Lessons Learned: Integrating Active Learning into Undergraduate Engineering Courses (original) (raw)
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2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings
Antonio. He earned his doctorate in Education in a dual-degree program between the University of Padua and The University of Tennessee. He also holds a doctorate in Languages, Cultures, and Societies from Ca' Foscari University of Venice. His research interests include new literacies, youth cultures, games and learning, music technology, and multimodality. He presented his work at national and international conferences such as GLS (Games + Learning + Society) and G4C (Games for Change). He is the author of the book La Quotidianità dell'Assurdo (The Everyday Absurd, Archetipolibri, Bologna, 2010).
Australasian Journal of Engineering Education, 2013
This work corresponds to the implementation stage of the curriculum reform using a CDIO-based approach that is currently underway at the School of Engineering, and which was previously described in [1]. Before this curriculum reform process, both first-year computer science and industrial engineering students had only one introductory course to their field of study, meeting just once a week for an hour. After the curriculum reform process, first-year computer science students take an Introduction to Computer Science course during the first semester, and a Programming Laboratory during the second semester. Similarly, the industrial engineering program now includes an Introduction to Industrial Engineering in its first semester and an Engineering Communication course in its second semester. These four first-year courses have been designed using CDIO standards 1, 4 and 8 as guidelines and have been formulated to include active learning in its many forms such as project-based learning, problem-based learning, case studies, small group discussions, oral presentations and reflective memos. The impact of the redesign of these first-year courses was assessed via anonymous student surveys taken the first week of class and at year end. Students also had to submit a short reflective memo on their experiences with each course. Our results show an improvement in student understanding of their professional endeavor and increased student motivation for their engineering programs. Student surveys registered high degrees of satisfaction with active learning techniques. Students also really appreciate working in teams, and receiving immediate feedback both from their instructors and their peers.
International Conference on Engineering Education August 18--21, 2002, Manchester, UK
Children learn a lot through playing games, probably because they become fully engaged and motivated and thus are more likely to practise. Moreover, game playing encourages experimentation and risk taking which are two key skills in independent learning. Consequently many authors have suggested that, where appropriate, introducing game playing into a more formal learning environment could improve learning. This paper introduces a novel game, developed by the author from a management context, which has been used successfully in lectures. The paper also gives some evaluation data on the game and reflections.
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.
Experiences in education innovation: developing tools in support of active learning
European Journal of Engineering Education, 2006
The paper focuses on educational projects developed in the ETSII (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid during the past few years. These projects were developed as new tools for enhancing the active role of students, for improving practical teaching, especially by means of virtual laboratories and different sets of problems and exercises, and for promoting self-learning. The paper analyses the use of ICT in teaching, with the case of a developed e-learning platform as a tracking system for subjects. The paper concludes by discussing the new educational trends in the Centre, devoted to develop an active role of students by activities such as peer mentoring and laboratory monitors programs, and competitions for achieving multidisciplinary engineering challenges.
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.
"Games for L2 Learning in a Spanish Technical Engineering Degree"
In recent years, the use of ICT has increased in the education field and with that many different types of contents have been created. One of them are educational games. However, very little research has been done to date if games are as effective as they try to be. The aim of this study was to collect information related to ICT, games and motivation in relation to L2 learning in a technical engineering degree and create some questionnaires which would then be analysed and compared with the data previously mentioned. Results show how little teachers know of the methodological applications of ICT and videogames, the benefits that they can provide to the bilingual classroom, such as motivation and how students who use games usually have a generally positive view of English learning. These results suggest that information and professional preparation regarding ICT and games have not been shared and are not mandatory, which leads to the incorrect and insufficient use of the resources. However, it would also be needed a study in the next few years as technology is always evolving and improving. What we are using currently it will become obsolete and new methodologies will have to be created in consequence.