See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/28806019

What Every Engineer Should Know about Engineering Education

Article · January 2005

Source: OAI

CITATIONS READS
13 2,809

1 author:

Nestor Osorio
Northern Illinois University
31 PUBLICATIONS 85 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Nestor Osorio on 04 March 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 WHAT EVERY ENGINEER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ENGINEERING
EDUCATION

Nestor L. Osorio1
1
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois; Email: [email protected]

1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to present the current status of the literature of engineering
education. In order to accomplish this task several questions are discussed: Who publishes them?
What are the topics of the articles published? How to find them? and Where to publish them?
The author also discusses the deficiencies found in existing databases caused by the lack
indexing a great deal of information of significant importance and proposes the development of
an engineering education gateway to overcome this problem.

As has been reported in previous works done by the author (Osorio, 1998) and (Osorio and
Osorio, 2002) the literature of engineering education is an active endeavour. Similarly to other
subject related educational literatures like mathematics education, the engineering education
literary production includes articles in journals, scholarly periodicals, trade magazines, papers in
proceedings, conference proceedings, reports, books, dissertations, software and audiovisuals.
Professional associations in engineering such as the American Society for Engineering Education
(ASEE) and the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI); colleges and universities;
state and federal agencies; non-profit organizations and other institutions are making important
contributions to the field by providing the support needed by researchers to get their research
done and to present it and publish it.

Based on an extensive analysis of the literature done by searching for documents related to
engineering education in several key databases the author has identified a core list of journals,
conference proceedings and publishers. It is the hope that this information will help professionals
in this field to make decisions about selecting possible avenues for their own publications.

In this paper also the results obtained by Wankat (2004), Whitin and Sheppard (2004) , Osorio
and Osorio (2002) will be presented in order to identify prevailing subject topics and trends; the
demographic data about authors; the type of articles and content or articles, and some other
important bibliometric data.

Finally, another aspect of this paper is introducing the idea of creating awareness about a large
portion of the literature of engineering education that has not been covered by conventional
indexing databases. As suggested by De Petro (2002) there is a need to incorporate this missing

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
part of the literature into the main stream of the bibliographic process. The author proposes the
creation of an engineering education gateway as a solution to this problem.

2. WHO PUBLISHES THEM?

In this section the principal characteristics of authors in the field of engineering education are
presented. The data was obtained from the previous work done by Osorio and Osorio (2002), and
by Wankat (2004). The first of these two articles collected data about the Journal of Engineering
Education (JEE) and the European Journal of Engineering Education (EJEE) and compared the
outcomes of these two publications during the period from 1998 to 2000. Wankat's article is
about the out-put of the Journal of Engineering Education from 1998 to 2002 and compares it
with data previously obtained from 1993 to 1997. Through out this and the next section the
results of these two works are presented. Although descriptively compared with the purpose of
showing the many different components in engineering education it is not intended to be a
critical evaluation of these works. Basically, only the facts are presented.

According to Osorio and Osorio (2002) 331 articles covering the period from 1998 to 2000 were
analysed and the following information about authorship was obtained:

JEE and EJEE authors come from 29 countries. The larger number of contributors come from the
USA, UK, Australia, Canada, and Germany. They represent the77% of all authors.

The combined author's professional status for these two journals is: teaching faculty (248),
university administrators (37), and university professional staff (13). These three groups account
for 91.5% of all authors. Others groups found are: graduate assistants, practicing engineers,
consultants, counsellors, federal/state agency staff, corporate administrators, and federal/state
agency administrators.

The main place of employment of these authors are: public funded universities (240); or privates
universities (73). These two groups represent 94.6% of all authors. Other sources of employment
for authors found are federal agencies, corporations, high school faculty and private consultants.

These results are consistent with the following factors characterized in these two publications: 1.
the membership of both sponsoring societies is mainly from academic institutions, 2. the main
audience of both journals are people involved in higher education and 3. the editorial board of
both publications are made up mainly of persons from the academic world.

Wankat's works shows a gender comparison of authors and whether or not they are professional
engineers. Table 1. indicates that 26.6% are female authors; and that 74.9 % of authors are
engineers. It also shows that 27.0 % of papers have a single author and women single authors
represent a 12.1%.

