Michael Dyrenfurth

Teaching Students to be Innovators: Examining Competencies and Approaches Across Disciplines

Universities are increasingly promoting programs and courses that focus on innovation to prepare students across disciplines for work in a competitive global economy. Information about program outcomes, target competencies, or best practices is limited given their early stages of development. This exploratory study examined eight academic programs offering an educational credential focused on innovation available to students in a variety of majors. The analyses of program descriptions and curricular requirements provide an understanding of their structure, content, and value they propose to students. This paper explores what teaching innovation means at a program-level and identifies where a curriculum is situated along the spectrum of topics that characterize innovation education. The results can be useful in developing and articulating core competencies related to innovation and understanding approaches to teaching it.

A Biomimetic Approach to Complex Global Problems

With scientific and technological advances giving rise to complex global problems, responding will require a different way of thinking than was involved in their creation. No longer are solutions bound within a domain of science or technology. Instead, solutions require a highly integrated approach across many domains, sciences, or technologies. What will become increasingly important is not engineering against nature as engineering with nature, as is emerging in the field of biomimetics. A discussion of sources and limits of knowledge that affect the biomimetic approach will provide an understanding for how mental models, metaphors, and analogies can be used to apply systems of nature with human systems to address complex global problems. Using this type of thinking can greatly enhance opportunities for solving, managing, or controlling the major complex global problems facing society.

Quality Indicators for Engineering and Technology Education

In recent years the development and use of university rankings, comparisons, and/or league tables has become popular and several methodologies are now frequently used to provide a comparative ranking of universities. These rankings are often based on research and publication activity and also not uncommonly focus on indicators that can be measured rather than those that should be measured. Further, the indicators are generally examined for the university as a whole rather than for university divisions, departments or programs. Implicit also is that placement in the rankings is indicative of quality. This paper provides an overview of the methodologies used for the more popular rankings and summarizes their strengths and weaknesses. It examines the critiques of rankings and league tables to provide appropriate context. The paper then examines the issue of how a university (or a college or program) could be assessed in terms of the quality of its engineering and technology programs. It proposes a set of indicators that could be used to provide relative measures of quality, not so much for individual engineering or technology programs, but rather of the university. Introduction & Methodology Todays world, and by all indicators the world of the future, seems to be increasingly competitive [1] and demanding. Resource scarcity, an increasing imperative for efficiency and effectiveness, manifestly more available information and escalating expectations for quality are but some of the factors that have caused universities, colleges, departments and programs to attend to evaluation, accreditation and invariably rankings and comparisons [2, 3]. Furthermore, increased global and intra-national mobility as well as widespread access to information has created the opportunity for individuals to more carefully research their selection of universities to attend . Perhaps in response to such pressures, there seems to have been an upsurge in the number of agencies, centers, corporations and others concerned with rankings and comparisons (see Appendix A). The International Observatory on Academic Ranking and Excellence (IREG), The Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), The University of Illinois Education and Social Science library has compiled an extensive set of resources on rankings, which are reproduced in the appendices with permission. There have been numerous conferences addressing this topic as well [5, 6]. Notably, many of the most significant players in the ranking/comparison field have agreed upon a formal set of principles that define quality and good practice for rankings and comparisons . These are presented in Appendix B. The authors, in collaboration with their university reference librarians and institutional researchers, conducted an extensive review of the periodical, book, and conference literature. This activity surfaced over 20 different ranking/rating/comparison schemes with significant presence [samples are provided in Appendices C and D] and undoubtedly a multitude of additional ones exist. But, the authors are compelled to ask – What purposes are served by such comparisons [3, 8, 9, 10] and why so many? In terms of methodology, this paper resulted from a Search ➮ Identify ➮ Analyze ➮ Synthesize ➮ Report approach. This began with the co-authors generating a concept map of the key ideas and terms central to their understanding of the problem – i.e., the misunderstandings and misuses of ranking and rating systems. Because the authors operated on both sides of the Atlantic, two significantly different contexts formed the backdrop to this study. The general concept map we used is shown below: These concepts were used to search the large array of databases, currently well over 100, accessible through the Purdue University Library portal. Conventional Boolean logic was employed. Similarly directed searches of contemporary literature occurred in Europe. To begin, it seemed prudent for the authors to begin by asking the prior question, namely to what end do universities exist? Why has society established universities? Here we discovered the root of our problem, i.e., the purposes served by universities are diverse, pluralistic, varied and sometimes contradictory . Among the purposes with critical mass are such purposes as: • Liberal education • Professional education • Knowledge development/research • Public service • Economic development A salient starting point should be an examination of the role and aims of the university. There is great diversity in higher education today, and many universities’ aims are quite different. Thus definition and contextual understanding are important. For example, the American philosopher Robert Paul Wolff speaking from the context of the Vietnam War, addressed the question of the role of the ideal university . He questioned whether the university should serve as a ‘training camp’ for professionals. Wolff directed his criticism against the ideal type of a university of professions towards its lack of intellectual inquiry and critique. He viewed the relationship between professional bodies and academic professionals as being inherently in conflict with the Rankings

Understanding the European Bologna Process

This paper describes the European Bologna process, provides a ‘mid-term’ review of its implementation status and discusses its possible positive and negative impacts on US – European links in the fields of engineering and technology education. The first section of this paper describes the meaning and rationale behind each of the Bologna objectives, and why there is a need to establish a European area of higher education. It also comments on how these objectives are interpreted within educational institutions. The second section provides a mid-term report on the implementation status within European universities, focussed primarily on engineering and technology education. The third section of this paper describes the issues associated with successfully implementing Bologna in engineering and technology education. These include critical issues such as degree structure, how educational institutions are addressing the two-cycle requirement, the employability of first cycle graduates, and quality enhancement at both an institutional and a national level. The final section outlines the implications and impacts for US – European institutional co-operation and links, particularly in the area of student exchange.

Concurrent Masters Degrees Across the Atlantic: Innovations, Issues and Insights

A transatlantic degree consortium to implement a four-semester dual masters degree initiative across a three-institution consortium consisting of Purdue University (USA), the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), and the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (Spain) is presented in this paper. This initiative, while focusing on graduate (Masters) student mobility, also includes faculty mobility, language instruction and assessment, project evaluation and other services to insure ongoing success. Effective existing collaborations, i.e., an active undergraduate exchange semester and collaborative faculty activity established a solid foundation for the new dual/concurrent technology degree program and enabled it to get off to a fast start. Two of the new consortium members are already partnering in an Atlantis undergraduate student mobility project that is working well and which has generated considerable student and faculty traffic and collaboration well in excess of the funding requirements. The partners have invested considerable amounts of their own monies in building the relationship and thus evidence the sustainability of the new dual transatlantic technology masters degree program.

Implications of Philosophy for Engineering and Engineering Technology Bachelors Programs

This paper raises the question: What is philosophy and then, after describing its branches and school, it extends the definitions to implications for the practice of engineering and engineering technology education. It folds the definitions against the work of engineering faculty. The latter was described as including curriculum development, teaching, mentoring/advising, research/scholarship, and engagement. Sample codes of ethics are shared for engineering technology students and professionals.