Engineering education in K-12 classrooms is a small but growing phenomenon that may have implications for engineering and also for the other STEM subjects-science, technology, and mathematics. Specifically, engineering education may improve student learning and achievement in science and mathematics, increase awareness of engineering and the work of engineers, boost youth interest in pursuing engineering as a career, and increase the technological literacy of all students. The teaching of STEM subjects in U.S. schools must be improved in order to retain U.S. competitiveness in the global economy and to develop a workforce with the knowledge and skills to address technical and technological issues. Engineering in K-12 Education reviews the scope and impact of engineering education today and makes several recommendations to address curriculum, policy, and funding issues. The book also analyzes a number of K-12 engineering curricula in depth and discusses what is known from the cognitive sciences about how children learn engineering-related concepts and skills. Engineering in K-12 Education will serve as a reference for science, technology, engineering, and math educators, policy makers, employers, and others concerned about the development of the country's technical workforce. The book will also prove useful to educational researchers, cognitive scientists, advocates for greater public understanding of engineering, and those working to boost technological and scientific literacy.
Engineering professional societies in the United States are engaged in a wide range of activities involving undergraduate education. However, these activities generally are not coordinated and have not been assessed in such a way that information about their procedures and outcomes can be shared. Nor have they been assessed to determine whether they are optimally configured to mesh with corresponding initiatives undertaken by industry and academia. Engineering societies work largely independently on undergraduate education, leaving open the question of how much more effective their efforts could be if they worked more collaborativelyâ€"with each other as well as with academia and industry. To explore the potential for enhancing societies' role at the undergraduate level, the National Academy of Engineering held a workshop on the engagement of engineering societies in undergraduate engineering education. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
The vitality of the innovation economy in the United States depends on the availability of a highly educated technical workforce. A key component of this workforce consists of engineers, engineering technicians, and engineering technologists. However, unlike the much better-known field of engineering, engineering technology (ET) is unfamiliar to most Americans and goes unmentioned in most policy discussions about the US technical workforce. Engineering Technology Education in the United States seeks to shed light on the status, role, and needs of ET education in the United States.
The aim of this report is to encourage enhanced richness and relevance of the undergraduate engineering education experience, and thus produce better-prepared and more globally competitive graduates, by providing practical guidance for incorporating real world experience in US engineering programs. The report, a collaborative effort of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), builds on two NAE reports on The Engineer of 2020 that cited the importance of grounding engineering education in real world experience. This project also aligns with other NAE efforts in engineering education, such as the Grand Challenges of Engineering, Changing the Conversation, and Frontiers of Engineering Education. This publication presents 29 programs that have successfully infused real world experiences into engineering or engineering technology undergraduate education. The Real World Engineering Education committee acknowledges the vision of AMD in supporting this project, which provides useful exemplars for institutions of higher education who seek model programs for infusing real world experiences in their programs. The NAE selection committee was impressed by the number of institutions committed to grounding their programs in real world experience and by the quality, creativity, and diversity of approaches reflected in the submissions. A call for nominations sent to engineering and engineering technology deans, chairs, and faculty yielded 95 high-quality submissions. Two conditions were required of the nominations: (1) an accredited 4-year undergraduate engineering or engineering technology program was the lead institutions, and (2) the nominated program started operation no later than the fall 2010 semester. Within these broad parameters, nominations ranged from those based on innovations within a single course to enhancements across an entire curriculum or institution. Infusing Real World Experiences into Engineering Education is intended to provide sufficient information to enable engineering and engineering technology faculty and administrators to assess and adapt effective, innovative models of programs to their own institution's objectives. Recognizing that change is rarely trivial, the project included a brief survey of selected engineering deans concern in the adoption of such programs.
