An active learning organisation: teaching projects in electrical engineering education (original) (raw)

Active Learning in Engineering Education: a (re)introduction

European Journal of Engineering Education, 2016

The informal network 'Active Learning in Engineering Education' (ALE) has been promoting Active Learning since 2001. ALE creates opportunity for practitioners and researchers of engineering education to collaboratively learn how to foster learning of engineering students. The activities in ALE are centred on the vision that learners construct their knowledge based on meaningful activities and knowledge. In 2014, the steering committee of the ALE network reinforced the need to discuss the meaning of Active Learning and that was the base for this proposal for a special issue. More than 40 submissions were reviewed by the European Journal of Engineering Education community and this theme issue ended up with eight contributions, which are different both in their research and Active Learning approaches. These different Active Learning approaches are aligned with the different approaches that can be increasingly found in indexed journals.

Active Learning Under the Industrial Engineering Perspective of the Second Year Students

2016

It is expected of the learning process of an engineering student the development of skills that are professionally required by the labor market. This need increases the interest to move forward and implement new teaching methodologies, which in this context was used the application of active learning methodology, peer instruction and project development in the Salesian University Center of Sao Paulo, unit of Lorena, applied in the fourth semester of Industrial Engineering. The new teaching methods imply a change in behavior both on teachers, who act as facilitators and collaborators, as students, who learn to act collaboratively through teamwork, in which they learn how to manage, to communicate effectively, to set goals and stick to them and how to understand the impact of their decisions. This article aims to present the assessment made by the students about the new methodologies through a quantitative questionnaire.

Active Learning in Engineering Education: Experiences in Asia and Europe

2020

Active learning aims to build knowledge and skills by doing going beyond traditional, passive classroom instruction. The advantages of active learning are many. It facilitates the retention of new knowledge. It goes beyond the goals of memorizing and understanding concepts, building student capacity on analyzing new information, applying it in practice, and explaining it to others. It builds high order thinking skills that are transferable to the real world. Despite the advantages of active learning it, is not widely applied in practice. This is particularly the case in South East Asian countries. Lack of or inadequacy of physical infrastructures is a significant obstacle. Even when labs do exist, the equipment is outdated and limited in the software that it can support. There is a lack of openly available software applications that can be deployed in educational contexts as complementary learning tools. Limited instructor training on how to exploit IT and to combine it with emerging learning pedagogies further discourages the deployment of active approaches in the classroom. This work presents an educational intervention that aims to introduce active learning as a strategic educational approach in engineering higher education in Europe and Asia. The educational intervention has a vertical design and aims to address the obstacles that inhibit the wide spread adoption of active learning. The intervention includes the development of digital active learning labs at 12 universities in Asian countries. It further involves the development of a digital active learning platform that acts as a repository of active learning activities based on digital applications such as learning games and simulations accompanied with guidelines for educators on how to best integrate them in the classroom. And finally, it includes instructor training on active learning concepts as well as the use of the physical labs in educational contexts. Instructor training takes place at the individual universities through face-to-face training sessions and through on-line webinars. Experiences from the deployment of the proposed intervention demonstrate that when adequately supported through infrastructure and training the introduction of digitally supported active learning practices contributes to the development of industry demanded skills among students while it builds instructor capacity on innovative learning design.

Application of Active Teaching-Learning Methodologies: Experience in the Engineering Area

Revista de Ensino de Engenharia, 2017

Active learning refers any approach to instruction in which all students are required to involve in the learning process. The purpose of the manuscript is to evaluate the application of active learning in teaching Green Engineering Principles and Applications as a compulsory course in environmental engineering department curriculum, Curtin University Malaysia. Green engineering can be defined as an approach of the design, process, product and commercialization that follow environmentally conscious attitude, principles and values combined with multidisciplinary engineering science that to minimize pollutant and promote local and global sustainability. Green engineering encompasses the conceptualization and implementation of reducing environmental impacts, maximize energy efficiency and develop the greener processes and product that bring environmental and economic benefit. A simple approach that combining the classical lecture-presentation and active engagement of the students with the course materials through case studies, problem solving and discussion has been developed. In conclusion, introducing the active learning to the students on solving any problems improve the students' ability in achieving the course outcome and thus the programme outcome of the

Empowering Engineering College Staff to Adopt Active Learning Methods

Journal of Science Education and Technology, 2008

There is a growing consensus that traditional instruction in basic science courses, in institutions of higher learning, do not lead to the desired results. Most of the students who complete these courses do not gain deep knowledge about the basic concepts and develop a negative approach to the sciences. In order to deal with this problem, a variety of methods have been proposed and implemented, during the last decade, which focus on the ''active learning'' of the participating students. We found that the methods developed in MIT and NCSU were fruitful and we adopted their approach. Despite research-based evidence of the success of these methods, they are often met by the resistance of the academic staff. This article describes how one institution of higher learning organized itself to introduce significant changes into its introductory science courses, as well as the stages teachers undergo, as they adopt innovative teaching methods. In the article, we adopt the Rogers model of the innovative-decision process, which we used to evaluate the degree of innovation adoption by seven members of the academic staff. An analysis of interview and observation data showed that four factors were identified which influence the degree innovation adoption: (1) teacher readiness to seriously learn the theoretical background of ''active learning''; (2) the development of an appropriate local model, customized to the beliefs of the academic staff; (3) teacher expertise in information technologies, and (4) the teachersÕ design of creative solutions to problems that arose during their teaching.