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
 Table 1. Author data (1998-2002)
%
Total authors 943
Total engineers as authors 707 74.9 based on 943 authors
Women authors 251 26.6 based on 943 authors
Women engineers as authors 147 20.8 based on 707 engrs. authors
Number of papers with a 99 27.0 based on 367 total papers
single author
Women as single authors 12 12.1 based on 99 authors
Engineers as single authors 78 78.8 based on 99 authors
Women engineers as single 7 7.0 based on 99 authors
authors

It is important to say that while Wankat collected data for all authors the work done by Osorio
and Osorio collected data only for the first author of each article.

An important piece of information reported by Wankat is about the financial support received by
authors to conduct their research. Table 2 shows the results.

Table 2. Reported sources of support

%
No of papers supported 180 49.0 based on 367 total papers
NSF 119 66.1 based on 180 papers
Other U.S. govt. agency 18 10.0 based on 180 papers
Corporate 23 12.8 based on 180 papers
Private foundation 28 15.6 based on 180 papers
State 4 2.2 based on 180 papers
Univ/Dept/College 43 23.9 based on 180 papers
Non-US Govt. agency 5 2.8 based on 180 papers
Others 17 9.4 based on 180 papers

According to the data it can be concluded that some authors received multiple sources of support
for the same research project. Also, the author comments that after the National Science
Foundation (NSF) the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) and
NASA were the two other U.S. government agencies providing more support to the authors.

Finally, Table 3 shows very similar results in terms of the numbers of reference sources cited by
the authors.

Table 3. Reference listed

Sources cite avg./article

Wankat 5,903 16.1
Osorio & Osorio 5,398 16.3

3. WHA ARE THE TOPICS OF THE ARTICLES PUBLISHED?

Based on the work of Osorio and Osorio (2002) Table 4 presents the type of articles published in
EJE and EEJE. In their paper a type of article "describes the nature of the paper" and a definition

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
for each type is made. According to Table 4, 64% of the articles fall in one of the first five type
of documents: description of project; review of topic; research report; description of program; or
description of course.

Table 4. Type of Documents

%
Total number of papers 331
Description of project 52 15.7
Review of topic 43 13.0
Research report 40 12.0
Description of program 39 11.8
Description of course 38 11.5
Case study 31 9.4
Survey report 25 7.5
Survey of field 23 6.9
Opinion paper 12 3.6
Description of teaching methods 11 3.3
Program reports 10 3.0
Survey of topic 2 .06
Review of field 3 .09
Report of project 2 .06

Also in the paper by Osorio and Osorio (2002) each article in EJE and EJEE is assigned one
principal subject. The most common subjects for articles published in these two publications are
courses, programs, and assessment. They represent 55.6% of all topics recorded. The definitions
of these terms were provided by the authors.

Table 5. Main Subject of articles

Main Subject %
Courses 82 24.8
Programs 61 18.4
Assessment 41 12.4
Society 26 7.8
Freshman 18 5.4
Skills 16 4.8
Administrative 12 3.6
Teaching 12 3.6
Technology 12 3.6
Women & minorities 9 2.7
History 9 2.7
Faculty 8 2.4
Curriculum 8 2.4
Learning 7 2.1
Design 4 1.2
Professional 4 1.2
Literature 1 .04
Laboratory 1 .04
Total no. of papers 331

Wankat (2004) used a similar approach by analysing each article and assigning them with
keywords to describe their subject content. The data shown in Table 6. is taken from 367 articles.
In this work multiple keywords or subject terms were given to a single article. The four first

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
keywords listed in this table - teaching, computers, design and assessments - were reported by
the author as the most common topics of research.

Table 6. Subject (1998-2002)

Main topic of article %

Teaching 94 25.6
Computers 66 18.0
Design 50 13.6
Assessment 36 9.8
Groups/teams 30 8.2
Internet/web 28 7.6
ABET 24 6.5
Learning 24 6.5
First year 21 5.7
Curriculum 20 5.4
Laboratory 19 5.2
Gender/women 13 3.5
Distance education 12 3.3
Communication/writing 11 3.0
Ethics 10 2.7
Experimental/hands on 9 2.5
Entrepreneurship 8 2.2
International/global 8 2.2
Retention 8 2.2
Programming 8 2.2

The author also indicates that the subject coverage of JEE "remains very broad". Keywords with
less than 8 hits were not listed.

Also, in the work done by Wankat (2004) five additional characteristics of the articles published
in JEE are explored. These characteristics are called "tabulated data for the content" of each
article. Each article can have several of these characteristics.

