This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant EEC-0343171. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Welcome to Manufacturing Education Tower at the University of Cincinnati!
In this building you will gain the experience for your future cooperate position, by attending available industrial-related courses and dropping virtual cooperate visits. This online facility will help you realize your fun of learning and ambition in career at the same time.
Click the above building picture to enter the lobby to see what's going on inside of our manufacturing education tower .
Introduction to Corporate Experience-based Manufacturing Education
Higher education in general and particularly engineering education is facing significant challenges. While state support for higher education has continued to decline, the nation is faced with growing demand for engineers capable of driving the technological future on which our economy, healthcare, and security depend. Attraction and retention of minority and female students to engineering continues to be a serious challenge that, if met, could increase the supply and quality of the engineering workforce.
We advocate a disruptive innovation to move a staid organization towards fundamentally different methods for doing business and providing services. Specifically, we will establish an innovative curricular structure, i.e., a virtual corporation for educating undergraduate manufacturing engineers. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the University of Cincinnati (UC) will fundamentally reform undergraduate education to better prepare undergraduates that can form the nation¡¯s technological future.
Our long-term goal is to be one of the best Manufacturing Engineering programs for undergraduate, graduate, and continuing (life-long) education students in the eyes of K-12 students and teachers, undergraduate, graduate, and non-traditional students, industry, and faculty. The overall objective of this particular application, which is the next step toward attainment of our long-term goal, is to establish a corporate experience-based curriculum in Manufacturing Engineering centered on a virtual corporation.
The central hypothesis for the proposed project is that a virtual manufacturing corporation can unify and energize the curriculum motivating students and faculty to learn, provide a mechanism for addressing industry wants and needs, and can be marketed to K-12 students and teachers. We plan to test our central hypothesis and accomplish the overall objective of this application by pursuing the following specific objectives:
1. Implement a virtual corporation based manufacturing curriculum. The working hypothesis for this objective is that a virtual corporation-based curriculum is the best approach to bridge the gap between manufacturing education and corporate practice. The success of such a curriculum requires the following elements: (1) a realistic corporate structure with courses mapped to job functions, (2) revised, flexible, course content that reflects current industry practice including pervasive use of software tools, (3) an integration mechanism that immerses all students in an ¡°employee¡± experience where they work collectively to engineer and produce profitable products, and (4) a board of directors that provides strategic guidelines to maximize return on investment in the education process for all stakeholders.
2. Develop a set of IT (information technology) tools to support the virtual corporation. The working hypothesis for this objective is that IT is the enabling technology for virtual corporation based education. The tools include (1) a web-enabled virtual corporation with real-time information access, (2) a digital navigator to provide a virtual tour of the corporation including introduction to job functions and course content at different levels of detail, and (3) a set of web-based communications tools to facilitate student collaboration.
3. Develop performance measures and feedback mechanisms. The working hypothesis for this objective is that project success is ensured by systematically conducting evaluations of the process and results. These assessments will provide formative evaluations in order to guide development of the virtual manufacturing environment and summative evaluations of the efficacy of the reforms. Assessment data will be collected from students, industry, K-12 teachers, faculty involved in the project, and all visitors to the virtual corporation.
4. Promote experience-empowered education strategy. The working hypothesis for this objective is that experience-empowered education is well suited for undergraduate engineering students. The incorporation of a virtual corporation throughout the curriculum will establish curricular relevance to students and help students apply the concepts learned in the classroom to real-world situations. The proposed curriculum is a model for educational reform that be used in other disciplines and will benefit the general education community.
The proposed research is innovative in that it integrates all of the manufacturing engineering courses within a degree program into job functions within a virtual corporation. This unification brings out the inter-relationships among the courses and ensures that course materials are associated with corporate objectives. The outcome will be a stimulating manufacturing curriculum with a set of enabling IT tools that offers a unique virtual corporate experience to sharpen our students¡¯ competitive edge. The IT tools will be an effective means to market manufacturing education to K-12 students to help them choose engineering careers. Rigorous performance assessment and 360 degree feedback from students, faculty, industry, and K-12 teachers will ensure successful curriculum implementation and the realization of envisioned benefits to the fullest extent. Dissemination of successful results and lessons learned to the general public will help advance the knowledge and practice in engineering education to a new level.
