scholarly journals The Impact of Entrepreneurship on Engineering Education

Author(s):  
Majed Jarrar ◽  
Hanan Anis

Engineering schools are integrating entrepreneurship within their curriculum in order to equip their students with the capacity to adapt quickly to technological innovation. The University of Ottawa has developed an entrepreneurship course that is open to all engineering students, and aims to provide them with a hands-on approach to starting and growing a technology start-up. This paper is centred on assessing the students who took this course. The results of the survey analyze the impact entrepreneurship has had on their engineering skillset. This skillset reflects the graduate attributes that the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) expects engineering students to develop. We will observe whether this impact has changed since the inception of this course in 2012 and throughout 5 course cycles. Using the survey results as well as the direct observation during those semesters, we present our analysis on how these outcomes can be replicated in other environments.

Author(s):  
Carol Hulls ◽  
Chris Rennick ◽  
Mary Robinson ◽  
William Melek ◽  
Sanjeev Bedi

In Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, a joint project involving small, inexpensive fuel cells cars was introduced to show how courses in the first term relate to one another. Additionally, the project was designed to provide the students with hands on learning, to give the students a taste of what to expect in later years, and to start incorporating many of the CEAB's graduate attributes at an introductory level. The fuel cell car consists of two low-voltage cells, a low power microcontroller and several sensors mounted on a motorised platform. Students employed concepts from chemistry, programming and mechatronics systems throughout the project, submitting reports at key milestones. during the projet, students needed to make decision in a team environment on which strageties to implement to meet the goals of the project. The project culminated in a final competition and report. Students were surveyed at the start, and end, and the term to measure any changes in attitude with regards to the courses as well as their satisfaction with the project. The project was well recieved by students but significant challenges remain to be solved.


Author(s):  
Laura Soriano ◽  
Danny Mann ◽  
Marcia R. Friesen

Recent accreditation requirements by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) have forced engineering educators to focus on the outcomes of their teaching efforts. Faculty members are rapidly gaining expertise in the assessment of the 12 graduate attributes, and it is envisioned that emphasis on outcomes-based assessment will improve both the quality of the overall curriculum and individual course instruction. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of any educational activity is to foster student learning. It is anticipated that students will gain a better understanding of the graduate attributes being covered in their courses if they are given the opportunity to self-reflect upon their educational experiences and achievements. The portfolio is the tool most often used to achieve this goal of self-reflection. A project has been undertaken in the Department of Biosystems Engineering at the University of Manitoba to assess the impact of self-reflection on student learning. During the fall of 2018, a series of voluntary workshops were organized i) to introduce Biosystems Engineering students to the purpose and art of self-reflection, ii) to describe self-reflection in the context of the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board graduate attributes, iii) to introduce the e-portfolio tool, iv) to develop the skill of self-reflective writing, and v) to demonstrate the link between e-portfolio development and career success. The purpose of the paper is to describe the workshop series, the focus groups that followed the workshop series, and the theoretical framework within which the work is positioned.    


Author(s):  
Ellie L. Grushcow ◽  
Patricia K. Sheridan

This paper explores the way in which three graduate attributes have been instructed on, together, in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. In particular, this paper explores how teamwork, ethics & equity, and the impact of engineering on society and the environment are taught together. These three attributes are used as a framing for engineering leadership education to explore how it has been embedded in the curriculum from a graduate attributes perspective. Following systematic literature review principles, this work explores the prevalence and motivations forincorporating these attributes in undergraduate engineering education in Washington Accord signatory countries. Findings indicate that these attributes are not frequently documented as being taught together, and are motivated equally as a design topic as a leadership/entrepreneurship topic.


Author(s):  
Michael Kyte ◽  
Ahmed Abdel-Rahim ◽  
Melissa Lines

The development, implementation, and assessment of the traffic signal summer workshop (TSSW) are explored. An innovative educational prototype that has been conducted at the University of Idaho during the past two summers, TSSW addresses several critical issues, including the need to educate and train university engineering students in different ways, and the lack of adequately trained engineers and technicians prepared to design and manage today’s traffic signal infrastructure. Those issues are discussed along with the pedagogical basis for hands-on experiences in engineering education. Also discussed is how the university has responded, with the TSSW prototype, to the need to deliver transportation engineering education in a new way.


Author(s):  
Sanjeev Bedi ◽  
Ajayinder Singh Jawanda ◽  
Ajay Batish

The holistic training of an engineer includes hands-on experience and theoretical study. Engineering at the University of Waterloo (UW) is unique because of its co-op program, which exposes students to practice of engineering in industry, interwoven with academic terms in the university.This paper details conduct of International Industrial Training Programs for the students of UW. These programs conducted over the past five years have addressed both issues of hands-on training and internationalization of engineering education. These programs provide skills and training on use of tools and machines culminating in a design and build project experience. This paper emphasizes safety and security in planning and implementing the programs in a foreign country. It also discusses issues related to international travel and cultural challenges faced by students and organisers. It summarizes the gains for the engineering students from the program based on immersive international exposure to a foreign culture through personal interactions with locals and planned trips, industrial practices, study of preparatory engineering courses like machining, welding, foundry, wood working, properties of materials and computer aided design leading to student designed and built projects.Five decades ago, when the university was founded, the students came from a demographic, that was split between a majority from rural and small urban centers. The students had some experience with tools and machines at high school and at home, as cars were simpler and home repair was a common activity. This was especially so on farms and in rural environments. This has gradually shifted to the present day when students primarily come from large urban centers and are very competent in working with high-tech gadgetry like computers, communication devices and entertainment consoles. Conversely, nowadays most high school children are not exposed to working safely with tools and machines.Over time co-op jobs have also shifted from hands-on engineering and shop floor work, to softer jobs using computers for design, analysis and managerial tasks. This has increased the challenge of engineering education where the facilities for teaching hands-on skills in the university are deterred by the lack of time in the curriculum, shortage of equipment and trained instructors. The economic environment of our nation has also evolved from a national manufacturing based economy a few decades ago, to a global economy of today. Industries have gone global in their routine functions, requiring engineers to routinely work in collaborative work with functionaries of their industry in other countries, with different culture, language and skill sets. It has thus become vital for engineering education to adapt and introduce the students to aspects of global engineering environment in the curriculum.