Engineering is a small but growing part of Kâ€"12 education. Curricula that use the principles and practices of engineering are providing opportunities for elementary, middle, and high school students to design solutions to problems of immediate practical and societal importance. Professional development programs are showing teachers how to use engineering to engage students, to improve their learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), and to spark their interest in engineering careers. However, many of the policies and practices that shape Kâ€"12 engineering education have not been fully or, in some cases, even marginally informed by the knowledge of teacher leaders. To address the lack of teacher leadership in engineering education policymaking and how it might be mitigated as engineering education becomes more widespread in Kâ€"12 education in the United States, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a convocation on September 30â€"October 1, 2016. Participants explored how strategic connections both within and outside classrooms and schools might catalyze new avenues of teacher preparation and professional development, integrated curriculum development, and more comprehensive assessment of knowledge, skills, and attitudes about engineering in the Kâ€"12 curriculum. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the event.
Engineering skills and knowledge are foundational to technological innovation and development that drive long-term economic growth and help solve societal challenges. Therefore, to ensure national competitiveness and quality of life it is important to understand and to continuously adapt and improve the educational and career pathways of engineers in the United States. To gather this understanding it is necessary to study the people with the engineering skills and knowledge as well as the evolving system of institutions, policies, markets, people, and other resources that together prepare, deploy, and replenish the nation's engineering workforce. This report explores the characteristics and career choices of engineering graduates, particularly those with a BS or MS degree, who constitute the vast majority of degreed engineers, as well as the characteristics of those with non-engineering degrees who are employed as engineers in the United States. It provides insight into their educational and career pathways and related decision making, the forces that influence their decisions, and the implications for major elements of engineering education-to-workforce pathways.
Today's undergraduate studentsâ€"future leaders, policymakers, teachers, and citizens, as well as scientists and engineersâ€"will need to make important decisions based on their understanding of scientific and technological concepts. However, many undergraduates in the United States do not study science, mathematics, engineering, or technology (SME&T) for more than one year, if at all. Additionally, many of the SME&T courses that students take are focused on one discipline and often do not give students an understanding about how disciplines are interconnected or relevant to students' lives and society. To address these issues, the National Research Council convened a series of symposia and forums of representatives from SME&T educational and industrial communities. Those discussions contributed to this book, which provides six vision statements and recommendations for how to improve SME&T education for all undergraduates. The book addresses pre-college preparation for students in SME&T and the joint roles and responsibilities of faculty and administrators in arts and sciences and in schools of education to better educate teachers of K-12 mathematics, science, and technology. It suggests how colleges can improve and evaluate lower-division undergraduate courses for all students, strengthen institutional infrastructures to encourage quality teaching, and better prepare graduate students who will become future SME&T faculty.
Engineering education is emerging as an important component of US K-12 education. Across the country, students in classrooms and after- and out-of-school programs are participating in hands-on, problem-focused learning activities using the engineering design process. These experiences can be engaging; support learning in other areas, such as science and mathematics; and provide a window into the important role of engineering in society. As the landscape of K-12 engineering education continues to grow and evolve, educators, administrators, and policy makers should consider the capacity of the US education system to meet current and anticipated needs for K-12 teachers of engineering. Building Capacity for Teaching Engineering in K-12 Education reviews existing curricula and programs as well as related research to understand current and anticipated future needs for engineering-literate K-12 educators in the United States and determine how these needs might be addressed. Key topics in this report include the preparation of K-12 engineering educators, professional pathways for K-12 engineering educators, and the role of higher education in preparing engineering educators. This report proposes steps that stakeholders - including professional development providers, postsecondary preservice education programs, postsecondary engineering and engineering technology programs, formal and informal educator credentialing organizations, and the education and learning sciences research communities - might take to increase the number, skill level, and confidence of K-12 teachers of engineering in the United States.
Can the United States continue to lead the world in innovation? The answer may hinge in part on how well the public understands engineering, a key component of the 'innovation engine'. A related concern is how to encourage young people-particularly girls and under-represented minorities-to consider engineering as a career option. Changing the Conversation provides actionable strategies and market-tested messages for presenting a richer, more positive image of engineering. This book presents and discusses in detail market research about what the public finds most appealing about engineering-as well as what turns the public off. Changing the Conversation is a vital tool for improving the public image of engineering and outreach efforts related to engineering. It will be used by engineers in professional and academic settings including informal learning environments (such as museums and science centers), engineering schools, national engineering societies, technology-based corporations that support education and other outreach to schools and communities, and federal and state agencies and labs that do or promote engineering, technology, and science.
