Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) is a course that is required during the third year in the mechanical engineering curriculum at Binghamton University. The primary objective of the course is to educate students in the procedures of computer-aided engineering design. The solid modeling and analysis program Pro/Engineer[TM] (PTC[R]) is used as the…

Simulations, particularly human-to-human interactions, offer social science students the opportunity to learn from firsthand experience, and can be an important and useful addition to an educator's teaching repertoire. However, it can be difficult for an instructor to know how to structure a simulation environment to meet specific educational…

Teacher and student roles continue to change as computers continue to influence the design curriculum (Kaplan, 1997). Educators and administrators continue to grapple with the best ways to teach, implement, and maintain current technology. Few technology teachers would argue that computers, software, and hardware found in technology laboratories…

In phase I of an Ohio project, 10 high school teams completed technical projects based on a fictitious manufacturer. In phase II, local industries provided reality-based projects for teams of math, science, and technology teachers and students. (SK)

In this article, the authors explain how they implemented Design eXchange as a shared collaborative online and physical space for design for their students. Their notion for Design eXchange favors a complex mix of key elements namely: (1) a virtual online studio; (2) a forum for review of all things related to design, especially design with the…

A typical Web-based training development team consists of a project manager, an instructional designer, a subject-matter expert, a graphic artist, and a Web programmer. The typical scenario involves team members working together in the same setting during the entire design and development process. What happens when the team is distributed, that is…

This article describes the AutoCAD Laboratory at Hawaii's Kamehameha Secondary Schools, offering the perspective of the AutoCAD instructor and Technology Department Head, looking at a day in the AutoCAD Laboratory, and explaining how teaching students about computer-assisted design and drafting can prepare them for college or careers. (SM)

This article discusses how students in a college-entry-level CAD course researched four generations of their family histories and documented cultural and symbolic influences within their family backgrounds. AutoCAD software was then used to manipulate those cultural and symbolic images to create the design for a multicultural area rug. AutoCAD was…

Spatial abilities are fundamental to human functioning in the physical world. Spatial reasoning allows people to use concepts of shape, features, and relationships in both concrete and abstract ways, to make and use things in the world, to navigate, and to communicate. Surgeons, pilots, architects, engineers, mechanics, builders, farmers, trades…

Information and communications technology (ICT) brings many potential benefits to technology education, though the evidence of improved performance on traditional tasks is not yet proven. Areas such as computer-aided design and manufacture are now becoming standard elements of any student's technology education. These applications of ICT require…

Graphical plans for construction of machinery and architecture have evolved over the last 6,000 years beginning from hieroglyphics to drawings on printable media, from the "Golden Age" of engineering graphics to the innovation of computer graphics and prototyping. The evolution of engineering design graphics as a profession has also evolved. Years…

There is a current vacillation in choosing hand or computer for design presentation in academia. Although the computer emerged as very powerful alternative presentation medium, it could not sweep away the hand totally. Believing that this vacillation cannot only be due to the positive and negative aspects of both media, we worked with a group of…

At some point in their education, pre-engineering students will take physics and/or calculus. For many freshmen who aren't certain about their career paths, taking these courses is a litmus test to determine whether they have the aptitude or desire to pursue an engineering degree. Therein lies the challenge for many students in the U.S. Science,…

The authors' activities in co-teaching an engineering design course across the Atlantic, at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA, and at Delft University of Technology (DUT), the Netherlands, at the same time, required the use of information and communication tools for communication and collaboration purposes between students and between…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of a web-based constructivist learning environment, which was developed based on a course given to students in the Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM) on student learning. Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, a web-based multimedia-mediated project was developed based on an Internet…