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INNOVATIONS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN THE ERAS OF GLOBAL-, AND e-BUSINESS ECONOMIES.
By E. Wilson Okyere Abstract The advent of e-business and global economy, as well as, the pervasion of the digital era is forcing the need to modify engineering education to suit the impending changes in educational philosophy and methods. Generally, engineering education has been concerned with providing the necessary know-how for the realization of existing and new technologies in the provision of equipment of all sorts. Engineering Design has therefore been mostly concerned with the engineering aspects of the units involved. Increasingly, the advancement in the digital era and the associated collapse of physical space in the communication forces the need to design in context of disparity in global infrastructures. The recognition of this engineering design philosophy was fundamental in the computer industry when the need for portable programs became acute, and hence led top the development of platform independent programming languages like Java. This paper looks at the influence of the global economy and e-business in shaping the format for engineering education to prepare students to comprehend the implications in the design of large distributed systems, such as trading systems. In recent years a case study project of commodity trading for the emerging economies has been used to introduce an additional dimension to the systems design approaches in one of the courses at the college of Staten Island.
Introduction Generally, engineering education has provided the necessary know-how for the realization of existing and new technologies in the provision of equipment of all sorts. Engineering Design has therefore been mostly concerned with the engineering aspects of the units involved. Increasingly, the advancement in the digital era, and the associated collapse of physical space in communications forces the need to design in context of disparity in global infrastructures. The recognition of this engineering design philosophy was fundamental in the computer industry when the need for portable programs became acute, and hence led top the development of platform independent programming languages like Java. Global Economy and e-Business is shaping the format for engineering education. It is increasingly becoming important to prepare students to comprehend its implications in the design of large distributed systems, such as trading systems. Global economy and e-Business, through the intensive use of the Internet, are practically eliminating the effects and affects of physical distance in business and replacing it with modern technology. Unwillingly, this progress is at the same time tying the different communications infrastructures in different countries and regions of the world together. In the process there arises the need for aspiring engineers to be acquainted with the scope of disparity in world infrastructure; as well as, the consequences of the disparities in their design formulations. In an attempt to bridge the gap, a case study project of commodity trading for the emerging economies has been used recently to introduce an additional dimension into the systems design approaches in one of the courses at the college of Staten Island.
Process The introduction of the global aspects of systems design is done in this particular case with extracts from a presentation made by the author (E. Wilson Okyere, et al.) to the International Financing Corporation part of the World Bank. This document is about the feasibility of the establishment of a ‘Futures Market in Sub Saharan West Africa’. A series of slides are presented to the students. These slides highlight the fundamental structures and systems that need to be in place for a commodity trading to be feasible in a single trading market. The market spreads, initially, over five Franco- and Anglo-phone countries. These slides, displayed in the Appendix, depict the following:
After the students have been presented with these slides, a one hour discussion of the engineering implications of the areas pertinent to the cross sectional majors of the students are discussed. In the process the students become aware of the need to be informed about the engineering challenges they will face as professionals in their fields after graduation. This aspect of engineering training/education used to be left to the corporations as part of their in service training. Today, the expanse of corporate global involvement requires that fresh engineers have advance awareness of the issues involved. Experiments performed in the course work were then interpreted in context of where they fit in the whole arsenal of components and parts that need to be assembled to realize the trading project. One such student project in the digital design laboratory course was the, design, simulation and implementation of a digital circuit. The was to be capable of receiving a random four bit serial digital information and a parity bit, automatically validate the received transmission and then pass the valid signal, in a parallel format, to the next stage.
Results The students started their design by first creating a functional block diagram as depicted in Fig. 1 below. This diagram gave them an idea of the number of functional sub-circuits that need to be implemented. The sectional implementation of these sub-circuits offered the students the opportunity to define a function and create the circuitry to perform that function. Of course, all the various theoretical information they have came to play in the design of each block function. For example, generation of truth tables, realization of the min- or max terms of the expected output signals; and the application of minimization techniques such as Karnaugh Mapping were necessary. This project required the application of both combinational and sequential logic techniques.
Fig 1 The embedded Figures depict the next stages of the design project. To view the figures double click on the diagram in figure 1.
In the end the students realized that they have in essence designed and built a miniature UART (universal asynchronous receiver transmitter). UARTs are the principal interconnections in data communicating networks. Further discussions over their design in context of both the trading system, and the varying infrastructure in the counties involved, pointed out to the students the need for variable baud – rate synchronization requirement for a building block (such as theirs) to function properly in the system under consideration. This requirement is, however, basic in all commercially available UARTs.
Conclusion During the course of the semester it became obviously clear that the student dedication and interest in the course work had improved. In discussions with the students, they attributed their intensified activity and interest to the fact that they can relate their efforts directly to their future professional activities, and therefore it made more sense to them to spend a little more time on the subject matter. Others indicated that they had used the futures market model as relational point to most of the engineering aspects of the semester. The model has become a sort of knowledge pond, for them, into which the undefined can be dropped and it will always fit in reality or in concept. In this sense the approach has yielded the expected result. It has heightened the awareness of the students to another level of engineering design philosophy where global conditions in the ever-shrinking world of e-business and global economy are not neglected.
Appendix This appendix is an embedded power point presentation. To view the presentation double click on the slide. |
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