The acquisition of wisdom in engineering design

Student motivation and knowledge restructuring are examined in the light of experience with engineering design projects. The work is related to existing experience with a broad range of observations resulting from educational experiments. The results of student responses to project work clearly identify concepts which are avoided by students when solving engineering problems. It is conjectured that these orphan concepts provide signposts to a better learning environment. The students' responses also suggest that working in a familiar environment, where an informal knowledge base already exists, is a strong positive motivator for knowledge restructuring.     

Semiotics as a basis for educational software design

Semiotics has recently been used to support formalisms for software design. On the other hand, every program has a certain educational potential as it exposes the user to a world of entities with which to interact. In this paper, we present a group of semiotic principles for software design and use them to show how they explain different educational possibilities. Our approach is illustrated by Theatre in the Computer: a software environment for children to experience the theatre.     

基于“学”与“习”的混合式教学实践与探索--以视觉传达设计课程为例

随着教学方式的改变与教育改革的不断推进,混合式教学已经成为高等教育的新趋势。网络信息技术应用于课堂,改变了传统的学习环境、教学结构和学习方式,提高了教学效率。通过基于"学"与"习",结合线上线下混合教学方式的实践,寻找适合工科学生设计类课程的新型教学模式,不仅提高了教学效果,同时增进了师生间的交流,促进了知识在设计实践中的应用,提升了学生的设计能力。     

Developing and designing online engineering ethics instruction for international graduate students

The present project embarked on an educational intervention, consisting of a series of online ethics learning modules, to aid international graduate students in overcoming the acculturation barriers to understanding and inculcating normative ethical obligations associated with engineering practice and research in the United States. A fundamental initial step in the process of helping international, as well as domestic, engineering graduate students embrace ethical obligations is to provide clear instruction on fundamental engineering ethical principles and values relevant in the United States. Most institutes of higher education do not have a cohesive approach to basic graduate engineering ethics instruction, much less materials that have been calibrated for international students (National Science Foundation, , 2009). Herein the authors describe our instructional intervention, as well as to document the development, design, and assessment of the learning modules intended to provide students with a framework for learning ethical precepts and applying them in the engineering field. Think-Aloud Protocol and Cognitive Task Analysis results were used to improve the content modules and learning experience. Initial pilot findings indicate that the content modules increased student knowledge acquisition compared to pre-test performance, indicating a step-forward in the formulation of a useful learning tool for graduate engineering ethics instruction.     

The Interface Design and the Usability Testing of a Fossilization Web-Based Learning Environment

This article describes practical issues related to the design and the development of a Web-Based Learning Environment (Web-LE) for high school students. The purpose of the Fossilization Web-LE was to help students understand the process of fossilization, which is a complex phenomenon and is affected by many factors. The instructional design team faced the challenge of designing an environment that could enable its users to construct knowledge actively by manipulating the various variables of organisms, ecological systems, and physical burials. An effective user interface is essential to the enabling of students who try to explore knowledge presented in the learning environment and who, in monitoring their own learning progress, hope to avoid overwhelmingly complicated content. The analyses of both the interaction of learning activities and the design of system functions are discussed. In addition, a usability test was conducted so that the effectiveness of the interface design could be examined. The findings reveal that target users are satisfied with the usability of the Fossilization Web-LE and consider use of the user interface to be easy. At the end, several practical applications in the design of instructional software’s user interface are suggested.     

面向新时代教育教学改革的工科授课方法探讨——以《内燃机原理》课程为例

针对新时代工科授课所面临的突出问题,文章分别从教育对象、教育内容和教育方式三个方面做出分析,指出了当前教学中学生主动性不强、知识结构松散和课堂教学方式滞后的特点。并根据工科内容的典型性特征,结合新时代大学生学习环境,提出了基于生活实践的兴趣引导策略、面向工程应用的目标驱动策略、融会贯通的知识整合策略和多资源协同的自主课堂策略。以《内燃机原理》课程为例,详细说明了教改授课的转变方法,突出了学生的综合能力培养。所做工作实现了新时代工科授课的探索,为进一步优化教学改革打下基础。     

The impact of new learning environments in an engineering design course

In this study, we investigated the effects of students’ participation in a collaborative, project-based engineering design course on their domain knowledge, interests, and strategic processing. Participants were 70 college seniors working in teams on a design project of their choosing. Their declarative, procedural, and principled knowledge, along with their domain interest and their interest in select roles within that domain were tested at the outset of the semester and at its conclusions. Findings indicated that this course contributed to a rise in students’ declarative knowledge, but not their procedural or principled knowledge of engineering design. Further, there was no significant change in students’ personal interest in the domain over the semester, and their role interests were not associated with their demonstrated knowledge in the field at posttest. Implications for the perceived effectiveness of learning environments consisting of peer collaboration and relevant problems on students’ academic development are considered.     

