×
INTELLIGENT WORK FORUMS
FOR ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS

Log In

Come Join Us!

Are you an
Engineering professional?
Join Eng-Tips Forums!
  • Talk With Other Members
  • Be Notified Of Responses
    To Your Posts
  • Keyword Search
  • One-Click Access To Your
    Favorite Forums
  • Automated Signatures
    On Your Posts
  • Best Of All, It's Free!
  • Students Click Here

*Eng-Tips's functionality depends on members receiving e-mail. By joining you are opting in to receive e-mail.

Posting Guidelines

Promoting, selling, recruiting, coursework and thesis posting is forbidden.

Students Click Here

Jobs

Engineering Education in the IT age

Engineering Education in the IT age

Engineering Education in the IT age

(OP)
I want to know the opinions of other people about the change of Engineering Education in the IT age.  I think that there is a major change has been done in the way we teach and learn engineering in the last ten years.  The existence of the Internet made an important role in the modification of the way we teach.
I want your comments on that.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

nades, as I have been out of college for more than 10 yrs, I don't know what they do now days, but, and this opinion has been reinforced by participation in these boards, I just don't see how you can beat fundamentals, at least in a Bach degree.

Regards,

Mike

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

A related phenomenon: distance learning.

I got my MSEE from Georgia Tech through a distance learning program in 1996-2000.  

I never sat foot on campus, but watched the lectures by video and did the same homework, projects, and took the same exams (proctored locally).

There's a lot of coordination involved in that effort, and email helped make it mcuh more manageable.

I can contract that to my BSEE degree taken approx 13 years before 1983-1987.

It seems there was a much bigger emphasis on numerical solutions (computer simulations, finite element etc) in my second degree in the 1990's than I got when studying in the 80's.  Maybe that's a trend?  

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Pete, you did your Masters 100% distance learning? I thought an accredited degree required at least some time on campus?

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

(OP)
What I meant that the use of computers in teaching, in addition to the use of the internet and the email, helped to facilitate the communication between students and professors.  The use of Engineering Software has made also a compulsory change in the teaching process.  Students are asked to do more analysis, but not more calculations.  The use of Computer Software helped students to gain experience in much shorter time when we learned engineering without computers.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Quote:

The use of Computer Software helped students to gain experience in much shorter time when we learned engineering without computers.

Don't understand.  You cannot gain experience in isolation.  You can become familiar with contemporary software products (I recall a pretty neat 6502 assembler in my student days) but you can't assume that today's students are learning tomorrow's tools.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

(OP)
Dear SomptingGuy,  I ment that you can solve 10 problems using the same time that we used to solve one problems. Therefore they can gain experience in a shorter time.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Hmm, you can run analyses quicker perhaps, but understanding the results still takes the same amount of time and experience.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

(OP)
yes SomtingGuy.  But I think that solving 100x100 simultaniuos equations cannot be done in few minutes as may the student do now.  I do not mean that the student will become better than his tutor; but, 20 years ago, if you compare yourself with the amount of time you need to solve a big problem, with the time you need today to solve the same problem, you will for sure agree that students today have better chances to learn faster.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

... they have more ability to try out the formidable matrix algebra that appears in course notes. (Ax=B, where both A and B are huge and scary).  But learning faster, no.  Doing coursework faster, yes.  I hated writing all those elimination routines in FORTRAN (full pivoting etc) and I'm glad today's students can access canned solutions in (free to students) commercial codes.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

A question:

Do students today lose the deeper subject understanding gained by traditional methods due to a reliance on software which can do lots of calculations quickly but hide the working from the user?

A toughy, and in my opinion knowing the fundamentals is more important than being able to do lots of numerical solutions quickly.  If you dont know the fundamentals how do you check the output.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

sms-

There are a lot of 100% distance programs these days, both bachelors and masters.  The field has expanded substantially in the last 3-4 years.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

As an Advisory Board member of an engineering school, I do see that IT has made significant changes to education.  I think educators are concerned that analysis programs make it more difficult for students to get a feel for what the right answer to a problem shold be.  Kind of like the supermarket checker who wants whatever the register says to ask for, regardless of if you are being charged $10 for a candy bar.  You still need to crank thru some problems by hand to understand where you are heading.
Research and online collaboration are much easier now than in the dinosaur days when I was a student.  The schools are understanding the importance of turning out a grad that has the ability not only to design the bridge, but explain it to a client, a regulator, the public.
With all the basics that a civil engineer needs these days, it is extremely difficult to cram it into 4 years.  You need an advanced degree to obtain education in your specialization.
IT has given students more to learn, not less.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

greenone-

"IT has given students more to learn, not less."

Star for you.  It comes down to how IT is worked into the curriculum.  I think it would be best for course to steer clear of all analysis packages and other software aids until the fundamental concepts have been taught and understood.

