In this exploratory study we examined the alignment of Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) middle school engineering design standards with lesson ideas from middle school teachers, science education faculty, and engineering faculty (4-6 members per group). Respondents were prompted to provide plain language interpretations of two middle…

Aim/Purpose: This study was aimed at enhancing students' learning of software engineering methods. A collaboration between the Computer Science, Business Management, and Product Design programs was formed to work on actual projects with real clients. This interdisciplinary form of collaboration simulates the realities of a diverse Software…

This mixed-methods study examines how teachers who have taught one or two units of the Engineering is Elementary (EiE) curriculum for two years reported on: students' responses to design failure; the ways in which they, the teachers, supported these students and used fail words (e.g. fail, failure); and the teachers' broad perspectives and…

Today's college-aged students are graduating into a world that relies on multidisciplinary talents to succeed. Engineering college majors are more likely to find jobs after college that are outside of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, including jobs in healthcare, management, and social services. A survey of…

This paper describes a method aimed at pointing out the quality of the mental models undergraduate engineering students deploy when asked to create explanations for phenomena or processes and/or use a given model in the same context. Student responses to a specially designed written questionnaire are quantitatively analyzed using…

Background: The motivation for this work is built upon the premise that there is a need for research-based materials for design-based science instruction. In this paper, a small portion of our work investigating the impact of a LEGO[TM] engineering unit on fourth grade students' preconceptions and understanding of animals is presented. Purpose:…

This paper examines students' achievements in solving problems and their misunderstandings when using models. A mixed research methodology was applied. Quantitative research investigated how the performance of students with various levels of high school GPAs correlated with their rating of their lecturers' teaching proficiency. Four lecturers and…

Historically, the teaching of design theory in an engineering curriculum has been relegated to a senior capstone design experience. Presently, however, engineering design concepts and courses can be found through the entirety of most engineering programs. Educators have recognized that engineering design provides a foundational platform that can…

We identified and examined how the instructional elements of problem-based learning capstone engineering courses affected students' motivation to engage in the courses. We employed a two-phase, sequential, explanatory, mixed methods research design. For the quantitative phase, 47 undergraduate students at a large public university completed a…

Two-year college teachers face great difficulty when they teach the principle of operation of the bipolar junction transistor--a subject which forms the basis for electronics studies. The difficulty arises from both the complexity of the device and by the lack of adequate scientific background among the students. We, therefore, developed a unique…

This article reports a mixed-method research probing the effect of utilizing a blog-buddy system on English for academic purposes learners' writing performance. Sixty Iranian undergraduate engineering students at Iran University of Science and Technology Virtual Campus participated in this study. Our analysis of the students' writings indicated…

A comparative study was conducted to compare two approaches to engineering design curriculum between different schools (inter-school) and between two curricular approaches, "Project Lead the Way" (PLTW) and "Engineering Projects in Community Service" (EPIC High) (inter-curricular). The researchers collected curriculum…