Middle school students' perceptions of engineering

This paper focuses on implementing engineering education in middle school classrooms (grade levels 7-9). One of the aims of the study was to foster students’ and teachers’ knowledge and understanding of engineering in society. Given the increasing importance of engineering in shaping our daily lives, it is imperative that we foster in students an interest and drive to participate in engineering education, increase their awareness of engineering as a career path, and inform them of the links between engineering and the enabling subjects, mathematics, science, and technology. Data for the study are drawn from five classes across three schools. Grade 7 students’ responded to initial whole class discussions on what is an engineer, what is engineering, what characteristics engineers require, engineers (family/friends) that they know, and subjects that may facilitate an engineering career. Students generally viewed engineers as creative, future-oriented, and artistic problem finders and solvers; planners and designers; “seekers” and inventors; and builders of constructions. Students also viewed engineers as adventurous, decisive, community-minded, reliable, and “smart.” In addition to a range of mathematics and science topics, students identified business studies, ICT, graphics, art, and history as facilitating careers in engineering. Although students displayed a broadened awareness of engineering than the existing research suggests, there was limited knowledge of various engineering fields and a strong perception of engineering as large construction

Psychological tools for knowledge acquisition

Knowledge acquisition is said to be the biggest bottleneck in the development of expert systems. The problem is getting the knowledge out of the expert's head and into a computer. In cognitive psychology, characterizing metal structures and why experts are good at what they do is an important research area. Is there some way that the tools that psychologists have developed to uncover mental structure can be used to benefit knowledge engineers? We think that the way to find out is to browse through the psychologist's toolbox to see what there is in it that might be of use to knowledge engineers. Expert system developers have relied on two standard methods for extracting knowledge from the expert: (1) the knowledge engineer engages in an intense bout of interviews with the expert or experts, or (2) the knowledge engineer becomes an expert himself, relying on introspection to uncover the basis of his own expertise. Unfortunately, these techniques have the difficulty that often the expert himself isn't consciously aware of the basis of his expertise. If the expert himself isn't conscious of how he solves problems, introspection is useless. Cognitive psychology has faced similar problems for many years and has developed exploratory methods that can be used to discover cognitive structure from simple data

The Responsibilities of Engineers

Knowledge of the responsibilities of engineers is key to answering ethical questions about the work of engineers, because the decisions made by engineers often have ethical dimensions and implications. Engineers develop and implement technologies that influence and shape the way we live, at times in manners unanticipated by those who develop such technologies. To be able to answer important ethical questions, it is essential first to define what the responsibilities of engineers are. This paper defines the responsibilities of engineers by considering what constitutes the nature of engineering as a particular form of activity. Specifically, this paper focuses on the responsibilities of engineers qua engineers, where that refers to the duties acquired in virtue of being a member of a group. In order to answer this question, this paper examines the practice of engineering, drawing on the idea of practices developed by philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre and showing how the elements of a practice are important for finding and justifying the responsibilities of engineers. To demonstrate the contribution that knowledge of the responsibilities of engineers makes to engineering ethics, a case study is discussed at the end of the paper which deals with ethical questions in the discipline of structural engineering. The circumstances surrounding the failure of the Sleipner A platform off the coast of Norway in 1991 will be discussed to demonstrate how the responsibilities of engineers can be derived from knowledge of the nature of engineering and its context

Minería de textos: una herramienta útil para mejorar la gestión del bibliotecario en el entorno digital

In the current stage of human development, the boom, assimilation and intensive use of knowledge has led to what we know as Knowledge Society, in which information management, documentation and knowledge are considered as vital strategic components. The horizons have been widened towards other jobs summoned to cooperate with information professionals: system designers, data providers, editors, salespersons, archivists, technicians, engineers and electronic text codification specialists, whose opinions and experiences make possible the localization, management, retrieval and use of digital information. New tools have been created to make easier the access to the great amount of knowledge generated daily. One of the most used is Text Mining, which allows the different organizations to explore a great number of texts that are not organized in data form, as well as to establish patterns and to extract useful knowledge