Engineering Practice in the Academic Plan: External Influences, Faculty, and their Teaching Roles

摘要

Recent calls to align engineering education with the needs of industry have focused on the development of non-technical skills for the workplace. Faculty with professional engineering experience may have some insight into how to incorporate these skills into their teaching practice. In fields that serve as gateways to the professions, prior professional experience may inform faculty teaching practice as well as faculty members' beliefs about how to teach in a manner that prepares students for the profession. Because the work of engineering faculty is situated in a complex sociocultural system, investigating how individual differences relate to the practice of teaching will uncover important insights for understanding how faculty make decisions about instructional choices. Faculty members with extensive industry experience, for example, may emphasize different topics in their classes or use a unique set of pedagogies relative to their colleagues who have worked solely in academic settings.