Using technology can empower students, but most U.S. schools fall short of this goal. The power of technology as related to other school subjects and problem solving is well documented in projects promoting integration of technology education with mathematics and science. National Science Education Standards are summarized. (26 references) (MLH)

Describes how interaction with several polymer manufacturing companies through industrial short courses and research projects has led to the development of dynamic and up-to-date undergraduate and graduate curriculums in polymer science and engineering technology. (DDR)

Discusses the foundations of engineering design and highlights the problems confronting students who are required to make creative input into a design problem. Describes a way to implement creativity in teaching engineering design. Contains 38 references. (DDR)

The development of Design and Technology curricula has always been premised on the importance of the act of designing and of the value of the contingent activity of creative thinking. Despite this, there has been a great deal of uncertainty about methods for developing creative thinking abilities in design and technology students. However, the…

Experimental learning environments based on simulation usually require monitoring and adaptation to the actions the users carry out. Some systems provide this functionality, but they do so in a way which is static or cannot be applied to problem solving tasks. In response to this problem, we propose a method based on the use of intermediate…

This guide, which is designed to be used in a two-course sequence, is intended to prepare college-bound high school juniors and seniors for engineering and related courses at the college level. The guide was developed as part of an experimental competency-based curriculum that integrates the high-tech applications of mathematics and science…

The purpose of this study was to describe a process of preparing technology education teachers to teach engineering design concepts in the context of technology education. This process was identified through a study of professional development activities that were organized and conducted by technology teacher education partner universities of the…

This present study investigated engineering students' conceptions and misconceptions related to derivative, particularly interpreting the graph of a function and constructing its derivative graph. Participants were 147 first year engineering students from four universities enrolled in first year undergraduate calculus courses with or without the…

High-performance computers coupled with highly efficient numerical schemes and user-friendly software packages have helped instructors to teach numerical solutions and analysis of various nonlinear models more efficiently in the classroom. One of the main objectives of a model is to provide insight about the system of interest. Analytical…

Describes a non-credit tutorial course held for engineering students to improve their skill in problem solving. In the group sessions, each student writes his approach to a given problem on a transparency; the class then analyzes the various approaches while viewing them on overhead projectors. (MLH)

Describes an approach which integrates experiential learning with the study of subject matter. The foundation of this program is a systems design called SAM, Self-Actualized Model. Presents design details of the program and an initial evaluation. (GS)

This project had three major goals: (1) investigate the extent to which introductory physics students misuse or misunderstand formulas; (2) catalogue the typical ways in which they do this; and (3) begin the larger task of identifying key types of knowledge that successful problem solvers use to give formulas meaning. Exploratory interviews and…

A heuristic model designed to improve creative problem-solving by engineering students was studied. Ten students majoring in industrial engineering were pre-tested to establish the range and accuracy of their performance prior to training and to identify stereotyped thinking. The test was an adventure scenario with 50 embedded problems along with…

Describes a course designed to demonstrate the relationship between design, manufacturing technology, and materials engineering. The course uses a lecture-discussion and laboratory-workshop approach including an analysis of engineering case histories and several service failures. (GS)

A course is described which gives students experience in creating practical mathematical models of "real" problems, relating the mathematical solutions of the model to the original problem, and recognizing non-mathematical constraints on possible solution approaches. The students assume the role of industrial mathematicians while their tutors play…