Larry G. Richards

The future of engineering education

Thirteen engineering educators and researchers were each asked to choose a particular aspect of engineerings future to address. Each of the authors has contributed a short piece that has been edited into a discussion of the future as we collectively see it. Topics include the stimulating change, the changing university, teaching, learning, research, outcome assessment and technology as well as a look back at predictions for 2000.

Stimulating creativity: teaching engineers to be innovators

Engineering is a creative profession; indeed that phrase appears in the title of a consistently popular introductory textbook. Yet few courses in the standard engineering curriculum require or even encourage creativity. Students often feel that creative behavior is actively discouraged in their classes. Several engineers have designed courses or programs to foster creativity, and the recently rekindled interest in engineering design in the curriculum has led to greater emphasis on innovative thinking. Although creativity is generally required for first and fourth year design projects, it is curiously absent in-between. In this paper, the authors explore the nature of, and conditions supporting, creativity, how to foster it in engineering education and describe several courses designed to teach engineering students to be innovators.

Ride Quality Evaluation 1. Questionnaire Studies of Airline Passenger Comfort

As part of a larger effort to assess passenger comfort in aircraft, two questionnaires were administered: one to ground-based respondents, the other to passengers in flight. Respondents indicated the importance of various factors influencing their satisfaction with a trip, the perceived importance of various physical factors in determining their level of comfort, and the ease of time spent performing activities in flight. The in-flight sample also provided a rating of their level of comfort and of their willingness to fly again. Comfort ratings were examined in relation to (1) typo of respondent, (2) type of aircraft, (3) characteristics of the passengers, (4) ease of performing activities, and (5) willingness to fly again.

Ride Quality Evaluation II: Modelling of Airline Passenger Comfort

Quantitative environmental and subjective data obtained aboard commercial airlines are used to model passenger reaction. Several models for comfort are compared. The manner in which the overall response to the flight environment depends on the time history is examined and the variability about the mean response discussed. The relationship to passenger satisfaction is presented giving a quantitative means of relating the physical environment to passenger acceptance. The proposed models give aircraft designers and operators a method by which they may seek to maximize passenger comfort and therefore satisfaction.

WHAT THE PASSENGER CONTRIBUTES TO PASSENGER COMFORT

An individuals reaction to a vehicle environment depends not only on the physical inputs but also on the characteristics of the individual. Surveys of airline passengers were conducted on board regularly scheduled commuter flights. Sex of the respondent and attitude toward flying were found to have import nt influences on passenger comfort. Individual differences were also found regarding (1) perceptions of environmental variables, (2) the importance of factors as determinants of comfort, and (3) the ease of and frequency of performing activities in flight.

Ride Quality Assessment III: Questionnaire Results of a Second Flight Programme

Abstract Aquestion was completed by 861 passengers on regularly-scheduled flights of four commuter airlines. Four types of aircraft were involved. Questions assessed major demographic variables, attitudes toward flying, frequency of flying, experience of airsickness, and passenger perceptions of detailed aspects of the physical environment. Passengers also rated their overall comfort level and their willingness to fly again. Passengers perceivo motion, noise, and seat factors as the primary determinants of their comfort. Rated comfort is strongly related to willingness to fly again. Incidence of airsickness was low. Sox differences in reactions to aspectsof the environment were found.

Factors affecting student attitudes toward active learning activities in a graduate engineering statistics course

The successful use of active learning practices in a medium-to-large sized (25 – 50 students) graduate engineering statistics course has its challenges as well as opportunities. Students expect that lecture would be the dominant pedagogy, so introducing team-based activities violates their assumptions about the structure of the course. Experience in teaching graduate-level courses in statistics, validated by survey responses and observation, leads us to conclude that the majority of students, regardless of their undergraduate group learning experiences, tend to prefer to work alone or in small groups with acquaintances; the main exception is a preference for working in groups on large-scale projects. Student attitudes seem to be primarily context-dependent, and we find the main factors affecting how a particular activity is received are the scope and grade-importance of the assignment; team size relative to the amount of effort required; and team composition.

Workshop - bringing engineering into middle schools: Learning science and math through guided inquiry and engineering design

For five years, faculty and students at the University of Virginia have been designing, implementing, testing, and distributing Engineering Teaching Kits (ETKs). We identify topics from science, math, and technology that have interesting engineering applications, and then help students learn science and math in the context of engineering design. Each ETK includes real-world constraints (budget, cost, time, risk, reliability, safety, and customer needs and demands), and each involves a design challenge that requires creativity and teamwork. These kits are used to introduce engineering concepts and methods into existing middle school science and math classes. ETKs promote awareness of the nature of engineering, and stimulate excitement about its practice. They also help develop an appreciation for the tradeoffs involved in the practice of engineering, and how engineering decisions impact society and the environment. In this workshop, we will introduce our approach to designing and testing Engineering Teaching Kits, show how our ETKs relate to educational standards (both state and national), demonstrate several ETKs, and have the participants work through others as though they were students.

A multidimensional scaling analysis of judged similarity of complex forms from two task situations

Ss provided judgments of pairwise stimulus similarities for 21 12-turn random forms in two experimental tasks: a scaling task, involving a variant of the method of graded dichotomies, and a sorting task, which simply required Ss to categorize the forms. The grouped data from both tasks, when analyzed using nonmetric multidimensional scaling techniques, yielded five-dimensional configurations with euclidean distances. The correspondence of these two spaces, assessed using canonical correlations, was extremely good. The psychological dimensions derived from both tasks were related to two sets of physical measures on the forms: the factor space suggested by Brown and Owen and a set of more basic physical measures. Physical cues of greatest importance involved size, dispersion, angularity, and rotation measures. The value of the tasks and the utility of the Brown and Owen measures were discussed.

An analysis of individual differences in similarity judgments about complex random forms

A variation of the method of graded dichotomies was used to obtain judgments of interstimulus similarity for all pairings of 21 12-turn random shapes. Using the Tucker-Messick procedure, a six-dimensional spatial model, representing individual variation in performance on the task, was derived. Six “idealized individuals” (IIs) were isolated. A five-dimensional Euclidean spatial model was obtained for each II using the Shepard-Kruskal scaling technique. The resulting psychological dimensions of perceived form were related to two sets of physical measures on the forms: the factor space suggested by Brown and Owen and a set of more basic physical measures. These basic measures allowed interpretation of most of the psychological dimensions and revealed differences between IIs in patterns of cue utilization.