Industrial field trips: an integrated pedagogical framework of theory and practice

• Autores: Victoria Townsend, Jill Urbanic
• Localización: The International journal of engineering education, ISSN-e 0949-149X, Vol. 29, no. 5, 2013, págs. 1155-1165
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The purpose of this paper is to propose a learning-centered, scholarly, and pragmatic pedagogical framework for facilitating fieldtrips for engineering students in cooperation with industry. Salient features of the field trip pedagogical literature from K-12 andscience education are aligned as research goals. They emphasize that field trips need to involve curriculum links, follow-up, clearpurpose, and active learning. They also affirm that field trips have the ability to yield social and affective learning, holistic learningin a dynamic system, long-term memory, and learning anchors. These goals are mobilized here by implementing Dewey’sexperiential continuum with Deming’s plan-do-check-act cycle and constructive alignment. This teaching-learning methodology istested with a case study: a Manufacturing Processes Design class of 17 undergraduate, industrial engineering students in anaccredited engineering program. The research results, which span a semester, are aligned to evidence the literature goals along withadditional academia-industry collaboration benefits from a student learning perspective. These added benefits include studentengagement, deep learning (including affective learning), joy in learning, and community synergy. Thus, learning value for studentsis yielded from the proposed, rigorous framework for industrial field trips in engineering education; the framework accomplishesscholarly alignment with pedagogical literature in parallel with empirical results that ensure successful application in a pragmaticmanner.