Table 7. Content of articles (1998-2002)

No of articles 367
Content Discipline specific 28 or 7.6 %
Teaching methods (computer techniques, lecture, cooperative groups) 127 or 34.6
Data (presented) 226 or 61.6
Assessment used (surveys, grades, stud. eval.) 152 or 41.4
Educational and learning style theories (Kolb, Learn. Styles, MBTI) 28 or 7.6%

As indicated by Wantak these types of subject analyses of journals "allows us to determine some
of the trends in engineering education". It appears that research on specific courses, programs
and assessments as reported by Osorio and Osorio (2002) and research on teaching, computers
design and assessments as reported by Wankat (2004) are some of the recent trends in the subject
covered by the articles. Since these two works were developed under a set of different
parameters it is advisable to read the original papers in order to reach a deeper understanding of
them. As for other data collected about the articles published; for Osorio and Osorio (2002) the
description of project; review of topic; research report; description of program; and description
of course are the most common type of articles found. For Wankat (2004) the teaching methods;
data (presented) and assessment used are the most common content found in the articles. Finally,

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
the study done by Whitin and Sheppard (2004) focuses on topics of papers published in JEE
from 1996 to 2001. It is a substantial and complementary approach of Wanka's paper and it also
a recommended reading.

4. HOW TO FIND THEM?

Published documents in engineering education are mainly articles in journals and articles in
conference proceedings. There are also a good number of related materials published as
monographs, and reports. Searching a library online catalog and a national catalog like WorldCat
is an effective way of finding books, reports and other formats such as dissertations and
audiovisual materials. A great portion of the current literature is published as articles in journals
and articles in conference proceedings. The sources listed in this section are the core of databases
where information about documents published can be found. This is not a complete list but it
represents some of the major sources of bibliographic information for engineering education.

Compendex. Engineering Information, Elsevier, New York. It is the most comprehensive single
engineering index; it includes papers in journals, conference proceedings and technical reports
since 1969.

INSPEC. Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), London, UK. It covers mainly electrical and
electronics engineering; computer science and control engineering; physics and astronomy; and
information technology since 1967.

ERIC (Education Resources Information Center). Computer Sciences Corporation

Lanham, MD. It is the most comprehensive index for education in the English language with
more than 1.1 million bibliographic citations since 1966.

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA), Bethesda, MD. This information service provider has
over 70 databases among them are: ANTE: Abstracts in New Technologies and Engineering;
Aerospace & High Technology Database; CSA Engineering Research Database; Civil
Engineering Abstracts; Earthquake Engineering Abstracts; Environmental Engineering
Abstracts; Engineered Materials Abstracts; Advanced Polymers Abstracts; Composites Industry
Abstracts; Engineered Materials Abstracts, Ceramics; and Mechanical & Transportation
Engineering Abstracts. All of them are recognized as excellent sources for engineering
information.

Web of Science. Thomson Scientific, Philadelphia, PA. It includes the Science Citation Index and
the Social Science Citation Index. A selected list of journals are included in each citation index
from which historical data about cited references can be obtained.

SciFinder Scholar. Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), Columbus, OH. A major index for
chemical sciences and engineering. It is the comprehensive index for this field and includes
several thousand journals and conference proceedings.

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
Google Scholar, Google, Mountain View, CA. It covers all areas of knowledge published in
journals, books, preprints, and reports. A Beta version is currently offered free of charge. A
search done on "engineering education" produced about 28,000 hits. (Cited 01-25-2005).

Examples of subject specific engineering databases are:

Civil Engineering Database (CEDB, American Society of Civil Engineering, Reston, VA. It
covers the publications of the society with abstracts since 1973.

Ergonomics Abstracts, Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia, PA. It has international coverage of the
literature on human factors and ergonomics.

Examples of electronic journals collections databases are:

ScienceDirect, Elsevier, New York, NY. It contains an extensive collection of science,

engineering and medical journals, nearly 1,800 in all.

EBSCO Academic Elite, EBSCO Information Services, Birmingham, AL. It covers over 1,500
journals in all academic areas.

Kluwer Online, Springer-Verlag New York, NY. It provides several hundred (650) scientific,
technical and scholarly journals. It has recently merged with Springer-Verlag.

Springer Link, Springer-Verlag New York, NY. It has a sizable collection of journals on
medicine, science, engineering, humanities and economics.

