Development of an Interdisciplinary Education for Future Engineering ...

3 downloads 535 Views 87KB Size Report
This demands for engineers equipped with the knowledge of specific engineering subject(s) and some systematic knowledge of intelligence and reliability ...
Development of an Interdisciplinary Education for Future Engineering Society Intelligent Reliable System Program in Aalborg University Zhenyu Yang, Gerulf K.M. Pedersen, Torben Rosenørn Esbjerg Institute of Technology, Aalborg University, Niels Bohrs Vej 8, 6700 Esbjerg, Denmark ([email protected], [email protected], [email protected])

Abstract One challenging objective for the future engineering production is to have products with not only super quality, but also high-level intelligence and reliability. This demands for engineers equipped with the knowledge of specific engineering subject(s) and some systematic knowledge of intelligence and reliability techniques as well. Since 2004 Esbjerg Institute of Technology, Aalborg University, has run a Master engineering education program called Intelligent Reliable System (IRS) Program. The IRS program combines the knowledge from control engineering, reliability engineering and some emerging artificial intelligence techniques into one unique engineering education framework. Besides the general engineering ability and some fundamental knowledge of control engineering, the IRS program also offers students with a systematic knowledge about analysis, modelling, design, validation, test and assessment of reliable systems by taking both the computation and control into consideration. Emerging artificial intelligence techniques which can enhance the analysis, design, verification and construction of reliable systems, are also introduced. Within this paper the educational and pedagogical experiences we gained through the development of IRS curriculum and operation of this program are discussed. The theme-centralized multi-disciplinary course integration and the problem-based learning method play key rules in the curriculum development. The close and extensive cooperation with industries gives gigantic and sustainable driving forces for this education and meanwhile it also leads excellent job opportunities for students. We wish the methodologies we employed in this education development can provide some fundamental guidelines for other modern interdisciplinary program development. Keywords: interdisciplinary engineering education, new competence, PBL

1. INTRODUCTION It is well known that any successful curriculum development for engineering education will confront a challenge of arranging a kind of interdisciplinary program for a limited time period. From Wickenden Report [12] in 1930s, Walker’s discussion [11] in 1970s, and up to recent investigations [2,6,10], this dilemma and its possible consequences have been thoroughly recognized and studied, but unfortunately not yet been completely solved. Actually, there might never be any perfect solutions to this problem. In practice some trade-off/balance need to be taken into consideration, such as how broad and deep the curriculum should be, how the science theory and engineering practice should be balanced [11], and what kind of assessment criteria for different disciplines should be taken [3]. Furthermore, any modern engineering education should have some degree of compatibility and adaptability regarding the latest emerging technologies [1,9,10]. Based on the existing relevant education programs, Esbjerg Institute of Technology (EIT) in Aalborg University has run a new Master engineering education program in the area of computer and electronic engineering with the specialization named Intelligent Reliable Systems (IRS) since 2004. As a brand new interdisciplinary education, the IRS program integrates some knowledge from control engineering, reliability engineering and emerging artificial intelligent techniques into one unique engineering education framework. Besides the general engineering ability and some fundamental knowledge of control engineering, the IRS program also offers students with a systematic knowledge about analysis, modelling, design, validation, test and assessment of reliable systems by taking both the computation and control into consideration. The theme-centralized multidisciplinary course integration and the problem-based learning method play key rules in the curriculum development. Furthermore, the extensive cooperation with industry partners gives gigantic and sustainable driving forces for the developed program. Meanwhile it also leads excellent job opportunities for students.

Within this paper the educational and pedagogical experiences we gained through the development of IRS curriculum and the maintenance of operation of this program will be discussed. We wish the strategies and methodology we employed in this development could provide some fundamental guidelines for other modern interdisciplinary program development. The rest of the paper is organized as: the background for IRS development is introduced in Section 2. Then Section 3 gives a brief overview of the IRS program including the study curriculum. Section 4 presents the strategy and methodology we employed for the IRS curriculum development. Some experiences we learned from this development and maintenance are discussed in Section 5. Finally we conclude the paper in Section 6.

