A taxonomy for introduction to engineering courses

• Autores: Kenneth Reid, David Reeping, Elizabeth Spingola
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 34, no. 1, 2018, págs. 2-19
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Many universities offer introductory engineering courses that can vary widely in content between institutions—evenamong sections within the same institution. The view into the underlying content in such courses is often obscured by thelack of a detailed syllabus and anincomplete description publishedin the University’s catalog. Thus, assessment of a coursesequence can be difficult due to the sheer volume of students and inconsistent content among sections. Moreover, thevagueness can affect transfer students, because awarding transfer credit implies a set of instructional objectives that thestudentmaynothaveencountered.Thisprojectresultedinaclassificationscheme,ortaxonomy,oftopicscommonlyfoundin ‘‘Introduction to Engineering’’ courses. The taxonomy allows a mapping of potential course content to be achieved suchthat users can communicate their courses using a common tool. The investigators utilized a three-stage qualitative researchdesign situated in the ‘‘purposes,’’ ‘‘content,’’ and ‘‘sequencing’’ constructs of Lattuca and Stark’s model of an ‘‘AcademicPlan.’’ The first two stages involved a survey of 28 syllabi for ‘‘Introduction to Engineering’’ courses followed by cullingtopics from transcripts of 6 focus groups of 4 first-year instructors in a conference workshop using content analysis. AculminatingthreeroundDelphistudywith24participantsservedtofinalizethetaxonomy.Coursecontentcenteredaroundeight primary aspects that frame the taxonomy, each of which was broken down further to include more specific topics thatmight be found under them. Note that the taxonomy represents a list of topics thatmay befound in ‘‘Introduction toEngineering’’ (or similar) courses as opposed to a list of all topics thatshould becovered. Instructors can now use ‘‘TheIntroduction to Engineering Course Classification Scheme’’ as a tool to aid in communicating their courses by classifying itin terms of common course topics—a universal syllabus of sorts. Schools interested in alternative methods of awardingtransfer credits or curriculum development for courses like ‘‘Introduction to Engineering’’ can be empowered to makedecisions that are more informed using the taxonomy as a flexible artifact of their processes.