Environmental Engineering Education Research Articles

Application of Kimi Intelligent Assistant in the Teaching of Water Pollution Control Engineering Course

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, its application in the field of education is becoming increasingly widespread. This paper introduces the functional features of the Kimi Intelligent Assistant and elaborates on its application in the teaching of Water Pollution Control Engineering course from aspects such as assisting in lesson plan design, creating mind maps, answering questions, process design, exercise compilation, and extracurricular extended learning. Challenges and countermeasures of introducing Kimi Intelligent Assistant into the course teaching are analyzed from the perspectives of technology integration, teacher training, student acceptance, data security and privacy, cost, and curriculum content updates. The paper also provides a prospect for the further application of the Kimi Intelligent Assistant, suggesting that it is expected to become an important tool in promoting the technological development of future environmental engineering education.

Structural Modeling and Measuring Impact of Active Learning Methods in Engineering Education

<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:</i> This article presents a novel approach that demonstrates how students’ learning can be improved by increasing classroom adherence to active learning (AL) application, in a typical engineering education (EE) environment. It does that by using classroom observation protocol data and student assessment grades analyzed by a statistical tool, representing seven engineering programs. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Background:</i> AL applications in EE have been growing in recent years and there have been relevant discussions about their effect on students learning. This research is grounded on a 2.5-year-long data collection process through objective measures, following a strict experimental design project. It differs from other studies where surveys are used for data collection. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Research Question:</i> Can differences in students’ learning between traditional teaching and AL methods be distinguished by means of classroom observation protocol measures coupled with partial least-square structural equation modeling? <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Methodology:</i> An experimental research design was conducted in an Engineering Higher Education Institution, by taking independent measures of latent constructs’ indicators, such as student grades and AL classroom adherence levels. The data were subject to a partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach for modeling, analysis, and validation. <p xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <i>Findings:</i> The results suggested a nonlinear positive cause-and-effect relationship between AL adherence and learning, validated by several performance indexes, such as a learning prediction relevance <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Q^{2}~\mathrm{predict}$</tex-math> </inline-formula> <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$=$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 0.453 and goodness of fit <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$=$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 0.588. The model demonstrated a learning score improvement from 45.89 to 74.90 as an effect of the adherence to AL score increase from 0 to 35.97.

Design and Usability Evaluation of an Annotated Video–Based Learning Environment for Construction Engineering Education

Design and Usability Evaluation of an Annotated Video–Based Learning Environment for Construction Engineering Education

Factors Influencing the Professional Development of Engineering Students Under the “Plan for Educating and Training Outstanding Engineers”

Purpose This study investigates the role of the engineering education environment created by the implementation of the “Plan for Educating and Training Outstanding Engineers” (PETOE) on the professional capability development of engineering students from the perspective of students’ experience. Design/Approach/Methods This study uses data from the National Engineering Student Survey and multiple regression analysis to explore the role of institutional resources and support, teaching reforms, and interpersonal interaction on the professional development of engineering students. Findings The opportunities for on-campus practical activities provided by the institution, content of the teachers’ teaching, teaching methods, comprehensive coursework assessment, and interpersonal interactions contributed to the development of students’ engineering competencies, with limited contributions from research-based teaching methods. Internship opportunities and international exchange environments were negatively associated with the development of engineering skills in an “unexpected” manner. Originality/Value Focusing on students’ experiences of engineering education reform, this study comprehensively evaluates the implementation of the reform measures adopted under PETOE. Furthermore, it assesses how corresponding changes in the general educational environment relate to students’ professional capability development. Thus, this study addresses an important research gap in educational reform—the lack of domestic empirical studies in China.

Efforts on Environmental Energy and Engineering Education for Children Incorporating Problem-solving Game Activity:

Efforts on Environmental Energy and Engineering Education for Children Incorporating Problem-solving Game Activity:

An interactive and collaborative augmented reality environment for civil engineering education: steel reinforcement bars teaching as an example

