MICROELECTRONIC SYSTEMS NEWS

FILENUMBER: 441 BEGIN_KEYWORDS National Engineering Education Delivery System END_KEYWORDS DATE: february 1995 TITLE: National Engineering Education Delivery System National Engineering Education Delivery System (Contributed by Jim Harris of California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo) NEEDS, the National Engineering Education Delivery System, is a project within the Synthesis Coalition (described below) exploring the infrastructure requirements necessary to enhance the educational experience of undergraduate engineers through the use of computers. NEEDS consists of three major metaproject groups: (1) the NEEDS distributed database and network group, (2) the NEEDS courseware development studio group, and the (3) NEEDS delivery system/learning environments group. In addition, a Technology Transfer organizational structure is being developed to facilitate the transfer of NEEDS technologies between and among Coalition campuses and other users of Coalition educational products. The Synthesis Coalition is a union of eight diverse institutions - California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, Cornell University, Hampton University, Iowa State University, Southern University, Stanford University, Tuskegee University, and the University of California at Berkeley - funded by the National Science Foundation to design, implement and assess new approaches to undergraduate engineering education that emphasize synthesis and teamwork. Together these institutions contribute a broad geographical diversity, a history of collaboration in education, a balance of sizes, missions, and institutional types, and a shared commitment to restructuring engineering education. In the belief that most engineering programs are overburdened with course requirements, excessive compartmentalization, and general lack of excitement and motivation, the Synthesis Coalition seeks to restructure undergraduate engineering education by developing, experimenting with and evaluating the effectiveness of a variety of innovative curricula, delivery systems, settings and pedagogies. And it is undertaking activities to improve the image of engineering as a field of study and as a profession, to attract and retain students and professionals. Using advanced supporting technologies provided by our industrial partners (IBM, DEC, Apple, and Sun Microsystems, among others), tools and curricular materials are being developed for alternate modes of instruction and access: visualization and information technologies, contextualization (relating to industrial practice, life-cycle design case studies, historical development of technology, and social forces), variable pacing (self-paced instruction with testing by modules), integration (relating material to other classes, interdisciplinary case studies and design synthesis projects), and tutoring systems to overcome deficiencies. Also, frameworks are being developed for the next generation of textbooks based on an "open architecture," which provides a skeleton to which successive instructors can add value in the form of specialized "chapters," case studies, problems, demonstrations, and software. Publishers such as John Wiley & Sons, Inc. are joining Synthesis to create the next generation of electronic teaching tools. Information on the items listed below may be obtained by accessing: WWW 1. Synthesis Projects 2. Synthesis Documents 3. Project Assessment 4. NEEDS Courseware Database Access 5. NEEDS Courseware Database Cataloging 6. Synthesis Coalition Servers 7. Synthesis Coalition Directory 8. Other NSF Engineering Education Coalitions

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