Abstract
This chapter discusses Quality Assurance in engineering education from an overall perspective. It advocates that engineering curricula should be revised to nurture all-round engineering designers, so that they can meet new social, industrial and educational needs. The chapter reviews the limitations of current engineering education practices, and argues that they are biased either toward the acquisition of engineering and technological knowledge and skills at the expense of critical thinking skills or toward the nurturing of creative thinking, while ignoring the ability to conduct in-depth investigations. This chapter uses Hong Kong as a case study to further identify new social, industrial and educational needs. To meet these needs, the chapter proposes Eight Cs as evaluative criteria for all-around engineering curricula. They are: competent, comprehensive, critical, creative, curious, continuous, collaborative, and compulsory.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the research funding support of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the faculty and researchers of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the National University of Singapore for their comments on the research direction of the projects which generated the findings for this article. The funding from the Asian Scholarship Foundation the K.C. Wong Education Foundation supported the core study in Hong Kong and supplementary studies in other Asian cities. Part of this article is revised from the article published in the 25th Anniversary Commemorative Album of the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority. I would also like to thank the comments of the examination officers of the Authority.
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Siu, K.W.M. (2009). Quality Assurance in Engineering Education: An All-round Perspective. In: Patil, A., Gray, P. (eds) Engineering Education Quality Assurance. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0555-0_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0555-0_14
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