Background: Implementing maker education in schools is on the rise, fuelled by its potential to move formal education towards a creative, technology-driven 21st century learning culture. In maker education, collaborative learning takes place through and around various digital and traditional technologies, which provide the means for students'…

Maker education can enhance learners' creativity. Design thinking can facilitate the innovative resolution of complex problems. The design thinking literature and most maker teaching modes are limited in their promotion of learning and ability development in various dimensions. Learners have stereotypes about some professions; interventions can…

STEM education is an easily identified area of innovation in the education field. The most significant innovation for our students' lives, however, is ensuring that these technology-based programs are providing opportunities for students to engage with the world in meaningful ways and to recognize how they can contribute to positive…

One of the challenges of global software engineering courses is to bring the practices and experience of large geographically distributed teams into the local and time-limited environment of a classroom. Over the last 6 years, an on-campus studio course for software engineering has been developed at the University of Queensland (UQ) that places…

The purpose of this study was to develop e-learning activities that could facilitate the integration of sustainability concepts and practices in engineering and chemical education. Using an online learning management system (LMS), undergraduate students in an applied chemistry program at a public university in Zimbabwe participated in an online…

Industry and authors of 21st Century Skill Frameworks are calling for student proficiency in creativity, problem-solving, innovation, collaboration, and communication skills. This project involved 13 fifth grade gifted students in inventing products for a specified audience with a set of given materials, time limit, and topic constraints. The…

This paper compares two models for reforming engineering education, problem/project-based learning (PBL), and conceive-design-implement-operate (CDIO), identifying and explaining similarities and differences. PBL and CDIO are defined and contrasted in terms of their history, community, definitions, curriculum design, relation to disciplines,…

This article describes the steps incorporated to teach an engineering design process in a fifth-grade science classroom. The engineering design-based activity was an existing scientific inquiry activity using UV light--detecting beads and purposefully creating a series of engineering design-based challenges around the investigation. The…

Teaching remote sensing in higher education has been traditionally restricted in lecture and computer-aided laboratory activities. This paper presents and evaluates an engaging inquiry-based educational experiment. The experiment was incorporated in an introductory remote sensing undergraduate course to bridge the gap between theory and…

This paper presents a case study examining 3rd, 4th and 5th graders' design fixation and cooperative learning in an engineering design project. A mixed methods instrument, the Cooperative Learning Observation Protocol (CLOP), was adapted to record frequency and class observation on cooperative learning engagement through detailed field notes.…

Cooperative learning may improve students' motivation, understanding of course concepts, and academic performance. This study therefore enhanced a cooperative, group-project learning technique with technology resources to determine whether doing so improved students' deep learning and performance. A sample of 118 engineering students, randomly…

The rapid proliferation of technology can have profound effects on the evolution of teaching, learning, scholarship, and governance in higher education (Katz, 2008). However, instructors report that simply "keeping up" with new instructional technologies, let alone integrating them productively into one's teaching, can be a significant…

RefWorks is ideally suited for undergraduate students with team-based research projects as part of their course assessment. The Dorothy Hill Physical Sciences and Engineering Library at the University of Queensland taught students from three engineering courses how to use RefWorks to manage project references and to create team-based…

We describe the development of a course to teach modeling and mathematical analysis skills to students of biology and to teach biology to students with strong backgrounds in mathematics, physics, or engineering. The two groups of students have different ways of learning material and often have strong negative feelings toward the area of knowledge…

A curriculum development project was designed to provide a learning environment for students from various disciplines to work together within an institution or between institutions in different countries. The student projects simulate the workplace of the modern European engineering manager. (JOW)