PurposeAt present, teaching methods based on 2D drawings are still commonly used for educating students on the location of steel reinforcement bars in concrete. However, traditional teaching methods have limitations as students can find it difficult to understand 2D drawings. This study aims to develop an interactive and collaborative augmented reality environment (ICARE) using augmented reality (AR) technology to improve students' engagement in learning.Design/methodology/approachThis study develops an ICARE prototype, which is organized into two stages: (1) The augmented teaching environment comprising of models and interactive components; (2) The AR collaborative application which uses Photon Unity Networking (PUN) plugin and Azure spatial anchors cloud service. The AR-based teaching environment runs with Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to enable development in the HoloLens 2 through Microsoft Visual Studio.FindingsAn experimental study was conducted, where 60 students were divided into three groups employing Drawings-based, building information modeling (BIM)-based and AR-based methods for teaching. After the test, the three groups of students were requested to complete a questionnaire. According to the analysis of the experimental results, the ICARE can improve students' comprehension, memory of learned materials and their ability to read and understand steel reinforcement drawings improving the quality of teaching, especially interactivity and engagement.Originality/valueAs illustrated in the experiments, the developed ICARE has outstanding performance over conventional approaches in civil engineering courses that can improve students' comprehension and memory of knowledge and their ability to read and understand steel bar drawings. This study provides empirical evidence that AR is a promising technology that can be integrated with traditional classroom instruction and can improve students' comprehension and memory of knowledge and their ability to read and understand steel bar drawings.

Ethnicity, Race, and Gender in Engineering Education: The Nuanced Experiences of Male and Female Latinx Engineering Undergraduates Targeted by Microaggressions.

Compared to other groups, relatively less research has specifically addressed the retention of Latinx students in STEM disciplines. These students face many negative stereotypes about their group, especially related to their academic success, yet there is limited research regarding how microaggressions, subtle or ambiguous discriminatory behaviors, targeting Latinx students in engineering education settings impact their experience in those programs. Guided by Sue's definitions and taxonomy of microaggressions, Critical Race Theory and Latino Critical Theory, the purpose of the current study was to answer the following research questions: 1) What microaggressions do Latinx engineering undergraduates experience in an engineering education environment? and 2) How do these microaggressions impact Latinx engineering undergraduates' academic well-being, as defined by their academic self-efficacy and academic performance?

E-learning versus face-to-face civil and environmental engineering education: A case study of the COVID-19 pandemic

The Malaysian Government implemented a countrywide lockdown due to COVID-19, which also affected the educational institutes. Under these circumstances, the e-learning educational strategy was initiated for the resuming of educational activities. A need for the study was devised and performed to assess the students’ perspective on this transition from face-to-face learning to e-learning for the effective implementation of the system. Students’ feedback data was evaluated for the January 2020 semester, which was collected before the pandemic and the September 2020 semester, which was collected during the pandemic by the end of the semester. Both data were analysed by adopting parametric Student’s t-test and non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. Overall, it is concluded that students were comfortable with the e-learning educational system. However, the effectiveness of the e-learning system is dependent on the course type and requirements. This study will help the instructors to evaluate and improve their teaching strategy for the e-learning educational system by the preview of students for the deficiencies, in comparison to face-to-face learning, as the current lockdown situation is uncertain due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The need for an effective environmental engineering education to meet the growing environmental pollution in Bangladesh

Globally, environmental engineering is the professional retort to the overwhelming environmental problems. From its historical development to formal recognition in universities, environmental engineering education has focused on mainly pollution prevention, environmental sustainability, and ensuring the goals of sustainable development. The objective of this education is embedded in human welfare and security. Bangladesh is currently suffering from incessant environmental pollution issues for decades. Although a significant number of legislation and environmental management plans have been enacted, a major gap remains in pursuing the engineering. Inadequate Environmental engineering education hinders in endorsing and devising these laws to be in effect. In contrast with the pressing environmental pollution of Bangladesh, this study particularly addresses the current scenario of environmental engineering education. The aim of this review paper is to convey the need for major amendments in the existing engineering curriculum. To develop a better environmental engineering curriculum and practice, a set of future directives have been discussed in length that would hone in on positive transformations. Ultimately, the appropriate educational changes discussed here should help turn the government's goal of sustainable environmental development into a reality. By preparing future environmental engineering graduates and professionals with befitting environmental engineering and management proficiency, the risk of the growing environmental pollution can be mitigated profoundly. • Discussion about the historical development of environmental engineering discipline. • Role of environmental engineering in mitigating environmental issues. • Major environmental issues of Bangladesh have been presented. • Future strategies for development in environmental engineering education have been discussed.

Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century: Increasing Diversity and Community Participation to Achieve Environmental and Social Justice.

Communities of color are disproportionately burdened by environmental pollution and by obstacles to influence policies that impact environmental health. Black, Hispanic, and Native American students and faculty are also largely underrepresented in environmental engineering programs in the United States. Nearly 80 participants of a workshop at the 2019 Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Research and Education Conference developed recommendations for reversing these trends. Workshop participants identified factors for success in academia, which included adopting a broader definition for the impact of research and teaching. Participants also supported the use of community-based participatory research and classroom action research methods in engineering programs for recruiting, retaining, and supporting the transition of underrepresented students into professional and academic careers. However, institutions must also evolve to recognize the academic value of community-based work to enable faculty, especially underrepresented minority faculty, who use it effectively, to succeed in tenure promotions. Workshop discussions elucidated potential causal relationships between factors that influence the co-creation of research related to academic skills, community skills, mutual trust, and shared knowledge. Based on the discussions from this workshop, we propose a pathway for increasing diversity and community participation in the environmental engineering discipline by exposing students to community-based participatory methods, establishing action research groups for faculty, broadening the definition of research impact to improve tenure promotion experiences for minority faculty, and using a mixed methods approach to evaluate its impact.

EVALUATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING EDUCATION PROGRAM FOR STUDENTS FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA TO HIGH SCHOOL IN JAPAN

High schools in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, conducted an environmental engineering education program for international students from Southeast Asia for 13 years from 1998 to 2010. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of the program on former international students and Japanese high schools as of now, 10 years after the end of the environmental engineering program. International students stayed in a Japanese home for a year and learned environmental engineering technology while interacting with Japanese high school students. In order to sort out the different types of exchange activities between former international students and Japanese high schools, and to do a post analysis, we conducted a survey of former international students and Japanese high school students, Southeast Asian and Japanese high school staff and host families.Using the survey data, a logic model for the environmental engineering education program was created. As a result, it was found that three elements of cross-cultural understanding, training agricultural engineers, and acquiring language skills are important for global human resource development. And it was found that the three elements involved four resources/inputs: homestay families, support for language learning, acquisition of agricultural technology, and learning and living experiences in foreign countries. It was found that the four resources exist all over the country, the program is likely to be applicable nationwide, and the global human resource development program can be disseminated anywhere.

Crisis and Water Services: How a 2007 Public Health Emergency in Finland Helped Shape Its Response to COVID-19

This paper aims at shedding light on the significance of water epidemics and their potential positive impacts on improving preparedness in water and sanitation services. We explore the water epidemic of Nokia in 2007 and preparedness-related reactions since then. The corona case confirms the fundamental role of clean water for well-being in communities, the need for sound management of water services to proactively promote public health, as well as the need for expanding conventional water and environmental engineering education and research to offer more holistic views.

Application of Lean 6s Methodology in an Engineering Education Environment during the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic.

In this work, the application of the Lean 6S methodology is exposed, which includes the Safety-Security activity in response to the demands caused by the epidemiological situation due to exposure to SARS-CoV-2, as well as its implementation through a standardized process in n higher education environment in the engineering field. The application of methodologies based on lean principles in the organizational system of an educational institution, causes an impact on the demands of organizational efficiency, where innovation and continuous improvement mark the path to success. The Lean 6S methodology, based on the development of six phases, guarantees, thanks to the impact of all its phases and especially of three of them: cleaning, standardize and safety, the control of the health risk against SARS-CoV-2. This guarantee is achieved through the permanent review of safety in the workplace. The areas of selected implementation to verify the effect have been the essential spaces for the development of the teaching activity: center accesses, learning rooms and practical laboratories. The laboratories are adapted to the security and organization conditions that are required in the regulations required by the Occupational Risk Prevention Services against exposure to SARS-CoV-2, since the appropriate protective equipment for the risk level is reviewed, the ordering of the workstations, the class attendance through the shifts organization and the rearrangement of the common places where the maintenance of a minimum interpersonal safety distance between the teaching staff, auxiliary services and students is guaranteed. The effort of the teaching staff in terms of following the established rules is notably increased. To balance this dedication, it is necessary to increase and rely on auxiliary personnel who guarantee rules compliance control in different spaces than the classroom and the laboratory.

