Investigating the field of engineering offers the opportunity for interdisciplinary, hands-on, inquiry-based units that integrate real-world applications. However, many K-12 students are not exposed to engineering until they enter college. Get a Grip! is a problem-based unit that places middle school students in the role of engineers who are…

Electronic mentoring programmes at colleges and universities and especially in engineering and science are a relatively new phenomenon. Electronic mentoring has been developed based on the possibilities unique to information and communications technology. The common feature of electronic mentoring programmes is the independence from geography and…

This fourth part outlines a strategy for overcoming the limitations of the knowledge system for engineering by combining intellectual maps, preventive approaches, umbrella concepts, and round tables as described in the earlier parts. A discussion of the issues faced by modern medicine illustrates the paradigmatic nature of the diagnosis and…

When sustainable development (SD) is only taught in specific courses, it is questionable if engineering students are able to integrate it into their engineering practices and technical designs. For this reason, sustainability should also be integrated into regular engineering courses, e.g. design courses, materials courses or processing…

Of all professions, engineering is ranked near the bottom in the UK in terms of the proportion of female applicants for university places, so the engineering industry is missing out on some of the best young talent available. Despite initiatives to increase the number of women entering engineering, there has been little change over the last…

In the present study we used bayesian latent growth modeling to asses the impact of a one-semester creativity course on the development of engineering students' creativity scripts. We compared a treatment (N = 52) and a control (N = 42) group with respect to individual differences in initial status and in rate of change. Results revealed that the…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to outline the approach and process in place within Kentz Engineers & Constructors to develop graduate engineers on an international basis. Design/methodology/approach: The approach adopted is that of a case study which describes activities and processes within the organization and the rationale behind them,…

In this paper we present eTeacher, an intelligent agent that provides personalized assistance to e-learning students. eTeacher observes a student's behavior while he/she is taking online courses and automatically builds the student's profile. This profile comprises the student's learning style and information about the student's performance, such…

An Excel add-in--XSEOS--that implements several excess Gibbs free energy models and equations of state has been developed for educational use. Several traditional and modern thermodynamic models are available in the package with a user-friendly interface. XSEOS has open code, is freely available, and should be useful for instructors and students…

A simple mixing of a hot- and cold-water stream at a T-junction was investigated. The main objective was to use mass and energy balance equations to predict mass low rates and the temperature of the mixed stream after the T-junction, and then compare these with the measured values. Furthermore, the thermocouple location after the T-junction and…

A simplified model of an industrially relevant fluid-particle flow system is analyzed using linear stability theory. Instabilities of the uniform state of a fluidized bed are investigated in response to small flow perturbations. Students are expected to perform each step of the computational analysis, and physical insight into key mechanistic…

Disaster studies have made important progress in recognizing the unequally distributed consequences of disasters, but there has been less progress in analyzing social factors that help create "natural" disasters. Even well-known patterns of hazard-creation tend to be interpreted generically--as representing "economic development" or…

We appropriate Rogoff's ("Apprenticeship in thinking: Cognitive development in social context," 1991; in: Wertsch et al. (eds.) "Sociocultural studies of mind," 1993) notion of guided participation to demonstrate, through abbreviated case studies, our strategy for integrating mobile technology-based learning experiences in higher education. Guided…

While most high school juniors in Howard County, Maryland, were quietly studying in their classrooms, students enrolled in the Energy, Power and Transportation Academy (EPT) of the Applications and Research Lab (ARL), in Ellicott City, were making a lot of noise, welding and cutting away to build an all-terrain wheelchair. The author was a part of…

This study examines the underrepresentation of women faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by comparing the intentions of attrition and turnover between genders in Research and Doctoral universities. It is found that the two genders did not differ in their intentions to depart from academia, but women faculty had a…