The Future of Engineering Education: Part 1. A Vision for a New Century

Abstract

When we walk into an arbitrarily chosen engineering classroom in 2000, what do we see? Toooften the same thing we would have seen in 1970, or 1940. The professor stands at the front of the room,copying a derivation from his notes onto the board and repeating aloud what he writes. The students sitpassively, copying from the board, reading, working on homework from another class, or daydreaming. Once in a while the professor asks a question: the student in the front row who feels compelled to answeralmost every question may respond, and the others simply avoid eye contact with the professor until theawkward moment passes. At the end of the class students are assigned several problems that require themto do something similar to what the professor just did or simply to solve the derived formula for somevariable from given values of other variables. The next class is the same, and so is the next one, and the oneafter that.There are some differences from 30 years ago, of course. The homework assignments require theuse of calculators instead of slide rules, or possibly computers used as large calculators. The math is moresophisticated and graphical solution methods are not as likely to come up. The board is green or white ormaybe an overhead projector is used. Nevertheless, little evidence of anything that has appeared in articlesand conferences on engineering education in the past half-century can be found in most of our classroomsand textbooks. In recent years, however, there have been signs of change.