Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

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for those unfamiliar to learn what the field is. It also creates challenges for recruiting new
students for all degree programs, even the graduate level. Both lack of notoriety and
homophily contribute to the overall diffusion challenge for optics and photonics. Rogers
defines diffusion as “the process in which an innovation is communicated through certain
channels over time among the members of a social system” (2003). Optics and photonics,
as an innovation is not well communicated within engineering and science or beyond, yet
some still find their way to the field.
Within an already close-knit community of photonics scholars, there is an even smaller
cohort of researchers interested in optics education, parallel with education research in
engineering. Engineering education is also small as a formalized discipline, yet reaches all
of the traditional engineering disciplines in some way. A strength of engineering education
is that many of those who are not highly engaged in the field are aware of its existence,
however adoption of the results of engineering education research is limited (Jamieson
2009). The practice-oriented subset of the field is critical to the success of the research
oriented part of the field. Jesiek (2009) discusses some of the challenges and opportunities
for engineering education that are similar to those of optics and photonics. For example,
optics related graduate students and faculty express knowledge and acceptance of “risk”
with developing a career a less familiar field. The same risk factor, and recognisability of
the field is associated with engineering education (Jesiek 2009). Engineering education
has had some influence in most of the traditional engineering disciplines. Our goal for this
project is to evaluate the scholarly influence of engineering education on optics and
photonics education.
Methodology
This study uses citation analysis to evaluate the influence of engineering education
knowledge in optics education. Citation analysis is used to determine research
performance (the published products of research), but also and in our case research
integration. In citation analysis references are counted based on some factor, be it a
university, department, country, discipline, or other characteristic. “Citation analyses
generate relatively short-term quantifiable items, they have the appearance of shortterm
research impacts, and are therefore attractive candidates as short-term proxies for
research impact and perhaps quality” (Wallin 2005, Kostoff 1998). In most citation
analyses, there is no consideration for the purpose of the citation, either to support or
refute a concept, or as an indicator of quality work; it simply means that others have taken
the time to reference. Our goal was to determine the lay ofsubject categories in optics and
photonics education publications, with emphasis on engineering education sources.
Heberger (2010) identifies subject categories as bodies of knowledge, so in this case
consideration was given to technical sources and engineering education sources. This
method enabled us to determine the influence of engineering education on optics
education publications.
This method was chosen because we only explored use, not evaluating how knowledge of
engineering education is used in optics and photonics education. Two publications were
selected as sources of optics education research: Proceedings of Education and Training in
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011