Teaching And Assessing Engineering Design: A Review Of The Research
According to the National Academy of Sciences (1995), undergraduate engineering education in the United States currently focuses on the study of engineering science at the expense of design. In a brief history of engineering design education, Eder (1991) explains that in the 1950s the engineering curricula shifted from a focus on teaching students about technology used in industry to an emphasis on engineering science including math, physics, and chemistry. He contends that faculty began to become more research-oriented and institutions of higher education placed less value on industry experience among faculty at roughly the same time. Eder argues that these factors contributed to the recent lack of emphasis on design skills and abilities in engineering curricula. He attributes renewed attention to design in curricula to a 1985 National Science Foundation initiative that resulted in funding to improve undergraduate engineering design education.