Engineering Education Research Aids Instruction

摘要

Discipline-based education research seeks to marry deep knowledge of the discipline with similarly deep knowledge of learning and pedagogy (1, 2) and may encourage college and university faculty members to bring more rigor to classroom instruction. For example, the physics-based education research community has used tools such as the Force Concept Inventory (3) to determine that students taught with interactive teaching techniques developed from discipline-based education research [such as Peer Instruction (4,5)] better understand the concepts of Newtonian physics than do students taught in a lecturebased format. Within the engineering community, the ultimate aims of such research include the creation of education programs that attract more, and more diverse, students to the study of engineering; retain more of the students who are enrolled; deepen students' understanding of engineering concepts; broaden students' appreciation of engineering's role in meeting the needs of a global society; and better prepare students for further study or professional practice.