On the interplay of manufacturing engineering education and e-learning

Abstract

This article addresses the interplay of e-learning (through the Internet) and manufacturing engineering education (at the undergraduate level). As is the case in other engineering programs, e-learning in manufacturing engineering must harmonize the aspects of near-future employment needs, academic discipline-based learning, and outcomeoriented learning. Thus, a procedure is presented for preparing the e-learning contents using the Internet-embedded concept maps. Examples are cited whenever necessary to make the description as clear as possible. Numerical results that show the students' learning behaviors are also reported, providing more insights into the effectiveness of the proposed concept map-based e-learning approach for educating the undergraduate students with the knowledge of manufacturing engineering. Because there is no unique, preferable solution for developing e-learning content, this study may help other engineering programs beyond manufacturing engineering to develop systems for implementing the e-learning in a befitting manner (i.e. integrating the aspects of near-future employment needs, academic discipline-based learning, and outcome-oriented learning).

Fundamental Issues of Concept Mapping Relevant to Discipline-Based Education: A Perspective of Manufacturing Engineering

“…As seen in Figure 2, in the era of Web 3.0/4.0, the manufacturing contents (i.e., different types of experimental and sensor data, models of products, machine tools, cutting tools, manufacturing processes, scheduling, and models of different manufacturing phenomena) will incorporate both the contents (syntax) and their meaning (semantics). The current trend shows that a user-defined description of the meaning of the content must be incorporated along with the content itself [25][26]30,40,45,52]. The description is inclined more toward user-defined linguistic expressions (soft) than toward predefined ontology (hard).…”

“…This softness in expressing semantics leads to concept map-oriented content preparation. This means that for new-generation manufacturing, concept mapping [19][20][21]32] becomes a default choice, no matter the content type of contents (model, data, knowledge, and alike) [25][26]30,40]. Apart from the issue of concept map-based content preparation for new-generation manufacturing, it (new-generation manufacturing) entails some other fundamental issues because the systems involved in new-generation manufacturing are supposed to operate as open systems.…”

“…It is worth mentioning that many authors have studied subject matter-based educational needs and relevant ICT infrastructures from the viewpoint of new-generation manufacturing [25,46,[57][58][59][60]. Some authors have emphasized a particular type of knowledge structure and its transformation [61] for the sake of active learning and teaching.…”

“…Some authors have emphasized a particular type of knowledge structure and its transformation [61] for the sake of active learning and teaching. Some authors have emphasized concept map-based content preparation [25] for enhancing meaningful learning in manufacturing [16][17][18][19][20][21]. In addition, many concept maps carrying both theoretical and empirical knowledge of manufacturing can be found in [25,30,31,40].…”

“…Some authors have emphasized concept map-based content preparation [25] for enhancing meaningful learning in manufacturing [16][17][18][19][20][21]. In addition, many concept maps carrying both theoretical and empirical knowledge of manufacturing can be found in [25,30,31,40]. Some of them are for human learning [25], and some of them are for machine learning [30,31].…”