Ethical practice in engineering is critical for ensuring public trust in the field and in its practitioners, especially as engineers increasingly tackle international and socially complex problems that combine technical and ethical challenges. This report aims to raise awareness of the variety of exceptional programs and strategies for improving engineers' understanding of ethical and social issues and provides a resource for those who seek to improve ethical development of engineers at their own institutions. This publication presents 25 activities and programs that are exemplary in their approach to infusing ethics into the development of engineering students. It is intended to serve as a resource for institutions of higher education seeking to enhance their efforts in this area.
Are we producing too many PhDs? Does the current graduate education system adequately prepare science and engineering students for today's marketplace? How do foreign students enter the picture? What should be the PhD of the future? These and other questions are addressed in this book by a blue-ribbon panel of scientists and engineers. Recommendations are aimed at creating a new PhD that would retain the existing strengths of the current system while substantially increasing the information available, the potential versatility of students, and the career options afforded to them by their PhD education.
Community colleges play an important role in starting students on the road to engineering careers, but students often face obstacles in transferring to four-year educational institutions to continue their education. Enhancing the Community College Pathway to Engineering Careers, a new book from the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council, discusses ways to improve the transfer experience for students at community colleges and offers strategies to enhance partnerships between those colleges and four-year engineering schools to help students transfer more smoothly. In particular, the book focuses on challenges and opportunities for improving transfer between community colleges and four-year educational institutions, recruitment and retention of students interested in engineering, the curricular content and quality of engineering programs, opportunities for community colleges to increase diversity in the engineering workforce, and a review of sources of information on community college and transfer students. It includes a number of current policies, practices, and programs involving community collegeâ€"four-year institution partnerships.
The future security, economic growth, and competitiveness of the United States depend on its capacity to innovate. Major sources of innovative capacity are the new knowledge and trained students generated by U.S. research universities. However, many of the complex technical and societal problems the United States faces cannot be addressed by the traditional model of individual university research groups headed by a single principal investigator. Instead, they can only be solved if researchers from multiple institutions and with diverse expertise combine their efforts. The National Science Foundation (NSF), among other federal agencies, began to explore the potential of such center-scale research programs in the 1970s and 1980s; in many ways, the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) program is its flagship program in this regard. The ERCs are "interdisciplinary, multi-institutional centers that join academia, industry, and government in partnership to produce transformational engineered systems and engineering graduates who are adept at innovation and primed for leadership in the global economy. To ensure that the ERCs continue to be a source of innovation, economic development, and educational excellence, A New Vision for Center-Based Engineering Research explores the future of center-based engineering research, the skills needed for effective center leadership, and opportunities to enhance engineering education through the centers.
The way in which academic engineering research is financed and public expectations for the outcomes from such research are changing at an unprecedented rate. The decrease in support of defense-related research, coupled with the realization that many U.S. technological products are no longer competitive in the global market, has sent a shock wave through research universities that train engineers. This book argues for several concrete actions on the part of universities, government, and industry to ensure the flow and relevance of technical talent to meet national social and economic goals, to maintain a position of leadership in the global economy, and to preserve and enhance the nation's engineering knowledge base.
This study was designed to provide expert, objective, independent advice to 11 tribal colleges that are working together to offer engineering programs. The chief data-gathering activity was a one and one-half day workshop. Reasons for establishing a four-year engineering program at a TCU were outlined in the workshopâ€"making it possible for American Indian students to complete a four-year engineering degree entirely within the tribal college system; reducing the high attrition rate of American Indian students who attend mainstream educational institutions; and providing an engineering program that is culturally relevant to tribal students.
