The current dilemma of "engineering science" may mean that a "paradigm shift" between the old and new paradigms of engineering education is coming. Image source: Chinese Journal of Science

foreword

On March 10, "China Science Daily" published an article jointly signed by Xu Weilin and other 25 scientists and entrepreneurs on the headline of the front page, "It is difficult to get out of the factory if you submit to the paper, and the "engineering science" needs to be reversed" (hereinafter referred to as the joint article ), calling for more engineering teachers and students to go to the front-line engineering sites to solve key technical problems in the industrial field in a timely and effective manner, so that enterprises will no longer be helpless against the "stuck neck" problem in key links, and promote the healthy development of the manufacturing industry. This call has aroused widespread response from the society.

From the perspective of cultivating the ability of excellent engineers, the solutions mentioned in the joint article are all reasonable suggestions. However, considering the constraints of the engineering curriculum structure, the time students can use for professional practice is very short. Even if these suggestions are implemented by colleges and universities, the extent to which they can be implemented and the effects they will produce need more discussion.

The joint article also touched on deep-seated issues such as the evaluation mechanism for teachers' professional titles. Twenty years ago, the older generation of college teachers did not have the problem of "submitting to papers and making it difficult to get out of the factory", but now this problem is becoming increasingly prominent. In this process, subtle changes in the "baton" played an important role. To discuss this change, we should not only look at colleges and universities, but also consider inter-school competition and the interaction between colleges and society. In order to seek development, engineering universities usually have to associate the external evaluation method of universities with the university's evaluation method of teachers' professional titles. Over time, the current situation has formed.

Want to solve the problem but found everywhere constraints. This probably means that the dilemma of "engineering science" has become an intricate structural problem. In recent years, engineering colleges and universities have done a lot of reforms to promote industry-university cooperation and collaborative education, and have also done a lot of work to "break the five onlys". This is food for thought.

The American philosopher of science Kuhn once put forward the famous paradigm theory. The theory explains the structural features of scientific revolutions through a set of concepts such as paradigm, community, anomaly, and paradigm shift. The engineering education paradigm should be regarded as a series of theoretical systems or basic beliefs about how to implement engineering education generally accepted by the engineering education community and society. And "abnormal" means that an old paradigm has been deadlocked in the operation process and cannot be used to solve the problems faced by the community.

Industrial development is the basis for the existence of engineering universities. If the operating mechanism of the latter has made it difficult for teachers and students to leave factories, then the "abnormality" revealed by Kuhn's paradigm theory may have appeared and be very serious. This shows that the existing higher engineering education may face structural adjustments like qualitative changes until the emergence of a new engineering paradigm and bring engineering education to the next stage of development.

In this sense, the current dilemma of "engineering science" may mean that the "paradigm shift" between the old and new paradigms of engineering education is coming, at least it is an opportunity.

1. The existing engineering curriculum system faces structural problems

In order to deeply understand the problems existing in the current engineering university paradigm, it is necessary to deeply analyze the design drawbacks of the current engineering curriculum system structure.

As the "operating system" for the teaching and operation of engineering universities, the current curriculum system design ideas of engineering universities are basically public basic courses for freshmen, professional basic courses for sophomores, professional courses for juniors, and graduation projects for seniors. This idea has lasted for more than 70 years and has profoundly influenced a generation of foundry engineering teachers and students. But no matter from the perspective of modern engineering education theory or from the actual teaching effect, there are many problems in this system.

In this system, professional courses and professional practice start when students are in their junior year. In such a short period of time, it is impossible for students to acquire a good professional vision and practical ability. Nowadays, while new concepts and new technologies are emerging in an endless stream, the technical concepts of the "old engineering" era are not completely outdated. The competition between new and old course content for limited teaching time makes it difficult for students to understand what they have learned within a year or a year and a half. Form a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the profession.

The problem of practical ability training is more prominent - the ability to solve complex engineering problems through hands-on practice is diversified and complex, and it needs to be cultivated by a large number of practical projects. However, according to the existing curriculum system, students do not have much time for hands-on practice, and the position is at the back. Even if students who are not strong in hands-on practice realize the importance of practice in their junior and senior years, and hope to remedy and adjust, they can only wait until the graduate or working stage.

In reality, many third-year students devote a lot of energy to preparing for postgraduate or civil service exams, and some even start from their sophomore year, which greatly reduces the time and energy they spend on practical ability training and professional knowledge acquisition. It can be seen that only from the perspective of learning time planning, the existing curriculum system cannot guarantee that most students will obtain sufficient engineering practice training. Therefore, even if teachers and students enter the front-line engineering site, they may not be able to understand and digest what they see and hear, let alone solve the key technical problems of the enterprise.