2. BACKGROUND EIT started an undergraduate education in the area of electronic engineering (in Danish Diplomingeniøruddannelsen i Elektronik) in 1995. This undergraduate program abbreviated as E-line consisted of 7 semesters (total 3.5 years). In 2002 a revision of this program was done by combining the first 5 semesters in the E-line program with the corresponding semesters in education program of computer science. This revision leaded to a new interdisciplinary undergraduate education called Data techniques and Electronics (DE) program (in Danish - Diplomingeniøruddannelsen i Datateknik og Elektronik). The first version of the DE study curriculum was simply assembled by taking about half courses from the former electronic program and the other half from the former computer science program. After several years’ running, some educational and technical problems turned out due to this simple assemble of curricula. Thereby, this DE curriculum was completely revised and later on approved by the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Medicine in 2006. The strategy for this revision is to arrange courses and projects centralized the theme of the program named microprocessor/computer-based integrated electronic systems. Thereby besides the necessary fundamental knowledge of traditional electronics and computer science, the knowledge of microprocessors and how to use them as well as the techniques regarding the integration of hardware and software were specially focused. An overview of the third to fifth semester curriculum is given in the following Table 1. Semester

Type SE course

Third

PE course

Project theme SE

PE Fourth Project theme SE course PE course Fifth Project theme

Name of course F3-1: Mathematics I F3-2: Circuit analysis FP3-1: Digital techniques II FP3-2: System architecture and integration FP3-3: Algorithms and data-structures for procedural programming Microprocessor Based Systems F4-1: Mathematics II F4-2: Database design F4-3: Electromagnetism and EMC FP4-1: Analog electronics and actuators FP4-2: Input/output in software FP4-3: Object-oriented programming and architectural design Combined Analog and Digital Systems F5-1: Object-oriented analysis and design F5-2: Operating systems, network and data communication FP5-1: Modelling and simulation FP5-2: Classical control FP5-3: Digital control FP5-4: Real-time and embedded programming Real-time Regulation Systems

ECTS 4 2 1 4 2 17 3 1 2 3 1 3 17 2 3 2 2 2 2 17

Table 1. The overview of DE3-DE5 curriculum (http://esn.aau.dk/studienaevn/studieordninger/), where SE course are semester course and PE course are project-support course. After the 5th semester, the students can choose either to stay in DE direction or to switch to the Computer Science (CS) direction for their further study. If the students choose to stay in the DE direction, they further have two choices – either Bachelor degree of science after the 6th semester or Bachelor degree of engineering after the 7th semester. The difference between these two degrees is that the later one consists of an internship

period, which means that the students spend about 20 weeks in some specific company for engineering practice. Before we launched the Master degree program - IRS program, the students need go to Aalborg campus or other higher education institutions for pursuing their Master degree study in the areas of electronic/electrical/computer engineering after they gain their Bachelor degree in DE education in EIT. In 2004 EIT launched the Master degree education – IRS program serving as a continuity of DE undergraduate education. This interdisciplinary program is under The Study Board for Electronics and Information Technology (ESN) in The Faculty of Engineering, Science and Medicine.

3. OVERVIEW OF IRS PROGRAM One challenging objective for the future engineering production is to have products with not only super quality, but also high-level intelligence and reliability [7]. This demands for engineers equipped with the knowledge of specific engineering subject(s) and some systematic knowledge of intelligence and reliability techniques as well [4,5]. The IRS program is specialized by taking the intelligent and Reliable Control Engineering as the main education direction, with Software Reliability Engineering as the minor subject. 3.1 Motivation Reliability, safety/security and quality are the fundamental issues to success in today’s commercial, industrial and public environments. The integration of reliability techniques with different disciplines has been an emerging technology and demanded from practical applications [4,5]. In addition to that, some non-traditional techniques, such as artificial intelligence techniques, are becoming more and more promising in handling complicated and sophisticated engineering systems [7]. However, the demand for engineers equipped with the knowledge of specific engineering discipline as well as the systematic knowledge of reliability, safety and quality of these engineering systems is far outstripped the supply [4]. We also observed that many Danish industries in the nearby region, such as Oil and Gas Industry, Off-shore Industry, regard the reliability and safety of their systems as the first fundamental requirement. There is a huge possibility for our education program to cooperate with these industries.

