Abstract:

Historically, undergraduate engineering education has created divisions between theoretical lectures, and laboratory and project work, preventing students from making clear connections among these modes of teaching. Furthermore, engineering programs are usually divided into courses, which are not taught in a collaborative manner that enables students to integrated knowledge from multiple courses to develop solutions to real-life problems. Designing, implementing, and operating industrial automation systems require the individual personnel to apply skills in a multiplicity of areas including Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) and PLC programming, process control and instrumentation, power electronics and robotics, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), manufacturing software applications, industrial networking and communication protocols, Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), as well as electrical and machine installation and commissioning. Therefore, curriculum should be designed and delivered such that the classroom experience encourages students to apply an integrated set of skills to craft solutions to industrial automation projects. Of the many possible pedagogical approaches which might be used to achieve such an outcome, this paper primarily focuses on practice-based learning that is supported by an integrated curriculum.

A practice-based learning approach that is supported by an integrated curriculum is in line with the general educational principle of integrating academic theory and engineering practice to understand how to leverage technology to create solutions and produce value for society. In our teaching approach, we use word ‘practice” as both a noun and a verb. As a noun, we take it to mean the actual application or use of an idea, skill, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it; and as a verb we take it to mean performing an exercising a skill repeatedly to improve or maintain proficiency. Therefore, with respect to our pedagogical approaches, we develop and deliver curriculum that trains each student the actual application of engineering and technology in systems automation by exercising their engineering and technology integration skills regularly.

Practice-based learning requires a fully integrated curriculum delivery approach (integration of theoretical lectures, laboratories, and projects) to achieve classroom success. The reason being, the various modes of teaching and learning are most effective at different levels of the Blooms Taxonomy. In addition, an integration across courses is required because real-life project usually require skills taught in multiple traditional courses. An integrated curriculum has added value. It helps students to realize that different courses are simply building blocks of the engineering and technology integration skills required of them in industry; and helps them to identify transferable skills while still in school; hence, inspiring them to become lifelong learners. In this paper we present how we have designed and implemented an integrated curriculum for the Automation Engineering Technology program at McMaster University, as well as the teaching and learning effectiveness of our approach.

Keywords:

Practice-based learning, integrated curriculum, Bloom taxonomy, engineering and technology education.