For those in the broad engineering community-those who employ, work with, and/or educate engineers, and engineers themselves-there is no need to explain the importance and value of engineering. They understand that engineers help make the world a better place for all, that they regularly grapple with important societal and environmental issues, and that the engineering process is every bit as creative as composing a symphony or crafting a piece of art. But the situation outside the engineering community is quite different. Studies have shown that most K-12 students and teachers have a limited appreciation of all the ways that engineering makes their lives better and, furthermore, that they have little understanding of what engineers do or of the opportunities that an engineering education offers. Messaging for Engineering supports efforts by the engineering community to communicate more effectively about the profession and those who practice it. This report builds on the 2008 NAE publication, Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering (CTC), which presented the results of a research-based effort to develop and test new, more effective messages about engineering. The new messages cast engineering as inherently creative and concerned with human welfare, as well as an emotionally satisfying calling. This report summarizes progress in implementing the CTC messages, but also recognizes that there is potential to galvanize additional action and thus suggests specific steps for major players in the engineering community to continue and build on progress to date. Many of the report's recommendations resulted from discussion at a December 2010 committee workshop that involved several dozen high-level decision makers representing key stakeholder groups in the engineering community.
It is essential for today's students to learn about science and engineering in order to make sense of the world around them and participate as informed members of a democratic society. The skills and ways of thinking that are developed and honed through engaging in scientific and engineering endeavors can be used to engage with evidence in making personal decisions, to participate responsibly in civic life, and to improve and maintain the health of the environment, as well as to prepare for careers that use science and technology. The majority of Americans learn most of what they know about science and engineering as middle and high school students. During these years of rapid change for students' knowledge, attitudes, and interests, they can be engaged in learning science and engineering through schoolwork that piques their curiosity about the phenomena around them in ways that are relevant to their local surroundings and to their culture. Many decades of education research provide strong evidence for effective practices in teaching and learning of science and engineering. One of the effective practices that helps students learn is to engage in science investigation and engineering design. Broad implementation of science investigation and engineering design and other evidence-based practices in middle and high schools can help address present-day and future national challenges, including broadening access to science and engineering for communities who have traditionally been underrepresented and improving students' educational and life experiences. Science and Engineering for Grades 6-12: Investigation and Design at the Center revisits America's Lab Report: Investigations in High School Science in order to consider its discussion of laboratory experiences and teacher and school readiness in an updated context. It considers how to engage today's middle and high school students in doing science and engineering through an analysis of evidence and examples. This report provides guidance for teachers, administrators, creators of instructional resources, and leaders in teacher professional learning on how to support students as they make sense of phenomena, gather and analyze data/information, construct explanations and design solutions, and communicate reasoning to self and others during science investigation and engineering design. It also provides guidance to help educators get started with designing, implementing, and assessing investigation and design.
In the last half-century, we have witnessed the birth and development of a new era: the information age. Information Technology (IT), the primary vehicle of the information age, has transformed the modern workplace and is pervasive in the development of new knowledge and wealth. IT has also dramatically influenced our capacity to educate. Yet, the application of IT in education has been disorganized and uneven. Pockets of innovation in localized environments are thriving, but the promise of open access, greatly enhanced teaching and learning, and large-scale use has not been realized. IT-Based Educational Materials: Workshop Report with Recommendations identifies critical components that support the development and use of IT-based educational materials. The report points to three high priority action areas that would produce a transitional strategy from our fragmented environment to an IT-transformed future in engineering education-Build Community; Create Organizational Enablers; and Coordinate Action. The report outlines six recommendations, including a call to establish a national laboratory to carry out evidenced-based investigations and other activities to insure interoperability and effective teaching and learning. The report stresses the need to pursue open architectures and to engage multidisciplinary researchers, including social scientists and others who address the transformation of faculty cultures. The report also discusses the need to engage users and developers of the IT-products in activities that are driven by student learning outcomes.
