Emerging Paradigms in Engineering and Science Education

Old educational paradigms such as behaviorism and constructivism served industrial growth and expansion by supplying work force with conformity and standards.With the recent advances in automation and social changes, questions are raised about the current adequacy of these paradigms.In the coming decades, growth of diversity of talents would be more appropriate than conformity of skills measured primarily by multiple choice tests, because creative problem solvers increasingly are in demand.Some of the legendary engineers, such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were college dropouts.There are several emerging alternatives that involve distance learning that need to be considered in order to investigate the real issues in engineering and science education.Some of the pertinent questions about any engineering program are: (1) How well do the program learning outcomes, teaching practices, and course materials prepare graduates with the required skills and knowledge for innovative problem solving?(2) What are the changing roles of media, learning environments, behavioral factors, perceptions and social factors?(3) Are there emerging alternatives that appear to be better than current practices?Past pedagogical practices appear to not address these questions adequately.This paper critically examines past pedagogical practices and assesses approaching trends accelerated by Cloud technologies, social networking and the mobile devices that characterize some of the emerging paradigms in engineering and science education.Highlighting evidence from various sources a discussion is initiated in order to examine controversies about trends in emerging paradigms and their implications.