基于文本挖掘的领域本体半自动构建方法研究——以教学设计学科领域本体建设为例

目前知识工程研究已逐渐成为教育技术学研究领域的热点问题,其中构建领域本体是知识工程的一个重要方面。从已有的基于本体的应用研究来看,领域本体可以在学习者模型建立、网络教学支撑平台开发、智能答疑系统开发、资源库建设等诸多方面发挥重要作用,而构建领域本体是各种应用得以实现的前提。然而构建领域本体是一项浩大的工程,需要大量领域专家的参与,当前是手工完成的,建设周期长。面对一个知识迅速增长的时代,仅仅依靠领域专家来手工构建领域本体显然不能满足需求。因此,本研究提出一种基于文本挖掘的领域本体半自动构建方法,即借助于面向文本的智能信息处理技术从教科书或科技资料中提炼出概念、概念定义和概念之间的关系,并辅之以学科专家和知识工程师的参与,从而加快领域本体建设速度。整个构建过程由“文献材料选取”、“文献材料文本处理”、“概念关系标注”、“形式化表示与存储”、“知识库评价”等五个环节组成,涉及信息提取、中文分词、术语自动提取、术语定义自动抽取等技术以及基于术语部件的概念间属种关系、并列关系半自动发现方法和基于术语互信息值的概念关联关系半自动发现方法等方法。文章还针对当前开展的全国中小学教师教育技术能力培训的学习资源需求,选取“教学设计”这一课程作为研究个案,以基于文本挖掘的领域本体半自动构建方法来建设教学设计学科领域本体,以便进一步丰富和优化教师教育技术能力远程培训的学习资源。     

基于Wiki的本体构建方法

该文提出一种本体构造环境方案,在Wikipedia的基础上加入本体构造用户接口,降低用户构造本体的门槛,使用户在建立概念的同时创建本体.系统以OWL本体形式存储、管理和共享知识,还可以以系统已有概念为字典,对相关本体领域相关文本进行本体学习,自动建立本体.     

Using the Internet to Improve University Education: Problem-Oriented Web-Based Learning with MUNICS

Up to this point, university education has largely remained unaffected by the developments of novel approaches to web-based learning. The paper presents a principled approach to the design of problem-oriented, web-based learning at the university level. The principles include providing authentic contexts with multimedia, supporting collaborative knowledge construction, making thinking visible with dynamic visualisation, quick access to content resources via information and communication technologies, and flexible support by tele-tutoring. These principles are used in the MUNICS learning environment, which is designed to support students of computer science to apply their factual knowledge from the lectures to complex real-world problems. For example, students may model the knowledge management in an educational organisation with a graphical simulation tool. Some more general findings from a formative evaluation study with the MUNICS prototype are reported and discussed. For example, the students’ ignorance of the additional content resources is discussed in the light of the well-known finding of insufficient use of help systems in software applications.     

Evaluation of students' strategies for concept application in engineering design

The article presents the results of an educational experiment in evaluating the strategies and microstructure of student thinking in the application of domain specific concepts in engineering design at the University of Melbourne. This work is related to previously reported propositions in educational theory. It is found from the Melboume experience that the compartmentalized domain specificity of engineering science learning, and by corollary the learning programmes in secondary schools, adversely affect the robustness of concept formation in engineering design. It is also conjectured that fluency in concept use as well as flexibility in crossing boundaries of knowledge domains is an essential trait of effective engineering designers.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Component Computing in Education

The use of professional software is an integral part of a student's education in the mining engineering curriculum at The Pennsylvania State University. Even though mining engineering represents a limited market across U.S. educational institutions, the goal still exists for using this type of software to enrich the learning environment with visual elements and, therefore, enhance the students' ability to understand design principles in a more systematic manner. All of the students are required to develop a complete mine-design project, from conception to completion, which includes the selection of appropriate mining components and systems to meet desired needs. However, the question that is often asked is whether or not the desired benefits from using such software can be justified in terms of initial cost, and programming time required for both the instructor and students of small engineering programs, such as mining engineering. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the experiences of faculty and students with typical professional software tools available for mining-engineering educational programs, and to assess their ability to enhance active teaching and learning through computer-based problem solving in a manner which is cost effective for a small-enrolment engineering major.     

Effect of a blended learning environment on student critical thinking and knowledge transformation

With the development of information technology and popularization of web applications, students nowadays have grown used to skimming through information provided through the Internet. This reading habit led them to be incapable of analyzing or integrating information they have received. Hence, knowledge management and critical thinking (CT) have, in recent years, become important topics in higher education. However, there are many web applications that may serve as effective teaching and learning tools. This study therefore proposed a blended learning environment that incorporated useful web applications within a knowledge transformation model to create an educational environment capable of improving CT and knowledge transformation for student users. A semester-long experiment was then conducted to evaluate this learning environment. Results revealed that the proposed approach was effective in improving student CT and knowledge transformation. Students were also satisfied with the courses and teaching methods used by the proposed learning environment which also effectively improved their learning motivation.     

