Engineering Ed in the 21st Century – Myth#1

[#1]

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All the news lately about “STEM” education has me thinking about my own experience coming to work at HP fresh out of college. Myth #1: If you’re great at problem sets, you’ll be a great engineer…

In my short “video reflection” (2:44), I share the kinds of experiences that REALLY prepared me for engineering design and that “spirit of innovation” that’s needed:

The good news is that many secondary and higher education institutions have been creating more hands-on, socially relevant, design experiences for their students. For grades 6-12, there are programs like Project Lead the Way, which helps schools provide pre-college engineering-like courses for credit. In higher education, there are innovative engineering programs on campuses such as Olin College, Purdue, and many more, where the thrill of real engineering design isn’t an experience saved for the final “senior thesis”, but it’s the excitement that draws in first-year students.

But there’s more to be done. Engineering accreditation needs to take a fresh look at its expectations. Secondary schools need to revisit how math and science can be more relevant through projects that engage students in socially meaningful solutions to real community challenges.

I know we can do it – there’s no time to lose.

Jim Vanides, B.S.M.E, M.Ed.
Education Program Manager
HP Office of Global Social Innovation
Hewlett-Packard

www.hp.com/go/socialinnovation
Follow me on Twitter @jgvanides

[#2]

Hi Jim,

Great video. Thanks for making it.

I agree that if you are great at completing problem sets assigned in traditional engineering, science and math classes, this does not necessarily mean that you'll be a great engineer. Your video makes this case persuasively.

However, I would not recommend doing away with problem sets entirely. To be able to solve tricky, real world engineering problems, it helps to learn to have learned the formalisms of engineering at some point. Formalisms are useful in that they provide an important organizing role for a discipline, can mitigate contextual ambiguity about core conceptual meanings, and help reveal the common deep structure underlying different contextual phenomena, thereby potentially supporting transfer and theory building. Formalism can be learned by doing problem sets, and gaining fluency in using particular problem-solving heuristics.

However, while disciplinary formalisms clearly serve a useful role for experts, that they are less useful for facilitating the conceptual development of an individual who is learning about the discipline or just beginning to recognize the value of disciplinary formalisms for meaningfully interacting with the world.

The issue as I see it is that too many engineering, science and math classes over-emphasize the formalisms and doing problem sets, and do not provide enough context, motivation, and engagement to persists in the hard work of doing problem sets and learning from them.

One way to address this increase the amount of contextualization of engineering, science and math upfront to engage interest and motivation. Then the courses should increase the diversity of contexts and decreased the number of contextual specifics so that over time students were required to understand the formalisms in increasingly tailored contexts, until the abstracted formalism itself became the focus almost explicitly.

- Joe

[#3]

Joe,

Thanks for taking the time to post such a thoughtful comment. 

You bring up some important points which I hope are discussed by Deans of Engineering around the world. While my video was a personal reflection on what I found to be most relevant in retrospect, of course there's a balance of experiences students need. Many engineering programs offer excellent opportunities for real-world design. But I have to say that too often these experiences are either supplemental or left until the end of a student's four-year journey (assuming, of course, that they didn't change their major). Olin College is the most notable exception, of course, since their program of study was designed without the historical constraints most universities face.

My hope is that the video provokes more conversation about what engineering students need to experience in order to be prepared. Thanks for getting the conversation started!

- Jim

[#4]

Hi Jim,

You wrote: "But I have to say that too often these experiences are either supplemental or left until the end of a student's four-year journey."

I agree with you entirely on this point. Many engineering programs seem to wait until the 4th (or 5th) year before students get to experience the "good stuff." I think if students got to experience real engineering challenges in their first two years, and tackled them in collaborative ways, more students would persist in pursuing an engineering degree rather than choose a different major (like I did), and be better prepared to "be an engineer" once they have graduated.

- Joe

[#5]

Three cheers for Project-Based Learning! Wish I would have had more of it throughout my education.