LITEE goes international
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The Laboratory for Innovative Technology and Engineering Education (LITEE) at Auburn University has received two grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for cooperative efforts with India and Chile to develop and disseminate innovative instructional materials designed to bring real-world issues into the classroom.
LITEE, the brainchild of Auburn University professors P.K. Raju, Thomas Walter Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Chetan S. Sankar, Thomas Walter Professor, Department of Management, is widely recognized for programs that utilize case studies, multimedia information technologies, and cross-disciplinary teaming to bring real world problem solving experiences to students.
The LITEE team will head south of the border to conduct a workshop in Chile in collaboration with Mario Letelier, director of the Center for Research in Creativity and Higher Education, University of Santiago. During this workshop a Spanish version of a LITEE case study and associated competency materials will be tested and fine tuned for Spanish speaking audiences in Chile and the U.S.
This effort is designed to identify materials that enable Hispanic students to better relate and understand engineering principles, thereby increasing retention and success in engineering programs, and the diversity of the U.S. engineering workforce.
The second grant will address problems that occur when engineers in the U.S. are called upon to work with their counterparts around the world to service customers, manage research teams, improve business processes and produce quality products.
LITEE will team with A. Ramachandriah a professor from the Department of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, to document issues that commonly arise in collaborative design projects and to provide engineering students from both countries with the tools to address them.
The ultimate goal of the grant is to identify and obtain the resources needed to develop a multimedia case study on collaborative global design for use in classrooms in India and the U.S. to prepare students for the real-world challenges posed by cross-border commercial ventures.
LITEE, founded in 1996, has developed numerous award-winning multimedia case studies in partnership with industry to bring real-world engineering problems into the classrooms (www.auburn.edu/research/litee). These case studies illustrate in detail how an industrial problem is analyzed and a solution found. They enable students to develop a solution and then compare their proposal to the solution actually used by the company.
Research on the use of case studies as a classroom tool has shown that they improve higher-level cognitive skills of students and encourage interest in engineering as a field of study. Women and minorities respond particularly well to the case study approach.
The NSF grants are jointly funded by the International Division and the Division of Undergraduate Education. LITEE is a joint effort between Auburn University's Samuel Ginn College of Engineering and the College of Business.
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