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Research on the Element Structure and Cultivation of Engineers' General Ability in the Chinese Context

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Conference

2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Tampa, Florida

Publication Date

June 15, 2019

Start Date

June 15, 2019

End Date

June 19, 2019

Conference Session

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering Division Technical Session 3

Tagged Division

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--33240

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/33240

Download Count

287

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Paper Authors

biography

Huiming Fan East China University of Science and Technology

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I am a lecturer from Institute of Higher Education, East China University of Science and Technology. I got Ph.D. degree from Zhejiang University in 2014. I was also a visiting scholar at the area of University-Industry Collaboration at North Carolina State University from 2012.12-2013.7. My research focuses on engineering education, university-industry collaboration, entrepreneurial university, etc.

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Abstract

Engineering and Technology have played an important role in the economic and social development, which are indispensable forces for human beings to seek a higher level of life. And the ability of engineers directly determines how the forces will be. From the current point of view, there are still some problems in the ability of engineers. The weak of general ability is one of the important aspects. According to the existing research and surveys, current engineers generally lack communication skills, interdisciplinary knowledge, etc. And in the context of rapid technological development and more severe human challenges in the future, it requires engineers to have a wider range of general abilities beyond professional knowledge, such as the ability of lifelong learning to adapt to future changes, the ability to participate in global competition, etc. Therefore, it is the main research question of this paper to study the general ability of future engineers and how to cultivate these skills more systematically in the Chinese context. Based on this question, several sub-research questions have been designed, including: (1) What is the trend of future engineering technology development? (2) How is the general ability of engineers currently performed? (3) What is the current status of university general education? (4) What kind of general ability should engineers have in the future? (5) How to develop students’ new general ability? A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods will be used to study the above questions. Literature analysis will be used to study Question (1) and throughout the study, providing a research basis for other questions. Interviews and questionnaires will be used to study the rest of the questions. The interviewees will be included the leaders and engineers in the companies, the engineering students and teachers. Different kinds of questionnaires will also be distributed to them. At last, a new structural element of engineer’s general ability will be proposed and a new training plan will be designed.

Fan, H. (2019, June), Research on the Element Structure and Cultivation of Engineers' General Ability in the Chinese Context Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--33240

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