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1.
Supplemental Instruction (SI) can be an efficient way of improving student success in difficult courses. Here, a study is made on SI attached to difficult first-year engineering courses. The results show that both the percentage of students passing a difficult first-year engineering course, and scores on the course exams are considerably higher for students attending SI, compared to students not attending. The study also shows that a higher percentage of female students attend SI, compared to male students. However, both genders seem to benefit to the same degree as a result of attending SI meetings. Also all students, independent of prior academic ability, benefit from attending SI. A qualitative study suggests that SI meetings provide elements important for understanding course material, which are missing from other scheduled learning opportunities in the courses.  相似文献   

2.
The Dainton enhanced engineering courses were designed to produce engineers who would be better prepared for careers in manufacturing management than their counterparts from conventional engineering programmes. As part of a large scale evaluation of these courses, the views of 167 students and 220 graduates of the programmes were compared with those of a control group of 353 students from conventional engineering courses. Respondents were asked for their opinions of 19 course elements in terms of the amount of time devoted to each as a preparation for a career as a professional engineer in industry.In general, enhanced students viewed their courses more favourably than students from conventional courses. Thus, over half of the conventional students criticised their courses for a lack of business and management material, compared with less than one in five enhanced students. There were few differences between the two groups in their views about the technical content of their courses. Criticisms about insufficient time being devoted to CADCAM, Engineering Practice, and Engineering Applications were common in students from both types of course. The views of enhanced graduates, who had up to five years' work experience post graduation, were similar to those of the undergraduates. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for engineering education in general.  相似文献   

3.
We have conducted action research involving an instructional intervention over a 20-year period. This has demonstrated that spatial ability influences academic performance in engineering, and can be increased through instruction focused on using perception and mental imagery in three-dimensional representation. Prior to our intervention, the first-year engineering graphics course at our university had a failure rate of 36% for all engineering students and failure rates of 80% for African students studying at our university. Similar high failure rates were reported in engineering drawing and design courses at other Southern African universities, and similar association between low scores on tests of spatial ability and academic performance, suggesting that the problem was one encountered by many engineering students, not just by students at our university. Over the initial 2 years of the intervention, pass rates for the first-year engineering graphics course increased from 64 to 76%. With further changes in teaching, and the training of senior students as tutors to support the lecturing and practical activities provided in the course, the pass rates have risen to 88% annually, over a period in which the composition of the first-year student has become increasingly diverse, with greater numbers of students entering the university from disadvantaged educational backgrounds. The instructional model we have used is based on Piagetian principles, and confirms Piaget's theories with respect to the trainability of spatial ability in adulthood. Our findings suggest the importance of early identification of students with difficulty, as well as the potential value of an intervention aimed at training the processes involved in visualization through three-dimensional modelling and representation of objects. While spatial ability appears to be trainable through the methods we have developed, our research also indicates that level of spatial ability at time of intake to university is an important influence on academic performance, suggesting the value of instruction in visualization and three-dimensional representation at school level. Social factors are also important influences on academic performance, suggesting the value of tutorial-based interventions aimed at improving spatial ability in those university and technikon courses for which visualization and three-dimensional representation are a requirement.  相似文献   

4.
Bridging/foundation programmes are often provided by tertiary institutions to increase equity in access and academic performance of students from under-served communities. Little empirical evidence exists to measure the effectiveness of these bridging/foundation programmes on undergraduate academic outcomes. This research identifies the predictive effect of academic outcomes achieved within a bridging/foundation programme, targeted towards indigenous and ethnic minority students, on first-year degree-level outcomes. Overall performance within the bridging/foundation programme was positively associated with increasing Grade Point Average (GPA), ‘Core 4’ GPA and passing all courses in first year. However, mixed associations were identified between feeder bridging/foundation courses and their intended first year course counterparts. These findings support the continued provision of bridging/foundation education; however, curricular reform within the bridging/foundation programme was required. Key developments included: restructuring course delivery; increasing constructive alignment across the curriculum; increasing cultural content within western science-orientated courses; introduction of cross-curricular assessment and use of additional innovative teaching and learning activities. Additional challenges remain for degree programmes to explore how they can change in order to better support indigenous and ethnic minority student success within first-year tertiary study.  相似文献   

