The Laplace transform is an important tool in many branches of engineering, for example, electric and control engineering, but is also regarded as a difficult topic for students to master. We have interviewed 22 university teachers from five universities in three countries (Mexico, Spain and Sweden) about their views on relationships among…

The concept of electric current is fundamental in the study of electrical engineering (EE). Students are often exposed to this concept in their daily lives and early in middle school education. Lower-division university courses are usually limited to the study of passive electronic devices and simple electric circuits. Semiconductor physics is an…

This is a position paper in the field of Engineering Education, which is at the very beginning in Europe. It relates challenges in the new field to the emerging technology of (Computer) Theorem Proving (TP). Experience shows, that "teaching" abstract models, for instance the wave equation in mechanical engineering and in electrical…

Engineering design places unique demands on teachers, as students are coming up with new, unanticipated ideas to problems along often unpredictable trajectories. These demands motivate a responsive approach to teaching, in which teachers attend their students' thinking and flexibly adapt their instructional plans and objectives. A great deal of…

As U.S. public schools continue to diversify, it is necessary for educators to find ways to meet all students' needs in the classroom. By beginning small, with some of the teaching ideas presented within this article such as learning about and supporting your students' cultural competencies and integrating students' backgrounds and interests into…

Stakeholders in STEM education have called for integrating engineering content knowledge into STEM-content classrooms. To answer the call, stakeholders in science education announced a new framework, Next Generation Science Standards, which focuses on the integration of science and engineering in K-12 science education. However, research indicates…

The first steps in the engineering design process are to identify and define the problem (Eide, Jenison, Mashaw, & Northup, 2001). The primary purpose of this article is to highlight the problem that has existed for the past three decades (a disconnect between industrial educators and proponents of technological literacy) and to make a…

As technology and engineering (T&E) education seeks to survive a shortage of teachers and funding, among other factors, it must proceed with caution. The field should remain true to its hands-on, design-based roots but must also provide rigorous instruction that applies STEM skills and situates it as a valuable stakeholder among the core…

Few of the papers published in journals and conference proceedings on problem-based learning (PBL) are empirical studies, and most of these use self-report as the measure of PBL (Beddoes, Jesiek, & Borrego, 2010). The current study provides a theoretically derived matrix for coding and classifying PBL that was objectively applied to official…

There is a long history of research efforts aimed at understanding the relationship between homework activity and academic achievement. While some self-report inventories involving homework activity have been useful for predicting academic performance, self-reported measures may be limited or even problematic. Here, we employ a novel method for…

There is little doubt that student motivation is essential in providing a beneficial learning experience. One way to produce such motivation is to stimulate it through suitable assessment methods. This paper shares the experience acquired by the authors, who are university lecturers in Civil Engineering at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid,…

As the emphasis on STEM education increases, the "E" (engineering) in the acronym is gaining more attention in K-12 education. K-12 educators are urged to develop new and creative strategies for engaging youth in science and engineering activities that encourage them to be inventors and not just consumers. The Inquiry By Engineering…

Engineering designers must make evidence-based decisions when applying the practical tools and techniques of their discipline to human problems. Information literacy provides a structure for determining information gaps, locating appropriate and relevant information, applying that information effectively, and documenting and managing the knowledge…

While teaching methods tend to be updated frequently, the implementation of new innovative assessment tools is much slower. For example project based learning has become popular as a teaching technique, however, the assessment tends to be via traditional reports. This paper reports on the implementation and evaluation of using website development…

Addressing the sustainability challenges in the forest sector in Mozambique requires capacity building for higher education and training of new skilled expert and future decision-makers. Our approach was to develop a study module on and pedagogical approaches to industrial environmental engineering and sustainability. The idea was to develop a…