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"Engineering education"

The Center for Water Resource Studies and the Bowling Green Community College of Western Kentucky University formed a partnership to address an anticipated Water & Wastewater Operator/Technician shortage over the next five to seven years. The Water and Wastewater Technician Training Institute (WTTI, pronounced "witty"), is a joint initiative with the employment sector (a number of water & wastewater utilities/municipalities/districts), state primacy agencies and technical assistance/trade associations to refine an industry needs driven curriculum that utilizes on-line course delivery to provide options for both traditional & nontraditional students. This partnership was presented at the 2008 ASEE annual conference. This paper will review the accomplishments and the lessons learned by this program over the first year of operation. The partnership has revitalized an existing Associates Degree program entitled "Water Utilities Management". The program requires sixty-seven (67) credit hours, including twenty-five (25) hours of General education Requirements, twenty-one (21) hours of Business Technology Core courses, and (21) twenty-one hours of Operations Track courses. The Operations Track courses can be focused toward either Water or Wastewater Operations. The program is designed to be delivered entirely online, allowing students to pursue their degree with unparalleled flexibility. According to the U.S. Department of education, in 2006-07, there were approximately 11,200 college-level programs that were designed to be completed totally through distance education; 66 percent of these programs were reported as degree programs and the remaining 34 percent were reported as certificate programs. Asynchronous internet-based technologies were cited as the most widely used technology for the instructional delivery of distance education courses; they were used to a large extent in 75 percent and to a moderate extent in 17 percent of the institutions that offered college-level credit-granting distance education courses. The WTTI courses are delivered through an open-source Course Management System (CMS) known as MOODLE (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment). The first Operations Track class, entitled Water Supply & Wastewater Control was offered/developed during the Fall semester 2008. This first course, as well as a second course entitled Water Distribution and Wastewater Collection Systems will be available during the Spring semester 2009. As courses are developed, approval is sought for Continuing education/Contact Hours from Operator Certification Boards in the individual states. Academic content is being provided by core university faculty with support from adjunct faculty eligible staff. All instructors (academic and practitioner) involved in the program are undergoing collaborative professional development to ensure that they are receptive to the unique structure of the program. As a demonstrably functional framework is being put in place, the program is being extrapolated to address other regional policy, academic discipline and industrial sector issues beyond the initial Kentucky and Tennessee target area. University-offered Water and Wastewater Operator Certificate Programs are being developed to fast-track students into the industry and allow current operators to reach advanced certification levels at an accelerated pace. Partnering utilities and municipalities are developing internship and cooperative educational opportunities to ensure work-based experiences for students. Trade associations have committed to developing scholarship programs to lessen the financial burden for potential students. In addition, some individual utilities are offering tuition reimbursement for current employees who are pursuing academic degrees or certificate programs. Finally, an educational outreach program that integrates into high school science curricula is being developed. This program is aimed at recruiting young adults into the water and wastewater industry. © American So for engineering education, 2009.

Cardiff University has offered a medical engineering undergraduate programme since 2001 and hence delivers one of the longest-running and most established medical engineering programmes within the UK. It currently offers BEng (Hons) and MEng (Hons) programmes that are both accredited by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and include the option to undertake a year in industrial employment. The admissions policy ensures that the intake consists of a diverse range of students and is typically very successful in attracting female students. The programmes consist of six key academic threads which ensure that the content is both relevant and continuous, with all threads tailored to provide a patient-focused learning environment. Students initially learn core and fundamental principles in years 1 and 2, supported by a range of laboratories and practical experimentation. The latter years then encourage the students to corroborate and apply this knowledge, including involvement in a range of project-based learning exercises. The programme is delivered by a core of experienced academic medical engineers, with support from other engineering colleagues, as well as colleagues from the School of Biosciences, the School of Medicine, and the National Health Service. Thus, the programme delivers a wide range of modules which guarantee that graduating students have a thorough understanding of all possible career options. These two factors are significant in making it possible for students to follow their chosen career path upon graduation.

A majority of engineering courses in the university have these characteristics such as much period, extensive content, very strong practice etc. The paper takes auto detecting and maintenance specialty as an example to analyze problems of engineering courses in the university in the practice teaching, and put forward many methods, means and new teaching mode to resolve these problems to improve further classroom teaching effect. The virtual instrument technology and the network technology are applied in teaching practice, which resolves the contradiction between more students and short teaching resource. © 2009 IEEE.

CDIO is a new mode in modern engineering education distinguished from traditional modes, which is project-based. CDIO stands for conceiving, designing, implementing and operating. It has been proved effective in engineering education. After the steps of CDIO analyzed, an example using CDIO is presented to show how CDIO works, and how traditional courses are changed into CDIO courses as well. The experiments show that CDIO does work on higher vocational education in China. Finally, the paper gives discussion on how to use and how to promote CDIO in China. ©2009 IEEE.