5.
Abstract

This paper brings together general principles for teaching inquiry across disciplines with those generally employed in mathematics classrooms. It describes some broad principles of teaching inquiry to first-year writing students and shows how these can be employed in the context of a course on game theory in popular culture. Although undergraduate mathematics may seem miles away from undergraduate writing, especially in first-year courses, we show how common educational practices in inquiry-based mathematics courses are easily adapted to teaching a writing course and how these pedagogical methods can be used to encourage students to develop habits of inquiry.  相似文献   

6.
Too difficult, too abstract, too theoretical – many first-year engineering students complain about their mathematics courses. The project MathePraxis aims to resolve this disaffection. It links mathematical methods as they are taught in the first semesters with practical problems from engineering applications – and thereby shall give first-year engineering students a vivid and convincing impression of where they will need mathematics in their later working life. But since real applications usually require more than basic mathematics and first-year engineering students typically are not experienced with construction, mensuration and the use of engineering software, such an approach is hard to realise. In this article, we show that it is possible. We report on the implementation of MathePraxis at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. We describe the set-up and the implementation of a course on designing a mass damper which combines basic mathematical techniques with an impressive experiment. In an accompanying evaluation, we have examined the students' motivation relating to mathematics. This opens up new perspectives how to address the need for a more practically oriented mathematical education in engineering sciences.  相似文献   

7.
Recently, many educational institutions across the globe have implemented engineering leadership programmes either as a part of a formal engineering curriculum or where leadership development is embedded into separate in-house programmes. This shows the clear intent of these educational institutions to prepare their engineering students for solving real-world problems, recognising that both technical and leadership skills are valuable for tomorrow's engineers. Leadership programmes in engineering education have been implemented in various formats with varying degrees of success. It has already been identified in research studies that 80–90% of engineering leadership programmes offered explicitly across the globe were based in the United States of America. However, in Europe and Australia, there is a noticeable lack of engineering leadership programmes, particularly in undergraduate curricula. The programmes that are offered across Australia and Europe have distinct design and delivery styles but there are certain key features that are common to most of the programmes, including professional partnerships, mentoring, engineering design and project-based approaches.  相似文献   

8.
The introduction of a new standards-based secondary school assessment system, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), necessitated significant changes to the admissions processes for New Zealand universities, particularly for competitive-entry programmes such as medicine, engineering and pharmacy. Selection to such programmes was traditionally based on marks or grades in designated science subjects. Under NCEA, the emphasis changed to the number of credits obtained. This article uses the case of pharmacy at The University of Auckland to examine whether the admission criteria under NCEA are ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of academic progression during the degree. The negative consequences of students having to repeat courses are both academic and financial. Using data from six cohorts of NCEA entrants to the Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) degree, the findings of this study clearly suggest that the best predictor of course success, measured by not failing courses, is the NCEA Grade Point Average. This is at variance with the current practice for admission to pharmacy and other limited-entry degrees which rely on prerequisite courses and the number of NCEA Credits gained. These results suggest that a reappraisal of admissions processes for pharmacy and similar programmes is required.  相似文献   

9.
Although previous research has examined how generic skills and disciplinary contexts are related, such investigation has not been conducted from students’ perspectives. Implications of disciplinary differences for the design of a generic skills curriculum have also remained unexplored. In this study, a questionnaire was administered to 502 first-year engineering and business students from a Hong Kong university which explored their perceived importance and competence level of their generic skills, as well as their motivation towards developing these skills. The results of engineering and business students were compared which revealed some disciplinary differences. Substantial differences were found in the importance and competency ratings on IT skills and business students gave significantly higher importance ratings on most generic skills than engineering students. This study will help guide curriculum design that leverages the benefits of interdisciplinary programmes and incorporates generic skills as part of learning outcomes within disciplinary contexts.  相似文献   

