At the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), General Education (GenEd) requirements for Bachelor Degrees include six credit hours dedicated to project work that brings students from all across the university to work in teams that resemble a professional work setting. These interprofessional student teams work with faculty and/or industry mentors on a wide range of projects. Students assume different roles in the team and are encouraged to approach the project from their own perspective and to contribute their respective discipline-specific knowledge while performing within their professional role in the team. Engineering students in these interprofessional teams are often addressing (and leading) the technical aspects of the project using engineering approaches to problem solving.

Abstract:Engineering programs across the country are increasingly offering outside-the-classroom programs and opportunities that strengthen and increase the value of an engineering education. Such opportunities support students in practicing their knowledge, further developing their ideas, better understanding contemporary world challenges, becoming more engaged with their communities, and experiencing first-hand the potential impact of engineering solutions for which they have the opportunity to participate while pursuing their undergraduate degree. Many of these activities are extracurricular or co-curricular and while engineering students look forward to participating and taking full advantage of all what is offered, demanding engineering curricula make the individual student planning of enrichment activities, and the tracking of overall student success, a project of its own.To complement and support academic and college-level enrichment program for engineering students at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), we implemented a new approach for following and recording student participation and performance in curricular and non-curricular activities that are relevant to their engineering education. We developed and implemented an automated on-line portfolio for engineering students that is personalized to each student and contains a full record of all courses, activities, and achievements throughout their undergraduate years. The IIT engineering portfolio is prepopulated with general information on curriculum requirements and enrichment programs and opportunities. As a student completes a specific requirement or participates in an enrichment activity, the individual student portfolio information is automatically updated. Each event or activity is fully described in the portfolio with relevant background information and accompanied with visual aid (photos or videos as appropriate) displaying the event and student work. Students are encouraged to further personalize their portfolios by adding all activities and projects that are relevant to their education, including those not facilitated by our institution.The IIT engineering portfolio provides students with a platform to plan, document and quantify their undergraduate experience. Students are able to track their progress, design their own academic path to graduation, and develop their own enrichment activity plan that best fits their specific interest. The engineering portfolio also assists students to prepare their resume for job interviews and, when used as a tool for interviewing, the portfolio highlights tangible experiences outside what is normally found in transcripts and conventional resumes.Our approach focuses on capturing the entire breath of each student's educational experience, while setting the foundation for students to build an open-ended self-guided career plan that draws from their skills, experiences, and achievements that comprise their engineering portfolio.Page 26.4.3 3 A key feature of our portfolio project for engineering students ...

No abstract

The benefits to students who engage in undergraduate engineering research are significant. Not only can students apply and extend knowledge they have learned in the classroom, they have an opportunity to engage in creative, abstract and critical thinking that leads to concrete, handson engineering applications. However, in many engineering programs, the current demand for undergraduate research exceeds available resources. As a result, many engineering students are precluded from participating in research during their undergraduate studies. Furthermore, most students enter research labs without the tools and background to hit the ground running. In this paper, we describe an inquiry-based engineering methods course designed to engage junior and senior level engineering students in structured, self-directed research at our university. This course is intended to stimulate creative engineering thinking in students while leading them through the process of conceptualizing and performing hands-on engineering research in a classroom setting. The course is open to all engineering undergraduate students and it is aimed at the development of student research skills and student preparation to perform mentored undergraduate research, therefore setting the stage for a more competitive and successful path to postgraduate studies or R&D industry career. In addition, this course helps close the gap between student demand for an undergraduate research experience and the often limited number of faculty-mentored research projects available to undergraduate students in engineering.