Active learning experiences in engineering education

International Journal of Engineering Education, 2019

The Architecture, Construction, Engineering and Operation (ACEO) industries are in urgent need for students with the capabilities to successfully implement BIM projects with sound strategies. Educators notice that project-based learning (PBL) can help students to understand the practice and challenges of the industries. But few researches paid attention to implement the PBL approach that could cultivate the expected BIM competences using capstone and real-world projects. In order to respond the problem, this research proposes a process framework of BIM project execution planning (BIM-PEP) for capstone with the integration of PBL and real world project information, The BIM-PEP includes steps of implementation and team roles, learning schedule, response collection and evaluation criteria. This research uses case studies to collect data for the group and instructions responses of the framework implementation. The results indicate that the students are able to conduct the chosen BIM use...

Active Learning for Physics (Electromagnetism) Teachers in an Engineering Course

2015 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Proceedings, 2015

Students of Engineering have difficulties in the assimilation of the concepts explored in Electromagnetism and Waves. These difficulties begin with a lack of abstraction, especially when seeking to understand the Electromagnetism concepts. Many active learning methodologies and cases are presented in the literature for Classical Mechanics, but there are few references to Electromagnetism and Waves. This study presents a PBL-Problem Based Learning and a Project Based Learning-practice which was applied to a large class (25 students) and replicated for a thousand student universe in an annual university physics class. In the Problem Based Learning approach, each semester, four students teams received, contextualized scripts (with problems for which they were required to conduct simulations and provide conceptual analysis) (see example in the Appendix); at the end of each semester, they presented their results in an oral presentation and had an oral evaluation test. In Project Based Learning approach, at the end of the academic year, the same teams worked together on a final open project using electromagnetics concepts (project, construct, and evaluate an electromagnetic crane with open specifications) and participated in a competition. The active learning development pedagogical process was used to allow students to have a better understanding of physical phenomenon, in addition to developing scientific thought to allow for suitable modeling, simulation, and analysis, without only doing mathematical deductions with no understanding of Real Physics. The evaluation of the learning process was done using a close-and open-ended questionnaire survey completed by the students at the end of the semester. Students, using a blind process, had the opportunity to evaluate how the proposed activities allowed them to achieve a better understanding of the physical concepts, such as if this increased their motivation for engineering, if the amount of time available to solve problems was adequate, if the support provided for the development of the work (infrastructure and service teachers) was used, and any suggestions they had for improvement. The survey results revealed that the students' perception of their understanding increased, with approximately 70% of students approving of the new pedagogical proposal. This same

ACTIVE LEARNING TECHNIQUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION

The current developments in technology and ideas have given entirely new dimensions to the field of research and education. New delivery methods are proposed which is an added feature to the engineering education. Particularly, more importance is given to new teaching practices such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). It is vital to adopt the new ICT methods which lead to emergence of novel structure and mode of education. The flipped classroom, think pair share and peer instruction are the latest pedagogical methods which gives students to learn the course. This involves students to watch video lectures outside the classroom and solve the problems at home. Students are engaged in group discussions in the classroom. These are the active learning methods where in student is involved diversely to learn the course. This paper gives a comprehensive study of past and present researches which is going on with flipped class room, thinks pair share activity and peer instruction.

Professional Development Program to Promote Active Learning in an Engineering Classroom

This work presents the structure and results of an ongoing engineering faculty development program at a large private university in Chile. This program uses the conceptual change approach as a framework in a recursive way, and it is specially designed to promote and ensure the use of active and innovative methodologies. The development program consists of six steps that aim to strengthen a learning community that fosters interaction of professors with common problems, interests, and experiences in a way that the collegial work sustains over time the dynamic and improved incorporation of active methodologies for teaching and learning. For this paper, we focus on the structure and some results. The results are related to faculty, students and institutional perceptions. We have evidence that faculty in this program changes their own perceptions as instructors towards reflecting whether their role is less regarding to transmitting knowledge, notes, and presentations to students. In the case of students, after a survey in courses in which participants were implementing educational strategies from the program, students' view is positive towards the activities. Students indicated that they learned more and that those strategies should be used in other courses. Institutionally, the achievements of faculty in the program and the program itself received recognition by the university.