10.
First-year engineering students often complain about their mathematics courses as the significance of the difficult and abstract calculus to their field of study remains unclear. We report on the project MathePraxis, a feasibility study which was designed as a means to give first-year students some impression about the use of mathematics in real practice. We aim to increase the motivation and retention rates among engineering students by connecting the contents of the first-year mathematics lectures with practical applications. We developed three projects, two of which are described in this article: an inverted pendulum considered as a model for the automated control within a Segway and a study on the optimal design of a ribbed cooler. In this article, we briefly present the mathematical content of the projects and report on their implementation.  相似文献   

11.
Abstract

In this study, the consequences of allowing course compensation in a higher education academic dismissal policy are evaluated by examining performance on a second-year follow-up (i.e. sequel) course that builds on material from a first-year precursor course. Up to now, differences in the consequences of compensation on student performance across groups of students who portray different unobserved study processes were not considered. In this study we used a latent class regression model to distinguish latent groups of students. Data from two undergraduate curricula were used and latent classes were formed based on similar patterns in averages, variability in grades, the number of compensated courses, and the number of retakes in the first year. Results show that students can be distinguished by three latent classes. Although the first-year precursor course is compensated in each of these latent classes, low performance on the precursor course results in low performance on the second-year sequel course for psychology students who belong to a class in which the average across first-year courses is low and the average number of compensated courses and retakes are high. For these students, compensation on a precursor course seems more likely to relate to insufficient performance on a sequel course.  相似文献   

12.
《大气与噪声污染控制工程》是高校环境工程专业的必修课程之一。由于环境工程专业学生的就业压力及大气与噪声污染控制的技术特点,传统的课程教学模式已面临挑战。结合笔者的相关横向课题,从工程案例题目设计、工程设计任务书制定、课程教学改革三方面,对《大气与噪声污染控制工程》课程开展工程案例的教育模式进行初步探讨,旨在提高学生的工程设计能力。  相似文献   

13.
Many engineering undergraduates begin third-level education with significant deficiencies in their core mathematical skills. Every year, in the Dublin Institute of Technology, a diagnostic test is given to incoming first-year students, consistently revealing problems in basic mathematics. It is difficult to motivate students to address these problems; instead, they struggle through their degree, carrying a serious handicap of poor core mathematical skills, as confirmed by exploratory testing of final year students. In order to improve these skills, a pilot project was set up in which a ‘module’ in core mathematics was developed. The course material was basic, but 90% or higher was required to pass. Students were allowed to repeat this module throughout the year by completing an automated examination on WebCT populated by a question bank. Subsequent to the success of this pilot with third-year mechanical engineering students, the project was extended to five different engineering programmes, across three different year-groups. Full results and analysis of this project are presented, including responses to interviews carried out with a selection of the students involved.  相似文献   

14.
2005年美国工程教育协会的调查结果表明,美国大学根据学生的知、情、意、行四方面设计工程顶点课程,它不仅整合了学生过去学习的知识,还让学生把先前所学知识和技能应用于实践中,帮助学生理解理论和实践的相关性.围绕课程与项目的结合,美国大学工程顶点设计课程形成了自己独特的教学模式、教学方法、教学组织、教学评价目标和手段.美国大学工程顶点设计课程的成功离不开教师、资金、项目、设计流程的保障.美国大学工程顶点课程的设计经验对我国培养高质量工程人才具有重要的借鉴意义.  相似文献   

15.
ABSTRACT

Feedback is an important part of design education. To better understand how feedback is provided to students on their engineering design work, we characterised and compared first-year engineering students’, undergraduate teaching assistants’, and educators’ written feedback on sample student design work. We created a coding scheme including two domains: Substance and Focus of feedback. Educators made more and longer comments than undergraduate teaching assistants, and undergraduate teaching assistants made more and longer comments than first-year students. The first-year students focused on giving specific directions in their feedback while educators and undergraduate teaching assistants asked thought-provoking questions. Students tended to make more comments about the ways that their peers had communicated their design work while educators and undergraduate teaching assistants made more comments about the design ideas presented in the sample work. This study offers implications for practice for supporting educators, undergraduate teaching assistants, and first-year engineering students to be able to provide feedback on design work.  相似文献   

