This article describes the possibilities offered by the online assessment system Etude to achieve the benefits of formative assessment. In order to find out the way this works in practice, we carried out an experiment with the use of Etude for formative assessment in the course on collaborative report writing. Results show that online formative…

A bioprocess engineer should have at least a set of basic design skills. Bioprocess design is a complex cognitive skill, which should be trained in every year of an academic Bioprocess-Engineering curriculum. However, there is little existing learning material to support the initial training of design skills early in the curriculum. For this…

This study examined whether divergent thinking test scores obtained from engineering students during college predicted creative work activities fifteen years later. Results showed that a subscore of the "Owens Creativity Test", which assesses divergent thinking about mechanical objects, correlated significantly with self-ratings of…

The work of Activity 1 of the Thematic Network E4 "Employability through Innovative Curricula" on curriculum development issues has been guided by the intention to contribute to the establishment of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by addressing crucial aspects of harmonisation, compatibility and comparability. In due course the…

Social cognitive career theory (SCCT; R. W. Lent, S. D. Brown, and G. Hackett, 1994) and general social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1999, 2000) posit somewhat different relations between contextual variables and choice actions. The authors tested the predictions of these 2 model variations. Participants (328 students in an introductory engineering…

This article describes BEST (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology), a hands-on robotics program founded by Texas Instruments engineers Ted Mahler and Steve Marum. BEST links educators with industry to provide middle and high school students with a peek into the exciting world of robotics, with the goal of inspiring and interesting…

Generally speaking, chemical engineering teaching programs at the undergraduate level focus on the continuous production of a single molecule, for which selectivity, yield, purity, as well as safety and environmental aspects are essential. Nevertheless, an increasing number of chemical engineers in Chemical Process Industries (CPI) have to face…

Magnet schools have developed strong national and local constituencies among parents and educators, who see them as vehicles for bringing equity and academic excellence to all students. Typically, these schools offer innovative programs through a specialized focus or theme. They may emphasize subjects like science or the arts, or they may adopt…

The authors synthesize preliminary findings from an interdisciplinary study of the practicum/clinical phase of undergraduate pre-service education in the professions. Early data analysis identified similarities and differences across disciplines in terms of: (a) the terminology describing each practicum program, (b) the programs' key…

To resolve the dispute amongst several studies, this research investigated whether the new generation of women engineering majors, who have been better academically prepared and presumably instilled with confidence, still experience lower levels of achievement than male engineering students. This study was framed under Bandura's (1986) triadic…

Goal: The use of an online game for learning in higher education aims to make complex theoretical knowledge more approachable. Permanent repetition will lead to a more in-depth learning. Objective: To gain insight into whether and to what extent, online games have the potential to contribute to student learning in higher education. Experimental…

In U.S. coverage of leadership in science and engineering (S&E), Latinos are generally dismissed from consideration. The pipeline metaphor tends to ignore advances made by Latinos in completing doctoral degrees in S&E. New data suggest a better metaphor, the pyramid of higher education, for understanding the progress of Latinos in S&E. Questions…

For decades, every chemical engineer has been asked to have a background in separations. The required separations course can, however, be uninspiring and superficial because understanding many separation processes involves conventional graphical methods and commercial process simulators. We utilize simple, user-­friendly mathematical software,…

Vocabulary learning is often perceived as boring by learners, especially for those who grew up in the digital age. This paper reports a study of the usefulness of online games in vocabulary learning for some undergraduate students. Three teachers and 100 engineering students participated in a quasi-experimental study for approximately nine weeks.…

During the 1998-1999 academic year, a survey was conducted to look at current trends and issues in the profession of graphics education (Clark & Scales, 1999). The survey solicited information from the membership of the Engineering Design Graphics Division of the American Society for Engineering Education related to their view of future areas of…