The Study On The Change Of Practical Teaching About Undergraduate Engineering Education In Chinese Key Universities

Chinese modern engineering education began with kinds of Western School set upby Qing dynasty during the Westernization Movement. After140years, especially60years of development, since the founding of New China, China has become the largestcountry of the scale of engineering education, in terms of the number of collge studentsor university graduates. As a part of the higher education system, undergraduateengineering education has trained a large number of engineers for economicdevelopment and social progress and the achievements are obvious. However, with therapid development of economy and society, science and technology, and highereducation in china, the job market of engineers has varied so greatly that personnelstructure and quality specifications are unable to meet the needs of society and industry. In the new situation, globalization, innovation, economy, engineering complexity andhuman sustainable development, brought new challenges to Chinese engineeringeducation. Undergraduate engineering education in key universities of china isincreasingly showing inadaptability. From the performance of students, they particularlylack the ability of engineering practice, human spirit, the capacity for sustainabledevelopment, cross-cultural communication skills and so on.Practice is the soul of the engineering. One of the main factors for the high qualityengineers is the lack of practice teaching. For engineering students, four-year college isthe best opportunity to participate in engineering practice, form engineering thinking, andgain engineering experience. Unfortunately, as an important part of the teaching systemof engineering education, practice teaching doesn’t get enough attention of colleges,teachers and students so that it is always the weakness in undergraduate engineeringeducation personnel training. In the field of engineering education research, theresearchers paid less attention on practice teaching, lacking of systematic exploration. Conducting systematic research on practice teaching about undergraduateengineering education, can provide theoretical and practical basis for the educationdepartment in charge of policy makers, to help teaching managers and engineeringprofessional teachers understand engineering education, even shift perspective to look atthe practical teaching; Formulation of specific recommendations for practice curriculumsystem and teaching methods reform about undergraduate engineering education, canalso play a guiding role on some specific issues. Discussion on the ideal of practiceteaching and training standards for engineering undergraduate, and to rebuild curriculumsystem and reform of teaching methods provide the corresponding theoreticalexplanation which has important significance for the expansion of higher engineeringeducation theory. In this paper, literature research, survey research and case analysismethods, summarize existing practice teaching and analysis of the issues behind theproblem, combing the concept of practice teaching, building training standards ofundergraduate engineering education. On this basis, this paper updates course content,reconstructs the curriculum system, and reforms teaching methods. The specific contentsare as follows:The first part gives a systematic account of problems existing in the practiceteaching of undergraduate engineering education from many aspects such as the goal ofpractice teaching, practice teaching system design, practice teaching methods, practiceteaching conditions and teachers, based on the engineering education requirements of thetimes. On the other hand, there is exploration of the cause of the problem from thetraditional culture, the concept of education, and the education system and educationresources invested to provide a reference for engineering education practice teachingreform and policy formulation. From the three aspects of nature of the project,engineering environment in the twenty-first century and the basic educational theory, thesecond part of this paper elaborates on the concept and idea of the practice teaching inundergraduate engineering education. The third part from the standard connotation and denotation, analyzes the relationship between the educational purposes, educational goals,and personnel training standard, comparing the background and content in the UnitedStates, Europe and our country in personnel training standards of undergraduateengineering education puts forward the personnel training standards revision andengineering education reform proposals of china. The fourth part of the article examinesthe current curriculum system of undergraduate engineering education and providesreform ideas, on the base of review and analysis of the historical situation for the practicecourses of undergraduate engineering education. The fifth part studies deeply show thepractice teaching methods of undergraduate engineering education. It is the teachingmethod reform that is the key to promote the practice teaching reform and personneltraining mode reform. As an effective teaching for guiding students to active inquiry anddeveloping students’ practical ability and innovative spirit, research teaching accordswith engineering capacity-building regularity and the logic that formed by overall quality.To a large extent, it realizes the change of students’ learning and the reform for teachingculture, communicating with the theoretical knowledge and practical training. Finally,the paper has some correlation explanation form the teaching objectives, teachingmethods and effects described on the base of two real practice teaching reform cases thatare “practice teaching based on real projects” and “Cross-cultural collaborative learningbased on practical engineering problems”.