Search Results for
"Engineering education"

Chemical engineering education is currently run in only two institutions in Ghana using the traditional, subject-based approach. The subject-based curriculum currently being used is seen as deficient in preparing students adequately to meet expectations of industry as well as the demands of globalization. Under the National Board for Professional and Technician Examinations of Ghana, competency-based curricula is being developed for Higher National Diploma (HND) engineering programmes in all polytechnics in Ghana, with the support of World Bank and Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher education. This paper provides an insight to tertiary education in Ghana and highlights milestones in chemical engineering training. This paper describes the methodology used in developing a competency-based training curriculum for HND chemical engineering. Functional area competency standards expected of HND chemical engineering graduates in Ghana were developed in close collaboration with personnel from industry. In addition, generic competencies expected of all HND engineering graduates in Ghana are outlined in this paper. As is the case in all CBT programmes, there is the need to train and adapt coaches to the CBT concept, in addition to building strong partnerships with industry for the successful implementation of the programme. © 2011 The Institution of Chemical Engineers.

Internationally there has been concern about the direction of technical education and how it is positioned in schools. This has also been the case in Malawi where the curriculum has had a strong focus on skills development. However, lately there has been a call for enhancing technological literacy of students, yet little support has been provided for teachers to achieve this goal. This paper reports from a wider study that looked at teachers' existing views and practices in technical education in Malawi. The article focuses on the findings from interviews that were conducted with six secondary school teachers to find out about their understanding of the meaning and rationale for technical education. It is also discussed how the teachers view technical education as involving skills development for making things and their thoughts on the benefits of such knowledge. It is argued that teachers' views about technical education were strongly linked to the goals of the curriculum vacationalization policies adopted at the dawn of political independence. Besides skills training they saw the potential to impart thinking skills related to design and problem solving, and the need for essential pedagogical techniques to support learning in technical education. Examination requirements, inadequate opportunities to conduct practical activities and a lack of supportive policy were seen as limiting factors. This article claims that teachers' views were shaped by their expectations and beliefs about the nature of technical education and what they perceived students may gain from such learning. Their views were also influenced by contextual factors which may have implications on reforms towards broader notions of technology education. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

This article argues that once apprenticeship is conceptualised as a social model of learning, then it no longer follows that apprenticeship is an age- or phasespecific model of vocational formation. The article explores this claim through drawing on a case study of the design of a Foundation Degree (FD) in aircraft engineering, which was explicitly designed to support the formation of 'new entrants' and the reformation of 'career switchers' vocational practice. Using the concept of recontextualisation the article highlights how: (1) the company (KLM) and the college (Kingston) FDs designed the teaching and learning curriculum to facilitate the above goals; and (2) learners used the opportunities provided by these curricula to develop their vocational practice. The article concludes with a number of observations about the conceptual and policy implications of its analysis. © 2011 The Vocational Aspect of education Ltd.

Technology education is a study of technology, which provides an opportunity for students to learn about the processes and knowledge related to technology. In the field of education, computers have become an important metaphor to denote technology in the classroom. Keeping this in mind, most teacher education institutes in India have introduced a course in Computers in education, but due to the paucity of time in the academic year, many teacher education institutes briefly cover the aspects of technology education in their classroom. A methodology was required that would allow the Pre-service teachers learn basic technical knowledge of relevant software effectively and hence allow more time for dwelling into the pedagogical constructs that makes the application technology in the teaching learning process - effective, interesting, challenging and satisfying. It was in this context that a Self learning material was developed for Open Office Impress - a free presentation software. Presentation software allows teachers to present text and images, including photographs, in color; to animate text and graphics; and to include audio and video files to a large audience, like the classroom. The cognitive apprenticeship framework specifies four dimensions for designing powerful environments, namely: content, method, sequence, and sociology. This paper discusses adapting an Interactive Video Based Self Learning Module on Open Office Impress in the Dimensions of the Cognitive Apprenticeship Framework. It further discusses the affect of this module on the Quality of Presentation made by Pre-service teachers vis-a-vis their Cognitive Style and their Gender. The results of the study showed that this material augmented the Pre-service teachers' technology skills in directly using, applying and learning technology. © 2011 IEEE.

Practical ability is always mentioned which is the most important in higher vocational education. This paper discusses a kind of ability-targeted mode based on projects in computer courses teaching in China, such as Office Automation and Web Design. When traditional teaching mode being reformed into ability-targeted and project-based mode, there are three important sections to be focused on, i.e., needs analysis, teaching and summary. Firstly, real projects should be chosen adapted to students, matching related course and covering all knowledge points of syllabus. At the section of teaching, it includes single-item training, integrated-project training and innovated-project training, and the result of experiment shows that students' competence of career is increased spirally after the training. During the final period, not only conclusions should be made, but also be feedback to needs analysis for next better teaching plan. It is proved that the ability-targeted mode works well. © 2011 IEEE.

engineering education has been well implemented in the majority of developed countries such as the USA, Germany, and the United Kingdom so that the gap between engineering science and engineering practice is greatly bridged. However, in China, the gap still exists, and some attempts by Chinese government, even though having made obvious progress, are not very satisfactory yet. Thus, the research on feasible engineering education strategy has drawn our pressing concerns. Based on the analyses of participants' motivation and value chain, an evolutionary model of institute-industry interoperation is proposed, which includes isolated stage, orienting stage, interacting stage, interoperating stage, and convergence stage. The case of one school of software in China is analyzed to support and clarify this model. This institute-industry interoperation model is showing considerable vitality in the development of engineering education, and it can present reference value not only to China but to other countries as well. © 2011 education Research Institute, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.