Engineering education is in a turbulent period. Chronic industry complaints about skill deficiencies in engineering graduates, high attrition rates of engineering students with good academic performance records, the worldwide adoption of outcomes-based engineering program accreditation, and findings from both cognitive science and thousands of educational research studies showing serious deficiencies in traditional teaching methods have all provoked calls for changes in how engineering

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... are structured, delivered, and assessed. As might be expected, many academic staff members and administrators are less than enthusiastic about the proposed changes, arguing that the traditional system functions well and needs no radical revision. The ongoing debate involves four focal issues: how engineering curricula should be structured, how engineering courses should be taught and assessed, who should teach, and how the teachers should be prepared. This paper outlines two conflicting educational paradigms and the position on each of these four issues that each one reflects-the traditional paradigm, which has dominated engineering education since its inception, and the emerging alternative-and offers predictions about the eventual resolution.