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| February 2010 | Subscribe |
PREMIER SPONSOR  |
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In This Issue:
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I. Databytes |
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Per Capita, Engineering Degrees Remain ConstantThe numbers of engineering bachelor's degrees awarded annually per capita have remained essentially unchanged at about 250 since the 1995 academic year (AY). The graph shown below (degrees per million population) indicates significant fluctuations prior to this period (a maximum of 330 in AY1984-85 and a minimum of 176 in AY1975-76). Many individual engineering disciplines, however, have shown significant trend variations in recent years. Aerospace, biological/biomedical, civil and mechanical engineering have been increasing substantially; computer and electrical engineering have been declining. Among the smaller disciplines nuclear and petroleum engineering have been increasing recently; environmental engineering degrees continue to decline. 
This article was provided by Engineering Trends. For more information, visit Engineering Trends at engtrends.com.
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III. Teaching Toolbox |
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NOT WHAT STUDENTS NEEDA major study questions whether engineering undergraduates are being prepared for 21st century degrees. By Mary Lord Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" probably doesn't top the required reading list at many engineering schools — but perhaps it should. Recent findings from a sweeping longitudinal examination of the undergraduate engineering experience suggest that the familiar routes may not always serve today's students or society. The Academic Pathways Study (APS), a five-year, multi-campus research initiative involving more than 5,000 students and dozens of scholars nationwide, challenges many assumptions about instruction and learning. The resulting data, some of the richest on engineering education ever amassed, reveal both reassuring strengths and surprising deficits. While students develop strong technical proficiency, professional skills, and engineering identities, many grow less satisfied and engaged with school as they progress. Men and women differ in some significant areas, from confidence in math skills to how they approach design problems. And undergraduates find it difficult to migrate to engineering from other majors. The research also raises questions about whether programs are adequately preparing students to tackle 21st-century global challenges — or even to pursue the profession. "There's a pretty big gap between what engineers do in practice and what we think we're preparing them for," observes APS investigator Karl Smith, civil engineering professor at the University of Minnesota and cooperative learning professor at Purdue University's School of Engineering Education. Despite four years of engineering-related courses and activities, for instance, some undergraduates are uncertain about what engineers do. A sizable minority of advanced students in any discipline lacked a basic understanding of such core concepts as the difference between heat and temperature. When asked, for example, how a single lightning strike could kill 56 elk in a Colorado herd, only 2 of 10 fourth-year electrical engineering students displayed a correct grasp of voltage. The Real World A surprising 40 percent of seniors didn't see school experiences as contributing significantly to their knowledge of engineering practice. Of the 10 undergraduates interviewed in depth by Holly Matusovich, an assistant professor in Virginia Tech's department of engineering education, three showed a similar lack of understanding. Matusovich, who worked on part of the APS as a graduate research assistant, says faculty "need to be more explicit about what we're teaching in class and how do you use it." With her own introductory design students, she injects examples from her 12 years in industry. She explains where linear regression came in handy, for instance, or admits she never used a particular software package but knows plenty of engineers who did. Matusovich recently even extended her explicit instruction to include effective PowerPoint presentations. Seniors, the study showed, tended to cut classes, turn in homework late, and report less satisfaction with instruction than did younger students, even though they interacted more with faculty and had smaller classes and greater opportunities for project-based learning. "One would hope that as students get into their majors, they would get more interested, and they don't," observes Cynthia Atman, a professor and director of the Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching at the University of Washington. She suggests faculty could help "blur the lines" between classroom and professional practice by explaining how engineers use the concepts they're teaching, possibly by integrating "grand challenges" into