Educating Engineering Students Research Articles

Behavior Model of Knowledge, Attitude, and Skills in Practicing Safety and Health in the Workplace among Higher Education Engineering Students

Behavior Model of Knowledge, Attitude, and Skills in Practicing Safety and Health in the Workplace among Higher Education Engineering Students

Enhancing teaching and learning in STEM Labs: The development of an android-based virtual reality platform

Integrating information technology as an ancillary tool in education is indispensable, especially in an era witnessing a remarkable transition in teaching and learning. Globally, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are applying digital e-learning tools to complement teaching aids for educational purposes. The paradigm shift to the fourth industrial revolution is a significant problem educators face and requires a rapid response through STEM implementation. Practical concepts are presented visually to learners using digital media devices and computer-based interactive platforms, including Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Extended Reality (XR), and Mixed Reality (MR). The paper presents the development process and final output of a mobile VR application relevant to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) labs, fit for purpose. Recently, HEIs have been utilizing VR technological platforms to communicate abstract ideas through this seamless approach, improving the learning process. A VR platform for education engineering students in induction motor technology was developed. Using VR, students interact in multiuser rooms within 3-Dimensional (3D) and multidimensional virtual environments. As a recommendation, the endless possibilities of VR may be explored by educators, as VR simulations enable the comprehension of imagined concepts.

Educating Engineering Students to Address Bias and Discrimination Within Their Project Teams

What training should engineering students receive to enable them to contribute to reducing bias, discrimination and the persistent lack of diversity in engineering? Collaboration is central to professional engineering work and, consequently, teamwork and group projects are increasingly present in engineering curricula. However, the influence of unconscious bias on interactions within teams can negatively affect women and underrepresented groups and is now recognised as an important engineering ethics issue. This paper describes a workshop designed to enable engineering students to work equitably in diverse teams. Key features of the workshop include (1) the emotionally safe, empowering and warm environment created, (2) the creation of opportunities for students to discuss and apply the issues raised to their own engineering projects, and (3) the opportunities to practice the use of both proactive and reactive strategies to address bias and discrimination in teams. The evaluation of the workshop suggests that engineering students regarded both onsite and online formats as providing useful skills that they intended to apply in practice. Follow-up evaluations suggest that the workshop leads to behavioural change, especially the use of proactive teamwork strategies intended to reduce the impact of unconscious bias.

Exploring the Prototypical Definitions of Intelligent Engineers Held by Irish and Swedish Higher Education Engineering Students.

Males are generally overrepresented in higher education engineering. However, the magnitude of this variance differs between countries and engineering fields. Evidence associated with the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis suggests that perceptions of intelligence held by actors within engineering affects the engagement of underrepresented groups. This study examined perceptions of an intelligent engineer held by undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students in Ireland and Sweden, countries selected based on their levels of female representation in engineering education. It was hypothesised that there would be a significant difference in perceptions between countries. A survey methodology was employed in which a random sample of Irish and Swedish university students completed two surveys. The first asked respondents to list characteristics of an intelligent engineer, and the second asked for ratings of importance for each unique characteristic. The results indicate that an intelligent engineer was perceived to be described by seven factors; practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge, reasoning, negative attributes, and inquisitiveness when the data was analysed collectively, but only the five factors of practical problem solving, conscientiousness, drive, discipline knowledge and negative attributes were theoretically interpretable when the data from each country was analysed independently. A gender × country interaction effect was observed for each of these five factors. The results suggest that the factors which denote intelligence in engineering between Irish and Swedish males and females are similar, but differences exist in terms of how important these factors are in terms group level definitions. Future work should consider the self-concepts held by underrepresented groups with respect to engineering relative to the factors observed in this study.

