USING CONTEMPORARY TECHNICAL LITERATURE TO TEACH ENGINEERING
FUNDAMENTALS
James W. Smith
University of Southern Maine
jsmith@usm.maine.edu
Introduction: Engineering courses can be distinguished by the degree to which they can be
considered foundational. In electrical engineering, concepts like circuit analysis and
electromagnetic field theory are foundational. Likewise, in mechanical engineering, topics such
as statics, dynamics and introductory thermodynamics are foundational. While there are many
textbooks for each foundational topic, and some are distinguished by novel (and sometimes
perplexing) approaches to the topic, they generally all cover the same material. Upper division
courses are often foundational too: topics like semiconductor electronics, control theory and fluid
mechanics certainly qualify but in upper division textbooks there is more of a tendency to
include more contemporary topics. Nevertheless, the textbooks here also have a certain sameness
to them.
Technical electives, however, are often much different. Here textbooks, if they are used, are
often written by specialists in the field. This categorization also includes note sets prepared by
faculty. Contemporary work is more often reflected in courses at this level, although actual
reading of current papers by students is less common than summaries of their salient points as
presented by faculty.
This work presents observations on several courses where contemporary literature was used as
the primary text. In one course, a special topics course on electronic properties of engineering
materials, papers published in periodic peer-reviewed journals were used to present an overview
of a number of new and emerging materials and devices based on them. What was learned in that
course about using contemporary literature as a text provided the basis for teaching a course in
physical metallurgy three years later.
The Problems This Paper Addresses: Engineering education is awash with textbooks, particularly
those dealing with foundational subjects. Moreover, the size and cost of many texts has grown
much more rapidly than has the fundamentals underlying the subjects. For example, M.E. Van
Valkenburg’s classic text, “Network Analysis” weighed 1.6 lbs. and cost $8.95 in 1960. A
contemporary text dealing with the same subject weighs 3.6 lbs. and costs almost $200. There
have been some changes in content since then; op-amps and software such as P-Spice justify
some more pages but not a doubling of the paper content. Moreover, the cost of living has not
increased 20 times since that time.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference
University of Hartford
Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education
Cost and size aside, many contemporary textbooks tend to dwell with minutia to the extent that it
becomes difficult for the student to separate first principles from secondary topics (or in the case
of at least one physical electronics text, tertiary topics). Moreover, many texts are issued in
numerous editions in which substantive changes are few, but which preclude the development of
a used textbook market. One suspects that in many cases textbooks are written more for the
benefit of the author and the publisher than the student.
In any event, using a textbook, even a well-written one (and there are certainly many of them)
saddles the instructor with the necessity of adhering, at least to some extent, to someone else’s
notion of how and what topics to cover.
The First Course: Several years ago the author was assigned to teach an upper-division technical
elective “Electronic Properties of Engineering Materials”. At USM a three credit course meets
twice a week for one hour and fifteen minutes. The prerequisites were courses in materials
science and physical electronics. Much of the course was designed to introduce students to some
of the less well-known, but technologically and commercially important materials such as
semiconducting oxides, ferroic and ferromagnetic compounds. The students were assigned a
reading in a basic text1 which provided some of the basic physical science for the paper to be
assigned. This was followed by a lecture expanding on the content of a particular paper. The
paper of the week was then assigned. Peer-reviewed articles from journals such as Journal of the
American Ceramic Society and the Journal of Electronic Materials were typical of the papers
which the students read. The period after the article was assigned the students were required to
prepare an essay which discussed the materials described in the paper, the physical science
underlying it and the significance of the work. The students then discussed the work. This format
worked well since there were only 9 students in the class. Grading was based on the essays and
class participation.
Course Results: Student evaluations rated the course as “good” or “very good”. Written
comments which accompanied the university evaluation tool, as well as anecdotes, were very
positive and suggested a high level of learning. To what degree this was true, however, was
uncertain since no final examination was given.
