The influence of external forces, institutional forces, and academics' characteristics on the adoption of positive teaching practices across australian undergraduate engineering

© 2016 TEMPUS Publications. This study investigates how academics' personal beliefs, perspectives on institutional forces, and perspectives on external influences relate to their teaching and learning decision-making. Using a national-level survey of Australian engineering academics (n = 591; 16% of Australia's engineering academics), analyses investigate (1) how influences external and internal to the university environment vary across characteristics of academics, and (2) how academics' characteristics, organizational features, and external drivers relate to issues informing academics' teaching and their actual teaching practices. External and internal influences differed across academics based on their individual characteristics and university contexts, and academics' individual characteristics explained the greatest variability in their teaching considerations and practices. For external influences (e.g., accreditation), promoting awareness of educational goals for undergraduate engineering-as opposed to forcing outcomes into course planning-relates to more desirable teaching and learning practices. No internal institutional policy driver related to teaching practice variables. This study points to informed, professional development that seeks to capitalize on academics' personal interests and characteristics and assists in helping them understand how curricula and outcomes may better align to help student learning. Findings support working from a bottom-up model of change to improve the teaching and learning culture within engineering programs

A blackboard database model of the design planning process in concurrent engineering

The basis for an intelligent decision support system for design process planning within a concurrent engineering (CE) environment is the efficient utilization and coordination of planning knowledge that resides within computerized workgroups of multidisciplinary experts. A systems approach may be taken to derive, represent, and utilize the many models of reasoning that might support a human-centric view of planning in a distributed environment. The blackboard database (BB) provides a suitable framework for utilizing these models in a structured manner by representing the planning problem as a loosely coupled hierarchy of partial problems along with the knowledge needed to progressively solve different parts of this problem. This article discusses the development of such a BB system, which is intended to provide the ability to experiment with various control and domain strategies in order to yield insight into more developed and intelligent methods to assist humans in planning the CE design process

Towards a system for design planning in a concurrent engineering environment

In concurrent engineering (CE), an attempt is made to perform design activities simultaneously rather than in series as in the case of traditional design processes. The theoretical benefits of this concurrent approach are a reduction of the duration of the design project, cost savings, and better quality of the final design. Practical implementations of CE in industry indicate that successfully managing the CE design process to achieve these goals will require advanced techniques and tools. A framework for a multiagent distributed system that supports analysis, planning and scheduling in order to provide coordination and control of the design process in a CE design environment is proposed. The ultimate goal of the envisaged framework is to provide engineering management with a design process planning software application which utilizes multiagent distributed systems (MADS) integrated to other knowledge sources (agents) by means of a blackboard-based architecture

Educational design and online support for an innovative project-based course in engineering design

A new course in Engineering Design and Innovation used a project-based learning approach to facilitate learning the design process, the development of design thinking and the skills required to solve open-ended design problems. The course involved over 950 first year students, in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of New South Wales. Students were enrolled in nine schools of engineering in the faculty. A WebCT Vista course was used to support student learning in design teams and to integrate and manage the course. Online facilitation methods were used to support student learning during several phases of the design process. Online peer assessment and review processes were used to encourage reflective learning and be time-efficient for academic staff. The paper includes survey data from the first offering of the course

Automated Feature Recognition System for supporting conceptual engineering design

A computer based Feature-Recognition (FR) process is being developed to extract critical manufacturing features from engineering product CAD models. Feature-recognition technology is used for automating the extraction of data from CAD product models to minimise redundant user interaction with a product model. The feature-recognition process was developed using rule-based methods with wire-frame geometry extracted from an IGES neutral file format. Use of wire-frame models simplifies product geometry and has the potential to support rapid manufacturing shape evaluation at the conceptual design stage. The FR process is demonstrated using a range of typical metallic aerospace components

Analysing reflective text for learning analytics: An approach using anomaly recontextualisation

Reective writing is an important learning task to help foster reective practice, but even when assessed it is rarely analysed or critically reviewed due to its subjective and affective nature. We propose a process for capturing subjective and affective analytics based on the identification and recontex-tualisation of anomalous features within reective text. We evaluate 2 human supervised trials of the process, and so demonstrate the potential for an automated Anomaly Re- contextualisation process for Learning Analytics

On load paths and load bearing topology from finite element analysis

Load paths can be mapped from vector plots of 'pointing stress vectors'. They define a path along which a component of load remains constant as it traverses the solution domain. In this paper the theory for the paths is first defined. Properties of the plots that enable a designer to interpret the structural behavior from the contours are then identified. Because stress is a second order tensor defined on an orthogonal set of axes, the vector plots define separate paths for load transfer in each direction of the set of axes. An algorithm is therefore presented that combines the vectors to define a topology to carry the loads. The algorithm is shown to straighten the paths reducing bending moments and removing stress concentration. Application to a bolted joint, a racing car body and a yacht hull demonstrate the usefulness of the plots