Educating Engineering Students in Egypt: A Stakeholders’ Perspective, Using Narrative Qualitative Approach

This is part of a series of three papers in a research project examining engineering education in Egypt. After concerns from several stakeholders about the graduates’ knowledge and skills, a fresh look at the phenomenon is attempted. In this manuscript the views of stakeholders, using narrative approach and analysis was carried out. The methodology followed a narrative approach, conducting stakeholder’s analysis with relevant and related people to engineering education (Coulter and Smith 2009; Sfard and Prusak, 2005). The sample included students & fresh graduates, engineers with several years of experience, others with long experiences, academics, parents and administrative staff, were elicited. The responses were collected by asking two questions via social media. The aim was to obtain a quick idea on how stakeholders perceive engineering education in Egypt, and the enhancements they would like to see. Importance of the study comes from both linking with three papers in series exploring engineering education in Egypt, and the in-depth narrative reflections and insights of stakeholders’ point of view. Four clear requests became evident from the stakeholders responses: the application of modern innovative teaching methods; soft skills training; modern software applications training; and practical technical or industrial training.

An impact of simulation labs on engineering students' academic performance: a critical Investigation

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the impact of simulation laboratory on continuing education engineering students’ academic performance.Design/methodology/approachThe investigation consists of establishing the student learning levels then mapping the student learning levels (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation) through program outcomes with appropriate evaluation components. 270 continuing education students enrolled during six years were selected to be observed as part of this study. These students were divided into two subgroups, one with 135 students who were offered simulation lab (G2) and the other 135 students were not offered simulation lab (G1) in this investigation. Subsequently, a comparative analysis was carried out on these two groups to assess the student performance in multiple evaluation components with respect to student learning level and program outcome achievement.FindingsIt was identified that student performance in the application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation learning levels has improved for the group with simulation lab, and no change or minimal change was observed for the group without simulation lab. It was revealed that the simulation lab practice problems needs to be aligned with the theoretical concepts in the course to get a better performance from the students.Originality/valueThe study was conducted in one of the leading institutes with 270 students’ performance observed over a period of six years. It is the comprehensive work done on a complete program with data collated over a period of six years in multiple courses and multiple assessments.

Spatio temporal smoke detection using hybrid deep Q learning classifier for educating engineering students

In this paper, we propose a deep learning based smoke detection method which overcomes drawbacks of the conventional smoke detection method. Real-time smoke detection via machine-based identification method in the area of surveillance system has been of great advantage in recent era. An effective smoke detection strategy is necessary to avoid the hazard resulting from fire. The conventional smoke detection method lacks in accuracy, therefore, deep learning based smoke detection is adopted for the same purpose. However, a lot of video smoke detection approach involves minimum lighting and it can be required for the cameras to discover the existence of smoke particles in a scene. Eliminating such challenges, our proposed work introduces a novel concept like hybrid reinforcement deep Q learning classifier of smoke detection. This work takes the correct decision about the smoke particles via reinforcement deep Q learning and classifies the smoke particle with the deep convolutional neural network. The proposed real-time algorithm is aimed to provide proper education for the engineers to detect moving objects for the purpose of developing surveillance systems. This method is also helpful for the beginners who have keen interest in the field of deep learning to control fire. Here, to observe the temporal variance of fire smoke, spatial analysis is identified in the present frame and in the subsequence of the video, spatio-temporal analysis has been taken into account. Finally, smoke particles are classified with the novel reinforcement Q learning-based classifier and experimental results show a better performance regarding classification accuracy. So we can detect smoke successfully with the novel method. The main purpose of this work is to describe and formalize a machine learning -based smoke detection algorithm that can be used by students.

Educating Engineering Students in Egypt: Recommendations for Improvement

Egyptian schools of engineering (government faculties, private faculties and private higher engineering institutes) award degrees to 35000 graduates annually. There have been concerns from the Egyptian Engineers Syndicate, experienced engineers, local & international employers, parents and other society stakeholders about the knowledge and skills gained by engineering graduates. In this article, first the institutions were analyzed from a fresh business perspective. The analysis highlighted several constraints that hinder radical reforms. In part two of this article the aspirations of stakeholders were collected and identified. In part three, recommendations were made based on the experiences of engineering education providers worldwide.

RETRACTED: Identifying LCF-DLT approach and educating engineering students to learn foreground perception in video surveillance

Real world actions occur often in crowded and dynamic environments. In this present world, surveillance plays a vital role in many applications. Here this paper proposed an intelligent surveillance...

