Study On Integration-based Engineering Education Patterns

We are living in an era of accelerating change and increasingly global society: Driven by the knowledge explosion, together with the rapidly evolving information and communication technologies, the territory of engineering is redefined, and correspondingly the functions of engineers are enlarged and evolved. However, the traditional engineering education patterns are slipping off of the path to future demanding. There might be overwhelmingly theorized, specialized and outdated teaching and learning in engineering education, which leads to poor quantity and quality of engineering students, not to mention the cultivation of elitists who characterized by the balance among knowledge, ability and quality, and aims to construct the wide, specialized, and multilateral talents. Engineering education is under the transformation storm from traditional science paradigm to engineering paradigm, bringing to the blooming of innovated patterns. This paper is not aiming at establishing a brand new pattern.It tries to figure out the common logical laws and framework of factors, collectively named integrated engineering education patterns.This paper focuses on the basic problem of how to cultivate and operate integrated engineering education patterns. To be specific, the thesis intends to solve the following questions step by step:(1)Factors Recognition:What are the basic factors of engineering education and how important are they?(2)Patterns Cultivation: How to choose and integrate those factors?(3)Patterns Operation:How to design and establish the policy environment under China’s reality. The thesis carries out a series of investigations from the view of theory and positivism through ways of literature review, case study, questionnaire survey, expert interview and data analysis. The main conclusions are as follows:To begin with, the concept of engineering education pattern is multi-leveled and multi-categorized. No matter of the world-spread PBL and CDIO patterns or other splendid ones, those cases are directly solving the common problem (vanishing of engineering elements) and sharing the common character (integration). This research reviews the related theories and clarifies the basic structure and implicit meanings of education pattern instead of specific definitions. Based on system theory, this thesis defines the three levels of education patterns (Philosophy/Institution/Execution) and three regions of systems (Total System/Education System/Teaching System). The study analyzes best practices from America, Russia, Britain and Australia. Those colleges choose different paths to transformation and direct to the same objective: recalling the holistic engineer education through integrating curriculum, teaching methods and the whole systems, which means, the nature of engineering:practical, synthetical, and innovative.Moreover, the framework of factors of integrated engineering education patterns is structured with four modules (objective/curriculum/method/condition) and42factors. The thesis reviews the related literature and identifies47factors at first, then adjusts some of them after case studies and peer reviews. Based on these findings, the study designs and issues questionnaires to senior students and graduates (within3years). After analyzing433effective results, the paper abstracts and names9common factors, and results in modified model. Thirdly, the study finds out the significant differences between the ideal importance and actual situation of all the factors. In general, curriculum design is paying great efforts on campus, but teaching methods and corresponding conditions are ignored. Those factors related to non-STEM, engineering practice and knowledge application, inter-disciples and innovation elements are in urgency.Lastly, this paper establishes the integrated engineering education pattern, structured by the total objective system, the holistic curriculum system, the diverse method system and the collaborative condition system. Future more, the paper explores inner mechanism of the integration phenomenon, which is the balance between theory and practice, analysis and synthesis, tradition and modern. Integrated engineering education patterns do not merely join the factors randomly, but collaborating those factors regularly. The paper ends up with suggestions on how to operate integrated patterns.The contributions of the thesis mainly lie on the following items:(1) Put forward the idea of integrated engineering education pattern, based on system theory, integration theory and the proposal of "Engineering With a Big E", which is new perspective.(2) Identify factors and framework, and establishes the integrated engineering education pattern, based on literature review, case study, questionnaire survey, expert interview and data analysis, which is new content.(3) Explore inner mechanism of the integration phenomenon, and figure out the deep meaning of paradigm shift, which are new thoughts. This study will enrich theoretical research on the construction of engineering education system, and provide some inspirations for China’s engineering educational reform and practice.