Practice of Mission-Oriented Engineering Education--Viva, the Engineering Spirit!

Engineering education is to be basically different from education in science. The reason is that objective of science is to understand existing phenomena more deeply, while the objective of engineering is to make specific soft and hard wares. Consequently, engineering education should start from real existing phenomena and emphasize the art how to assemble physical principles and techniques for a final realization of needs. Most engineering education of today, however, start with conceptual abstracts followed by applications~a suitable educational methodology for science. In this paper, few case studies of engineering education starting with real phenomena will be reported. In one of the case studies, a product was actually manufactured with a limited budget and within a limited time. It is demonstrated by the case study how the successive engineering processes, including the formation of ideas and the syntheses of related principles and knowledge, can be incorporated in education.