It took me several semesters of college calculus to undo the damage done to my maths skills in high school by me TI-89 calculator!  And I am still recovering from the damage that Mathematica did to my understanding of diffential equations.  

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Speaking as a Luddite I'd ban computers both from schools and most undergraduate courses.

Unless you can perform a given analysis by hand (or at least a good approximation to it) then you should not be using a computer to do it.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Quote:

Do students today lose the deeper subject understanding gained by traditional methods due to a reliance on software which can do lots of calculations quickly but hide the working from the user?

Absolutely they do.  I've seen the degradation in engineers I've worked with since 1980 to today. I use computers all the time so I'm not all that enamoured with hand calculations but I have to say that I think the education that engineers get via work experience is definitely stunted by the computer.  

When you do anything by hand - sketch, draw, calculate, there is a sort of mental intimacy that occurs with what you are doing and you have to understand everything you calculate.  

If you hand a young engineer a spreadsheet or other program that does the calcs in shorter time, they absolutely do not develop a deep understanding of the nuances of the code, calcs or design process.

The computer speed can help you get a quicker feel for the effect various parameters have on an analysis or design - but you don't learn the guts of what you are actually calculating any faster.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

nades,

I don't think the human species has changed much in 10 years. The way people learn 30 years ago is still pretty much the same as people do today. Evolution takes time.

Computers are great. I am all for them. They are a tool. They are not a god. Just because you use computers now in school does not mean that you are getting a better education than someone 30 years ago before most universities had computers.

Or put it another way. Having a computer will not make you into an Einstein or Da Vinci.

Yes, you can crunch problems much faster with a computer than without. Have you thought about the possibility that if you had to do it by hand, you would be more likely to find shortcuts and approximations? Just a thought.

Unlike some of my peers, I am not a Luddite or Amish. I think technology is wonderful. I don't think technology is the holy grail. A tool in the hand of a master is great. A tool in the hand of an apprentice sometimes don't work.

I graduated many years ago. I recently took a course, and yes, the computer was of great help. Actually, the PDF files are of a great help (the weight of my bag is greatly reduced). The instructor was half my age, as were most of the other students. However, as far as I can tell, I still learned the same way I did 30 years ago. And, as far as I can tell, so did all the other people in the class. The learning was the same. The packaging was definitely different.

Different? Yes. Better? Pretty much a wash.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."   
Albert Einstein
Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Freshmen should have to do everything with slide rules.  Sophomores should be allowed to use punch cards to do their programming.  Juniors should be allowed to progress to time-share terminals, and then as Seniors they could be allowed to use personal computers.

I was too late for the slide rules, but wish I'd learned how to use one.  I graded papers, statics and circuits, and saw way too many examples of work by students who didn't have enough understanding of the problem to actually solve it and know if they had a reasonable result, an analysis that the slide rule would have forced.  I also saw too much reliance on "if the calculator shows it, it must be right".  The answer in the back of the book isn't always correct and more than once I saw problems where if the student would have merely written the result of the final calculation they wrote on the paper they would have correctly solved the problem, but instead they wrote down the answer from the back of the book.

Punch cards required much greater thought and analysis of the programming problem than is necessary when the program editor points out all the syntax errors as you create them.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

"Or put it another way. Having a computer will not make you into an Einstein or Da Vinci."

Especially since neither Einstein or Da Vinci had a high powered lap top computer in their study.

Hmmm... an interesting thought experiment... if Einstein or Da Vinci had a laptop loaded with some modern engineering tools would they have accomplished something even grander, or would it have sapped all the imagination and creativity out of them.

I suppose it could go either way....

-The future's so bright I gotta wear shades!

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

I can often calculate by hand quicker than I can set up an analysis. If you only learn how to do your calculations by computers than you are stuck with them, if you have learnt how to do the hand calculations you eventually learn shortcuts to these and can do preliminary designs much quicker.

You cant say in the middle of a meeting that you need 20 minutes to load up your laptop and input the data, if you can do back of envelope calculations to estimate sizes then this makes you much more efficient.

Computers also make things more complicated as you often have to put every load case in and model things exactly. If you do the same thing by hand you can often instinctively pick the worst case for each member as you design it.

I have intentionally focused on the negative, but I agree there are many positives.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

As a college instructor, I see too much reliance on computing devices. GIGO, people! That seems to be the root of the problem. I agree with the other posters above who have said that many students don't develop understanding of the problems assigned. Additionally, many students don't really understand what they're doing with regards to the calculator/computer. They often use the tool improperly, as was also noted above.

For example, a popular electric circuits textbook uses radians for the frequency argument and degrees for the phase shift argument in sinusoids. I still laugh when I think of the student who entered the data provided into his calculator without reconciling to a consistent system of units! His graph looked nothing like the picture in the book. I wonder why?

