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ASession 2793@

Simulating Industry in the Classroom

By Joel Weinstein, Ron Chin, Gary Krikorian, & Kamran Qamar

Northeastern University

Introduction

One way that engineering technology differentiates itself from other technical disciplines is in its industrial flavor. Engineering technology tries to create industry-ready technologists. From an academic perspective, most curricula do an admirable job of preparing students for the technical challenges they will face. However, academia traditionally falls very short in preparing the student for the kinds of social and political experiences that will be encountered in the real industrial world.

In the classroom, engineering students learn about circuit analysis, mechanics and programming in preparation for their jobs. However, engineering students enter the field with limited abilities to deal with the corporate literacy requirements that allow them to deal effectively with real industry-related problems such as teamwork and customer relations. Corporate literacy is a growing educational priority both nationally and locally. College students express great interest in acquiring this knowledge to supplements skills in computer technology. Once they begin to understand how companies really work, they develop great enthusiasm and confidence for hands-on technological applications, which can be combined with corporate literacy to achieve professional success. Integrating corporate literacy into the engineering curriculum has become increasingly important. Classrooms, now centers of technical learning, need to educate and teach fundamentals of corporate culture and its importance.

Simulating industry in the classroom is an excellent means of learning corporate culture. This paper describes a model for bringing togethe r the educational, technological and corporate communities to support students in their quest to learn how to deal with the real problems of industry. It uses the implementation of software engineering and computer engineering technology as the foundation on which good corporate literacy skills can be learned. Our experience has provided substantial evidence that this type of collaboration yields important benefits for all participants, including students and the corporate world that they will eventually populate.

This paper details a single project—one of many—in which students had to complete a software solution for an imaginary client. This particular project required the design of a software solution for a small airline. The software was needed to help the airline maintain passenger reservations.

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education

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Chin, R., & Qamar, K., & Krikorian, G., & Weinstein, J. (2001, June), Simulating Industry In The Classroom An Ongoing Process Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9776