Special Session: Model Eliciting Activities In Engineering: A Focus On Model Building

This paper addresses the importance of models and modeling in engineering education reform. It focuses specifically on model-eliciting activities, or MEAs, as research and curriculum tools to develop complex reasoning skills, nurture transference and generalizability of problem-solving, and build collaborative skills emphasized in reform literature. Modeling as a key strategy to engineering education carries risk that exclusively didactic and sequential approaches do not, but it appears that much of this risk can be mitigated.