When engineering students are unable to evaluate the validity of their solutions, they are unprepared to solve complex, real-world engineering problems that require decomposition or knowledge transfer. A proper framework is key to successful implementation and can encourage more institutions to adopt problem-solving engineering labs. This paper…

Background: The flipped classroom space lacks a clear design framework that describes the day-to-day structure and implementation of a flipped classroom experience in a way that can be reproduced and be meaningfully compared across contexts. The ILEARN framework aims to address part of this problem by more clearly defining how course content is…

We examine the soundness of the idea and practice of engineering accreditation and look critically at the process as implemented in regions around the world. Based on our analysis of the effectiveness of current approaches, we suggest areas and methods for improvement and propose guidelines for a revised accreditation framework that addresses some…

Integrating humanities and arts into STEM has been suggested to better prepare students for the workforce. Studies have shown that improvisation (abbreviated as improv), an educational program from humanities and arts, can potentially improve engineering pedagogy and learning. However, little is known about improv's impact on developing…

This is the high-level story of the Mechanical Engineering (ME) department at Stanford University in three parts: The abrupt change at the end of our Winter Quarter (March 2020), the transition to a fully online Spring Quarter (April-June 2020), and the overdue confrontation of racial injustice (June 2020-present). Told from the perspective of one…

In this contribution we describe and reflect on the organization of Chalmers University of Technology and how it benefits education development and innovation. Chalmer's matrix organization with a buyer-supplier management model for education has proven to be a driving force for change and quality enhancement and promotes the agility necessary for…

Implementation of educational innovations on a local scale requires consideration of a variety of different factors including stakeholders, curriculum design, classroom context, and culture. Although theories exist for dimensions of scale and diffusion of educational innovations across multiple institutions, they do not focus on the elements…

Most product development work in industrial practice is incremental, i.e., the company has had a product in production and on the market for some time, and now time has come to design an upgraded variant. This type of redesign project requires that the engineering designers have competences to carry through an analysis of the existing product…

Entrepreneurship programs and courses in engineering education have steadily increased in the United States over the past two decades. However, the nature of these entrepreneurship courses and programs and the characteristics of the instructors who teach them are not yet well understood. The paper explores three research questions: 1) What content…

This paper develops a systems engineering-based framework to assist in the design of an online engineering course. Specifically, the purpose of the framework is to provide a structured methodology for the design, development and delivery of a fully online course, either brand new or modified from an existing face-to-face course. The main strength…

The field of electrical and computer engineering has evolved significantly in the past two decades. This evolution has broadened the field of ECE, and subfields have seen deep penetration into very specialized areas. Remarkable devices and systems arising from innovative processes, exotic materials, high speed computer simulations, and complex…

In 2004, a group of engineering and education faculty at Virginia Tech received a major curriculum reform and engineering education research grant under the department-level reform (DLR) program of the NSF. This DLR project laid the foundation of sponsored research in engineering education in the Department of Engineering Education. The DLR…

Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) was used as a foundation to redesign a computer programming class for mechanical engineers, in which content was delivered with hybrid/distance technology. The effort confirmed the utility of CLT in course design. And it demonstrates that hybrid/distance learning is not merely a tool of convenience, but one, which, when…