Table 8. shows a distribution of the type of documents about engineering education in the
Compendex database. This data was obtained by searching 14 thesaurus terms of this database
that are closely related to engineering education. The time span is from 1980 to 2004.

Table 8. Type of documents in Compendex

Type Count %
Journal article 17374 41.8
Conference article 23073 55.5
OTHERS: 2.7
Conference proceeding 555
Monograph chapter 365
Monograph review 3
Report chapter 2
Report review 72
Dissertations 0
Unpublished paper 104
Total 41548

As reported earlier by Osorio (1998) articles in conference proceedings are the most common
type of document in engineering education. Considering the fact that a good number of
conference proceedings are published as special issues of journals the 55.7 % reported here could
be higher. In Osorio (1998) it was 69%. The coverage of book reviews in Compendex is not very

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
good, therefore, the low figures for monographs and reports in Table 8 does not represent the real
numbers in these types of documents. A library online catalog or a universal catalog like
WorldCat are better sources for finding out about monographs and other formats.
In spite of its deficiencies Compendex is a very good database for finding documents on this
subject. Table 9 shows the results when the 36 journals listed in Table 11 were searched in three
different databases about articles dealing with engineering education during the period of 1980 to
2004. In Compendex 37% more documents were found than in INSPEC. It is noted that the
coverage of each database differs from each title and even within a database the coverage of a
title is not always consistent, therefore, shortcomings in the databases creates in some cases
significant gaps in coverage. Articles in journals indexed in ERIC for this subject is quite limited.

Table 9. Articles in journals (1980-2004)

Database Count
Compendex 7094
INSPEC 5141
ERIC 1030

Similar searches were done to compare the coverage of articles from conference proceedings in
the three databases. In this case data for the 33 conferences listed in Table 12 was collected. The
scope of each conference was limited to documents related to engineering education. This was
accomplished in Compendex by selecting 14 thesaurus terms related to engineering education. In
INSPEC keywords related to the subject such as teaching, learning, education, instruction, etc.
were used. The time period is also from 1980 to 2004.

Table 10. Articles from conference proceedings (1980-2004)

Database Count
Compendex 19078
INSPEC 3803
ERIC 1

Therefore, Compendex is also the best source for finding articles in conferences. ERIC
practically does not cover this type of document for engineering education.

As reported by Osorio (1998) several hundreds of journals published articles on engineering

education. Initially, in 1998, this list was collected by searching four databases: Compendex,
INSPEC, ERIC and Ingenta producing a core list of professional journals where articles on
engineering education are indexed. The data for this list has been updated for this article
covering the period 1980-2004 and dropping the Ingenta database. A substantial reduction in
coverage in Ingenta in the last years was the reason for this decision. Table 11 shows the top 18
journals in the field. Top meaning the journals with large numbers of citations found.

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
 Table 11. Journals in Engineering Education

IEEE Transactions on Education 1470

Chemical engineering education 806
ASEE Prism 781
International Journal of electrical engineering education 795
International Journal of engineering education 729
European Journal of Engineering Education 670
Journal of engineering education 436
Journal of professional issues in engineering education 343
Engineering Science and Education Journal (ceased 2002) 434
International Journal of mechanical engineering education 341
Computer applications in engineering education 304
Education for information 246
IEEE transactions on power systems 183
Communications of the ACM 176
International journal of technology design (ceased, 2002) 154
Quality progress 153
Transportation research 137
Journal of the operational research society 107

This list indicates how several professional engineering societies are directly involved in the
production of documents on the subject. Among them are the Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI), the
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the Association of Computing Machinery,
and the Operational Research Society (ORS).

The following conference proceedings list was also originally developed by Osorio (1998) and it
has been updated for this article. The list was made by searching in Compendex, INSPEC, and
ERIC. Also used was the hands-on knowledge the author has about other professional
conferences supported by engineering societies and other organizations. It is important to say
that hundreds of conferences dealing with all areas of engineering were found including papers
in their programs about engineering education. This list is a representative sample of the most
productive conferences in the field.

