scholarly journals Current Directions In Earthquake Engineering Education: The University Consortium On Instructional Shake Tables

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirley J. Dyke ◽  
Phillip Gould ◽  
Kevin Truman
2000 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.H. Hahn

Traditionally in Germany environmental engineering education took place within the context of a civil engineering programme. There were reasons for this: the beginning of much of what we understand today to be environmental works fell within the parameters of city engineering. There were and are advantages mostly in view of the necessary planning, construction and operation of environmental infrastructure. There are also disadvantages which become more and more pronounced as the field of environmental protection expands: the civil engineer frequently lacks basic training in disciplines such as biology and chemistry and carries a large and sometimes burdensome knowledge of other less relevant subjects. Thus, educators begin to look for alternatives. This paper deals with an alternative that was developed some ten years ago and therefore has proven viable and successful: at the University of Karlsruhe students may choose to major in environmental engineering within the context or on the basis of an economics and business administration curriculum. The basic question here is as to what extent the student masters the field of environmental engineering if he or she has predominantly a solid background in social sciences and very little in natural sciences. The paper will describe the curriculum in structure and intensity and evaluate the accumulated knowledge and suitability of these students in terms of actual environmental problems. This will be done in terms of examination performance parallel and/or relative to traditionally trained civil environmental engineers as well as in terms of topics successfully treated in Masters' theses. In conclusion, it is argued that such combination of curricula should not be confined to economic sciences and environmental engineering but also be planned for legal sciences and environmental engineering.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Emily Hauptmann

ArgumentMost social scientists today think of data sharing as an ethical imperative essential to making social science more transparent, verifiable, and replicable. But what moved the architects of some of the U.S.’s first university-based social scientific research institutions, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), and its spin-off, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), to share their data? Relying primarily on archived records, unpublished personal papers, and oral histories, I show that Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and others understood sharing data not as an ethical imperative intrinsic to social science but as a useful means to the diverse ends of financial stability, scholarly and institutional autonomy, and epistemological reproduction. I conclude that data sharing must be evaluated not only on the basis of the scientific ideals its supporters affirm, but also on the professional objectives it serves.


Engineering is crucial for economic development in developed and developing countries. With various changes taking place globally over the years, it has had influence on all aspect of human endeavor and we are now at a time of pervasive breakout of technologies known as the fourth industrial revolution. This study therefore conceptualizes excellence VS relevance in engineering education in the era of the fourth industrial revolution by first demystifying what the fourth industrial revolution is and then conceptualizing excellence and relevance in engineering education. Findings from the study revealed that Findings from the study revealed that the world is at a stage of massive changes and this requires solutions to these numerous changes. It was also found out that excellence and relevance are not new as it is a common term used across various spheres of human life especially within the university where excellence in research and learning is emphasized. The study recommended that STEM education should be encouraged across board so as to develop the skills necessary in the fourth industrial age and also effort should be made at intensifying action on adopting some of the technologies that are emerging in the fourth industrial revolution especially in the developing countries.


Author(s):  
George Kilada ◽  
Victoria Thomsen ◽  
Jillian Seniuk Cicek ◽  
Afua Adobe Mante ◽  
Randy Herrmann

A qualitative narrative study was designed to examine the impact on students’ learning when an Elder came to speak to students in a Technology, Society and the Future course in the Price Faculty of Engineering at the University of Manitoba. This study accounts for one student’s story as heard through an open-ended narrative interview facilitated by a team of researchers, and restoried into a problem-solution narrative structure. The preliminary findings highlight the impact of the Elder’s teachings on the student, the importance of Indigenous People’s Knowledges and perspectives in engineering education, and the importance of making space for students to reflect on these learnings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Norshahida Sarifuddin ◽  
Zuraida Ahmad ◽  
Ahmad Zahirani Ahmad Azhar ◽  
Hafizah Hanim Mohd Zaki ◽  
Amelia Wong Azman ◽  
...  

In line with the current global focus on sustainability and the well-being of the planet, becoming a professional engineer nowadays requires more than simple mastery of technical skills. Considering that engineers are required to have a deep sense of responsibility not only for humankind but also for the environment, engineering education and practices must be reformed substantially to prepare engineers that will contribute to sustainable development. This necessitates updating conventional engineering programs (CEE) to incorporate Humanizing Engineering Education (HEE). Although HEE is an old practice of individual engineers and other organizations outside the academic field, it is relatively new in academic engineering. While the definition of what truly merits being considered HEE remains debatable, many engineers believe that their work involves a humanitarian aspect. To streamline the development of HEE, there is a need for developing guidelines and frameworks for a comprehensive model. Ideally, that framework should integrate humanizing pedagogy in the new curriculum design. The objective of the paper is to share the experience of the authors in designing a new curriculum for a Materials Engineering Programme (MEP) that is embedded with Humanitarian Engineering (HE), which is among the main elements of HEE. Data collection was through interviews, qualitative surveys, reports from the stakeholders, accreditation bodies and benchmarking with other Higher Learning Institutions (HLI). An extensive scholarly literature review was executed to identify shortcomings in CEE and how it could be reformed by integrating it with HEE. The Sejahtera Academic Framework (SAF); a strategic framework for academic programmes developed by the university, was used as a reference to customize MEP to better meet students’ needs. Since the proposed model applies a new emerging concept, it inevitably raises challenges related to different levels of understanding among course implementers and perceptions of external stakeholders. Moreover, the developers had to consider the limitations imposed by the university's policies and structures while acknowledging the availability of finite resources (i.e. time, money, equipment, and expertise).


Author(s):  
Rafia Naz Memon ◽  
Rodina Ahmad ◽  
Siti Salwah Salim

Requirements Engineering (RE) is the most crucial process within software development projects. In order to prepare skilled requirements engineers, Requirements Engineering Education (REE) needs to be provided to students at the university level before they become software engineers and part of the workforce. However, RE is considered the most difficult subject within the software engineering curriculum for students to learn and for lecturers to teach due to its uncertain nature. This chapter examines the current and potential areas for research within REE. It first presents the current status of REE provided in universities and the REE problems reported in the literature that lead us to the potential research problems in REE. The REE teaching approaches proposed by researchers are then elaborated. The proposed approaches are mapped back to address the REE problems. The chapter closes with recommended directions for future REE research.


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