I appreciate the use of computers in engineering for system modeling, tedious calculations, their graphical output capabilities, and for iterative analyses - and so do my students. It will be difficult to function in the workplace without computer literacy.

I will not let my students become dependent on them, however. I remind them that there really is only one brain behind the solution to the problem - their own - and that they have to understand what they're doing, the limitations that are inherent in the tools and techniques they are using, and the concepts they are applying.

xnuke
"Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life." Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Just like we don't give first graders calculators to do arithmetic, computers should be banned from colleges until students have learned the fundamental engineering principles.  Sounds extreme but really its how I feel.

If engineers can't perform their work in the absence of computer programs or calculators, they are not truly engineers.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Do I detect a trend? :)

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

I imagine so.

Having said that there are certainly programs around that would increase the rate of understanding of problems.

If you have ever seen the demo version of Working Model 2D it could reinforce and expand the book-learning of a dynamics student much faster than a lab can, although the lab is still compulsory.

http://www.design-simulation.com/WM2D/versiondiff.php

I use an equivalent 3D program to this all the time - I am very cynical about the 'canned' models, but building a mechanism up from basics is very eductaional.

But as an engineer you still need to understand spring/mass/damper systems, you still need to be able to write the equations down, playing with virtual Erector sets is fine for learning but hard to justify to a client. (Well, sometimes I get jobs like that!).

Similarly - who has learned more about structures - the one that has handsolved a uniformly loaded beam on 3 pinned supports, or someone who loads the geomerty into an FEA program and hits the 'solve' button?



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Steve - Yes, I got my MSEE 100% off-campus.  Degree requirements are the same as an on-campus students.

As far as ABET accredidation,  I am pretty sure that it does not apply to graduate engineering programs, only undergraduate engineering programs.  The relevant question to ask of a graduate school is whether their undergrad program in the same area is accredited. (Georgia Tech has an accredited undergrad engineering program.)

http://www.cdl.gatech.edu/dl/servlet/DLHome
Under news:
"According to U. S. News & World Report Georgia Tech's Graduate School of Engineering is ranked 4th in the nation. Our online degree programs the best and largest in the USA, and we are the number one public institution in engineering research."

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

electripete is correct about accreditation, only the undergraduate programs are ABET accredited.  University of Idaho also offers a Masters program without any on-campus classes.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

There's nothing wrong with computers in college.

It's how their use is encouraged.

I would encourage students to exploit to the maximum extent practicable the computer for writing papers.

As far as engineering goes, though, teachers should only accept hand-written homework, tests, and lab notes (I'd require type-written lab reports later on, though).

There's no need to learn, for example, structural analysis software packages in college as a) they should take about a week to learn, and b) they're used for analysis of problems that cannot be solved by hand in a timely manner. I mean, would you assign a full building structural frame problem for homework? No. Just give 'em a 2d problem that can be solved, at most, in a couple of hours. Same goes especially for trusses.

Over-emphasizing computers in engineering school will only breed generations of appliance users. If they want the answers, let 'em go to the library and read a bunch more books.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Good Point DVPE,

Every new job I interview for they ask me can you use 'X' software package. Once you take that week to get used to the first one you can pick up most of the others and use them within a couple of hours.

Do you think accountants get taught how to use accounting software in their degrees?

Learning how to program spreadsheets e.t.c. is a valuable tool that may save you hours of iterative work, but there is no need to teach proprietary packages.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

I agree that you can only learn the foundation concepts of a field by working through the hand calculations.  There is a problem in EE high tech fields though where familiarity with tools is considered a job requirement.  This puts the student in the tough position of deciding between learning the course concepts or learning the tool to get the lab done.  Most tool companies also push their wares to the universities and I would argue that those tools are overkill for undergraduate in most cases.  If I was given the choice an undergraduate degree would look like:
Year 1:  All hand calculations and theory.  Only physical labs.
Year 2:  Add Programming language like C and Matlab.
Year 3:  Same.
Year 4:  Intoduce students to commercial packages in specific course (i.e. Cadence in a transistor level design course)

Graduate:  Appropriate at this level to use commercial packages for design.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Hi there:

I would like to add that basic engineering needs to be taught in the same fashion as it has been for many years and hand calculations need to be done by hand so the people can get the feeling for the basic engineering laws, trends and numbers.

Once basic engineering knowledge is acquired, then computer tools and IT can help speed up the rest of the engineering basic course work.

In summary, basics stay basics and there should be a good mix and careful introduction of the computer tools in the engineering learing process.

Otherwise, people coming out from engineering schools will end up relying too much on computer tools and IT technology without knowing what to expect and what the outcome is.

Software is nice, but there are lots of bugs that need to be taken care of and validations done before one can trust the output numbers for the given input values.

