Developing engineering students' research and technology assessment abilities

This article describes research done among M. Eng. students in several faculties of the Eindhoven University of Technology into their abilities to integrate nontechnical (social) elements in the research that led to their M. Eng. theses. It was found that these students often lacked research skills (the abilities to define the research problem, to comment upon research methodology, to reflect upon research outcomes). As a result, they also tended to neglect social factors relevant to their engineering research.Recommendations to improve this situation are formulated for the curriculum of engineering education programmes.     

浅析工程造价管理中的按实结算

本文以基础土方工程为例,对工程造价管理中的按实结算问题全面系统地进行了分析。     

制药工程实践教学现状与探索

项目化实践教学[1]是当代高校根据新的时代背景为制药工程专业实践教学做出的探索。文章总结了当前制药工程专业实践教学模式引导的人才培养模式所存在的问题,并阐述了"项目化"实践教学体系这一改革方案,探索了项目内容选择及开展时间等问题,为制药工程专业实践教学的改革提供了一种新思路。     

Using MBTI for the success assessment of engineering teams in project-based learning

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a teaching and learning methodology that emphasizes student centered instruction by assigning projects. The students have to conduct significant projects and cope with realistic working conditions and scenarios. PBL is generally done by groups of students working together towards a common goal. Several factors play a significant role on the final success of each group. It is not only the technical aspects that have an influence on their final achievements, but also the human aspects and group dynamics. These dynamics can be studied through personality assessments, the Myers-Brigss Type Indicator (MBTI) being one of the most used and well-known methods. The MBTI is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. Although MBTI strictly speaking just only identifies a personality type of an individual, it taps into key aspects of personality and behavior in areas such as communication, problem solving, decision making, and interpersonal relations. Several studies have also related MBTI profiles with leadership styles. The MBTI also helps in understanding group dynamics, analyzing shortcomings in an individual’s style and how the style affects the group as a whole. MBTI has been widely used in Team Building, Conflict Resolutions, Communication Skills and Understanding. The purpose of this work is to study how different combinations of student profiles could explain different group dynamics and at the same time, to predict the final success in a group. Knowing more about the personality of the team members, their leadership styles and how different personalities get along or conflict with each other can be useful information for building successful PBL groups. To this purpose, the final results of eight different student groups are analyzed, studying the influence of the MBTI profiles of their members with the group success. The final results obtained in this study suggest that the leadership style associated with the profile of the student playing the role of group coordinator and the members’ profile combinations have an influence on the group’s success.     

Sustainability awareness in engineering curriculum through a proposed teaching and assessment framework

Engineers play a vital role in enabling the sustainable development of their societies. Thus, it is necessary to teach sustainability in universities, especially for engineering students, for a more sustainable future. The present work aims to measure and enhance engineering students’ awareness of sustainability by monitoring and evaluating learning and student outcomes during the last stages of an engineering curriculum and its culminating major design experience. A questionnaire to assess students’ awareness of sustainability and its tools is implemented. From this empirical study, obstacles to the awareness of sustainability through engineering education are discussed. The analysis of the results of the questionnaire implies the modification of the structure of senior projects and other capstone design courses in order to include a proposed teaching and assessment framework. This framework emphasizes students’ ability to understand and use effective sustainability tools, within the environment of their major design experience. The framework is composed of two paths. The first path concerns course design through which sustainability concepts and methods are included in several course elements. The second path addresses the assessment of the attainment of sustainability objectives by the students.

     

Investigating the feasibility of using digital representations of work for performance assessment in engineering

This paper reports on the results of a 3-year study conducted at the Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) at Edith Cowan University in collaboration with the Curriculum Council of Western Australia which concerns the potential to use digital technologies to represent the output from assessment tasks in the senior secondary course, Engineering Studies. The general aim of this study is to explore the potential of various digitally-based forms for external assessment for senior secondary courses in terms of manageability, cost, validity and reliability. The problem being addressed was the need to provide students with assessment opportunities in new courses, that are on one hand authentic, where many outcomes do not lend themselves to being assessed using pen and paper over a three hour period, while on the other hand being able to be reliably and manageably assessed by external examiners. That is, the external assessment for a course needs to accurately and reliably assess the outcomes without a huge increase in the cost of assessment. A computer managed examination was designed that consisted of a design task that was broken down into a number of timed activities. Students were paced through each activity, recording their input in the form of a portfolio. Input consisted of text, graphics through a camera, video and voice. The exam outputs were uploaded to a online repository. The students’ work was marked by external assessors using a standards based rubric that allowed the students work to be ranked though Rasch Modelling.     