16.
过程设备设计是过程装备与控制工程专业最核心的专业课之一,实践性教学环节为设备课程设计。在课程设计中,出现学生对专业基础知识掌握不牢固,缺乏工程设计意识的现象。分析这一现象产生的原因,并给出相应的改进措施。  相似文献   

17.
The affordances of technology-based assessments, like the objectively structured practical examination, have become an integral part of gross anatomy courses. The Department of Anatomy Faculty of Medicine at the University of Warmia and Mazury developed and introduced an application for tablet devices which has been implemented in student examinations and assessments, called the tablet-assisted objective structured spotter practical examination. It was created to simplify the educational process and to build a rich learning environment, facilitating deep learning for students through examination and feedback data. The method consists of cadaver stations with traditional corresponding pin spotters in an expanded tablet application. It not only provides instant feedback on various observations of teaching–learning skills but has also positively affected the entire process of education. The method provides an unbiased evaluation of knowledge and understanding of the anatomy course, ensuring objectivity and standardization. The current study was performed on a total of 608 first-year medical students in Polish and English divisions and focused on the observed advantages since the new method was introduced. Outcomes indicate that after the implementation of the method for both the Polish and English divisions' first-year medical students, the mean score of examinations significantly increased compared to other teaching–learning methods. The study highlights that students were excited about the implementation of the new method and identified its many benefits. It is recognized that technological development and the digital environment offer a range of opportunities and added value versus traditional assessment activities, methods, and processes.  相似文献   

18.
The chemical engineering programme at the United Arab Emirates University is designed to fulfil the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) (A–K) EC2000 criteria. The Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering has established a well-defined process for outcomes assessment for the chemical engineering programme in order to ensure that its graduates achieve the programme educational objectives. Different direct and indirect tools are implemented in the assessment process. Among these tools, the greatest weight in the assessment process has been given to the curriculum (30%). The course and curriculum assessment usually plays an important role in improving the course content and quality; as it should provide considerable information on the effectiveness of an academic programme. This paper aims to discuss the methods used to assess the courses/curriculum of the chemical engineering programme as an important direct tool in the assessment process for ABET accreditation. Application of the curriculum assessment results in the continuous improvement of chemical engineering programmes is also addressed.  相似文献   

19.
In the modern working environment it is essential for a structural engineer to have an understanding of abstract concepts in structural behaviour and an ability to use them qualitatively. This paper presents the findings of a study on how effectively students acquire such conceptual understanding within a new project/design focused degree course. The new degree programme is described. The first-year students experience a mixture of learning opportunities, including model building/testing, laboratories, workshops/tutorials, and lectures. In the second year there are two design exercises but no formal structural theory course. Specific concepts-based learning material was introduced into the first-year course at mid-semester and the effectiveness of this examined by tests and interviews. The performance of the first-year students is compared to that of the second-year students. The findings show that there is good student engagement and satisfaction with the course and that basic skills are successfully being acquired throughout both years. However, the study highlights areas where concepts are not being adequately developed in the first year and subsequently show little enhancement in the second year.  相似文献   

20.
ABSTRACT

With increasing demand for improved medical equipment and healthcare, next-generation biomedical engineers need strong design skills. Equipping biomedical engineering students with tools for idea generation and development can increase student design success. Design Heuristics are an ideation tool developed through empirical studies of product designs. While identified in the mechanical engineering space, Design Heuristics may be applicable in biomedical engineering design. In our study, we implemented a Design Heuristics session during upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate biomedical engineering design courses. We examined the applicability of Design Heuristics within individual and team concept generation contexts. The findings demonstrated that biomedical engineering students were able to use Design Heuristics to generate multiple concepts, and that initial concepts produced using Design Heuristics were carried over into final team design. The results support the applicability of Design Heuristics to student idea generation in biomedical engineering design.  相似文献   

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