coursework. Seniors had lower confidence in their interpersonal skills than in their math and science skills but considered them less important professionally, revealing a gap between classroom learning and real-world practice that could have far-reaching implications. "When we project what's really going to be needed to help them compete in the world, it's their people skills, their creativity, and probably not their analytical skills, that will make them worth six-figure salaries," says Ruth Streveler, an assistant professor of engineering education at Purdue University and one of the core group of APS scholars. Stanford's Sheppard expected that as students advanced to more project-based learning, "they'd be getting the message that these communication skills are key to the practice of engineering." Instead, seniors are no more convinced than freshmen about the importance of these skills in practice. Matusovich has found in related research that while faculty understand the importance of communication, teamwork, and other "soft" skills in engineering work, they rarely report explicitly teaching them. Notably, the most socially confident students had plans to head toward non-engineering jobs upon graduation, APS research found. Stanford's Sheppard offers a snappy solution: Have a panel of alumni return after 10 years to talk to design classes about what skills they use on the job. "I virtually guarantee" students will see the importance of communication, teamwork, and the ability to lead and persuade, says Sheppard. "If you don't have these, you won't get your work done." The Confidence Gap Through senior year, and despite evident academic success, women had less confidence than men in their mastery of math and science, although both sexes grew more self-assured in their ability to apply their skills. The college experience "has done nothing to close the confidence gap," concludes APS investigator Debbie Chachra, assistant professor of materials science at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, even though "by a lot of measures, our women are actually leading the way: grades, teamwork. They are who we want our engineers of the future to be." Her work with University of Washington research scientist Deborah Kilgore exposed a widespread perception among male undergraduates that women gained admission with weaker math and science credentials. This attitude, together with a paucity of female role models, may undermine women's self-confidence. "You think you can do something because you see people around you doing it," Chachra explains. Both women and minorities get less "social affirmation" in a discipline largely dominated by white males, resulting in less of a "sense of belonging and the sense you can accomplish things," she adds. Men and women also conceptualize engineering differently. Female engineering majors typically approach design with the goal of understanding the problem better while their male counterparts consider it "building something." Sheppard notes that "when thinking about what it takes to be successful in engineering, women tend to emphasize the importance of leadership, communication, and teamwork skills, as well as business acumen, more so than men do." Women also "think globally, a bit more broadly about gathering information," observes Washington's Atman. When tackling a design problem to create new retaining walls to prevent another Mississippi flood, for instance, female undergraduates saw the project in the broader context of social and environmental impact; the males typically focused on more technical details, such as construction costs and materials. A "big takeaway" is for faculty "to be aware of variability," Atman says. The APS offers a roadmap for changing engineering culture, one that investigators are already applying. For example, say Atman and Sheppard, "diverse teams can be helpful" when teaching about design. Findings also are filtering into classrooms. To ensure that all students, not just self-confident males, gain "genuine competence from genuine experience," Olin College's faculty take care to assemble student teams with diverse skills and more than one female. To create a "safe space" for less confident students to participate in class, Matusovich invited them to do homework problems on the board, nudging those offering muddled responses toward the correct answer. The larger question is whether engineering programs can alter their internal structures and culture to engage a broader array of students. That includes creating easier routes for non-engineers to migrate in from other disciplines. While most freshmen stick with engineering, only about 1 in 10 majors starts in another field, far lower than most concentrations. "The problem with engineering is there are many pathways out but very few pathways in," notes APS investigator Karl Smith. Encouraging students to forge new pathways into engineering and to graduate better prepared may require educators to pursue unfamiliar routes, too. But that could make all the difference.
