Thinking Like an Engineer, 4th edition

About the Book

Balance structure and flexibility to encourage guided inquiry

• Presented topically rather than sequentially, the balance of flexibility and structure provide each student with the amount of scaffolding they need to be successful.
• Provide the foundation upon which the upper-level courses depend for the skills necessary to master more advanced material.
• Scripted examples accompany skills in select sections of this text that are difficult to lecture, such as Excel and MATLAB. The first time a skill is presented, students are expected to use their laptops to work through the examples (not just read them).

Reinforce and Expand through Active Learning

• Several checkpoints within the text allow students to see if they understand the material.
• Comprehension Checks, within the reading, allow the students to self-evaluate their understanding of the material in preparation for class–to enable students to be self-directed learners, we must encourage them to self-evaluate regularly.
• Review Sections, at the end of each of the five parts of the text, provide additional questions, often combining skills within the part to help students climb to the next level of understanding.
• In-Class Activities, stimulate active conversation within pairs and groups of students working through the material. The focus is kept on student effort, and forces them to keep working the problem until they arrive at the right answer. This provides a set of worked out problems for them to solve, using their own logic, before they are asked to tackle more difficult problems.
• Umbrella Projects, allow students to apply skills that they have mastered to larger-scope problems. These problems have been found extremely helpful in providing context for the skills that students learn throughout the unit.
• Video lecture slides accompany each section within the chapter and present sample solutions using voiceover. The video lecture slides provide a set of sample solutions in addition to and different from those in the text.
• Starting worksheets and code are provided for Excel and MATLAB for students to work through examples.
• UPDATED! Microsoft Office 2016 and MATLAB 2016.
• Templates are provided for several types of reports and presentations.

Customize Your Course

Content can be customized to match the topic organization in your course syllabi. Instructor Resources include:

• Instructor’s Manual—Available to all adopters, this provides a complete set of solutions for all activities and homework exercises. For the in-class activities, suggested guided inquiry questions along with time frame guidelines are included. Suggested content sequencing and descriptions of how to couple assignments to the Umbrella Projects are also provided.
• PowerPoints—A complete set of lecture PowerPoint slides make course planning as easy as possible.
• Sample Exams—Available to all adopters, these will assist in creating tests and quizzes for student assessment. 

About the Book

• New material and revisions are based on the comments from faculty who teach with the text, reviewer recommendations, and feedback from students.
• Updated to Microsoft Office 2016 and MATLAB 2016.
• Added approximately 30% new questions and modified 25% of existing questions.

Content Updates

Chapter 1: Everyday Engineering

• New specific engineering fields show the diversity of engineering.
• Improved representation of women in list of engineers in Review Questions.

Chapter 3: Design, Teamwork, and Project Management

• Expanded discussion of design, particularly a more general discussion of idea generation.
• Expanded discussion of teamwork, including discussion of common team dynamics.
• New discussion of project management approaches.

Chapter 4: Engineering Communication

• Improved examples of bad practice in presentations along with improved versions.
• Extensive do’s and don’t’s list for designing technical posters. 

Chapter 6: Solving Problems