Why Standards Education

Technical standards are formal documents that establish uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices developed through an accredited consensus process.

Standards are:

• developed based on guiding principles of openness, balance, consensus, and due process;
• established in order to meet technical, safety, regulatory, societal and market needs;
• catalysts for technological innovation and global market competition.

Recognizing the important role standards play within the engineering, technology and computing fields, IEEE is providing resources to help introduce and teach undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professors and educators, about technical standards by providing free online tutorials and case studies. Knowledge of standards can help facilitate the transition from classroom to professional practice by aligning educational concepts with real-world applications.

These resources will hopefully be of use in the classroom and help incorporate the teaching of standards into curricula:

• To benefit both students and their faculty mentors as they face challenging design processes;
• To help electrical and computer engineering undergraduate programs incorporate standards into their learning processes;
• To provide tools for use in learning about standards and their impact on design and development.