Surveys student and qualified engineers (N=189) in Bulgaria via a questionnaire. Results stress the importance of the need for women to work for economic reasons and the role of the communist system in emphasizing engineering and gender equity. Contains 26 references. (DDR)

Explores several engineering concepts as the basis of teaching programs for schools, examines ways in which these concepts are modified and adapted to technical and vocational education, and identifies consequences for teacher education. Focuses on the transformation of models in academic disciplines and extracts knowledge useful for decision…

Emphasizes the need to accommodate growing cultural and educational diversity among first-year college students. Describes several programs designed to address freshmen needs including a two-day orientation program; a mentoring scheme; and a course unit to improve teamwork and communication skills, increase awareness of university facilities, and…

"SET (Science, Engineering, and Technology) for the Future," a research/action project at Scotland's Heriot-Watt University, surveyed SET students' education experience, compared information with previous research, and used results to modify two SET modules to increase the participation of women students and improve their experiences.…

About one quarter of first-semester students enrolled in engineering technology programs at a Newfoundland (Canada) college dropped out. Student interviews and surveys indicate that academic difficulty was the most significant factor. Part-time attendance, uncertainty about future employment opportunities, work, and time elapsed since high school…

While graduates must be effective critical thinkers, they must do more than just think critically for its own sake. College coursework should encourage collaboration and invite the kind of sophisticated, cross-disciplinary, flexible perspectives necessary in the workplace. (MM)

Presents ideas about how the workplace affects job performance, how to diagnose workplace-related problems, and how to make modest improvements. Highlights include: workplace-imposed limits on performance; the mental and physical steps of work; screening behavior; how adaptation interferes with performance; task- and human-based workspaces;…

Most people think that engineering and mathematics go hand in hand. To many, being an engineer means manipulating equations and calculating measurements to design and build structures of all kinds. And they are right. Engineering does involve a great deal of mathematics. But, building structures to withstand certain environmental conditions or…

The aim of this paper is to report on a three-year follow-up evaluation of an experimental problem-based learning (PBL) integrated curriculum directed to second-year engineering students. The PBL curriculum brought together the contents of physics, mathematics and computer science courses into a single course. Instead of the students having to…

In recognition of the fact that science centers and other informal educational institutions can play a role in the reform of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, several major research and professional programs are currently underway. This article discusses one such effort, the Center for Informal Learning and…

Written and oral communications and the processes of writing and reading are highly valued within the scientific community; scientists who communicate well are successful in gaining recognition and support from members of their own communities, the research funding agencies, and the wider society. Yet how do scientists achieve this proficiency?…

For the past year we have been developing and implementing a program in which students design and construct remote operated vehicles. In this paper, we report on a pilot study that occurred over the course of an academic year in an inner city high school. Specifically, we have been investigating whether students learn meaningful science content…

The objective in this paper is the implementation of the highly structured seven-step problem-based learning (PBL) procedure as part of the learning process in a human-computer interaction (HCI) design course at the Technical University of Denmark, taking into account the common learning processes in PBL and the interaction design process. These…

Evolutionary theory serves as the fundamental cornerstone to all life science; yet students frequently possess misconceptions regarding evolution or resist learning the idea altogether. This study, which emerged from a larger project focused on informal reasoning, explores how college students' conceptions of evolutionary theory affect their…

Assessment in engineering disciplines is typically oriented to demonstrating competence in specific tasks. Even where assessments are intended to have a formative component, little priority may be given to feedback. Engineering departments are often criticized, by their students and by external quality reviewers, for paying insufficient attention…