Portfolio Considerations in the Valuation of Real Estate

When a real asset rises in price faster than inflation (as real estate did in the late 1970s) and rises significantly in price over an extended period (as real estate has done for the last decade and one-half), it concerns valuation and investment professionals who fear about it being over-valued. One of the reasons for such price performance may be an increase in demand due to the portfolio characteristics of the asset during the period of time in question. For real estate this means the proportion included in optimal portfolios should be significant and increasing as individual tax rates increase in an environment of increasing average tax rates.
This study uses six tax brackets (0%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) and portfolios consisting of three traditional assets (NYSE common stocks, corporate bonds and small stocks) plus three types of real estate (residential, business and farmland) to demonstrate that this is what has transpired in the real estate markets. Optimal portfolio weights are derived for each asset for after-tax portfolios. Real estate in general and residential real estate especially increased as a proportion of the optimal after-tax portfolio as individual tax rates increased. Other studies are used to demonstrate an environment of increasing average tax rates.     

湖南芷江七里桥电站导流设计与施工实践

本文结合工程实例论述了中小型电站导流设计和施工的全过程,从导流标准选择、围堰设计、防渗形式、施工实践效果等方面进行了阐述。该案例采用的施工工艺对解决防渗问题,节约经济成本有一定的参考价值。     

创业企业贷款组合风险管理研究——基于不同生命阶段的视角

投资品种的多样化与分散化是金融风险管理的核心方法,它可以有效地防范和控制各类风险。对银行业来说,将贷款分散地投放给不同行业、不同区域或处于不同生命阶段的企业,可以减少其因借款企业违约而可能遭受的损失。因此,银行在贷款投放过程中,如何进行多样化和分散化,以达到整个贷款组合收益的最大化和风险的最小化是一个决策难题。本文通过对贷款组合风险和预期收益的度量,提出针对不同生命阶段创业企业的贷款组合优化模型,并进行了相关实证研究,研究结果表明模型具有较强的适用性。     

可再生能源配额制的国外实践及相关启示

我国将出台可再生能源配额制政策,促进可再生能源大规模并网和消纳,保障可再生能源发展目标的实现。从配额制的义务主体、配额总量目标和指标分解方法、配额制运作机制等关键要素,系统分析了国外可再生能源配额制的实践和特点,全面认识配额制政策与其他可再生能源政策的关系、配额制的成本疏导机制、最终义务承担主体等。考虑我国配额制政策设计的特殊性,提出了完善我国配额制政策设计的有关建议。     

Strengthening the link between theory and practice in teaching design engineering: an empirical study on a new approach

In 2007, the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of the Delft University of Technology introduced a new bachelor program. Based on theories of learning and instruction three design principles were used to develop an approach that aims to make it easier for students to bridge the gap between theoretical design engineering courses and practical design projects. To investigate whether the new program is successful in this respect, we selected a representative combination of one course and one design project, analysed grades, sent out questionnaires and interviewed teaching staff. The unique change of all three course years at once, as opposed to sequential introduction, allowed us to establish a control group and obtain precise results. By repeating our studies 1 year later, we further enhanced the reliability of our findings. We conclude that our approach indeed strengthens the link between theory and practice, and have reason to be positive about the research method adopted. Furthermore, we identified several barriers that must be overcome for such an approach to become successful, and can now give additional recommendations for course and/or program revisions in teaching design engineering at academic level.     

The Role of Real Estate in the Portfolio Allocation Process

This study explores the role of direct real estate investment in a portfolio context incorporating the real estate imperfections of indivisible assets and no short sales. Mean-variance efficient portfolios are calculated using Treasury-bills, bond and equity indices together with cash flows and appraised values from a set of twenty-two properties having an aggregate appraised value of $336 million. Real estate diversification benefits are shown to be the greatest with smaller properties and are most advantageous at higher target levels of return. The study suggests that a 9% allocation to real estate is optimal, rather than the 20% figure suggested in other studies.     

