A Collaborative Model of Engineering Education for Complex Global Environments

Qiu, R.G.
Nanjing Univ. of Aeronaut. & Astronaut., Nanjing, China

This paper appears in: Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2010 IEEE
Issue Date: 27-30 Oct. 2010
On page(s): S3J-1 - S3J-5
Location: Washington, DC
ISSN: 0190-5848
E-ISBN: 978-1-4244-6260-5
Print ISBN: 978-1-4244-6261-2
INSPEC Accession Number: 11705015
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/FIE.2010.5673356
Date of Current Version: 23 December 2010

Abstract

Although team-based projects have become a popular practice in colleges with focus on helping students learn subjects collaboratively and effectively, the current education paradigm mainly adopts ad hoc collaboration practices. There lacks a quantitative methodology for enabling appropriate and scientific approaches to guide the educational community in teaching and transforming educational practices to support the development, implementation, and improvement of state-of-the-art collaborative-learning practices on campuses. This paper presents a new computational model and framework to quantitatively explore the collaboration-based behavioral dynamics of student teams and its impact on team performance. More specifically, a suite of mathematical models in the form of computations, structural equation modeling, and principal component analysis are created to describe and analyze a variety of learning circumstances, aimed at generating rules of thumb to guide student teams to retune collaborative practices in a proactive and realtime manner for improved performance.

1226.pdf (application/pdf Object)