3.2 Objective Besides offering the general engineering ability and some fundamental knowledge of control engineering, the IRS program aims to offer students with a systematic knowledge about analysis, modelling, design, validation, test and assessment of reliable systems by taking both the computation and control into consideration. Meanwhile, some emerging artificial intelligence techniques which can enhance the analysis, design, verification and construction of reliable systems, are also introduced.

3.3 Content The content of the IRS program is to integrate some fundamental principles and techniques from the subject of fault tolerant computing and the subject of fault tolerant control into a uniformed hybrid framework for reliability engineering education. The first subject is a key issue within computing/software reliability engineering and the second subject is an important technique in dealing with safety-critical control systems [7]. Some emerging techniques named fuzzy logic, neural networks, discrete event systems, supervisory theory and hybrid system theory, are employed as the enhancement tools for this integration.

3.4 Curriculum The IRS is a 2-year graduate education program. The curriculum consists of three distinguished parts: SE courses which are fundamental courses and need individual exam by the end of the semester; PE courses which are project supported courses and the evaluation of these courses are combined into the semester project exam; Project work is evaluated through the project exam by the end of the semester. An overview of the IRS curriculum is listed in the following Table 2. Semester

Type SE course

First

PE course

Name of course/theme F7-1: System identification F7-2: Stochastic analysis for engineers FP7-1: Scientific methods and communication FP7-2: Distributed systems FP7-3: Plant-wide (advanced) process control systems

ECTS 1 2 3 2 2

Project theme SE

PE Second

Project theme SE course Third

PE course

Fourth

Project theme Thesis project

FP7-4: Introduction to reliability and fault tolerance Distributed/Real-time control systems F8-1: Engineering responsibilities F8-2: Reliability modelling and analysis I F8-3: Robust control FP8-1: Fault detection and diagnosis in dynamic systems FP8-2: Reliability modelling and analysis II FP8-3: Fuzzy logic and neural networks for engineering FP8-4: Estimation and sensor information fusion Intelligent monitoring and fault diagnosis F9-1: Discrete event systems and supervisory control F9-2: Hybrid dynamical systems FP9-1: Fault tolerant control systems FP9-2: Fault tolerant computer systems FP9-3: Adaptive and predictive control Intelligent reliable system design Intelligent reliable systems

1 19 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 22 1 1 2 1 2 23 30

Table 2. Overview of IRS7-10 curriculum (http://esn.aau.dk/studienaevn/studieordninger/)

4. STRATEGY AND METHODOLOGY FOR CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT 4.1 Strategy The following aspects have been taken as key guidelines for developing IRS curriculum. • Research-based education program. The research group named Control Laboratory was set up in EIT in 2002 by a group of faculties (http://www.cs.aaue.dk/contribution/research/lce/) in EIT. The key research directions of the Control Laboratory, such as fault detection and diagnosis, fault tolerant control, hybrid dynamical systems and fault tolerant computing, gave the direct and significant technical support to the IRS program. With the first-hand and frontline knowledge and experience in relevant research areas, we are quite confident of the technical and professional quality of the developed curriculum and the consequent education products. The main contents of many key courses, such as the course of fault detection and diagnosis in 2nd semester, courses of hybrid dynamic systems, fault tolerant control systems in the 3rd semester, are organized from our latest research achievements. This kind of research-and-education connection makes IRS program distinguishable from other existing education programs. • Theme-centralized multi-disciplinary course integration. The theme of IRS program is design of reliable automation systems. By centralizing this theme, the necessary mathematical knowledge as well as some fundamental concepts, theories and techniques relating to fault tolerant computing and fault tolerant control are given within the proposed program. Specially, the integration of techniques from these two subjects is emphasized by using some emerging artificial intelligence techniques, such as fuzzy logic, neural networks, discrete event systems, supervisory control and hybrid system theory, which can enhance the analysis, design, verification of reliable complex systems. Moreover, some fundamental courses relating to analysis, modelling and control of process systems as well as some advanced control courses are also offered within this program so as to have a solid basis in the control engineering direction. • Practice oriented/driven course content. We followed the principle that almost all contents of arranged courses should be practice-oriented or driven by practice-oriented problems. For example, though the course of reliability analysis and modelling, the students can realize how important to have systematic knowledge of statistics, probability and stochastic processes in order to do quantitative reliability modelling and analysis, so that the “math scare” [10,11] is no more a barrier blocking students to learn more advanced mathematics. • Compatibility and Flexibility w.r.t. relevant undergraduate Programs. The IRS program should be a kind of natural choice for a Master degree study after students graduate from the DE undergraduate program mentioned in Section 2. Nevertheless, the IRS program should also have some kind of flexibility, especially the organization and study curriculum for the first semester, so as to be able to enrol qualified students from other educational resources, such as national/international students with necessary background in the areas of electronic, electrical, computer engineering or other relevant equivalent-levels. • Problem-Based Learning (PBL). The PBL method is the typical education style used in Aalborg University. Thereby the IRS education should be organized by semester courses and project/thesis work. It have been evidenced that this kind of pedagogic method is quite effective and efficient in educating and

