Cross-Fertilization of Engineering Education Research and Development

Abstract

There is considerable concern over the slow rate of dissemination of proven engineering education innovations (Borrego et al. 2010). One possible cause of the slow rate of dissemination is that engineering educators in different engineering disciplines rarely communicate with one another. To study this issue, we analyzed the citations in all the 2009 papers in the nine U.S. engineering education journals and the proceedings listed in Table 1. This guest editorial presents data and recommendations for the Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice. Because none of the engineering or science education journals can unilaterally solve the problems caused by lack of crossfertilization and low rates of dissemination, results for other journals and proceedings are published in the following companion guest editorials: Journal of STEM Education, the Proceedings of the ASEE Annual Meeting, and the Proceedings of the Frontiers in Education (FIE) Conference (Wankat 2011c); Chemical Engineering Education (Wankat 2011a); and IEEE Transactions on Education (Wankat 2011b).