Another disadvantage of the existing curriculum system is that it almost isolates a large number of professional course teachers from junior undergraduate students. Many engineering universities include teachers of public basic courses into unified colleges, and teachers who undertake most professional courses and professional basic courses are distributed in various professional colleges. There are a large number of teachers in professional colleges, but only a small number of teachers have the opportunity to open professional basic courses and thus contact sophomore students. Most teachers who offer professional courses can only contact students after junior year.

Limited by the overall credit hours and the number of required courses, students are accustomed to taking elective courses in their freshman and sophomore years. Therefore, when elective courses are offered in junior year, there will not be too many students taking courses. This has resulted in teachers of basic courses needing to complete a large amount of class hours, and there are nearly a hundred people in a class, who are simply too busy; at the same time, many young teachers who are introduced as high-end talents only have a course workload of 4 credits a year, and the actual class is only Five or six students. The study of students during college is mainly managed by various professional colleges, but most of the professional teachers in the colleges have little opportunity and time to contact freshman and sophomore undergraduates. This is a very absurd and real phenomenon, but it has become natural.

Freshman and sophomore years are valuable time periods for students to build their professional aspirations. Students at this stage are very confused. At this time, the education of aspiration and determination can embody the educational connotation of "one soul awakens another soul". More contact with teachers of professional courses will give you more practical opportunities, which is conducive to the germination of students' careers. Otherwise, studies may be abandoned due to lack of self-motivation. If teachers of professional courses have little contact with students, it is not conducive to their accumulation of educating experience.

The suggestions in the joint article, such as "alternate learning and practice", "interdisciplinary cooperative training", and "modular teaching", are all very good, but in the implementation process, there may be problems of how to connect with the curriculum system and specific courses. The problems of the existing engineering curriculum system are structural, which will restrict the implementation of the above suggestions in many ways. If the engineering curriculum system is not reformed, the time left for "going to the factory line to solve practical problems" will be very limited.

2. The concept of engineering ontology needs to be adjusted

Tracing back to the source, whether it is the unreasonable problem of the operating mechanism revealed by the "science of engineering" or the unreasonable design of the engineering curriculum system discussed above, it is related to the deviation of the engineering education community's understanding of the ontology of engineering.

As a concept of engineering philosophy, engineering ontology (or fundamental theory of engineering) is the fundamental understanding of what is engineering and how to understand engineering. When designing the curriculum system or operating mechanism, people are more or less potentially influenced by some kind of engineering ontology. If there are errors or deviations in engineering ontology, the education system built on it will lose its stable foundation. At this time, if the original system cannot be redesigned, it is impossible to make engineering education out of the predicament by only partial repairs.

In this sense, establishing a new consensus on engineering ontology and forming a new idea for engineering curriculum system design is one of the core issues of the new engineering "paradigm transformation".

There are two kinds of engineering ontology, old and new—the old theory regards engineering as the application of science, a derivative of science or technology. However, from the perspective of the new engineering ontology, engineering is creation, which has an independent fundamental attribute and is not a derivative of some scientific knowledge. The core difference between the two lies in whether to recognize that engineering has fundamental attributes independent of science.

Different engineering ontology will lead to different design ideas of engineering education system, and will also affect the design of the operating mechanism of engineering education. The engineering education community must make a choice between the old and the new.

According to the old engineering ontology, since engineering is the application of science, students' engineering cognition is naturally to learn science first, and then do engineering. It is logical to design the curriculum system in the order of "mathematics and physics basic courses-professional basic courses-professional courses-engineering application".

Under this teaching arrangement, students have a relatively large amount of theoretical knowledge in the freshman and sophomore courses, and the learning process is very compact. Students who rely on short-term memory and earn credits through exams will forget most of the previous semester's course knowledge in about 3 months. When they looked for the use of this knowledge in their junior and senior years, they had completely forgotten it. In this regard, most engineering teachers and students can feel it in actual teaching.

However, despite poor practical implementation, few teachers and students would question the correctness of the course architecture design because "engineering is the application of science" has become an iron law in people's minds.

According to the ontology of new engineering, because engineering is creation, and creation will inevitably involve the intersection and synthesis of knowledge of various disciplines, it is impossible to wait for students to learn all the knowledge before starting innovation, so students must be trained to "learn while doing, while learning". "Learning by doing, unity of knowledge and action"—know what engineering problems to solve, break professional barriers in engineering practice, learn what needs to be done, and think about the application of knowledge in the process.

