Integrated pedagogy for specialty courses in chinese engineering education

Specialty courses bridge a student’s university education and future occupation. This paper discusses an integratedpedagogy to cultivate a broader, global engineering perspective among Chinese students to enhance their critical thinkingand research skills. Two kinds of pedagogies based on the curriculum order are integrated with traditional lectures: Englishlanguage literature review and Project-Based Learning (PBL). This integrated pedagogical approach was applied in threedifferent kind of engineering courses at three different schools in three different Chinese universities. Student feedback andself-evaluation shows that the literature review method helps them improve their specialty area English level, as well as gaina better grasp of textbook theories and concepts. Meanwhile, PBL helps students develop process-oriented approaches toreal-world problem solving and collaboration. Findings show that Chinese students experiencing the integrated pedagogyaccept the method, and report a better understanding of textbook content than through passive lectures alone.