CEE New Millennium Colloquium
March 20-21, 2000
Wong Auditorium, Tang Center, MIT Building E51
The New Engineering and Science Education
Past Present in the MIT-CEE Curriculum
Future
HERBERT H. EINSTEIN
MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
1. Introduction
In 1989, the concept of a New Engineering and Science Education was formulated by this writer based on discussion with Frank McClintock (Professor of Mechanical Engineering). This paper will briefly review the concept and examine which, if any, immediate effect it had. It will then trace its interaction with similar educational and professional endeavors which, through multiple feedback, eventually led to the formulation and implementation of the new Civil Engineering (1-C) Curriculum at MIT. At this stage, i.e. ten years later and after some testing and modifications, it is both possible and challenging to look into the future and discuss where the concept may lead us.
2. The 1989 New Engineering and Science Education and its Effects
2.1 Overview
The proposal for the New Engineering and Science Education consisted of the four parts: problem, objective, concept and approach which are briefly reviewed below. The parts directly cited from the 1989 document are written in cursive.
Problem:
The present engineering and science education is inadequate and this inadequacy is increasing strongly:
Objective:
Educate a society in which science and engineering is truly integrated. Do this by:
Specifically, we need to educate engineers (architects, planners) and scientists (social, natural) who can truly communicate with each other and benefit from each other's knowledge. We have to give them the humanistic basis and breadth of thinking enabling them to similarly communicate with and benefit from interaction with society as a whole. We have to make certain that this interaction and mutual use of knowledge continues throughout their professional careers. We have to make it possible that technical and scientific knowledge is continually updated and incorporated. Most importantly, we have to expand our contribution to education to the entire society by directly influencing primary and secondary education.
Concept:
Approach:
A knowledge module based process was proposed.
Knowledge can be captured and presented in form of knowledge (information) modules (Figure 1). A knowledge module describes the performance of a particular physical or social system. Modules contain links for interacting with other knowledge modules. Modules can be combined to build more complex systems.
Each module consists of several levels of knowledge (Figure 1a). The uppermost level can be understood by everybody; the deepest level represents cutting edge research. When combining several modules to build more complex systems, this can be done at any of the levels (Figure 1.b).
Knowledge modules are continually updated by research on the deepest levels and by reflecting this new knowledge to the upper levels (Figure 1a). Similarly, they are also updated by feedback from practical application (Figure 1c).
The approach with multilevel knowledge modules and their incorporation in increasingly larger systems is meant to make use of the analogous structure of computer based information systems. However, the approach does not have to rely on a large computer system. It can and has to also be used with other information modes such as verbal explanation, textbooks and visual aids. Preferably an optimum combination of different information modes will be used.
The implementation and use of this approach is described in more detail in Einstein (1989).
2.2 Impact and Interaction with other Educational and Professional Endeavors
The problem statement made in 2.1 above was in one way or the other expressed by many people at that time and also much earlier (C.P. Snow, 1959, 1964). Unfortunately, one might say that some of the problems still exist. Nevertheless, given that many people realized something needed to be done, a number of major efforts were started around that time. This writer participated in two of these; they will now be described:
Design Education ECSEL
The National Science Foundation took the lead in reforming engineering education through the creation of so-called "Coalitions". ECSEL (Engineering Coalition of Schools for Excellence in Education and Leadership) which involves seven universities; (CCNY, Howard University, MIT, Morgan State, Penn State, University of Maryland and University of Washington), was one of the coalitions funded in the first round starting in 1990. The central theme of ECSEL was and still is to enhance engineering education through the integration of design. Design, which will be discussed in more detail in Section 3, was chosen as a central theme because it directly addresses some of the aforementioned problems: Design is inherently a synthesizing process. It has to end up with a practically relevant product and thus bridges the gap between education and practice. It often involves hands-on work by students and, in many cases, teamwork with concurrently undertaken tasks. Hence, ECSEL emphasized during its first five years the development of freshman design subjects and in its second five years, integration of design throughout the curriculum. At MIT, given that the Freshman year is largely devoted to Institute requirements, and given the existing upper class design education, particularly in Mechanical Engineering, this sequence was reversed. The design education in years 3 and 4 was strengthened in several courses during the first ECSEL period (1990-95). Since 1996, several Freshman Design subjects (16.00, Introduction to Aerospace Design; 2.670 Mechanical Engineering Tools; Freshman Seminar: Design for Developing Countries ) were introduced. ECSEL overall and at MIT also used design as a means to connect with practice and in outreach (K-12/14).
