[EAS] Teaching Engineering

Peter J. Kindlmann pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Sun May 13 20:19:26 EDT 2007


Dear Colleagues -

In the early days of these aperiodic mailings, more than 10 years 
ago, there was a natural tendency to relish good online resources for 
education. It was a time of sparse beginnings and of generosity of 
sharing.

Now we are more habituated and overloaded, though all the while the 
amount of excellent material has grown. Here are some items as 
reminders of that. The first item, the book from Purdue, is also a 
pleasant reminder that files need not be bloated. A nicely designed 
350 page book is a 1.1MB pdf file.

I should also be mention that the weekly Scout Report 
<http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/>, which I excerpt here, 
has been published continuously since 1994, and is one of the oldest 
and most respected Internet resource identifiers. Although Google 
searching has become amazingly capable, the amount of junk amidst 
which it must search has exploded. Quality resource identifiers, like 
the talents of the reference librarians often compiling them, very 
much retain their value as quiet, almost contemplatively so, venues 
to excellent material.

    --PJK

----------------------
(from The Scout Report -- May 11, 2007
<http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/2007/scout-070511.php>)

Teaching Engineering [pdf]
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/News_and_Events/Publications/teaching_engineering/index.html

Purdue University has one of the strongest schools of engineering in the
United States, and they remain committed to providing new and interesting
materials about the art and science of teaching engineering to their
students. Professors Phillip C. Wankat and Frank S. Oreovicz recently
created this very helpful textbook to aid engineering educators in the
classroom, and it is exciting to see that it is available online here for
free. Visitors can download the entire book, or they can just browse around
through some of the seventeen chapters. These chapters include "Problem
Solving and Creativity", "Lectures", and "Learning Theories". Additionally,
there are several helpful appendices, such as "Obtaining an Academic
Position" and "Sample Teaching Course Outline". Overall, it's an exemplary
resource, and one that will be most useful to engineering educators. These
materials can be used in a variety of engineering courses, including those
that deal with chemical and mechanical engineering.


Materials Engineering [pdf, Quick Time]
http://www.gatewaycoalition.org/sub_category/sub_category.aspx?subcatid=1022&mcatid=105

The Gateway Engineering Education Coalition consists of a group of
universities that are concerned with providing high-quality educational
resources in the field of engineering education. Their site contains a
number of topical sections that deal with the different branches of this
field. This particular section deals with educational resources in the area
of materials engineering, and visitors will be glad to learn that there are
interactive features here that cover the corrosion of metals, electrical
conductivity, fracture mechanics, and ten additional topics. These materials
can be used in the classroom to illustrate different principles and
processes within materials engineering, and students may also wish to return
to them as reference points during their studies.


National Clearinghouse on Academic Worklife [pdf]
http://www.academicworklife.org/

The world of higher education is very much in transition in the United
States, and there has been a great deal of soul-searching and heated
conversation regarding the increase in non-tenure track faculty, just to
name one of many areas of pressing concern. A number of organizations and
clearinghouses have been set up as of late to provide resources and
commentary on these subjects, and the National Clearinghouse on Academic
Worklife (NCAW) is one of them. Created in 2005, the NCAW is located at the
University of Michigan's Center for the Education of Women and they have
created this online bibliographic record of materials that cover such
subjects as benefits, tenure, career development, and business models in
higher education. Visitors to the site can search the clearinghouse archive,
or also look over the "Features" area, which includes recent additions to
the NCAW database. Also, they may wish to suggest resources for inclusion in
the database and sign up to receive the NCAW email newsletter.

----------------------
 From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2007.
http://scout.wisc.edu/



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