (CSI), the Problem Solving Inventory (PSI), the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), and Zimbardo's Time Perspective Inventory (ZTPI). The analysis, undertaken in 2005, identifies two statistically significant differentiating capabilities that distinguish highly-skilled IT Architects from less skilled IT Architects. The first capability is that the highly-skilled IT Architects approach problems differently and generate more alternatives before attempting solutions and spend more effort evaluating outcomes than the less skilled IT Architects. The second capability is that the less skilled IT Architects have a different attitude towards time and do not always act consistently with a longer term perspective. The final stage of research investigates whether the teaching of material related to the two distinguishing capabilities improve students outcomes for these capabilities. In 2006 we measured the initial student capability level of 35 students, the level of 28 of these students at the conclusion of the subject, and again in 2007, one-year later 16 students were measured. We again use quantitative surveys with the PSI and ZTPI instruments and found that whilst we measure a change in student capability for problem solving, the two capabilities we targeted are not significantly affected through the teaching. Interviews with the participants indicate that the teaching is effective and the lack of significant differences in the targeted capabilities is because of external factors overriding what they are learning. Our research contributes to the field of Computer Science and Information Technology by providing: (i) the basis for improved identification and selection of IT Architects for industry and providing additional information to enhance their professional education through the identification of distinguishing capabilities of highly-skilled IT Architects; (ii) information for educators about IT Architect capabilities and capability development that are important for highly-skilled IT Architects and some considerations when teaching these capabilities; (iii) a foundation for research that compares and contrasts capabilities within other IT professions; and (iv) results that can be used to improve the process of architecting IT systems. More generally, the research contributes to the body of knowledge regarding IT skills and requirements for different roles.