Educating engineers for the information age

Abstract

Information technology, which is rapidly becoming one of the fundamentals of engineering, will soon be embedded in virtually every new product and process. In order to take full advantage of the wide range of new possibilities that are becoming available, the design of products, systems, and services will require teams that can integrate information technologies with traditional engineering areas such as fluid mechanics, thermal sciences, materials science, manufacturing technologies, and precision design. In addition, more than 1.3 million new programmers, engineers, systems analysts, and computer scientists will be required between 1996 to 2006 to meet the information technology demands of the nation's industries according to a report from the U.S. Commerce Department's Office of Technology. To address this need, the vital importance of the introduction of information technologies to creatively improve undergraduate education has been stressed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Thus, in partnership with relevant industries, we have developed instructional materials in the form of multi-media case studies with the following educational objectives: (1) to introduce engineering students to the complexity of real-world problems; (2) to show how engineering companies operate in the information age; and (3) to improve the higher-level cognitive-based problem solving abilities of our students. In this paper, we will describe our approach and discuss how the educational objectives were accomplished. Our results show that multimedia case studies (1) stimulate students' interest in engineering topics, (2) engage female students, and (3) motivate engineering faculty members to integrate these materials in their classrooms.