Thanks,     

Gordan Feric, PE
Engineering Software
http://members.aol.com/engware

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

I'm fresh from school.  I used a computer model in one class for one project (EPAnet); we solved similar problems on paper first.  We would have to write our own VB programs, or MathCAD, or Excel in order to solve problems.  For the way I think, I have to write everything on paper first, then use the computer as a tool to solve it.

You almost have to have a better understanding of how to solve problems to use a computer tool to solve it (as long as it isn't a program someone else created) because it will never work right the first time, and you have to find your mistake (figuring out which cell on a spreadsheet is wrong can be more difficult than finding a mistake on paper.)

From what I could tell, not much has changed in what we learn.  I think the dependence on computer models must come after school, though I haven't used any programs other than Excel and AutoCAD.  (I learned drafting by hand in high school, so I wouldn't say I'm totally dependent on AutoCAD.)


RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

I think a lot of how computers are incorporated into the curriculum has to do with the professors. I had some professors that wanted everything done in Excel or MatLAB, while others, even through upper level senior courses, would not accept anything that was hand calculated. At the time it was horrible trying to do structural analysis by hand (I still have nightmares about one particular direct stiffness method test on a frame with 8 members), but after it was said and done I knew how the process worked, not just how to build a model in an analysis program. Analysis software packages were not even inrtoduced to us until our senior year, which I feel is the best way to do it. Before junior and senior year you don't know enough to know if your answer is even practical, let alone correct.

Computers can be great resources as long as they are taught to be used as resources and not as a crutch.

Cheers,
Kat

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

sms-
It is my understanding that a school can have EITHER a B.S. program accredited OR a M.S. program, but not both.  I don't know of too many schools who have an accredited M.S. as that would mean the B.S. can't be accredited.
Please correct me if this is inaccurate.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Well, it's certainly not true in the UK.  My university offered BEng, MEng, MPhil & PHD in various types of engineering.

I graduated at the end of the 90s.  While we were introduced to them we didn't do any actual FEA or CFD work as part of the main course, I think people doing certain projects etc may have but it would have been the minority.

We did have 2 computing modules learning C.  We used computers in various labs but mostly as a back up to hand methods.  The once exception was our brief drawing class which was all CAD, if Autosketch counts as CAD!

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

KENAT-
I didn't mean that a school can't have a B.S. and a M.S. program (most do).  I am pretty certain, however, that only one of the programs can be accredited by ABET.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Structural,
Not my alma mater.
You can get your bachelor's as credit towards PEng or you can receive your undergraduate in Chemistry, Physics, etc. and go for your master's in engineering and also receive credit towards your PEng.
It was funny watching the BSc majors in my master's courses struggle with the jargon/lingo used by the rest of us....

Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day, from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

GrimesFrank-
I am not talking about counting as time toward the PE (that is a licensure issue taken up by individual states).  I am talking about ABET accreditation.  Typically, ABET does not accredit a graduate program unless the school has no undergraduate program.  The undergraduate ABET accredited program is the only one that matters in terms of licensure (in most, if not all, states).  
I have never seen any requirement for a graduate program to be accredited to count as time toward the PE.
That being said, my initial response to sms asking if you have to be "on campus" at least some time to get an "accredited" graduate degree was that most graduate programs are not ABET accredited anyway.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

StructuralEIT, I made it clear in my post I was talking UK.  The accreditation process is different there.  All the courses were accredited.  

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

Structural,
I don't know of your juridiction but in mine you have to have recevieved a degree from an ABET accredited institute in order to qualify for licensure.....or prove a long long history of industrial experience citing specific use of material taught in a ABET accredited program. (Not recommended)

Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day, from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

GrimesFrank-
Only your undergrad degree has to be ABET accredited.  A graduate degree does not have to be ABET accredited.  

RE: Engineering Education in the IT age

I'll give an example where the the software vendors add to the problem.  They advertise their program will simulate any ChemE type process.  The young engineer convinces management to get the program because it is so accurate.  The kid racks up up money on the help line to get the answers that he should know.  Within a year the kid is no smarter and the company poorer.  

I gave the kid a problem one time that could not be solved by just brute computers, it took some some understanding of the problem and interpertation of the unsolved results of the program.  This time the help desk told him to set the iterations to 10000 and go to lunch.  1 hour later no results.  Oh, well he was a rising star in the company because he had done so well in the past, I let him alone, he'll cost the company a bundle someday, it's the only way he and his boss will learn.....

Red Flag This Post

Please let us know here why this post is inappropriate. Reasons such as off-topic, duplicates, flames, illegal, vulgar, or students posting their homework.

Red Flag Submitted

Thank you for helping keep Eng-Tips Forums free from inappropriate posts.
The Eng-Tips staff will check this out and take appropriate action.

Reply To This Thread

Posting in the Eng-Tips forums is a member-only feature.

Click Here to join Eng-Tips and talk with other members!


Resources