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IV. JEE SELECTS |
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THEY LEARN, BUT ENJOY IT LESSOnlines students miss face-to-face communication. By Katherine R.M. Mackey and David L. Freyberg Globalization means more technology, and education is no exception. International distance courses can include real-time audiovisual communication between people in different countries, something rarely feasible even 10 years ago. They would seem to be ideal for today's technologically savvy students, who have grown up with everything from YouTube to Ebay and iChat to Skype. But not all aspects of communication can be captured with these new tools. While some non-verbal communication cues like gesturing, facial expression, and posture are transmitted by the virtual interface and help build social presence, others, like eye contact and physical proximity, are lost. Our study sought to find out how learning is affected by this change in communication structure. In a time when everyone has an online avatar, is face-to-face communication really necessary in the classroom? We surveyed students enrolled in a graduate-level civil engineering course, taught both in face-to-face and international distance formats, to identify factors influencing student satisfaction (affective learning) and knowledge acquisition (cognitive learning). We found that today's students still prefer more social presence than real-time audiovisual technology currently provides. When participation decreased in a virtual classroom, so did student satisfaction. In the non-distance class we studied, much of the student-instructor interaction occurred one-on-one after class and during breaks. But most distance courses preclude this type of informal chatting — the conversation ends when the audiovisual feed terminates. Distance course instructors can make up for lost out-of-class interaction by asking frequently for questions and comments during class. By breaking the ice, the instructor creates a more conversational atmosphere and helps students overcome concerns about using the audiovisual technology. Added communication efforts by instructors may be particularly important when students are not familiar with the technology or when the technology is not easy to use. For example, even something as simple as a brief microphone delay can wreak havoc on class participation during a distance course. In spoken conversation, pauses of different lengths help the listener interpret the speaker's expectations: During a pause, did the speaker pause for effect or did the speaker ask a question? Failure of the listener to take the floor following a pause can create a breakdown of interactivity. It follows that if technology alters natural communication patterns and introduces awkward silences, students become less likely to initiate conversations, and social presence deteriorates. Therefore, as distance-learning technologies continue to evolve, special consideration should be given to improving the clarity and reliability of audio equipment. If affective learning suffers in a distance course, what about cognitive learning? Did students in the distance course fare worse with respect to knowledge gained? Based on assignments and exams, there is no difference in cognitive learning between the two formats. In other words, students in the distance course learned just as much as their non-distance counterparts despite being less satisfied. This uncoupling of affective and cognitive learning hints at the complexity and flexibility of learning: When the instructor's social presence decreases, students may devise alternate strategies to learn material other than relying on the instructor. For example, greater reliance on independent study, peers, or teaching assistants could all potentially improve cognitive learning while not necessarily altering satisfaction. Establishing a high social presence in distance courses may create a classroom atmosphere that is more similar to non-distance courses, and hence more familiar to students. Therefore, prompting participation during class and improving audio transmissions may make the distance-learning environment more similar to "real life" and more enjoyable for students. Katherine Mackey is a doctoral student and David Freyberg is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. This article is based on "The Effect of Social Presence on Affective and Cognitive Learning in an International Engineering Course Taught via Distance Learning" in the January 2010 Journal of Engineering Education.
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V. JOBS, JOBS, JOBS |
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Job-hunting? Here are a few current openings:1. Dean -- 3 opportunities 2. Mechanical Engineering -- 2 opportunities 3. Biomedical Engineering -- 1 opportunity 4. Electronic Engineering Technology -- 1 opportunity Visit here for details:
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VI. COMING ATTRACTIONS |
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A SNEAK PEEK AT PRISM'S UPCOMING MARCH ISSUECOVER STORY: Startups. When Wall Street tanked and investors grew cautious, a lot of the capital that used to flow freely to startups dried up. University researchers with innovations to sell are learning they have to be as agile in the board room as they are in the lab. FEATURE ONE: Singapore. If China is the growth engine of Asia, Singapore aims to supply the cutting edge brainpower. The city-state is going all out to become a center of research and innovation, with a five-year plan that calls for spending $10 billion on science and technology. FEATURE TWO: Frontier. Much of the recent attention to federal energy research has focused on ARPA-e, the program modeled on DARPA. But some of the most important science may be going on at Energy Frontier Research Centers, housed in universities. They now number 46, and the latest Obama budget would add $40 million to establish more. TEACHING TOOLBOX: Libraries. They're so last century, right? Wrong—they're more popular than ever, prospering by constantly changing with the times, and providing students with valuable, unique spaces, technologies and services.
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VII. COMMUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS |
ASEE/NSF Corporate Research Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
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