Undergraduate research has a rich history, and many practicing researchers point to undergraduate research experiences (UREs) as crucial to their own career success. There are many ongoing efforts to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education that focus on increasing the active engagement of students and decreasing traditional lecture-based teaching, and UREs have been proposed as a solution to these efforts and may be a key strategy for broadening participation in STEM. In light of the proposals questions have been asked about what is known about student participation in UREs, best practices in UREs design, and evidence of beneficial outcomes from UREs. Undergraduate Research Experiences for STEM Students provides a comprehensive overview of and insights about the current and rapidly evolving types of UREs, in an effort to improve understanding of the complexity of UREs in terms of their content, their surrounding context, the diversity of the student participants, and the opportunities for learning provided by a research experience. This study analyzes UREs by considering them as part of a learning system that is shaped by forces related to national policy, institutional leadership, and departmental culture, as well as by the interactions among faculty, other mentors, and students. The report provides a set of questions to be considered by those implementing UREs as well as an agenda for future research that can help answer questions about how UREs work and which aspects of the experiences are most powerful.
The Lifelong Learning Imperative (LLI) project was initiated to assess current practices in lifelong learning for engineering professionals, reexamine the underlying assumptions behind those practices, and outline strategies for addressing unmet needs. The LLI project brought together leaders of U.S. industry, academia, government, and professional societies to assess the current state of lifelong learning of engineers; to examine the need for, and nature of, lifelong learning going forward; and to explore the responsibilities and potential actions for the primary stakeholders. The United States is facing a crisis in its engineering workforce just as global competition is becoming very intense. During the next several years there will be massive retirements of skilled and experiences engineers, and the United States has one of the lowest rates of graduation of bachelor-level engineers in the world: only 4.5 percent of our university graduates are engineers. The issue is especially acute in the national security industry because of citizenship requirements. Perhaps even more critical, the pace of technological change continues to accelerate, making the specifics of engineering education and skill development obsolete in short order. A critical part of our corporate and national strategy to address this looming crisis should be to ramp up the quality of engineers' professional life, improve their capacity to innovate, and widen their fields of opportunity. A project-framing workshop was organized by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in partnership with the National Academy of Engineering in June 2009 to examine the issues relevant to lifelong learning in engineering. A UIUC research team then conducted a survey-based assessment of the issues identified in the 2009 workshop. Preliminary findings from the UIUC study were examined more fully. Lifelong Learning Imperative in Engineering reflects the opinions of the authors based on the UIUS team's survey analysis and learning from the discussions at the 2011 workshop.
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are cultural achievements that reflect our humanity, power our economy, and constitute fundamental aspects of our lives as citizens, consumers, parents, and members of the workforce. Providing all students with access to quality education in the STEM disciplines is important to our nation's competitiveness. However, it is challenging to identify the most successful schools and approaches in the STEM disciplines because success is defined in many ways and can occur in many different types of schools and settings. In addition, it is difficult to determine whether the success of a school's students is caused by actions the school takes or simply related to the population of students in the school. Successful K-12 STEM Education defines a framework for understanding "success" in K-12 STEM education. The book focuses its analysis on the science and mathematics parts of STEM and outlines criteria for identifying effective STEM schools and programs. Because a school's success should be defined by and measured relative to its goals, the book identifies three important goals that share certain elements, including learning STEM content and practices, developing positive dispositions toward STEM, and preparing students to be lifelong learners. A successful STEM program would increase the number of students who ultimately pursue advanced degrees and careers in STEM fields, enhance the STEM-capable workforce, and boost STEM literacy for all students. It is also critical to broaden the participation of women and minorities in STEM fields. Successful K-12 STEM Education examines the vast landscape of K-12 STEM education by considering different school models, highlighting research on effective STEM education practices, and identifying some conditions that promote and limit school- and student-level success in STEM. The book also looks at where further work is needed to develop appropriate data sources. The book will serve as a guide to policy makers; decision makers at the school and district levels; local, state, and federal government agencies; curriculum developers; educators; and parent and education advocacy groups.
