Over the past few years many universities worldwide have introduced a common first year for all engineering disciplines. This is despite the opinion of many academics that large classes have negative effects on the learning outcomes of first year students. The University of South Australia is also faced with low motivation amongst engineering…

This paper presents the outcomes of the preliminary survey in which the method of IFS was used to integrate motivating questions into the lecture presentations in order to increase the students' involvement. Instant Feedback System (IFS) enables the educators to improve their own teaching by getting instant and real-time feedback about how clear…

Students taking the "How to Make (Almost) Anything" class at Mahtomedi High School in Mahtomedi, Minn. can literally make almost anything--from chess pieces to cups to chairs, and DVD cases to clocks to lampshades--right in their classroom. And besides getting a daily dose of amazement, these students are making history in the first…

Ethics is among the professional skills embedded in the first year engineering curriculum in many institutions. The general format of the study of ethics is similar to many other institutions: student teams review case studies and develop written and oral presentations on the ethical issues encountered. This report investigates whether the use of…

This paper describes the redesign and implementation of the course, "Introduction to Programming for Engineers" using microcontroller (MCU) hardware as the programming target. The objective of this effort is to improve the programming competency for engineering students by more closely relating the initial programming experience to the student's…

This study examined the characteristics of 10 science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) focused high schools that were selected from various regions across the United States. In an effort to better prepare students for careers in STEM fields, many schools have been designed and are currently operational, while even more are in the…

Background: Cross-cultural studies contribute to engineering education as a globally interconnected field. The methodological challenges posed by research across cultural boundaries must be explored to ensure the quality of such studies. Purpose: This article explores challenges and opportunities for insight by examining the effects of…

Background: A report from the American Society for Engineering Education (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2012) identified career-long professional development for faculty, teacher training in graduate programs, departmental climates that value and support educational innovation, and reward systems that recognize achievements in educational innovation as…

While Engineering values direct communication, indirect communication produces a kind of literacy salient for engineers that direct communication may not offer in the way indirect communication does. This article emphasizes the inadequacies of overly emphasizing direct communication for Engineering majors and explains how teaching indirect…

Purpose: This paper is the continuation of an earlier paper in this journal on global megatrends provoking institutional changes. It contains sectoral analyses with relevance to environmental protection. Conclusions for suitable institutional reorganisation of (environmental or other) institutions are presented. The paper aims to discuss these…

In foundational knowledge engineering courses, students engage in problem solving in order to learn important course concepts. To help in this process, students receive feedback on their performance from the instructor. This paper explores an alternative to instructor-provided feedback: a semi-structured assignment in which students reworked…

Deliberate practice is important in many areas of learning, including that of learning to program computers. However, beliefs about the nature of personal traits, known as "mindsets," can have a profound impact on such practice. Previous research has shown that those with a "fixed mindset" believe their traits cannot change;…

Virtual Labs (VLAB) is a multi-institutional Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative, exclusively focused on lab experiments for engineering education. This project envisages building a large OER repository, containing over 1650 virtual experiments mapped to the engineering curriculum. The introduction of VLAB is a paradigm shift in an…

Educational software systems have an increasingly significant presence in engineering sciences. They aim to improve students' attitudes and knowledge acquisition typically through visual representation and simulation of complex algorithms and mechanisms or hardware systems that are often not available to the educational institutions. This paper…

Freshmen at the Manresa School of Engineering, Escola Politècnica Superior d'Enginyeria de Manresa (EPSEM), of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) are voluntarily provided with the mentoring service during their initial period at University. Mentoring gives academic, teaching and self-organizational support. It improves academic results…