The paper investigates difficulties involved in integrating online courses in academic colleges. Despite their growing prevalence in Israel and worldwide there are still no online courses offered as part of the learning process in many colleges. In order to identify factors for this phenomenon, a study was conducted to investigate the attitudes of…

Outdoor adventure education courses are used in higher education to develop transferable skills such as groupwork and problem-solving skills. There is a need for exploratory investigation into students' perceptions of this experience. This study aimed to develop an innovative qualitative data collection method, and to use it to explore…

The Rural Engineering Department (Technical University of Madrid) ran three competence surveys during the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 academic years and evaluated: (1) the competences gained by agricultural engineer's degree and agricultural technical engineer's degree students (360 respondents); (2) the competences demanded by agricultural employers…

Academic writing in English in our context is a significant aspect that can be innovative when a convergence model of writing stages is used along with collaborative work. This article reports on a study aimed at analyzing how collaborative work relates to undergraduate electronics students' academic writing development in English as a foreign…

This study explores the factors affecting the development of academic excellence on a group of 33 high-achieving engineering students. Participants were interviewed individually to explore several personal and contextual aspects of their past and current academic pathways. The results obtained reflect three main contributions to the…

This paper describes an action-research experience carried out with second year students at the School of Engineering of the National University of Entre Ríos, Argentina. Vector calculus students played an active role in their own learning process. They were required to present weekly reports, in both oral and written forms, on the topics studied,…

The mission of national colleges of technology (NCT's) in Japan and the universities of technology (UT's) in Taiwan is to pragmatically prepare quality engineers and technologists. In recent years, the partnership among NCT's and UT's is extended and expanded. This paper introduces the pragmatic and successful partnership between National United…

Due to the growing importance of technology and engineering in the educational landscape, and to support America's ability to contribute to and compete in a global economy, the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) initiated development of the first NAEP Technology and Engineering Literacy (TEL) Assessment. Relating to national efforts in…

Like many technology teachers, the author, a technology education teacher at Arthur Hill High School in Saginaw, Michigan, tries to stretch his budget by "milking" each student activity for maximum benefit. In the technology department, they use balsa wood towers to teach the basics of structural engineering. To get the most from their materials,…

Experiments in continuous-stirred vessels were proposed to introduce methods in pharmacokinetics and drug transport to chemical engineering students. The activities can be incorporated into the curriculum to illustrate fundamentals learned in the classroom. An appreciation for the role of pharmacokinetics in drug discovery will also be gained…

This study was an effort to add to the body of research surrounding Gilbert's Behavior Engineering Model (BEM). The model was tested to determine its ability to explain factor relationships of organizational safety culture in a high-risk work environment. Three contextual variables were measured: communication, resource availability, and…

One may ask the question, What is energy? Typically the first answers that come to mind are oil, coal, and natural gas or nuclear energy. Most human activities require some form of energy consumption. This may be the energy produced by the food that one eats or the gasoline that is used in cars, trucks, buses, and other vehicles. One cannot ignore…

This article describes a design activity that provides students with a solid understanding of the many issues involved with alternate energy system design. In this activity, students will be able to learn about electric vehicles and have the opportunity to design a way to recharge the batteries while the cars are parked in a commuter garage. The…

International graduate students often face significant challenges with academic writing. These challenges create uncertainty about faculty members' roles as teachers of discipline-specific writing, especially in relation to the roles of writing specialists in other academic units. This qualitative case study explored faculty members' attitudes…

In the past, engineering programmes were developed with separate technical learning outcomes supplemented by generic attributes. The latter were in most cases a standalone set of attributes developed by academic institutions or professional societies overseeing engineering accreditation processes. Although the technical learning outcomes were well…