Table 12. Conference proceedings in Engineering Education

Annual Conference on Frontiers in Education

ASEE Annual Conference
ASEE Gulf Southwest Section Meeting
ASEE North Central Section Meeting
ASEE Illinois-Indiana Section Meeting
ASEE Northwest Section Meeting
ASEE Pacific Southwest Section Meeting
ASEE Southeastern Section Meeting
College Industry Education Conference
International Conference on Engineering Education
SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
Annual Conference of Society of Technical Communication
Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress
Biennial University/Government/Industry Microelectronics Symposium
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Congress on Computing in Civil Engineering
IEEE Conference on Decision and Control
IEEE International Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, ICASSPO
IEEE International Conference on Microelectronics Systems Education, MSE

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
 IEEE International Conference on Multi-media Engineering Education
IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics
IEEE International Professional Communication Conference
IEEE SOUTHEASTCON
Industrial Engineering Research Conference
International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering
International Conference on Education in Manufacturing
Proceedings of the SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, International Conference on Education in Optics.
SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
World Congress on Engineering Education and Training
UICEE Annual Conference on Engineering Education.
International Conference on Engineering and Technology Education (INTERTECH)

Examples of other journals or conferences not included in Table 11 nor Table 11 are: The
UICEE (UNESCO International Centre for Engineering Education) Annual Conference on
Engineering Education; SEFI Annual Conference; The Global Journal of Engineering
Education; and, the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education. Many other smaller
publications are making a significant effort to be at the forefront of engineering education. These
smaller but excellent publications are additional possibilities for places where authors can get
their works published.

Finally, the ASEE Web page has made significant improvements in providing access to
published documents in the field. Limited only to ASEE members are the full-text of the
following publications: the Engineering Education Journals and Prism but other users are
allowed to browse the indexes of these publications. The following conference proceedings are
available as open access publications: ASEE Annual Conference (1996-2004); International
Colloquium on Engineering Education (2002-2003); Engineering Research Council - ERC
(1996-2003); Conference for Industry and Education Collaboration - CIEC (2001-2004); and
Frontiers in Education (FIE) (2000-2004). The last two are not loaded on the ASEE servers and
are dependent on the functionality of external links. A significant improvement in the searching
capabilities of the ASEE search engine is also worthy of mention. This Web page also has a large
amount of information about future conferences.

5. WHERE TO PUBLISH THEM?

In the previous three sections a great deal of information about the literature of engineering
education has been discussed. In summary, the authors in this field can publish their work mainly
in the proceedings of conferences. A good number of engineering societies are supporting this
kind of activity as well as commercial publishers. The second most important avenue for
publication are professional journals. There is a core list of refereed engineering education
journals. Other forms of publications are less common but a good number of monographs and
reports have been published from a variety of sources.

Data obtained from Osorio (1998) indicates that these are publishers that in the past have
published books, reports, conference proceedings or journals related to engineering education:

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
 Table 13. Publishers

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), New York, NY.

American Institute of Chemical Engineering, New York, NY.
American Society of Civil Engineers, Reston, VA.
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Washington, DC.
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Fairfield, NJ.
Columbia University Press, New York, NY.
CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL.
Elsevier Science & Technology Books, San Diego, CA.
Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.
Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), Edison, NJ.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Piscataway, NJ.
IEEE Computer Society, Piscataway, NJ
Institution of Chemical Engineers, Rugby, UK.
Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, UK.
Iowa State University Press, Iowa City, IA
Manchester University Press, Manchester, UK.
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC.
National Academy of Science, Washington, DC.
National Science Foundation, Arlington, VA.
Oregon Institute of Technology Press, Klamath Falls, OR.
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK
Plenum Publishing Corporation, New York, NY.
Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), Dearborn, MI.
Society for Computer Simulation international, San Diego, CA.
Springer Verlag, New York, NY.
SUNY-Albany Press, Albany, NY.
Tempus Publications, Hamburg Educational Partnership, Hamburg, Germany.
Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ.

Although this is not a complete list a variety of professional societies, academic, government and
commercial publishers can be identified as active publishing partners in engineering education.

6. CONCLUSION

The results of works done about the literature of engineering education indicates that this is a
robust and active field. The sections on authorship and subject coverage presented in this paper
demonstrate a sophisticated level of complexity in the field of engineering education similar to
other well known areas such as mathematical sciences education and science education.
Therefore, it is necessary to recognize the importance of engineering education as a whole and
independent body of knowledge. The interrelation of engineering education to other subjects is
also well documented here. This conclusion is supported by the findings of Whitin and Sheppard
(2004) who has stated: "As such, the body of work represented by the Journal shows an
enterprise that is growing in size, in complexity of the work it is undertaking, and its ability to
present this work in a reflective and convincing manner." In relation to the role play by JEE they
said "to play a role in the broadening of engineering education culture by helping to bring the
scholarship of engineering education to the same level of respect and recognition in the faculty
reward system as traditional scholarship in engineering sciences." These reflections are also
applicable to the whole production of research in engineering education.