A scientific writing pedagogy and mixed methods assessment for engineering education using open-coding and multi-dimensional scaling

Assessments of new pedagogical practices usually rely on instructor oriented surveys and questionnaires to measure student perceptions of teaching methods; however, fixed response categories in structured questionnaires might bias results. This paper demonstrates a mixed methods approach using open and multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) for a student-oriented exploratory analysis and visualization of perceptions of teaching methods. A scientific writing and research methodology course is a required course for first year PhD students in software engineering and geo-infomatics at Wuhan University, China. PhD students attending this course came from countries whose first language is not English, and from a variety of software engineering and geo-infomatics domains. The problem therefore, was to elicit un-mediated perceptions of course assignment, reduce and generalize the resulting data for interpretation. A graphical visualization of themes emerging in student responses to two open-ended questions about an assignment provided a basis for inferring student interests and needs. In this course, an assessment of a task oriented problem-solving experience was implemented through a mixed method strategy incorporating qualitative methods, exploratory data mining techniques, and cartographic visualization. The visualization shows that participating students generally perceived the exercise as challenging, helped them understand journal requirements, and develop ways to survey texts to extract information. The results also suggested that this consensus breaks down in terms of each participant’s own goals, domain, and research interests. Unstructured questions, open coding, and MDS visualization might also prove to be helpful in the process of devising and assessing other student centered pedagogies.     

Portfolio of controls in outsourcing relationships for global new product development

Due to increasing globalization and technological discontinuities, firms strive to develop new product capabilities and flexibilities by engaging in outsourcing activities and adopting modular systems. However, these strategies contain risks of opportunistic expropriation of tacit knowledge and costs related to monitoring sourcing partners who are geographically and culturally distant. This study examines the antecedents of control mechanisms through which firms manage the risks and costs associated with outsourcing relationships in global technology-intensive markets. Modularity in design is hypothesized as a moderator of model relationships because it can serve as a substitute for formal or informal controls in a “controls portfolio”.     

机电设备安装工程招标中的组合报价法

组合报价法用画有承包商的价格、时间曲线的CB图为解释获得价格、时间参数的机理。业主用单位时间价值UTV来影响承包商的组合报价。根据UTV对承包商报价方案的影响分析,建立一种计算最优报价参数的数学模型。承包商可以用这一模型来确定最优报价参数,并进行投标决策,从而可能赢得更多的承包合同。     

Exploring Portfolio Decision‐Making Processes*

Portfolio management is the set of activities that allows a firm to select, develop, and commercialize a pipeline of new products aligned with the firm's strategy that will enable it to continue to grow profitably over the long term. To appropriately manage the firm's new product portfolio, decisions must be made about which projects to fund, to what levels, at what point in time. Previous research has investigated portfolio management decisions as individually discrete decisions. Significant streams of research have investigated both project selection and project termination decisions. This research project shows, however, that portfolio decision making may be better understood if it is considered as an integrated system of processes that considers these decisions simultaneously, along with other decisions such as those to continue a project with reduced funding. Using in‐depth data from four diverse case studies, we use a grounded theory approach to develop a general model of how firms make new product portfolio decisions. According to the findings from these cases, effective portfolio decision‐making processes produce a portfolio mindset, focus effort on the right projects, and allow agile decision making across the portfolio's set of projects. Effective portfolio decision making is the result of the interaction between three types of decision‐making processes that managers use in making decisions: evidence‐, power‐, and opinion‐based. Being able to use each of these types of processes to make decisions depends upon having the data inputs that they require. Three domain‐based decision input‐generating processes (i.e., cross‐functional collaboration, practices of critical thinking, and practices of market immersion) are associated with making evidence‐based portfolio decisions. In addition, organizational politics produces the inputs that are associated with power‐based portfolio decision making, while managerial intuition is associated with opinion‐based portfolio decision making. Firm cultural factors, including trust, collective ambition, and leadership style, are associated with how these evidence‐, power‐ and opinion‐based processes are combined into an overall portfolio decision making process, and whether the firm's processes are more rational and objectively made, or more politically and intuitively made. The article presents propositions for how the decision‐making processes interact in their associations with decision‐making effectiveness.