Leadership in innovation is essential to U.S. prosperity and security. In a global, knowledge-driven economy, technological innovationâ€"the transformation of new knowledge into products, processes, and services of value to societyâ€"is critical to competitiveness, long-term productivity growth, and an improved quality of life. Preeminence in technological innovation depends on a wide array of factors, one of which is leadership in engineering research, education, and practice. A threedecade- long decline in the share of federal investment in research and development devoted to engineering and a perceived erosion of basic, long-term engineering research capability in U.S. industry and federal laboratories have raised serious questions about the long-term health of engineering research in the United States. This book illustrates the critical role of engineering research in maintaining U.S. technological leadership; documents major challenges and opportunities facing the U.S. engineering research enterprise; and offers specific recommendations for leaders in federal and state government, industry, and universities to help strengthen U.S. engineering research in the face of intensifying global competition.
The U.S. system of graduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has served the nation and its science and engineering enterprise extremely well. Over the course of their education, graduate students become involved in advancing the frontiers of discovery, as well as in making significant contributions to the growth of the U.S. economy, its national security, and the health and well-being of its people. However, continuous, dramatic innovations in research methods and technologies, changes in the nature and availability of work, shifts in demographics, and expansions in the scope of occupations needing STEM expertise raise questions about how well the current STEM graduate education system is meeting the full array of 21st century needs. Indeed, recent surveys of employers and graduates and studies of graduate education suggest that many graduate programs do not adequately prepare students to translate their knowledge into impact in multiple careers. Graduate STEM Education for the 21st Century examines the current state of U.S. graduate STEM education. This report explores how the system might best respond to ongoing developments in the conduct of research on evidence-based teaching practices and in the needs and interests of its students and the broader society it seeks to serve. This will be an essential resource for the primary stakeholders in the U.S. STEM enterprise, including federal and state policymakers, public and private funders, institutions of higher education, their administrators and faculty, leaders in business and industry, and the students the system is intended to educate.
Faculty in all disciplines must continually prioritize their time to reflect the many demands of their faculty obligations, but they must also prioritize their efforts in ways that will improve the prospects of career advancement. The current perception is that research contributions are the most important measure with respect to faculty promotion and tenure decisions, and that teaching effectiveness is less valued-regardless of the stated weighting of research, teaching and service. In addition, methods for assessing research accomplishments are well established, even though imperfect, whereas metrics for assessing teaching, learning, and instructional effectiveness are not as well defined or well established. Developing Metrics for Assessing Engineering Instruction provides a concise description of a process to develop and institute a valid and acceptable means of measuring teaching effectiveness in order to foster greater acceptance and rewards for faculty efforts to improve their performance of the teaching role that makes up a part of their faculty responsibility. Although the focus of this book is in the area of engineering, the concepts and approaches are applicable to all fields in higher education.
The term "service-learning" generally refers to projects planned as components of academic coursework in which students use knowledge and skills taught in the course to address real needs in their communities. This kind of learning experience, which allows students to focus on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibility, has become an increasingly popular component of undergraduate science education. In April 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine planned a workshop to explore the current and potential role of service-learning in undergraduate geosciences education. Participants explored how service learning is being used in geoscience education, its potential benefits, and the strength of the evidence base regarding the nature and benefits of these experiences. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.
Both sides of the engineering equation--education and utilization--are studied in this unique volume. A brief discussion of the development of engineering in the United States is followed by an examination of the status of engineering today. A specially developed flow diagram, which defines all aspects of the current engineering community, demonstrates how the profession adapts and responds to change. The book then takes a critical look at the strengths and weaknesses of current engineering and evaluates major trends in the composition of the engineering work force. The final section offers a preview of engineering and its environment in the year 2000. Companion volumes in the Engineering Education and Practice in the United States series listed below discuss specific issues in engineering education.
Both sides of the engineering equation--education and utilization--are studied in this unique volume. A brief discussion of the development of engineering in the United States is followed by an examination of the status of engineering today. A specially developed flow diagram, which defines all aspects of the current engineering community, demonstrates how the profession adapts and responds to change. The book then takes a critical look at the strengths and weaknesses of current engineering and evaluates major trends in the composition of the engineering work force. The final section offers a preview of engineering and its environment in the year 2000. Companion volumes in the Engineering Education and Practice in the United States series listed below discuss specific issues in engineering education.
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