The following comments are related to engineering education and its sources of publication:

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
Compendex is the most comprehensive index for engineering but it has significant gaps in the
coverage of some core journals for engineering education. For example: the International
Journal of Engineering Education; the International Journal of Mechanical Engineering
Education; the European journal of Engineering Education; and the Computer Applications in
Engineering Education are not included. Some other journals have several gaps in several years
or are not covered cover to cover.

INSPEC, an index with a more specific subject coverage (electrical, control engineering,
computer science, physics and information technology) indexes some of the journals and
conferences in this field. The combined coverage of Compendex and INSPEC is good but is not
complete.

ERIC is the major English language education index but it has poor coverage of engineering
education. Basically, it does not include major journals and conference proceedings in this
subject. Therefore, it is not recommended unless the motive to search on ERIC is to search for a
specific topic in the literature of general education such as assessment methodologies,
pedagogical principals, teaching methods, etc.

The major lack of coverage in index databases (Compendex, INSPEC and ERIC) is the indexing
of articles published in conference proceedings. Compendex just recently (December 2004)
finally included the proceedings of the ASEE Annual Conference. But Compendex nor INSPEC
does not index any of the ASEE sectional conferences. Major national and international
conferences such as the Annual Conference on Frontiers in Education and the International
Conference on Engineering and Technology Education (INTERTECH) are also missing. Less
known journals or conferences have little chance to appear in these databases.

Conference proceedings in engineering education is the most common format for researchers in
the field to publish their findings. Therefore, it is important to attain a more complete level of
coverage for this format. Also troublesome is the inconsistencies and gaps for the coverage of
articles in journals and the complete absence of other smaller but important publications.

Monographs, textbooks, reference sources in engineering education are not that common. Most
monographs on the subject are proceedings of conferences. There is a potential for growth in
publishing monographs specifically about engineering education since it already appears to be a
sizeable and acceptable knowledge in this field.

7. WHERE TO GO FROM HERE?

As indicated by De Petro (2002) one of the critical components of importance in maintaining the
current vitality of the field is the identification, analysis and recording of the engineering
education periodicals and proceedings.

As was mentioned before the American Society for Engineering Education has made
considerable progress in the last few years by making several of its publications easily available
in one place. But the lack of bibliographic record of a great portion of the literary production is
still troublesome.

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference
 Following the example of the National Science Digital Library - a multi-institutional project
funded by the National Science Foundation - the author would like to propose the development
of an Engineering Education Gateway.

This gateway initially could be a bibliographic center for all the documents not included in the
now available databases. It would also include the full-text of those documents that are made
available from their sources free of charge. Further developments for this gateway would be the
inclusion, for example, of databases with significant teaching materials of importance to
engineering courses. There is also a considerable interest in the library and information
community to identify open access projects that could be funded by external sources. Therefore,
a project of this nature would be well received by libraries and it would need for its development
the support of the engineering education community.

REFERENCES

De Petro, T.G.(2002). Engineering Education Periodicals and Proceedings: Increasing

Awareness of and Access to the Literature. In: Proceedings of the ASEE Gulf-Southwest Annual
Conference, Section ICE. The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, La.

Osorio N.L. (1998). Engineering Education as Knowledge Discipline. American Society for
Engineering Education, Annual Conference. Engineering Libraries Division, Poster Paper
Session, Seattle, WA., June 29.

Osorio N.L., and Osorio, M.A. (2002). Engineering Education in Europe and the USA: An
Analysis of Two Journals. Science & Technology Libraries, 23,(1), 49-70.

Wankat, P.C. (2004). Analysis of the First Ten Years of the Journal of Engineering Education.
Journal of Engineering Education, 93, (1), 13-22.

Whitin, K., and Sheppard, S. (2004). Taking Stock: An Analysis of the Publishing Record as
Represented by the Journal of Engineering Education. Journal of Engineering Education, 93, (1),
5-12.

American Society for Engineering Education April 1-2, 2005 – Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
2005 IL/IN Sectional Conference

View publication stats