Vancouver, BC
June 26, 2011
June 26, 2011
June 29, 2011
2153-5965
Knowing Ourselves: Research on Engineering Education Researchers
Educational Research and Methods
17
22.1574.1 - 22.1574.17
10.18260/1-2--18514
https://peer.asee.org/18514
421
Dr. Krishna P.C. Madhavan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He is also a member of the Education Research Team of the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology (nanoHUB.org). Prior to his arrival at Purdue, he was an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the School of Computing and the Department of Engineering and Science Education at Clemson University. Dr. Madhavan also served as a Research Scientist at the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing, Information Technology at Purdue University where he led the education and the educational technology effort for the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN). His work focuses on how semantic grid-based technologies and tools can co-exist with students’ lifestyles, learning patterns, and technology choices. Dr. Madhavan was the Chair of the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing Education Program 2006 and was the curriculum director for the Supercomputing Education Program 2005. In 2008, he was awarded the NSF CAREER award for work on learner-centric, adaptive cyber-tools and cyber-environments. He was one of 49 faculty members selected as the nation’s top engineering educators and researchers by the US National Academy of Engineering to the Frontiers in Engineering Education symposium.
Dr. Vorvoreanu is an assistant professor in Computer Graphics Technology and Organizational Leadership & Supervision at Purdue University. She studies the socio-cultural impact of new communication technologies. Before joining Purdue, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University, SC, and the Department of Communication at the University of Dayton, Ohio. While at Clemson and UD respectively, Dr. Vorvoreanu taught various public relations and communication courses, and did academic research in the area of public relations and new Web technologies. She has published research articles in the Journal of New Communications Research, Public Relations Review and the Journal of Website Promotion and a book about online public relations: Web Site Public Relations: How Corporations Build and Maintain Relationships Online. Dr. Vorvoreanu holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Purdue University.
Brent K. Jesiek is assistant professor in Engineering Education and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Tech and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. His research examines the social, historical, global, and epistemological dimensions of engineering and computing, with particular emphasis on topics related to engineering education, computer engineering, and educational technology.
Phillip C. Wankat is the Clifton L. Lovell Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and the Director of Undergraduate Degree Programs in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. He earned his B.S.Ch.E. from Purdue, his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton and a M.S.Ed. in Counseling from Purdue. His technical research is in separation processes. Phil has been very active in developing new teaching processes and in teaching graduate students how to teach. He is the co-author of the book Teaching Engineering, and author of The Effective, Efficient Professor: Teaching, Scholarship and Service, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, 2002.
Understanding the Engineering Education Research Problem Space Using Interactive Knowledge NetworksFor any knowledge intensive undertaking – such as a discipline – it is critical to chart its birthand growth to understand where the discipline stands and what innovative endeavors lead to thecreative accomplishments currently witnessed in its knowledge products. In this paper wedescribe the research and development of Interactive Knowledge Networks for EngineeringEducation Research (iKNEER) – an online knowledge platform for the engineering educationresearch community. iKNEER aims to provide visual overviews of the emergence and growth ofthe discipline of engineering education research anytime, anywhere based on user queries thatare made through an easy-to-use interface.Researchers, educators, and other stakeholders in the engineering education research communityhave long called for the construction of platforms that provide longitudinal overview of theproblem space to better understand the emergence and growth of engineering education research.Numerous research publications published by the National Science Foundation, the NationalAcademy of Engineering, and the ASEE call for the use of ultra-scale data analysis to understandnot only the evolution of engineering education as a discipline, but also to pioneer new cyber-enabled methods that can form the core of an engineering education researcher’s toolset.Traditionally the use of computational techniques has been the domain of a few computerscientists. iKNEER changes this dynamic significantly to allow users to drive the exploration ofthe problem space.Using a theoretical model that combines ultra large-scale data mining techniques, networkmapping algorithms, and time-series analysis of knowledge product evolution, we attempt tocharacterize and provide the type of insights required by the community by utilizing ultra-scaleknowledge product such as publications in journals and conferences in engineering education,the National Science Foundation grant proposals, and articles published by the NationalAcademy of Engineering. In the full paper, we describe our processes for data acquisition,citation data mining, and interactive visualization. To provide a non-redundant dataset of author,keyword, and affiliation information, we have developed an intelligent correction system tofacilitate data calibration. In order to assign keywords to those documents without author-provided keywords, we implemented a compute intensive tool to generate machine-providedkeywords by choosing the most significant words in each document. Finally, we visually presentthe evolution of engineering education research and allow community members in engineeringeducation to access and interact with knowledge products through a web browser.As of September 2010, iKNEER includes a total of 35,591 documents from 21 differentpublications including Journal of Engineering Education, International Journal of EngineeringEducation, Frontiers in Education, ASEE conference proceedings, and IEEE Transactions onEducation. We cover a long time period for each dataset with the oldest document dating back to1965. Our document repository is continuously expanding to reach broader inclusion ofpublication sources and longer coverage. Out of the whole dataset, we have developed thecapability to understand the scientific profile of 27,102 authors and 30,568 keywords. We arecurrently working on closing the gap between the number of documents acquired and thosehaving been processed.Figure 1. Collaboration Network (Circular) for Karl Smith generated real-time by iKNEER.Brightness of lines between nodes (authors) indicates number of papers between the authorsFigure 2. Query suggestion automatically generated as users type “ci” into the search box
Madhavan, K., & Xian, H., & Johri, A., & Vorvoreanu, M., & Jesiek, B. K., & Wankat, P. C. (2011, June), Understanding the Engineering Education Research Problem Space Using Interactive Knowledge Networks Paper presented at 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC. 10.18260/1-2--18514
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