The Second Course: In the spring semester of 2010 the author taught a course in physical
metallurgy. The student audience was upper division students majoring both in mechanical
engineering and electrical engineering. The prerequisite was a course in materials science,
although some students hadn’t had it. Examination of available texts showed them to be either
extremely basic and descriptive and focused on iron and steel metallurgy or extremely theoretical
and seemingly ungrounded in practice. The decision, then, was to use the procedure described
previously, i.e. use current technical articles as the primary text. This course, however, was
different from the electronic materials course in that physical metallurgy is more of a
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference
University of Hartford
Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education
foundational subject. The class size differed also, whereas the previous class was only nine
students, the enrollment in the course was 30.
The procedure for this course differed slightly from the previous course. No supplement text was
used. Instead, I would lecture for a period on a relevant topic in physical metallurgy and then
assign a paper to be read. The students were divided into groups. One group would take the
introduction, one group would take the experimental procedure etc. Each group would prepare a
written report on their section of the article which was then presented to the class. A particular
example is a lecture in which phase transitions and grain structures were discussed. The article2
which the students were then asked to read dealt with thermal cycles in stainless steel. The class
was divided into five groups. One group took the introduction, one took the experimental
procedure and the other three divided the results. Because much of the material was unfamiliar,
the students engaged in what might be called “just in time” learning. The students provided a
written report and, as a group, gave a PowerPoint presentation on their particular section. The
presentation provided an opportunity for the professor to expand on the teaching both of the
previous lecture and of the article as a whole.
What the Students Thought of the Course: The students were uniformly positive in their review
of the course; they felt that they had a good command of the concepts presented in the course.
The papers assigned, at least in the beginning, had a certain sameness to them. They dealt with
deformation in various steels so the repetition which occurred tended to reinforce basic concepts.
One serious criticism was that computational skills were not developed to any extent.
Summary and Conclusions: This paper describes initiatives by the author to use contemporary
technical literature as the primary “text” for upper-division engineering courses. The first was a
special topics course in which the use of contemporary literature would not seem unusual. The
second, however, was a more foundational course which is typically taught in conjunction with a
textbook. Learning by using such materials takes place in a different manner than learning from
textbooks. A textbook is organized by topics. A metallurgy text, for example, might begin with a
chapter in structure followed by one on characterization techniques. The text then builds on this
knowledge. Reading technical literature is very different. A paper draws on a variety of concepts
dealing with structure, characterization, experimental procedures and analysis and may be
foreboding to students with limited knowledge on these areas. What seemed to succeed in this
course was presenting papers with a certain sameness, for example, four different papers dealing
with heat treatment of various metals were read on consecutive weeks. In this type of learning
repetition becomes a tool which brings about a gradual understanding of a number of different
topics, probably more than could be obtained by using a traditional text. So the way students see
a topic is different because they see it in a particular context. They see, for example, dislocations
not as a stand-alone subject but as a deformation mechanism in a particular material.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference
University of Hartford
Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education
One problem the students had with this mode of learning was the lack of computational skills
developed. That is not necessarily a given in this mode of instruction but care must be taken to
pick articles which have content from which computational exercises could be devised. Another
feature was a sense that whatever success the course had, was due partially to the maturity and
sophistication of the students involved who were willing to come to grips with material which
was not organized or presented in the way that they were used to but who, nevertheless, grappled
with material which initially they had little familiarity with. Using technical papers as the
primary text is probably best used with upper-division students.
References
1. Livingston, James D. “Electronic Properties of Engineering Materials”, Wiley, New
York, 1999.
2. Kumar, B.R. et al, “Effect of thermal cycles on heavily cold deformed AISI 304L
austenitic stainless steel”, Materials Science and Engineering A, vol. 527, (2010) pp875882.
Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Northeast Section Annual Conference
University of Hartford
Copyright © 2011, American Society for Engineering Education