Teaching electronics-ICT : from focus and structure to practical realizations

We present a four-year electronics-ICT educational master program at Ghent University in Belgium. The students develop knowledge and skills from novice to experienced electronic circuit designers. In the corresponding topics, the immersion into engineering problems is deepened. The horizontal and vertical alignment of courses in the four-year master program at our university is discussed. The curriculum of the four-year master program is highly projectoriented and all topics are clustered around a well-considered set of standards. This clustering supports the logical structure of the program, with students gradually acquiring the necessary competences. All standards and their mutual interaction are extensively discussed in the paper. We also focus on four design-implement projects included in the electronics-ICT program, explicitly following CDIO-guidelines. Whereas the first-year project has a limited level of difficulty, the challenges increase significantly in the course of the next years. Students learn that product design is an iterative process on different levels, where the design strategy can be changed continuously based on important and crucial feedback. Different evaluations have demonstrated that our students are not only aware of CDIO-principles, but are also convinced of the quality of the results obtained by following the standards

Software Engineering Timeline: major areas of interest and multidisciplinary trends

Ingeniería del software. EvolucionSociety today cannot run without software and by extension, without Software Engineering. Since this discipline emerged in 1968, practitioners have learned valuable lessons that have contributed to current practices. Some have become outdated but many are still relevant and widely used. From the personal and incomplete perspective of the authors, this paper not only reviews the major milestones and areas of interest in the Software Engineering timeline helping software engineers to appreciate the state of things, but also tries to give some insights into the trends that this complex engineering will see in the near future

Evaluation of Public Housing Programmes in Nigeria: A Theoretical and Conceptual Approach

The aim of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical and conceptual framework for an alternative approach to evaluation of public housing programmes in Nigeria. It seeks to address limitations of existing approaches where one theory or discipline has the upper hand in evaluating public housing programmes. This paper proposes a broad-based framework for assessing relationships between input, output and outcomes of public housing programmes through a realistic approach to evaluation based on objective-oriented theory, theory-driven evaluation paradigm and conceptual issues. This approach allows for the use of logical framework to explain the complex connections between underlying programme theory and outcomes. The distinct features of this alternative evaluation approach include: an open-ended evaluation approach; housing providers and residents participation; broad-based and a multi-faceted data gathering approaches and analysis in distinguishing the outcome of different housing delivery strategies in public housing programmes

Using Case Study Research as an Active Learning Tool for Demonstrating the Ability to Function on Multidisciplinary Teams

Case study projects can be used as an active learning tool for expanding students’ knowledge beyond classroom discussion. A required course taken by EE (Electrical Engineering) and CS (Computer Science) students at the University of Portland provides an excellent environment for assessing students’ ability to function on multidisciplinary teams as specified in the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission Student Outcome (d) an ability to function on multidisciplinary teams. This paper presents an experience of using a team-based case study project as an active learning tool in the EE and CS required course for assessing the attainment of this student outcome. The performance indicators clearly demonstrate that the ABET Engineering Accreditation Commission Student Outcome (d) is successfully attained

Problem based learning in architectural education

There is limited published research and discussion on pedagogical approaches in architectural education. Problem (or Project) Based Learning is used successfully in other professional disciplines, and, consequently, there have been attempts to utilise the same pedagogical approach in architectural education. This paper critically reviews PBL implementations at the Faculty of Architecture, Technical University of Delft (TUDelft), Netherlands and the De-partment of Architecture, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia and draws general conclusions about the implementation of PBL in architecture and particular recommendations with respect to the teaching of architectural computing

The NGOs, social constructors in the domain of occupying the labor force. The case of Ruhama Foundation

Among the Romanian NGOs, the case of the Ruhama Foundation is a success story. Research undertaken by us captures the main determinants of its success: the quality of the human resources, the strategic management performance and determination (motivation) of the members of the organization. All those have generated complex strategies designed to change the attitudes, the values and even the organizational structure. The diversification of the organization activity, initially focused exclusively on social problems of vulnerable groups, led to a preventive approach to vulnerability respectively of the economic coordinates that allow the identification of the social inclusion and the preventing exclusion. This gave rise to the center “Careers” which offers programs of self-knowledge and career guidance, professional training or retraining correlated with the existing labor market needs, and also the desires and the possibilities and potential beneficiaries of these courses. Our research, conducted in several stages and using various research methods and tools in the context of appreciative inquiry (questionnaires, individual interviews and focus group interviews type), decrypts the process by which the organization is discovered and rediscovers itself, with its potential, values, and desires, based on the opportunities related to the environment in which it operates and it constructs on this basis a new architecture not only to maintain itself on the market, but even to turn it in a social actor, a genuine partner of bodies empowered to ensure social welfare and a promoter of best practice models.NGOs; Social constructors; Appreciative inquiry; Employment; Intraorganizational values; Social architecture