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(2014) Handbook of research on educational communications and technology, Dordrecht, Springer.
Our Western society depends strongly on continuous technological innovation. Engineers, the designers of the future technology need extensive competencies to face the challenge of dealing with ever increasing complexity. In some areas more than half the knowledge they learn in University is obsolete by the time the enter practice. Recognition of these issues has recently resulted in worldwide increase of attention for innovation of engineering education. This chapter presents a brief outline of the traditions in higher engineering education culminating in the stage of research and development in the last century. Next, the recent revival of engineering education research is described, contrasting the developments in the USA with Europe and the rest of the world. The efforts in the USA appear to follow Boyer's concept scholarship of teaching, and aim for the establishment of engineering education research as a discipline in its own right. The trend in Europe is to build on the experiences with social sciences research in higher education, aiming to involve practitioners in research in their own fields. At the end of the chapter, a taxonomy of engineering education research questions is proposed, based on efforts by the SEFI (European Society for Engineering Education) working group Engineering Education Research (EER) and the European project EUGENE.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5_44
Full citation:
de Graaff, E. , Kolmos, A. (2014)., Innovation and research on engineering education, in J. Elen (ed.), Handbook of research on educational communications and technology, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 565-571.
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