An Assessment And Teaching Strategies Of An Integrated Model For Management And Economics Instruction For Engineers

Barbara Tedesco, Sanford Bordman, Iftekhar Hasan
1997 Annual Conference Proceedings   unpublished
Recent rapid advances in technology, fierce corporate competition, and tremendous uncertainty in today's economy have made the engineering function more complex and multifaceted than conventional or traditional forms of organization. Organizations are continuously trying to adapt to changes not only in technology but also in markets, regulations, financial innovations, socioeconomic conditions, and work force diversity. The computer and telecommunication revolution places technocrats in closer
more » ... ore direct contact with internal workers, suppliers, competitors, and clients. Moreover, the recent significant shift of U.S. companies towards a more service-oriented global network and changing scenarios demand engineers who are capable of assuming the multiple role of technology experts with efficient management skills. However, academic institutions have not focused on the increased need for a more integrated approach to educational training for our engineering scientists to cope with their emerging roles. Bordman and Hasan (1996) projected some thoughts on how an educational background could be re-organized in order to better prepare today's engineering and technology scientists. More specifically, the article outlined a combined effort by the School of Industrial Management and College of Science and Liberal Arts at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in redesigning the basic economics and management courses for our new technological and global society. The redesign was an attempt to develop a joint curriculum for both courses with an applications emphasis. This paper is a follow-up to the previous paper with an assessment that concentrates on learning style, teaching strategies, and student performances. The paper proceeds in the following manner. First, we briefly discuss the growing literature on the roles and required skills for engineers followed by a description of our approach to integrating management and economics courses as part of an integrated engineering and management education. In the third section, the paper discusses the literature on appropriate learning styles and environments followed by an analysis of different accepted assessment indicators useful for assessing the learning environment and student performance in our integrated 1 We thank Bruce Kirchhoff for helpful comments and Balakrishna Tirumalakanduri for research assistance. The authors are responsible for any remaining errors.
doi:10.18260/1-2--6425 fatcat:mcch7wpvlvagrb4znavred3yoe