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.

No description available.

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.

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have been criticised by employers, government and graduates themselves, for not adequately developing required work skills. An example of practice that does develop student skills is a short industrial placement (SIP) where students are expected to solve a real problem in a company, in two weeks, working with one other student. This practice occurs in a one year Masters programme at Cambridge University Engineering Department. This work studies the SIP practice to understand why it is effective and determine lessons that could contribute to solving the wider skills problem. A five year research timeframe, coupled with an annually run programme, enabled a multi-stage study using an Engaged Scholarship methodology. The first-stage was an exploratory study that investigated the initial development of SIP skills, using simulated experiences, in a taught HE based module. Skills development was found to be a complex multi-component process. A theoretical skills development framework was constructed from literature and compared with practice. It was determined that five simulated SIP experiences provided the student with sufficient skills to undertake a SIP in practice and, the most significant problem was that SIP skills were not well defined. The second-stage focussed on defining skills. Skills were found to be context specific and defining skills required both the associated task and its context to be known. With tasks found to be both essential to defining skills and effective in describing what graduates do in practice, a SIP task framework was constructed which was tested on 80 different SIPs in one academic year. The resulting framework comprised twelve problem-solving process-stages, that in total contained 64 different tasks, and five generic task domains. These generic domains were investigated in the third-stage of this research. These were found to be more extensive and complex than anticipated resulting in a reconfiguration of the SIP framework, the generation of SIP specific domain descriptions and partial completion of task frameworks to describe each domain. This research has generated a plausible skills development theory for HEIs, and task frameworks to describe a SIP. Further work has been identified to refine the task frameworks and to continue work on the proposed skills development theory.

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.

Atualmente, com a globalização da economia e a alta competitividade imposta por mudanças sociais, reforça-se de maneira inigualável a necessidade de se equacionar a questão da capacitação humana no que se refere à qualificação profissional frente às novas exigências. Essa necessidade é imposta pelos desafios diante de uma atuação competente estabelecida por novos padrões de qualidade e produtividade como única forma de atuação competitiva. Novos padrões de desempenho do trabalho, apoiados em critérios de multidisciplinaridade do conhecimento e multifuncionalidade de competências passam a ser exigidos não só dos produtos e serviços mas dos profissionais de engenharia, enquanto agentes de transformação tanto sociais como mercadológicas. Neste trabalho, abordam-se aspectos relativos à situação do ensino de engenharia e às novas exigências de atuação no cenário globalizado com o objetivo de propor uma estrutura de referência que permita avaliar a qualidade do ensino de engenharia em seus vários aspectos. / Nowadays, due to economy globalization and the high competitivity impose by social changes, the necessity of solving the question of human capacity concerning professional qualification facing the new exigencies is reinforced. Such necessity is imposed by the challenges of a competent performance established by new quality and productivity patterns as the only way of competitive performance. New patterns of performance at work based on criteria of multidisciplinarity of competences start to be required not only from products and services, but also from engineering professionals, while agents of social and market transformations. The present paper deals with the aspects concerning the engineering teaching situation and the new exigencies of performance in the globalized background in order to propose a reference structure witch allows evaluating the quality of engineering teaching in its several aspects.

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.