In the perspective of new engineering ontology, whether students can discover and propose engineering problems from multiple perspectives, whether they can conceive breakthrough solutions, and whether they can solve engineering problems through the cooperation of interdisciplinary teams, etc., characterizes the effectiveness of engineering education. The New Engineering Ontology emphasizes that engineering has an independent fundamental attribute. This does not mean that basic science is not important and knowledge learning is not important, but that engineering activities and engineering thinking are the root of engineering education and should be in a dominant position.

According to the ontology of new engineering, the logic of connecting traditional engineering courses of "theory first, then practice" is no longer iron-like correctness. It is unacceptable to shorten the time for practical engineering training and professional training. At the same time, guiding students to carry out interdisciplinary independent learning according to the innovation needs of engineering practice should become the most concerned content of educators, and the engineering practice innovation of "real swords and guns, making something" should become the "basic course" of engineering.

The curriculum system design based on the new engineering ontology does not negate the necessity of theoretical courses such as mathematics and physics, but advocates that the curriculum design should be guided by the innovative ability of engineering practice, and integrate industry-university collaboration, engineering practice, mathematical physics, humanities and social Integrating and connecting the learning of science and professional skills, that is, changing from "theory before practice" to "theory while practice", implementing an engineering-oriented engineering education.

3. New engineering disciplines cannot be based on error ontology

There are plenty of examples in the history of engineering science that do not support the old engineering ontology.

As we all know, modern human science has a history of only a few hundred years, but if the use of stone tools is regarded as an engineering creation activity, then human beings have a history of engineering for more than one million years. The Pre-Qin "Kao Gong Ji" reveals that there was already a clear division of labor and standardization of handicrafts at that time. In addition to a large number of inventions, the Mohist school, dominated by craftsmen, also recorded experimental records that are very close to modern geometric optics. This shows that engineering has an evolutionary trajectory independent of science, and is not a derivative of science.

In fact, even with the emergence of modern science and the increased interaction between engineering and science, engineering often precedes science in many fields and leads to new scientific discoveries. For example, in the books "What Engineers Know and How They Know" and "Thinking Determines Innovation", American engineering historians Vincenti and Billington analyzed historical cases in various fields such as aviation technology and transistor technology. He pointed out that even in modern industrial practice, there are still a large number of phenomena that engineering exploration precedes theory.

Nevertheless, for more than half a century, the social values and thinking habits of "science priority" have been formed around the world, and it has been implemented in every detail of the operation of the science and engineering education system, which has profoundly affected engineering education and the entire society. society. In contrast, although the new engineering ontology has been proposed in the research of engineering history around 1990, it has not attracted enough attention so far. The view that "engineering is the application of science" is not only deeply rooted, but even "unscathed".

This concept leads to the widespread phenomenon of "emphasizing scientists and despising engineers". When this concept has been applied to the education field for a long time, it is not difficult to understand that the training of masters of engineering and masters of engineering converges, and that teachers of engineering universities "succumb to thesis and find it difficult to get out of the factory".

Many people believe that the current engineering education system has been in operation for many years, and it can only be partially repaired and improved. Although this kind of consideration is reasonable, if we do not completely adjust our understanding and take some key steps, it will be difficult to get rid of the shackles of the old engineering and reach the other side of the "new engineering".

When the concept of "engineering is creation, and engineering has its roots independent of science" has not been generally established, the industry and engineering education circles will lack sufficient imagination and courage to make breakthroughs in how to design "engineering-led" engineering education. At present, the exploration of the teaching reform of the new engineering paradigm is still going on, but no matter what the new engineering paradigm is, one thing is clear—we cannot let it continue to be based on an engineering ontology that has been proven to be wrong.

In this sense, "engineering has an independent root" should be established as soon as possible as the engineering ontology of the new engineering paradigm, and on the basis of a wider consensus, the exploration and transformation of the new engineering paradigm should be accelerated. A critical step towards the "paradigm shift" phase.

From the perspective of new engineering ontology, the cognition of engineering, the training of engineering ability, the development of engineering thinking and the shaping of the concept of large-scale engineering should all come from engineering practice activities. Zhu Gaofeng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, once pointed out in his book "Engineering and Engineering Education" that "the essence of engineering education'return to engineering" lies in the change of its dominant position from practice to replace theory...Although theory and practice must be combined, they can only It is a combination of engineering practice leadership.” To achieve practice leadership or even engineering practice innovation leadership requires a series of targeted adjustments to the engineering curriculum system and the operating mechanism of engineering universities.

