The first engineering schools in the United States used the laboratory as the primary mode of instruction (1). The specialization of the graduated engineer often depended on the local industries. Educators spent little time developing students' creative abilities, and concentrated instead on skills like drafting. After World War I, engineering education shifted toward a more general preparation including the administrative and executive responsibilities associated with a career in engineering. World War II brought another redirection of focus. Engineers were now being asked to develop the ideas created by scientists; to accommodate this change, engineering education moved from emphasizing technology practice to focusing on the scientific and mathematical principles underlying the technology. This period also marked the beginning of design theory as an important aspect of engineering. The 1960's brought a paradigm shift away from teaching and towards academic research. Today, colleges and universities perform about half of all science and engineering research supported by the federal government, and also administer the federally funded research and development centers (1, 2).
As a result of this engineering education history, the current freshman engineering curriculum typically consists of calculus, physics, chemistry, humanities, and perhaps an introductory engineering science course. The topics covered in this last freshman class range from an orientation to each of the engineering disciplines to a survey of engineering ethics, safety, and environmental technology. This first year curriculum lacks substantial opportunities for students to have realistic experiences with products or processes, and leaves most integrative thinking until capstone design courses in the senior year.
This now "traditional" approach to engineering education presents several problems. The science materials being taught are often isolated and abstract, without frequent reference to problems and situations which students perceive as relevant to societal or economic concerns. The opportunity for students to develop their independent skills is suppressed by curricula built largely around lecture presentation and "cookbook" labs in which all students perform the same experiment at the same time (3, 4). Moreover, by delaying substantial introduction to engineering, the student's ability to identify with the chosen profession is deferred, with resulting delays in their development of a sense of purpose and motivation.
Opportunity for earlier student participation in engineering is needed. We describe here, a new lab which includes substantial time for device usage, assembly and tinkering. The resulting active participation serves as an effective educational vehicle, as anticipated by Jean Piaget's comment:
If we desire to form individuals capable of inventive thoughts and of helping the society of tomorrow to achieve progress, then it is clear that an education which is an active discovery of reality is superior to one that consists merely in providing the young with ready-made truths.
Additional weaknesses in the present curricula are evident. Most do not provide early exposure to fully operational and functional products or processes, and students are therefore denied the opportunity to appreciate and to absorb over time the importance of the final product or process and its performance in the hands of the end user. Engineering students must be able to function in teams in creating new products, processes, and systems, but team-based learning is missing from nearly all lecture courses. A more subtle problem is that we have come to enter engineering only through science, an approach which denies the practical and integrative nature of engineering in its own right: technology students must be able to combine their understanding of science, practical knowledge, hands-on orientation, and experimental skills and insight (5). Finally, current educational practices tend to develop students with a sufficient factual knowledge, but an insufficient ability to apply these facts or integrate them in order to solve complex problems (6).
In consequence of these perceived shortcomings, a critical examination of the engineering and science curricula has been undertaken in recent years and as a result, new courses or revamped old ones have been implemented (7-11). Some new chemical engineering courses show how chemical engineering theories and principles are applied to new areas like biotechnology and microelectronics (12, 13). At Wilkes University, a microelectronics laboratory has been developed in which engineering analysis is integrated with societal needs and environmental impact (6). MIT offers a design course in which students are given a box of parts and are asked to build a device which performs a particular function. Most of the mystery behind the creative design process is eliminated and the self-confidence of the students is increased, because at the end of the course each student can say, "I built that" (1). At the University of Maryland at College Park, a new freshman engineering design course introduces students to design, manufacture, and assembly of playground equipment (5, 14), an approach similar to that being offered at Arizona State University (15-17). Drexel University's E4 project redesigns the freshman and sophomore engineering curricula (18) to include a team-teaching approach in several interwoven courses, a hands-on freshman laboratory and design experience, and an enhanced emphasis on communication skills and societal awareness. The University of Sydney's chemical engineering department developed a freshman laboratory where students must dismantle, reassemble, operate, and interpret data from rigs made up of industrial machinery and equipment (19). At Stanford University, a new undergraduate laboratory in mechanical dissection encourages students to take apart and reassemble toasters, printers, locks, faucets, and 10 speed bicycles. MIT has also created a graduate level opportunity in which students, as part of their research, are asked to create within two years a prototype new product for a company (1).
The National Science Foundation has strongly encouraged the educational reform movement by funding four engineering school coalitions, each with a different focus. The ECSEL coalition integrates more design experiences into the entire curriculum (11, 20, 21). SYNTHESIS has focused on improving the effectiveness of engineering education through the use of information technologies. GATEWAY has decided to alter engineering education by incorporating integrated learning processes into their curricula. Our SUCCEED coalition is developing "Curriculum 21," which emphasizes both the process of engineering and the engineering education process.
Key components of SUCCEED's "Curriculum 21" are the promotion of an integrated learning environment and the incorporation of engineering design and processes into the curriculum. The integrated learning environment emphasizes hands-on opportunities, innovation, leadership, teamwork, project-driven assignments, and frequent student-faculty interactions. By incorporating more process and phenomenon-based teaching into the curriculum, this coalition expects to promote, and to help students retain, the fundamentals and experience of engineering.
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