Challenging Prospective Computer Engineers to Design Educational Software by Engaging Them in a Constructivist Learning Environment

This study focuses on the development of prospective computer engineers' knowledge of educational software design through their involvement in a constructivist learning environment emphasizing project based learning. Within this environment prospective computer engineers (PCE) adopted a variety of roles namely: learners, teachers, users, designers, implementers and evaluators of educational software dealing with concepts of computer science while also taking into account theoretical educational considerations regarding constructivism and social views of knowledge construction. The analysis of the data shows that PCE frequently start by considering traditional behavioristic views regarding teaching and learning as well as regarding the design of educational software. The PCE progressed to accept more constructivist views regarding teaching and learning as well as to designing educational software by communicating their knowledge with their colleagues and the teacher in the project based context. PCE also progressed through the evaluation of the educational software using real classrooms. By exploiting the given feedback, PCE improved the quality of software specifications.     

Models and methodology for simulating virtual enterprises in educational environment

This paper deals with a semester-long educational experience the authors led at the University of Calabria for reproducing current developments and uncertainties in real-world concurrent engineering, knowledge management practice and virtual enterprise organization. Students with different backgrounds (mechanical engineering, computer science engineering and management engineering) were selected in order to form a laboratory class and then were divided into many multidisciplinary teams. Such teams played different roles and were required to collaborate on the Web to simulate a virtual enterprise, which was aimed at designing virtual prototypes of average complexity articles. In addition to that, any team was involved in the construction of a knowledge base for codifying the explicit knowledge arising from the execution of technical and managerial tasks. The paper deals with models, methodologies and technologies that have been used in this laboratory experience and, moreover, it describes an approach for simulating, in an educational environment, some aspects of the behaviour of virtual enterprises generated by a virtual organization.     

Investigating Students’ Learning Through Co-designing with Technology

Involving students in the co-design of educational curricula and practices can benefit both students and teachers. Students who participate in co-design may show better learning or increased agency or engagement. In the present study, we investigated what kind of science knowledge or practices can be learned by student co-designers while engaging in co-design practices and how that learning happens with six high school students. We created a model to guide the analysis of students’ learning with technology in co-designing processes. The results revealed that students learned engineering design process even if no explicit instruction on engineering learning was given. Also, our analysis suggested that co-designing with technology enabled learning of the engineering design process and potentially furthered learning of science because it promoted knowledge integration. The results have implications for understanding and enhancing engineering design and science learning through co-designing with technology.

     

分布式多用户三维虚拟校园系统

本文提出并设计了分布式多用户三维虚拟校园远程教育系统。在三维空间中,利用虚拟现实技术构建虚拟的校园生活。将校园生活的各种场景、细节和体验完全复制到互联网上。不受空间位置和相互距离的限制,可让远距离的师生或位置分散的学生“共处于”一个虚拟的校园空间中,使得能够沉浸在友好的环境中,多用户交互,协同学习,激发学生的学习兴趣,提高远程教育质量,为远程教育增强学习的氛围、构建虚拟校园文化。该系统有效解决了当前远程教育所遇到的困难,具有很高的实用价值,将是远程教学系统的新发展方向。     

The evolutionary design of a Knowledge Network to support knowledge management and sharing for lifelong learning

Knowledge Management (KM) and knowledge sharing are important factors that support lifelong learning, and enable people to continue developing throughout their careers. The concept of a Community of Practice ( Wenger, 2000 ) is attractive in drawing together people whose work shares similar aspects, and consideration is given here to how technology can be used to develop and support such a community. In this paper, concepts from the Community of Practice literature are used to consider the development of a software environment for people working as a community in the area of lifelong learning. The intention was to design the system in an evolutionary way, using a minimal set of essential elements which would be elaborated according to user feedback. Three key design questions are considered: Who can contribute resources to such a system? What happens to existing practices? How is the community engaged? We conclude that, in lifelong learning, knowledge management supported by a software environment offers a good way to bring together communities, resources and experience, but to achieve these benefits, great care needs to be exerted in introducing the system and maintaining existing work practices.     

TM4L: Creating and browsing educational topic maps

In this article, we describe TM4L, an environment for building, maintaining and using standards‐based, ontology‐aware e‐learning repositories. It is based on the idea that concept‐driven access to learning material implemented as a topic map can bridge the gap between a learner and targeted knowledge. One of the driving goals of this work is to increase the reusability of available educational resources by enabling the use of a developed subject ontology with courses on the same subject with different stricture. Another goal of TM4L is to support an efficient context‐based retrieval of learning content tailored to the needs of a learner working on an educational task. The paper focuses on three aspects of the TM4L environment: domain modelling, editing capabilities and the interface for exploring the learning collection. The key features of the TM4L functionality are illustrated with some examples.