Such reforms will inevitably encounter various internal and external resistance. However, if the teaching community can accept the new engineering ontology, reflect on the dilemma of "engineering as a science", understand the engineering education concept of combining theory and practice dominated by engineering practice innovation, and make solid and effective changes to the content and methods of the new curriculum system. The continuous construction of the building and the avoidance of a gust of wind-like changes in the morning and evening, then the resistance of opposition will become smaller and smaller.

4. Practicing innovative engineering education for new students can carry out large-scale experiments

"The combination of theory and practice led by engineering practice innovation" can be used as the basic principle for the reconstruction of engineering curriculum system. Only by allowing engineering students to always have the opportunity to be exposed to practical innovation during their undergraduate years can it be possible to achieve "practical innovation leadership". To achieve this, the most difficult but most valuable step is to provide students with high-level practical innovation training during their freshman year.

Practical and innovative freshman engineering education cognition focuses on the personal cognition of engineering concepts and methods. It advocates that engineering students can be exposed to engineering practice in the first week of entering the university, and encourages them to "know engineering in engineering and innovate in innovation". Cognitive innovation in middle school, self-learning, exploration and trial and error before the learning is fully developed, and gradually establish a new engineering learning concept of "learning while doing, combining knowledge and action; real swords and guns, making something".

Purely from the perspective of the curriculum system, the implementation of practical and innovative engineering education for new students can be used as an important indicator to judge whether a college has carried out the exploration of new engineering teaching. Because even if the practical and innovative learning activities are put forward to the sophomore stage of students, there is still a sense of traditional engineering courses of "theory first, practice later". Only when relevant education is implemented in the first year of freshman year, can the new engineering characteristics of "practice and theory" be clearly reflected.

The implementation of practical and innovative freshman engineering education means that a large number of professional course teachers will enter the teaching of the freshman stage. This educational model has the basic idea of "adapting to changes and returning to educating people". It pays more attention to students' ability to face challenges and adapt to changes. It is a "generative education" that can produce new knowledge, new concepts and new discoveries. , has a completely different educational connotation and educational law from traditional education.

Freshman engineering education is a kind of pre-education based on convergence and guidance. The main knowledge that students encounter will be followed up in more detail in higher grades. This enables teachers to devote more energy to shaping students' engineering thinking. Our country has a vast territory. Even students from the same university have very different thinking patterns and study habits in high school, and their learning status in college is even more different. Practical and innovative engineering education places more emphasis on project-based learning, perplexing inquiry-based learning, independent learning, group learning, and a combination of online and offline learning. Students behave differently in such a diverse learning environment, and the rules need to be grasped.

Judging from some of the new engineering education explorations that the author has done so far, some important features of the new engineering paradigm, such as industry-university cooperation, multidisciplinary interdisciplinary, online and offline learning, project-based learning, borderless learning, group learning, etc. It can be manifested in different degrees in the newborn stage. Various types of thinking methods such as engineering thinking, system thinking, design thinking, creative thinking, and humanistic thinking can also be cultivated in it. Freshman engineering education allows teachers and students to make full and free attempts in learning method adjustment and self-construction, so it is suitable as a "new engineering education reform laboratory" for engineering cognition.

The joint article mentioned that "the majority of teachers generally devote their energy to scientific research and writing papers, while despising teaching, thinking that engaging in undergraduate teaching is just to complete the task." If this phenomenon is true, and it is still difficult for engineering universities to make teaching a common concern of all teachers, then at least they should try their best to create conditions to give full play to the creativity of some teachers, as well as the initiative and imagination of students, and explore new ideas that belong to the future. engineering education.

The implementation of practical and innovative engineering education for new students means that the practice and innovation of engineering education can be achieved continuously for four years, and it is possible to learn repeatedly in practice under the guidance of the concept of large engineering, and fully integrate basic, professional and social knowledge into practice , form a large engineering experience, and complete the real cross-disciplinary innovation in the process of engineering innovation.

Recently, cross-discipline has become the trend of education, but there are also teachers who only put the courses of multiple disciplines in the same curriculum system framework, and then claim to have achieved "inter-discipline". It's different." If students only attend classes without relevant practice, it will be difficult for them to cross-synthesize multidisciplinary knowledge immediately when encountering practical problems that need to be solved. New engineering education should create opportunities for "grinding through things" so that students can naturally integrate the knowledge they have learned in practical training.

Engineering education has many important features that are different from traditional disciplinary education, such as industry-university cooperation, multidisciplinary interdisciplinary, hands-on practice, innovation-oriented, and adaptability-oriented, etc. If these characteristics are the directions of future engineering education, students should experience these directions during their freshman year. The plan for a year lies in spring, which focuses on germination rather than maturity. Similarly, first-year college education should also be a kind of germination. Students need "aspirations" before they can talk about "aspirations".