training engineers [8], with respect to “the distinguished characteristic of the engineer – ability to design” [11].

4.2 Methodology Bearing all the above strategies in the mind, we arranged the entire IRS curriculum as a kind of step-by-step four-phase learning process [8] according to the Blooms Taxonomy. The first semester is a “ready-to-go phase”. The objective of this semester is to make all students have a rigid and professional strategy for their study, as well as technically make them be ready at the common starting point for the rest semesters. In this semester, a big course (4 ECTS) named Scientific Methods and Communications is arranged so as to introduce students about scientific method and its use in practice, besides technical/scientific communication in English. The students need document their project work in terms of scientific article, poster and worksheets. By the end of the semester they need to join the annual 7th semester student conference named SEMCON in Aalborg and deliver oral and poster presentations of their project work in the conference. The technical courses in this semester are arranged with no strict pre-requisition w.r.t. the situation that the students might come from different background and different education styles as well. The second semester is a kind of “perception phase”. The objective of this semester is to offer students systematic knowledge and methods about how to analyze system reliability and how to gain fault detection and diagnosis. In this stage, there is no requirement for design mechanism in order to improve the system’s reliability, which is the task in the following semester. The third semester is a kind of “action phase”. In this semester a set of systematic design methods for reliable systems are introduced from the perspective of fault tolerant control and fault tolerant computing, along with some emerging artificial intelligence methods. In this stage, the students should be able to design some control/computing mechanism so that the considered system’s reliability could be significantly improved. The fourth semester is a kind of “feedback phase”. The students need to carry out their thesis work by employing the knowledge and methods they learn from the past three semesters into some practical case study, which serves as the platform for their dissertation work.

5. WHAT WE LEARNED Through the four-year’s experience of running IRS program in EIT, we observed the following good and weak aspects from the educational and pedagogic perspectives. Good aspects: • The consistency and continuity between DE undergraduate program and IRS program are obvious. • The SEMCON activity in the first semester is indeed very good in motivating students to think about their professional attitude and strategy in their study and project work; • The close and extensive cooperation with industries plays a crucial role in effective learning and enhancing the engineer education. As suggested in [11], this kind of cooperation indeed gives a gigantic and sustainable driving force for modern engineering education. Meanwhile this kind of cooperation leads to excellent job opportunities for students as well. Since the beginning of IRS program, we have had extensive cooperation with Danish industries in terms of semester/thesis projects, industrial guest lectures/seminars and exam censors etc. The contents of the cooperation range from short-term student projects to long-term research projects. A stable industry cooperation network has been setup, which consists of local companies and national/international companies as well, such as Danfoss A/S, Grundfos A/S, Dong Energy A/S, Bang & Olufsen A/S, SKOV A/S, Mærsk Oil & Gas A/S, Rambøll A/S. Almost all graduate students immediately got jobs after their graduations. • To develop proper courseware/platform is important in effective knowledge transfer and comprehension. We have developed several laboratory-sized courseware/platform in past years, such as the electromagnetic levitation system as shown in Fig.1 (a) for practicing feedback control theory, the three-tank system for practicing the MIMO control design and fault tolerant control. Due to the close cooperation with industrial partners, we also got some setups from them, such as the multiple-pump system provided by Grundfos A/S as shown in Fig. 1(b) for the study of designing an intelligent and reliable water boosting system. • The form of long-term final thesis project (combining the third and fourth semester project work together) sounds very attractive to students and industrial partners as well. So far 80% IRS students chose this way for their final thesis project.