Author(s):  
A Gonzalez-Buelga ◽  
I Renaud-Assemat ◽  
B Selwyn ◽  
J Ross ◽  
I Lazar

This paper focuses on the development, delivery and preliminary impact analysis of an engineering Work Experience Week (WEW) programme for KS4 students in the School of Civil, Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering (CAME) at the University of Bristol, UK. Key stage 4, is the legal term for the two years of school education which incorporate GCSEs in England, age 15–16. The programme aims to promote the engineering profession among secondary school pupils. During the WEW, participants worked as engineering researchers: working in teams, they had to tackle a challenging engineering design problem. The experience included hands-on activities and the use of state-of-the-art rapid prototyping and advanced testing equipment. The students were supervised by a group of team leaders, a diverse group of undergraduate and postgraduate engineering students, technical staff, and academics at the School of CAME. The vision of the WEW programme is to transmit the message that everybody can be an engineer, that there are plenty of different routes into engineering that can be taken depending on pupils’ strengths and interests and that there are a vast amount of different engineering careers and challenges to be tackled by the engineers of the future. Feedback from the participants in the scheme has been overwhelmingly positive.


Author(s):  
George Kilada ◽  
Victoria Thomsen ◽  
Jillian Seniuk Cicek ◽  
Afua Adobe Mante ◽  
Randy Herrmann

A qualitative narrative study was designed to examine the impact on students’ learning when an Elder came to speak to students in a Technology, Society and the Future course in the Price Faculty of Engineering at the University of Manitoba. This study accounts for one student’s story as heard through an open-ended narrative interview facilitated by a team of researchers, and restoried into a problem-solution narrative structure. The preliminary findings highlight the impact of the Elder’s teachings on the student, the importance of Indigenous People’s Knowledges and perspectives in engineering education, and the importance of making space for students to reflect on these learnings.


2022 ◽  
pp. 271-289
Author(s):  
Violeta Meneses Carvalho ◽  
Cristina S. Rodrigues ◽  
Rui A. Lima ◽  
Graça Minas ◽  
Senhorinha F. C. F. Teixeira

Engineering education is a challenging topic that has been deeply explored in order to provide better educational experiences to engineering students, and the learning by doing approach has been appraised. Amidst a global pandemic, an engineering summer program denominated i9Masks emerged and aimed to create transparent facial masks for preventing the virus spreading. This project had the participation of 21 students from different engineering areas, as well as professors and monitors whose guidance and commitment were of great importance for its success. Aiming to understand the importance of this engineering hands-on project for students' training, two inquiries were applied, being one for students and the other for professors and monitors/researchers. Students described this initiative as an amazing and innovative experience that they would like to repeat and considered useful for their careers. Regarding the impact perceived by the teaching staff, the results proved that they enjoyed participating in the i9MASKS project and sharing knowledge with students in a practical way.


Author(s):  
Kevin G. Kearney ◽  
Elizabeth M. Starkey ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller

Abstract Advancing virtual education through technology is an important step for engineering education. This has been made evident by the educational difficulties associated with the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. Maintaining educational standards while using virtual learning is something possibly solved through researching new educational technologies. A potential technology that can enhance virtual education is Augmented Reality, since it can show information that would otherwise not be easily experienced or obtained. Traditional learning tools fail to offer the ability to control objects and explore numerous perspectives the way augmented reality can. Augmented reality can be even further enhanced through the addition of animation. Animation could add the ability to see motion, increasing overall understanding as well as increasing the motivation to learn. When motion is not visualized, it must be perceived, which can increase cognitive load and cause the limitations of working memory to be met. Reaching the limits of working memory has been shown to negatively affect learning. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the impact of digitizing product dissection on engineering student learning and cognitive load. Specifically, we sought to identify the impact of Augmented Reality and Animations through a full factorial experiment with 61 engineering students. The results of the study show that the virtual condition with animation exhibited increased effectiveness as a learning tool. It also showed that augmented reality is not significantly different than a virtual environment in the context of product dissection. The results of this study are used to explore future uses of augmented reality and animation in education, as well as lay the groundwork for future work to further explore these technologies.


Author(s):  
Douglas V. Gallagher ◽  
Ronald A. L. Rorrer

At the University Colorado Denver, a manufacturing process design course was specifically created to raise the level of the as constructed senior design projects in the department. The manufacturing process design course creates a feed forward loop into the senior design course, while the senior design course generates a feedback loop into the process design course. Every student and student project has the opportunity to utilize CNC mills and lathes where appropriate. Specific emphasis is placed upon the interfaces from solid models to CAM models and subsequently the interface from CAM models to the machine tool. Often the construction of many senior design projects approaches the level of blacksmithing due to time constraints and lack of fabrication background. Obviously, most engineering students have neither the time nor the ability to become expert fabricators. However, the wide incorporation of CNC machining in the program allows, an opportunity to not only raise the quality of their prototypes, but also to immerse in the hands on experience of living with the ramifications of their own design decisions in manufacturing. Additionally, some of the art of fabrication is turned into the science of fabrication. The focus of this paper will be primarily on examining the effect of formal incorporation of the manufacturing process in the capstone design course.


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