Tutorials for Integrating CAD/CAM in Engineering Curricula

This article addresses the issue of educating engineering students with the knowledge and skills of Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing (CAD/CAM). In particular, three carefully designed tutorials—cutting tool offsetting, tool-path generation for freeform surfaces, and the integration of advanced machine tools (e.g., hexapod-based machine tools) with solid modeling—are described. The tutorials help students gain an in-depth understanding of how the CAD/CAM-relevant hardware devices and software packages work in real-life settings. At the same time, the tutorials help students achieve the following educational outcomes: (1) an ability to apply the knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering; (2) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet the desired needs, (3) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems; and (4) an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools that are necessary for engineering practice. The tutorials can be modified for incorporating other contemporary issues (e.g., additive manufacturing, reverse engineering, and sustainable manufacturing), which can be delved into as a natural extension of this study.

Sustainability and LCA in Engineering Education – A Course Curriculum

Educating engineering students in sustainability is becoming increasingly important since engineering is expected to play a vital role in solving the sustainability challenges facing us. At the Technical University of Denmark this awareness is visible in the strategy where sustainability is expected to be an integrated part of all study programmes. The division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment (QSA) aims to provide this competence to the DTU students. QSA focus mainly on Life Cycle Assessment based methods but have designed a course curriculum that can provide different levels of sustainability competences to students with a progression of complexity from the bachelor to the master or even PhD level. This role is unique since LCA is not systematically a component of engineering studies today. We present and discuss our experience with attempts to integrate LCA and life cycle thinking in an educational curriculum to teach sustainability broadly to engineering students at DTU. A main challenge is how to integrate the teaching into study programmes and eventually how to accommodate an increasing number of students on the individual courses.

Sustainable Development, Technological and Industrial Impacts on Engineering Education

The past industrial revolutions had negative effects on our world especially on environmental and social aspects. Hence, our societies must be able to steer the continued industrial revolution into the direction of sustainability. In particular, the current industrial revolution relies on the technologies of the Internet of Things, which open the ways to the development of sustainable solutions in order to meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future. In the transition towards a sustainable society, teaching sustainability is necessary to ensure sustainable design and preserve the ecosystem. Consequently, educating engineering students on sustainable development is wide spreading and is actually taking place worldwide in many modern faculties and universities. This article examines the teaching methods for a sustainability subject and builds on the experience of others and a wide spectrum of methods in order to provide guidelines for curriculum design. The design is based on innovations in technologies to cover sustainability along with environmental and social implications. The article also provides a criterion for evaluating the impact of executing the proposed sustainable development curriculum.

Integrated Product / System Design and Planning for New Product Family in a Changeable Learning Factory

The large product variety driven by customers’ preferences and fluctuation in number of product variants produced annually impose manufacturing challenges. Changeable, reconfigurable, adaptable and smart manufacturing (Industry 4.0) paradigms aim at dealing with these challenges. The implementation of such paradigms presents many challenges to industry. Learning factories can be used as a research test bed and in educating engineering students and practitioners with the required knowledge and continuing professional development. This paper demonstrates the steps involved in introducing a new product family to an existing changeable learning factory characterized by changeability enablers including mobility, modularity, scalability and convertibility. A new product family of belt tensioners is introduced as a new product for the assembly learning factory, the iFactory, in the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) Center, which initially assembled a family of desk sets with 265 variants. All required steps starting with the rationale of selecting the new product family, process planning, redesign of fixtures, pallets, and system re-configuration are discussed. The ability of the modular learning factory to change and adapt to the new product family, the involved experiential learning objectives and benefits and research projects along with the experience with the transition to new products family are discussed.

An Investigation of the Behaviour of Agricultural Extension and Education Engineering Students in Tehran University Towards Employability

One of the most significant aims of universities is to educate experts for entering the business market and applying their knowledge in developing the economy of the country. Accordingly, higher agricultural education has a very colossal role in development of the agricultural and employability skills among the students of this field. Therefore, in the present study, employability of the students of agriculture extension and education of Tehran University has been investigated, based on various observational dimensions of Ajzen's theory of planned behavior, attitude, perceived behavioral control, subjective norm and intention. For this purpose, 42 students of agriculture extension and education of Tehran University reported their information according to the elements of Ajzen's theory. The data supported and reaffirmed Ajzen's theory. The first anticipant of the employability was the control of students’ perceived behavior. In the same way, intention toward employability was the most considerable anticipator of the employability behavior.

Serious games and the development of an entrepreneurial mindset in higher education engineering students

The paper discusses adoption of Serious Games (SGs) for supporting development of an entrepreneurial mindset in university students of technical and scientific universities. The paper relies on the authors experience in the eSG project, which aims at introducing students, mainly through practice, to basic concepts of entrepreneurship and company management. In the framework of the project, courses have been designed and carried out in three different countries: Italy, Spain and the Netherlands.The paper discusses the main requirements for the courses and presents a table template, based on state of the art models for entrepreneurship education, that we have used for the scouting of the most suited SGs and defining the most appropriate mix for their use in the courses, keeping into account targeted competences and skills, usability and pedagogical effectiveness.Using the template, the paper draws a comprehensive overview of relevant SGs available on the market and identifies, through an expert analysis, key benefits and issues concerning their adoption in teaching entrepreneurship for the target students. Finally, the paper critically analyzes the state of the art, indicating directions for future research that should lead to development of more effective SGs for entrepreneurship education.

Educating Engineering Students in the Arts

The presentation will discuss a third-year engineering elective course, Engineering and Science inthe Arts, offered by the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. The presentation will detail the unique course deliverables, which require the engineering students to, first, create original works of art, and, secondly, to explain how these works connect to engineering and/or science. A key objective in the course was that the students eradicate the boundaries separating engineers and artists, and this presentation will consider the course’s success in this regard.

Increasing the self-study effort of higher education engineering students with an online learning platform

This article presents a study on motivating engineering students towards more active independent work and higher course effort using an online learning platform, weekly groupwork and weekly progress reporting. In the past five years, the average final grades of the students in a traditionally implemented computer networks and information security lecture course have been decreasing. An experiment on increasing student effort was made in a new information security course, relying on reducing the amount of lectures and moving a corresponding amount of course work into a computer-based learning environment to be performed independently and in a group. The results of the experiment were extremely promising, showing higher student effort and better grades. The experiment was repeated in another new course and the preliminary results also indicate a similar increase in student effort. The conclusion is that similar strategies should also be employed in existing courses and future new courses.

Developing environmental awareness in engineers through Engineers Without Borders and sustainable design projects

Today’s engineering students recognize the importance of environmental issues, but the traditional engineering curriculum is weak in opportunities for students to experience the link between the practice of engineering and the ideals of environmental sustainability. To meet this need, we attempt to offer multi‐disciplinary knowledge early in the university course. We suggest a means for educating engineering students to understand environmental problems by viewing them through the eyes of the affected inhabitants. The vehicle for this educational model is Engineers Without Borders. By exposing undergraduate engineering students to real world projects presented by Engineers Without Borders in the first year of their program, the importance of considering the social and environmental issues can be more firmly ingrained in the problem solving process.

Active learning and reflection in product development engineering education

Traditional engineering courses at tertiary level have been traditionally theory-based, supported by laboratory work, but there is now a world-wide trend towards project-based learning. In product development education, project-based learning is essential in order to integrate the disciplines of design, marketing and manufacturing towards the common goal of creating a new product. The process of development consists of a set of activities, tools and methods that are themselves evolving and improving with practice. A successful active learning course in product development education is presented in this paper as part of undergraduate engineering education, within the context of a fourth year course in New Zealand. The industry sponsored individual projects support active real-life learning and reflection. The paper presents ways in which active learning can be enhanced within the learning outcomes of a project-based paper. These methods can be adopted in educating engineering students of any discipline to better prepare them for their future careers.

First Year Engineering Students' Approaches to Study

Student approaches to learning (SAL) and the levels of understanding they achieve are critically linked and closely related to motivation. This paper reports the results of a study involving first year higher education engineering students using the ASI-32 questionnaire to investigate approaches to study and end of year achievement.