Concept of Supporting and Resisting Social Engagement in Environmental Engineering Education

This article investigates how understudies familiarity the mix of common information into ecological building instruction. Building for harmony requires going past simply specialized designing towards an incorporated social and specialized comprehension of how building can advance network improvement and cultural great. This investigation centers around understudy encounters at two significant building for network advancement programs that are effectively incorporating social and specialized information in designing instruction, with the objective of preparing all the more socially drew in engineers. This makes the reception and incorporation of these ideas trying for understudies occupied with these countryside. Standardizing, techno-centric originations of building personality, information, and practice.

Application of Computers in Sustainable Development of Environmental Engineering Education

Natural Engineering training assumes a significant function in reasonable turn of events. Customary training techniques fixated on educators and normally brings about an overall absence of enthusiasm for understudies to learn. PCs are an ideal apparatus for natural building instruction. Numerous colleges endeavored to utilize interactive media learning conditions rather than customary up close and personal instructing strategy. Online training utilizing electronic advancements are developing in higher and non-proficient ecological designing instruction. An ever increasing number of PCs will be utilized in Environmental designing instruction outside of customary instructive settings over the long haul.

Environmental Engineering Program to Train Engineers for Tackling New Challenges

The Environmental Engineering Education Research Team has planned and is executing a program for a designing school which fundamental objective is to offer a PhD program of high caliber so as to satisfy the work market interest for a high qualified natural designer. It is an interdisciplinary ecological building program that expects to offer understudies an energizing chance to zero in their specialized abilities on developing science that influences human personal satisfaction in a worldwide scale and can at the same time help safeguard and reestablish territories in which they work. Following the world pattern instructive model of hypothesis and practice, understudy ventures give novel, hands-on chances to investigate the multifaceted contemplations encompassing ecological designing issues on neighborhood and worldwide levels, and to improve everyday environments in the branches of knowledge. It has an educational plan that tends to the time-crunch issue by incorporating proficient practices into the specialized educational program.

Environmental Engineering Education Based on Artificial Neural Networks for Specialists

The use of the model of the breathing cycle in the instructive round utilizing a PC intricate created at the nature and work security is thought of. The model assists with working out the aptitudes for recognizing side effects of debilitation of the practical condition of the respiratory framework. The wished-forsculpt depends on counterfeit neural organizations and can be utilized for other branches of knowledge and applications, including ecological building training.

Development of Web-based Technology for Environmental Engineering Education System

The objective of the ecological building instruction ought not just train understudies' natural information, the more significant thing is that it prepares understudies' natural ethics and structures the conduct which is good for the earth, and these must be shaped by training, in actuality. In the customary showing model of training, one instructor can just guide one practice simultaneously. With the improvement of organization innovation, instructor can control the distinctive practice exercises firing up in various areas or in various occasions by network. In light of the incorporation of viable need and intuitive qualities of condition instruction, the creator set forward an online domain training mode named "practice-intelligent partake in". The Core of this mode is to prepare understudies' natural ethics by training and to understand educators' guidance through organization.

Increasing Engagement With Engineering Escape Rooms

Although games are intrinsically engaging, standard educational practices are not necessarily. So, gamification and game-based learning within education is a topic of interest. In this article, we use the popular escape room concept within an engineering education environment using a physical hardware decoder box. We outline a collection of four sets of puzzles, which we have used to increase engagement, with four different sets of participants within the engineering department: faculty, international students, high school students, and undergraduate students. Our results indicate that the escape room learning paradigm is well received by participants. They report high levels of engagement and motivation as a result of the activity.

Methodological Guidelines for the Design and Integration of Software Learning Objects for Scientific Programming Education

The motivation for the research is the need to develop an integrated and holistic approach to fostering students’ scientific inquiry based on scientific programming education by conducting computational experiments and simulations. At the same time, the implementation of the learner-centred approaches to scientific programming education and the related development of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learner-centred educational environment are of primary importance for K-16 education. The key interest is how to design and integrate learning resources which include software learning objects for making simulations. The research investigates educational aspects of the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework applied to scientific computing and scientific programming educational domain and provides methodological guidelines and design principles of practical implementation of educational resources. These include design principles for the development of the model-based scientific inquiry-centred learning resources, generic design templates for designing educational aspects of scientific programming education, generic use case models for learning resources for scientific programming education, and supportive methodological considerations.