(a) One-dimensional levitation system

(b) Multiple-pump system

Fig. 1 Examples of the courseware/platforms used in IRS program

Weak aspects: • Due to the tight connection of different semesters, it is relatively hard for potential students to join directly any other semester except the first semester. This problem could be partially solved by rearranging some contents of relevant courses, such as adding the “preface” lecture(s) to briefly review the pre-requested knowledge for the following lectures. • Due to lack of sufficient teaching resources, we tried some remote multimedia education system and internet-based remote learning methods for some courses. However, so far as the reflection from students, these kinds of modern education methods are not yet as promising as they expected. If possible, the face-to-face education is still preferred to. • Lack of enough students, even though the subject is very promising and attractive to future engineering society. Some PR activity needs to be enhanced.

6. CONCLUSION The development of an interdisciplinary graduate education named IRS program in EIT, Aalborg University, and the experience of operating this program are discussed. According to our strategy, the theme-centralized multi-disciplinary course integration and the problem-based learning method play key rules in the curriculum development. The semesters are planned by following a “ready-perception-action-feedback” learning process. In practice, the close and extensive cooperation with industries offers dramatic power in effective learning and enhancing the engineer practice, meanwhile it also brings huge job opportunities for students. Acknowledgement The first two authors would thank the former ESN chairman – Prof. Flemming Fink, Assoc. Prof. Henrik Schøle, the ESN chairman – Assoc. Prof. Ove Andersen and all colleagues who have commented/contributed to this IRS program development.

References [1] J. Froyd, J. Layne, K. Watson, “Issues regarding change in engineering education”, Proceedings of the 36th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Oct. 28-31, 2006, San Diego, USA, pp.T1B3-8. [2] R. Hashemian, “Teaching an interdisciplinary engineering course to help students to better select their majors”, Proceedings of the 35th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Oct. 19-22, 2005, Indianapolis, USA, pp.S2E32-37. [3] J. George, J. Cowan, “A handbook of techniques for formative evaluation”, Kogan Page Ltd, 1999. [4] Y. Joshi, M.Pecht, W. Nakayama, “Electronic packaging and reliability education for the 21st century: The University of Maryland CALCE EPRC program”, Proceedings of 1997 Electronic Components and Technology Conference, pp.585-588. [5] D. Kececioglu, X. Tian, “Reliability education: a historical perspective”, IEEE trans. on Reliability, Vol.47, No.3-SP, 1998, pp.390-398.

[6] K.E. Newman, A.J. Rosa, R.R. Delyser, S.S. Thompson, R.K. Whitman, “The interdisciplinary undergraduate curriculum at the University of Denver”, Proceedings of the 33rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Nov. 5-8, 2003, Boulder, pp.S4a6-10. [7] R.J. Patton, “Fault-Tolerant Control: The 1997 Situation”, Proceedings of IFAC SafeProcess'97, 1997, pp. 1033-1055. [8] P. Ramsden, “Learning to teach in higher education”, Routledge Falmer, 1992. [9] H.T. Roman, “Reengineerng education – a change is needed in U.S: engineering education”, IEEE Power & Energy Magzine, May/June 2004, pp.85-88. [10] V.A. Skormin, “Challenges of education in engineering”, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magzine, vol.21, No.3, 2006, pp. CF1-3. [11] E.A. Walker, “The major problems facing engineering education”, Proceedings of the IEEE, vol.59, no.6, 1971, pp.823-828. [12] W.E. Wickenden, “Report of the investigation of engineering education, 1923-1929”, Pittsburg, Soc. Promo. Engineering Education, Vol I, 1930; Vol II, 1934.