In this process, more engineering teachers should lead students to actually contact the engineering world and explore its mysteries, so that students' aspirations to engage in engineering careers can germinate, and it is easier to form self-driving force. The self-control ability of students in this age group has not yet been fully formed. If the four-year study lacks self-motivation, they will probably indulge in entertainment and fall into a relatively poor state of study and life.

It is difficult to promote practical and innovative engineering education for freshmen, but it is a relatively easy step compared to the major reform of the entire engineering education system—it can trigger systemic changes without causing too drastic mutations, which is conducive to the formation of a It is a kind of migration where new and old engineering disciplines coexist and transition, which is suitable as a breakthrough for "paradigm transformation". In the process of exploring the new engineering education reform in the past few years, this kind of teaching reform exploration has undergone a certain scale of teaching tests, and its significance has already emerged.

Under the long-term influence of the old engineering ontology and the old engineering curriculum system, engineering universities and even the whole society still lack sufficient understanding and attention to freshman engineering education, and some schools are reluctant to increase investment. However, if we want to move towards the new engineering direction, we should start and break the ice from the perspective of engineering education for freshmen, establish a cognitive system of new engineering ontology, highlight the fundamental connotation of engineering, and gradually open engineering education of a new engineering paradigm.

5. "Four years of continuous innovation in engineering practice" should be taken as a stage goal

The reason why the reform at the level of the education system is difficult is that it is intertwined and involved. People want both change and stability, which requires us to find a suitable breakthrough point.

Enabling freshmen to receive engineering training in practical innovation is an inevitable trend of engineering education reform, and it is also the basis for the establishment of "four years of continuous innovation in engineering practice". With this foundation, it is possible to talk about "combining theory and practice dominated by innovation in engineering practice". Since then, various types of new engineering education innovations can be carried out logically.

Universities should start from the perspective of new engineering ontology, strengthen around "four years of continuous innovation in engineering practice", carry out teaching design and operation mechanism design for core issues such as curriculum system and teacher resource allocation, and carry out large-scale reform experiments. This is not only conducive to the orderly application of the existing educational reform achievements of new engineering, but also provides some systematic solutions to the dilemma of "engineering science" in reality.

In the past "theory first, then practice" curriculum model, the role of practice is only to verify the theory. This kind of practice is more like a set of "prescribed actions", and the experimental reports completed by students in each class are similar. However, in engineering practice and scientific research, a large part of practice is for discovery and development, so that innovation can be achieved.

Currently, the ability of many highly talented students to ask questions is worrying—not only in the classroom, but also in the workplace and even research-oriented jobs. We have recently discovered that the pre-Qin Mohists already had teaching methods for raising questions and conducting inquiries in life and production activities. In this regard, we need to carry out reasonable inheritance in engineering teaching. In this way, the students trained can take the discovery and exploration of real problems in the enterprise as their due understanding.

From a long-term perspective, my country, as a major engineering country, needs to generally form a culture of respect for engineers. The construction of this kind of social culture should also start from engineering education. The ontological view of new engineering has sufficient factual basis, and its persistence can reflect the cultural confidence of the industry and engineering education circles.

From a practical point of view, in the face of the new situation of economic and social development at home and abroad in the post-epidemic era, the society's desire for high-level engineering talents has also become stronger. In this situation, the long-standing disadvantages of engineering universities of "submitting to papers and making it difficult to get out of factories" have also emerged. Reflecting on the causes and process of the predicament of "engineering science", we will find that this is not a simple isolated problem, but a guiding There have been problems with comprehensive factors such as concept, value goal, curriculum system, operating mechanism, personnel composition and actual effect, as well as social concepts and social environment. If we want to fundamentally solve the above problems, we need to understand the current dilemma of "engineering science" from the height of "paradigm crisis".

Only when the understanding of the fundamentals of engineering changes, it is possible to trigger a system-level engineering education reform, and make the industry, engineering education circles and even society form a joint force; To conduct discussions and experiments on many issues of change, and to carry out a "paradigm shift" in this way, the actual resistance encountered will be much smaller. Iterative education reform in this direction will gradually establish a new engineering paradigm.

(Original title "Establishing a New Engineering Ontology View, Reconstructing the Engineering Curriculum System and Breaking Through the Dilemma of "Engineering Science" with "Paradigm Transformation")

(The author Ji Yang is a professor at the School of Information and Communication Engineering of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications; the author Zhang Ping is a professor at the School of Information and Communication Engineering of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering)