By: M. Mitchell Waldrop and Nature magazine

When campus president Wallace Loh walked into Juan Uriagereka’s office last August, he got right to the point. “We need courses for this thing — yesterday!”

These days, students carry laptops, tablets, and i-Pads to the classroom along with their notebooks and writing accessories. They take notes directly using their information and communication technology (ICT) tools. Some make use of the internet to quickly know the meaning of new terminology that they come across in the classroom.  No wonder then that lecturers are no their toes these days!

Thanks to the progress of ICT systems, lecturers are able to conduct Web-based classroom discussions among students, monitor assignments, and facilitate them to learn the concepts while interacting with their peers.  It is also possible to make available pre-recorded lecture videos digitally.  In other words, the students receive support as and when needed, and connect with the lecture content at their own pace, space and time.

Modern-day lecturing involves enhancing the student-learning outcomes by augmenting the face to face classroom teaching with online teaching. A simple survey by show of hands in my class indicated that students prefer face to face classroom teaching augmented by online teaching support and resources.

This is no surprise as they are Generations Y and Z!

To read the full article please click here.

On March 11-13, 2013, the first ever Global Summit on the Grand Challenges of Engineering was held in London, UK. The summit, jointly sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the US National Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was hosted by the RAE in its facilities. It was inspired by the NAE Grand Challenges of Engineering, articulated in 2008, and it followed the successful previous US national summits in Durham, NC, in 2009 and in Los Angeles, CA, in 2010. It was supported by a number of sponsors, with key support from Lockheed Martin. The program was put together by a steering committee consisting of representatives from the RAE and the NAE, as well as from Microsoft, University of Cambridge, Duke University, Olin College and the University of Southern California. Distinguished panelists in sessions from sustainability to health to resilience and to enrichment of life presented the state of the art in the respective fields and led to lively interactive discussions with the audience present as well as with those following on the web. The Summit opened with a plenary address by Craig Venter on Synthetic Biology and closed by a plenary address by Bill Gates on the challenges of the developing world. An impromptu appearance on one of the panels by noted recording artist Wiil.i.am provided the opportunity for interesting new insights on engineering outreach in K-12. The day prior to the official start of the Summit was devoted to a business plan competition by students from participating universities. The Summit closed with the announcement of the establishment of a new program, the Vest Scholars, an initiative undertaken by eight US Universities, Caltech, Duke, IIT, MIT, NC State, Olin, USC and the University of Washington, which will provide the opportunity for doctoral students from abroad to study in the US for one year in any of the NAE Grand Challenges topics supported by the above universities. This initiative honors Chuck Vest, outgoing NAE President. The audience consisted of a mix of Academy members, industry representatives, academics and students. Attending were several engineering deans, including Dame Dowling of Cambridge, Tom Katsouleas, Dean at Duke University College of Engineering, President Rick Miller of Olin College, Leah Jamieson Dean from Purdue University, Wayne Davis, Dean of the University of Tennessee Knoxville, College of Engineering, Nagi Naganathan, Dean of the University of Toledo,  and Yannis Yortsos, Dean of USC. The next Global Summit is to be held in Beijing, China, in 2015.