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Web Resources on Curriculum Integration in Engineering Education
A Framework for Interpreting Students' Perceptions of an Integrated Curriculum by Ann McKenna, Flora McMartin, Youki Terada, Vanravi Sirivedhin, Alice Agogino Undergraduate engineering reform efforts to better integrate math, science and engineering courses have recently been conducted at the University of California at Berkeley. Since 1998, faculty from the mathematics, physics, and engineering departments at Berkeley have collaborated to restructure first year and lower division courses. Several changes were made to specific courses to improve students' integrative understanding of calculus and the physical sciences, and to emphasize applications to engineering. Various data have been collected to investigate the impact the reforms had on student learning, as well as to gain insight into students' experiences during their undergraduate engineering career. Interviews were conducted with engineering students and faculty to garner feedback about integration efforts and students perceptions of the curriculum. This paper describes the interview project and outlines the interpretive framework we established for the analysis of the interview data. Initial analysis suggests that students have difficulty understanding lower division math and physics courses because of the following reasons; 1) the pedagogical approach is inadequate for properly integrating and reinforcing the material, and 2) student perceptions and beliefs about the disciplines conflict with the goals of integration.
The University of Alabama - College of Engineering TIDE Freshman Program (Teaming, Integration, Design, Engineering) TIDE is a freshman program offered for engineering and computer science students. Students participating in TIDE will work side-by-side with other students, teaching assistants and faculty to learn five core subjects: Chemistry, Engineering, English, Mathematics, and Physics.
The University of Wisconsin Madison - College of Engineering LINKS Freshman Program
Foundation Coalition Publications
Resources on Interesting Integration Examples
Example #1: Bianconi and Barabási demonstrated that, under fairly general assumptions, the growth of scale-free networks and development of Bose-Einstein condensates are governed by the same mathematical relationships.
Publications for Further Reference
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Brazee, E.N. and Capelluti, J. (1995). Dissolving boundaries: Toward an integrative curriculum. National Middle States Association. Columbus OH.
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