Engineering education has a long and well-researched history; however, recent declines in the number of undergraduate students entering and matriculating through to graduation has commanded the engineering education community's attention. To help counter the declining number of students entering and persisting in engineering, an engineering…

Educational approaches in structural engineering have focused on classical methods for solving problems with manual calculations through assignments, quizzes, and exams. The use of computational software to apply the learned knowledge has been ignored for decades. This paper describes an educational approach to tackle the lack of applicable…

For many years, educators have been developing tools and techniques to improve the learning process in higher education; however, the vast majority of these do not focus directly on deep learning. In this work, an innovative teaching/learning tool is presented which focuses on deep learning of some engineering skills and principles. The tool is…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe specific techniques of "inquiry-based learning" employed by three instructors in Engineering schools, one in Europe and two in the USA. Design/methodology/approach: Theorists such as Bransford et al. argue that twenty-first century educators need to teach students to do more than simply…

Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is a hands-on, project-based engineering curriculum for high school and middle school students, which has quadrupled annual enrollment in Texas in five years to over 23,000 students. The diversity of students participating has also increased dramatically. Using six years of longitudinally-linked student data, the…

We analyze and study the beginning of a new Electrical Engineering Department, supported by an NSF Departmental Level Reform award, within a new College of Engineering in the 21st Century and also describe the academic approach and influences of an innovative cognitive-based approach to curriculum development. In addition, the approach taken…

Demonstrations can be very effective at enhancing student learning and represent a mechanism for embedding laboratory experiences within a classroom setting. A key component to an effective demonstration is active student engagement throughout the entire process, leading to a guided laboratory experience in a lecture setting. Students are involved…

Active learning enhances engineering education. This paper presents rationale, curriculum supplements, and an approach to active learning that may be seamlessly incorporated into a traditional lecture-based engineering class. A framework of educational theory that structures the active learning experiences and includes consideration of learning…