Looking Beyond Content: Skill Development for Engineers

Redish, Edward F.; Smith, Karl A.

doi:10.1002/j.2168-9830.2008.tb00980.x

Cited by 143 publications

(133 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…It motivates students to pursue further education, and reveals the need for continuous learning and self-improvement. It helps students prepare for their chosen career in engineering [Wissey, 2000;Redish & Smith, 2008;Martinez, Romero, Marquez & Perez, 2010;Seetha, 2012;Di Carlo, Barsics & Moitroux, 2013;Ruchina, Kuimova, Polyushko, Sentsov & Zhang Xue Jinc, 2015].…”

Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Research Activity as an Integral Component of Engineering Education

Kuimova¹,

Burleigh²,

Arnst³

et al. 2016

Ponte

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The international aerospace industry needs to hire specialists who possess a broad range of skills and are able to work independently in a diverse, multi-disciplinary team, generate innovative ideas, solve non-standard problems and make important decisions. To meet new challenges, universities promote active learning and encourage students to participate in research activities. This paper studies the organization of research activities at universities, and factors that benefit their productivity. It also presents the results of a short survey among bachelor students of the Institute of Non-Destructive Testing, Tomsk Polytechnic University, showing their interest and active participation in research work.

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Section: Related Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Research Activity as an Integral Component of Engineering Education

Kuimova¹,

Burleigh²,

Arnst³

et al. 2016

Ponte

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“…It has been recognized that being successful in today's highly technological and globally competitive world requires a person to develop and use a different set of skills than were needed before 5 . Many studies have converged on a view of engineering education that not only requires students to grasp traditional engineering fundamentals, such as mechanics, dynamics, mathematics, and technology, but to also develop the skills associated with learning to imbed this knowledge in real-world situations 6 . This vision of engineering requires engineers be trained to learn to be lifelong learners and learn to develop adaptive expertise 7,8 as well as be self-regulated learners.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pedagogical Tools to Enhance the Cognitive Skills of (Humanitarian) Design Engineers: The Rationale

Colledge¹

2017

IJSLE

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-This is the first of a series of papers which seek to elaborate upon the cognitive and metacognitive skills which industry has identified as needed by engineers and the descriptions of the pedagogical tools to better prepare the prospective engineers for the careers that lie ahead of them. The papers describe an alternative way of conceptualizing the engineering curriculum by shifting the focus from learning engineering as a body of disparate knowledge consisting of science courses, engineering science courses, and analysis courses to understanding engineering as a way of thinking -promoting deeper conceptual understanding of core fundamental ideas and preparing students to be lifelong learners. Focus is placed on the pedagogy for enhancing the cognitive aspects of thinking including adaptive expertise, selfregulated learning, problem-solving skills, critical thinking skills, metacognition and workplace thinking -incorporating engaged scholarship at its core.

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“…The goal of the modelling process is a model that lends itself to mathematical treatment (e.g., Lesh & Doerr, 2003;Redish & Smith, 2008). The underlying qualitative model appears to be seen as self-evident and/or implicit in the quantitative model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When the mathematical model has been manipulated and transformed, and a result calculated, the result has to be given meaning (Bissel & Dillon, 2000; Kehler & Lester, 2003;Redish & Smith, 2008). The students need to understand why a result is as it is.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does teaching students how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems improve their understanding of these systems?

Jensen

2014

European Journal of Engineering Education

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Does teaching students how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems improve their understanding of these systems?. European Journal of Engineering Education, 39(4): 391-411Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:fhs:diva-5242 1 Does teaching students how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems improve their understanding of these systems?If students really understand the systems they study, they would be able to tell how changes in the system would affect a result. This demands that the students understand the mechanisms that drive its behaviour. The study investigates potential merits of learning how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems. The approach and performance of 15 system dynamics students, who are taught to explicitly model the causal structure of the systems they study, was compared with the approach and performance of 22 engineering students, who do generally not receive such training. The task was to bring a computer simulated predator-and-prey ecology to equilibrium. The system dynamics students were significantly more likely than the engineering students to correctly frame the problem. They were not much better at solving the task, however. It seemed that they had only learnt how to make models and not how to use them for reasoning.Keywords: engineering education research; modelling; external representations, dynamic systems, qualitative reasoning IntroductionThe literature on modelling tends to focus on the quantitative model that results when the laws of physics have been applied and relevant measurements made. The goal of the modelling process is a model that lends itself to mathematical treatment (e.g., Lesh & Doerr, 2003;Redish & Smith, 2008). The underlying qualitative model appears to be seen as self-evident and/or implicit in the quantitative model. True as this may be,we cannot be certain that it is evident to the students. When the mathematical model has been manipulated and transformed, and a result calculated, the result has to be given meaning (Bissel & Dillon, 2000; Kehler & Lester, 2003;Redish & Smith, 2008). The students need to understand why a result is as it is. In other words, they have to be able to interpret their results. Furthermore, if they 2 really understand the system under study they would be able to tell changes in the system would affect a result. This demands that the students understand the qualitative structure of the system, i.e., the mechanisms that drive its behaviour.The aim of this study is to investigate the potential merits of training students in how to explicitly model the qualitative, or causal, structure of the systems they study.Do students who receive such training understand the systems they study better than students who do not? It might be the case that students spontaneously model the causal structure when the need arises, or that it is sufficient that the cau...

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Looking Beyond Content: Skill Development for Engineers

Cited by 143 publications

References 34 publications

Research Activity as an Integral Component of Engineering Education

Research Activity as an Integral Component of Engineering Education

Pedagogical Tools to Enhance the Cognitive Skills of (Humanitarian) Design Engineers: The Rationale

Does teaching students how to explicitly model the causal structure of systems improve their understanding of these systems?

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