2009 International Conference on Engineering Education (ICEED 2009), December 7-8, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Cases of Higher Education Changing Impacted by

Information Technology

Yamin LI UTSEUS (Sino European School of Technology of

Shanghai University) Shanghai University

Shanghai, China liyamin@shu.edu.cn

Abstract- Information technology has been developed fast, which is a significant opportunity to higher education, and makes universities take creative methods to train university students. Authors believe education is a service industrial and universities should work on making students be qualified talents. This paper gave two cases using task driven programs to help students learn efficiently.

Keywords-higher education; information technology; engineer; task driven program

I. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, as information technology impacts higher education more and more, the operation of higher education is changing enormously. Previously, for example, teachers used to give students the instruction of experiment step by step, and what students need to do is just to carry out the instruction, which lead students to be lack of creativities. However, today teachers are not the only resource who can give knowledge to students any more; the ways for students to get information are not limited to books. There are much more abundant information recourses than before, such as e-Ieaming resource, BBS, Blog, which is defmitely a transformation [1]. Students can work out solutions by themselves with plentiful information. Under this kind of situation, universities and university teachers have to do some changes to adapt the transformation, and also to promote the abilities of students [2, 3].

II. EDUCATION Is A KIND OF SERVICE INDUSTRIAL; TEACHERS SERVICE To STUDENTS

Under the development of information technology, higher education is a kind of service industry. It takes freshmen, and leads them to a qualified engineer within some years. The qualified engineers should know how to design, how to manufacture, and also how to study by themselves in the future. In universities, providing opportunities and the environment to students is a way to make qualified engineers. Under these opportunities, teachers in universities setup the environment and design programs for students to help them apply knowledge, which is a way of task-driven.

978-1-4244-4844-9/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE 207

Jinwu Qian* ,Member, IEEE UTSEUS (Sino European School of Technology of

Shanghai University) Shanghai University

Shanghai, China jwqian@shu.edu.cn

Universities supply laboratories with many kinds of hardware, such as computers, internet, robot components, lathe, 3D-Printers, and software like Proe, Java, Robot Lab, etc.

In this kind of task driven programs, teachers would not tell students knowledge directly, but induct students to fmd solutions by themselves. In other words, teachers are bridges between students and solutions. When students meet difficulties during the courses they work on the programs, teachers only help with where are the solutions.

III. CASES

In this part, authors describe two cases of using programs to help students learning and practice.

A. Case I-Robot System Building Program

There were nine students joined this program. Those students were the fifth year's students in university for engineer diploma. They were divided into two teams, and each team was expected to fmish the program by themselves. In the program, they were required to build a robot system in a closed field. This robot system is required to detect where the bottle is in the field, then takes the bottle to the destination.

Both teams had no experience in LEGO robot building. All available to them were LEGO robot components, including mechanical parts, sensors, controller and software Robot Lab, a computer and internet. A large mount of information they got was from internet. And they were required to fmish the program in 16 hours (Two hours per week). Although the time looked a lit bit tight, they were happy and devoted themselves into the project. The field is as in Figure 1.

obstacle

guiding line

Figure I. The field of robot system building program

2009 International Conference on Engineering Education (ICEED 2009), December 7-8, 2009, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

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Team I: This team designed a robot (Figure 2)with 'eyes'­vision sensor to detect the bottle and obstacles, a 'hand'­machine claw to scrap the bottle, and two smart tracks to move. Besides, this team also programmed to control the robot.

Figure 2. The robot built by team I

Team 2: This team used a totally different solution. They built a new path and three robots in their robot system, which was a creative solution (Figure 3). The first robot is in charge of detecting the bottle and pushing it onto the second robot; the second robot is installed on the path, and has a trigger to let the bottle roll on to the third robot; the third one looks like a crane with a tray, which pull the bottle to the end point.

Figure 3. The robot system built by team 2

Both of the two teams were successful. They found different solutions by searching and studying information by themselves.

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B. Case 2-Make A Skateboard Bicycle

This kind of program had two students in a team who already studied one or two years in university. They were asked to make a skateboard bicycle. They needed to design the structure and manufacture a real one. In this program, teachers usually need to give more instructions, especially at parts depending more on experience. In order to make a skateboard bicycle, the two students worked out an idea first, made drawings with Proe and tried to improve it again and again. After they made their decision, they found some components on markets, manufactured, and adjusted. It took ten months for those two students fmishing a skateboard bicycle in their part time as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. The skateboard bicycle

IV. CONCLUSIONS

What information technology brings to higher education is not only itself, but also a new concept, an opportunity. As the cases in the paper, universities use varied methods to train students. Higher education will be more flexible and efficient, which could lead to a transformation to higher education.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported by UTSEUS (Sino European School of Technology of Shanghai University). Besides, colleagues and students from UTSEUS, and students from UT (University of Technology of France) also give a lot of help.

REFERENCES

[ I] ZHENG Xu-dong, SANG Xin-min. "A window to look at the picture of information technology in American Higher Education-EDUCAUSE's Missions and Implications." Journal oj Higher Education . .J., 2008, VoI.29,pp.99-104.

[2] MILLER J G EDUCOM. "Interuniversity Communications Council." Science, 1966, ( I 54),pp.483-488

[3] Li Bian."Information Technology and Its Application in E-Ieaming." 2009 International Conference on Networking and Digital Society, Volume I, 30-31 May 2009,pp.293 - 296