ECSEL is coming to an end this year. A concluding workshop was held on April 30/May 1, 1999. The main conclusions (Bucciarelli, et al., 2000) indicate that all ECSEL universities have changed. Design plays an important part in engineering education and so does the related teamwork. Most importantly, the participating universities have "bought in" and the educational reform has taken hold. This does not mean that not much more needs to be done.
Interdisciplinary Work in an Engineering Firm
The engineering firm, E. Basler & Partner in Zollikon, Switzerland, since its beginnings was involved in problems which reached beyond traditional civil engineering. As a consequence, it always was at the forefront of having non-civil engineers such as natural and social scientists amongst its workforce. In the mid-nineties, the firm became aware of the fact that having such specialists acting as internal consultants was not satisfactory. A review of the internal structure indicated that not only the interaction between non-civil engineering and civil engineering specialists but also interaction in general required some rethinking.
The rethinking process which involved retreats, additional internal discussions and a task group which conducted systematic interviews led to the assessment of the present (at that time) state of interdisciplinary work in general and at the firm in particular. In this context, the development of interdisciplinary work from mono-disciplinary (one discipline can solve the entire problem) to multidisciplinary (many disciplines are needed to solve problem but the disciplines can arrive independently at their solution) to interdisciplinary (many disciplines are needed to solve the problem and they can only do this through intensive interaction during the solution process) was traced. It was shown, and this is not surprising, that some engineering work can and always will be done in a mono-disciplinary mode. It was also quite evident that the interdisciplinary mode will be used in many more projects than in the past and will involve more complex problems than in the past. Hence, E. Basler & Partners initiated a major follow-up effort by informing all of its collaborators about the character of interdisciplinary work emphasizing that communication, teamwork, and an adequate organizational structure are essential.
In assessing these two important examples, I would like to stress that although I played a role in both, they would have taken place without the formulated concept of the New Engineering and Science Education. It is interesting to see, however, that the necessity to synthesize, to communicate, to work in teams, to cooperate beyond technical disciplines, to strongly relate practice and education, which were mentioned as problems and as issues to be addressed in the concept, were dealt with, both in ECSEL and E. Basler & Partners.
3. The New Civil Engineering (1-C) Curriculum at MIT
3.1 Preliminary Phase
In the early 90's, several CEE faculty members shared the opinion that the Civil Engineering curriculum or at least parts of it, were not satisfactory. Most of these people were active in the ECSEL effort, and with ECSEL funding had redesigned subjects, developed modules or devised integrating processes. Regular discussions of a group of "design faculty" were held which also included people from architecture. An outgrowth of this was the creation of an integrating capping subject (S.S. Sunder, K. Kruckemeyer), the complete modification of the undergraduate soil mechanics subject (1.30) into a design oriented subject (R. V. Whitman), the "modern design studio" (J. Williams) as well as some IT based educational modules and tutors (H. H. Einstein). The new 1.30, within the context of ECSEL was taken over by the University of Maryland. The "modern design studio" was intended to bring back the old "drafting room atmosphere" with people spending lots of time discussing their work but with modern tools available.
The success of this initial phase was mixed. The capping subject suffered the fate of many previous capping subjects (Ehrmann, 1978; Bush, 1998); it works well only as long as it is taught by teachers who are convinced of its value. The concept of the modern design studio actually was a success but mostly in the Department of Architecture.
Most important, however, was that all of these activities worked as seeds for the major curriculum revision in Civil Engineering
3.2 The Curriculum Revision
During the academic year 95/96, S. Bush, in the context of her M.Sc. thesis (Bush, 1998), collected information on all Civil Engineering undergraduate subjects, interviewed the faculty and many students. She also had access to the evaluations done by B. Masi, the ECSEL-MIT evaluator. The major curriculum problems were a lack of coordination amongst subjects and the fact that no undergraduate design experience existed any more. This information and the "concept" of the New Engineering and Science Education, together with three proposals for changing the curriculum, were discussed by the Department faculty during the years 1996/97. Of the three proposals, the first one only introduced minor changes, specifically, the re-creation of the capping subject. The second and third proposals introduced design (synthesis), coordination and communication as major features. The third and most radical proposal would have essentially eliminated traditional subjects in favor of a design studio sequence (see Figure 2).
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An example project sequence might be as follows:
Steel Truss Bridge |
Geotechnical Design Studio Retaining Structure |
Sophomore Year
| Fall | Structural Design Studio 1 (24 units, 3 of which LAB) |
| Spring | Geotechnical Design Studio 1 (24 units, 3 of which LAB) |
Junior Year
| Fall | Structural Design Studio 2 (24 units, 3 of which LAB) |
| Spring | Geotechnical Design Studio 2 (24 units, 3 of which LAB) |
Senior Year
| Fall | Construction/Operation of Specialty Project (24 units) |
| Spring | Combined Project (24 units) |
Figure 2. Proposed Design Studio Sequence (As proposed in 1997, it included only structural and geotechnical design; the principle could be expanded to engineering systems.)
