Critical thinking extends to all aspects of professional engineering, especially in technical development, and, since the introduction of the ABET 2000 criteria, there has been an increased emphasis in engineering education on the development of critical thinking skills. What is hoped for is that the students obtain critical thinking skills to complement their abundant logical thinking skills. Critical thinking is a developmental skill that cannot be taught simply by traditional methods, i.e., step-by-step instruction followed by repetitive skills, as used for logical thinking skills. The research and development reported here is concerned with outlining how students first can be alerted to what critical thinking is, and how critical thinking can be nurtured through practical experience with appropriate guidance and reinforcement. The module 'Introduction to Fluid Mechanics' has been selected to demonstrate how formal critical thinking components may be introduced with the development of principles of logic and an obligatory problem solving procedure. A method of assessment during various phases of critical thinking, i.e., initial design or set-up, testing of method or prototype, and evaluation of the results, of open-ended assignments in engineering for each year of the undergraduate course has been developed.
Purpose -Quality criteria of The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) have been used as a standard for organisational self-assessment and benchmarking. The threefold purpose of this paper is: to analyse the individual weights of the MBNQA criteria for organisations of the construction and the manufacturing industry within the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries in order to create a basis for self-assessment and benchmarking; to identify differences of criteria importance between the construction and the manufacturing industry (external alignment) in order to identify challenging areas on TQM when two organisations from the respective industries collaborate; and to compare the perspectives of project managers with those of quality management representatives (internal alignment) in order to identify challenging areas on an organisation's TQM caused by not aligned or contradicting perspectives. Design/methodology/approach -Questionnaire based in-depth interviews of GCC project managers and quality management representatives were analysed using a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) to calculate the weights and subsequent ranking of seven quality criteria. Findings -When compared to the original weights of the MBNQA criteria, the "results" criterion was found to be ranked the same. However, clear differences were identified regarding the criteria "leadership" and "measurement/analysis". The differences between the two analysed industries were not significant, whereas project managers and quality management representatives have clearly differing views on all seven criteria. Originality/value -First, the analysed ranking of MBNQA quality criteria in the GCC countries gives organisations of the construction and the manufacturing industry a benchmark for comparison with their ranking of the MBNQA criteria. Second, clients may assume a common and hence strong basis for TQM when organisations belonging to the construction industry collaborate with organisations belonging to the manufacturing industry. Third, the organisations' internal communication between project managers and quality management representatives needs to be improved in order to pursue common TQM goals effectively.
A systematic procedure is developed for studying the dynamic response of a rotating nonuniform Euler–Bernoulli beam with an elastically restrained root. To find the solution, a novel approach is used in that the fourth-order differential equation describing the vibration problem is first written as a first-order matrix differential equation, which is then solved using the power series method. The method can be used to obtain an approximate solution of vibration problems for nonuniform Euler–Bernoulli beams. Specifically, numerical examples are presented here to demonstrate the usefulness of the method in frequency analysis of nonuniform Euler–Bernoulli clamped-free cantilever beams. Results for mode shapes and frequency parameters were found to be in satisfactory agreement with previously published results. The effects of tapering, both equal and unequal, were investigated for both a cantilever wedge and cantilever cone.
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