The second alternative which after fine tuning was chosen and which is illustrated in Figure 3 has the following main features:
Figure 3. The New 1-C Curriculum
Through the new curriculum, we are hoping to eliminate the major weaknesses of the past engineering education as listed in Figure 4. Figure 4 also indicates that many of these weaknesses can be eliminated by exposing students to design. The new curriculum is being implemented, and the class of 2001 will be the first one having completely followed it.
While improving our education is the objective of the new curriculum, something equally important happened during its development. As indicated before, the curriculum evolved from an extensive discussion involving all faculty. In addition, 12 subjects were either completely revised or newly developed. This also happened through group work involving the teacher(s) responsible for the subject as well as those providing the prerequisites and vice versa. In other words, we went through the process of "understanding the problem - conceptualizing and brainstorming preliminary design prototyping - final product performance monitoring", i.e. we practiced design in our curriculum development. Not only did this happen but it happened through teamwork. A major change!!
4. The Future
The new 1-C curriculum is only one example of many similar efforts at MIT and elsewhere. Hence, we can say:
Many of the things which the New Engineering and Science Education intended to do have been and are being implemented. On the other hand, one can also say that there is still quite a way to go if one looks at the concept and objectives formulated in 1989; in addition, new challenges and possibilities appear.
Much of what is not satisfactory in engineering education can be changed by learning of design.
| Students cannot conceptualize and formulate problems | --> Design |
| Not much exposure to ill defined (open-ended) problems | --> Design |
| Infrequent and often ineffective teamwork | --> Design |
| Basics not coherently integrated in follow-on course | |
| Societal context often missing | --> Design |
| Emphasis on abstraction and analysis not much emphasis on synthesis and creativity | --> Design |
| No comprehensive communication | (--> Design) |
Figure 4. Improvement of Learning through Design
When discussing linked knowledge modules (Figure 1) it was mentioned that the structure is well suited for implementation through IT (Information Technology) but does not require it. Advances in IT, notably, in visualization and simulation, have, however, made its use in this context much more attractive and, most importantly, easier to implement. With IT it is thus possible, for instance within a project, to concurrently link activities of different specialists. An example is the architect who, when designing space and enclosures, sets the boundary conditions for the structural engineer, for the HVAC engineer and others. The boundary conditions are continually updated as the design progresses. The same interactions occur in the opposite direction between engineers and architects. Through IT links, it is possible to keep all design partners continually updated. Some major civil engineering projects have already made substantial progress in this direction. Such IT based interaction during design can include simulation of construction, thus reducing another civil engineering problem, the often encountered neglect of constructibility.
This leads to the new vision the New Master Builder.
The Master Builder of the past was a single male who taught his apprentices by having them actively participate in building a physical structure, where building involved design and construction but not much analysis.
Facilitated by IT, the new Master Builder will emerge: There will be computer simulation of the entire design -, construction - and operation process and this at any desired level of detail. Many different designs can be created quickly and their simulated performance can be used to improve the project in practice and to learn in education. Teams, both in practice and education, will concurrently work on projects. Eventually, practice and education will be linked. Students will participate in practical design, first as observers and gradually as co-designers. Practitioners, in turn, will serve as teachers but also benefit from new ideas and new research results, once the research system is also linked. All this will not be restricted to the simulated processes but it can include reality through different links to physical experiments in the laboratory, to construction and to operation. While the complexity of this multi-dimensional education practice research structure seems to be formidable, one has to remember that it can function at different levels (see Figure 1). Much of this has already begun. Remote interaction on student projects involving worldwide discussions, project presentations and critiques have taken place in some architecture and civil engineering projects. We
are starting to use real time observations of a variety of sensors in buildings in education. Information technology, mainly through simulation and visualization will be a facilitator to allow humans to interact and to integrate what they do and to do this more thoroughly and more quickly. Nothing prevents us from using these aids while we actually talk person-to-person and see our joint ideas grow and become a design we evolve from the Old Master Builder with his apprentices, to the old drafting room, to the Modern Design Studio, to the New Master Builder.
5. Conclusions
The New Engineering and Science Education was and is an attempt at formulating problems and solutions in Engineering Education, Practice and Research. Progress has been made. Further major steps can be made through the use of information technology which will lead us to the New Master Builder. This Master Builder, like the old one, will be human; teams who, thanks to the new tools can more easily communicate, can learn with real life problems and can devise solutions for very complex problems.
References