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How Engineering Students for the 21st Century Changes the Program
"We remember what we understand; we understand only what we pay attention to;
we pay attention to what we want."
Overview of Change
Engineering Students for the 21st Century will begin to change the electrical engineering program from transmitting a particular set of knowledge to teaching students how to be engineers. What does this mean to students and faculty? The type of student ES21C aims to produce can be illustrated through a well known anecdote about a student taking a physics exam at the University of Copenhagen [15]. Read the anecdote
This anecdote illustrates the difference between shallow or artificial learning, and deep or authentic learning. Shallow learning [16] refers to students' use of strategies like pattern matching or memorization to pass a class with as high a grade as possible, usually successfully. Artificial learning is reinforced by contrived test or homework problems that do not measure skills used by practicing engineers; i.e. the barometer question in the anecdote. In contrast, authentic learning sets tasks for students that mimic those used by practicing engineers. To develop deep learning students must be given authentic tasks. To become engineers students need to continually practice being engineers. This is done by giving them problems or projects that are relevant to students' preconceptions of engineering. However, as anyone who has taught a design or laboratory course knows, it is not enough just to give students difficult problems to solve.
Successfully solving a difficult problem or completing a design project requires that:
(1) a student is prepared with sufficient knowledge and skill to solve the problem,
(2) the student is explicitly taught the process of solving the problem.
How is this accomplished? Engineering Students for the 21st Century creates a small number of courses throughout the program that will emphasize both preparation and process by posing an open-ended problem to students, then teaching them the process of solving it as well as the concepts needed to do so. These “development classes” have several differences compared to traditional knowledge-based courses. First, development classes explicitly acknowledge that there are both different types and levels of learning or knowing. For example memorizing a formula for a test is a different type of learning than being able to measure a voltage and a different level than using the formula to predict how a system will behave. Second, the faculty who teach a class need to be able to identify what levels students are at and the match course goals with different types of learning. For example if an instructor assumes students have skills identified with a higher level of learning than they actually possess very little learning will occur. Finally, faculty need to adopt teaching techniques that are shown to be effective at transitioning students to deeper levels of knowledge. While solving homework problems has value in gaining understanding, it may not be effective as a lab activity in learning how to apply knowledge to an actual system.
Identifying Levels of Learning
To gauge different levels of knowledge, ES21C uses Bloom's Taxonomy [17] to identify six levels of learning and the characteristics of students who have mastered a level. A simplified version of this model is shown below.
Bloom's Taxonomy used as a developmental model to identify and develop deep levels of thinking in students.
Levels of learning are represented by light blue shaded boxes; the name of each level is to the left. Shallow levels of learning are at the top while deep levels are to the bottom. The model is hierarchical- to reach deep levels of learning it is necessary to first mastered the shallow levels. In other words, remembering concepts is needed to understand them, understanding concepts is a prerequisite for applying them. Each level represents an increase in a student's ability to solve problems. Example tasks that students might undertake to develop the skills needed to advance to deeper levels are listed to the right of the arrows. Note that this is a very simple representation; ES21C is developing much more detailed guides to measuring and promoting learning.
The inverted green pyramids to the right of the figure represent how much effort courses at different points in the curriculum emphasize upon each level of learning. Courses during the freshman and sophomore years emphasize the lower levels, while upper division courses place relatively more emphasis on higher levels. Note that the relative emphasis is always greater at the lower levels reflecting the fact that students need to develop skills.
The Strategy for Reform
Many other reform programs change their curriculum; Engineering Students for the 21st Century focuses on changing individual courses. The developmental courses all share a common structure, or strategy, to ensure that students learn efficiently [8]. Using an uncoordinated set of teaching methods, no matter how effective, forces students to continually adapt to changing expectations with negative consequences to learning [18]. To prepare students for an engineering career while teaching the process of engineering design ES21C courses incorporate the six common features shown in the table below:
What ES21C Courses Do
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How They Accomplish This
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Click To Learn More
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| Emphasize that engineering is about solving technological problems or designing new technologies or devices |
Structure learning around two or three fundamental problems rather than a fixed set of concepts. |
STEP 1 |
| Train students in the teamwork skills |
Devote part of each course to building teams and provide feedback on team performance. |
STEP 2 |
| Make sure courses teach material in context. The context should be relevant to students |
Pose the fundamental problems to students through a case study. |
STEP 3 |
| Explicitly teach students the process of solving the problem in three parallel step |
Walk students through the process of problem solving by identifying parts of the process with learning levels on Bloom’s Taxonomy. |
STEP 4 |
| Step 1: Prepare students with the basic concepts needed to solve the problem. |
Remember and understand concepts needed in solving the problem outside of the classroom. | STEP 4a |
| Step 2: Show students how to use these concepts to solve the problem. |
During class periods student teams apply what they know and analyze the problem under faculty guidance. | STEP 4b |
| Step 3: Give students guided practice in solving the problem. |
Have student teams create a solution to the problem then evaluate how well it works. | STEP 4c |
| Teach students how to document and communicate what they have learned and done. |
Have students build an engineering portfolio. | STEP 5 |
| Have students learn from their experiences, both good and bad, to help chart a career path |
Have students reflect on their understanding and experiences | STEP 6 |
Details on each of these steps and links to resources on implementing them can be found by clicking the hyperlinks on the table above.
These six steps or pedagogies [19] guide the curriculum reform strategy. Faculty, however, choose techniques (tactics) that best suit their teaching style, course goals, and the level of their students. These steps are not necessarily sequential. Students may be learning and applying concepts at the same time. A comparison between the organization of a traditional course and a course in ES21C is shown below. Note that traditional courses are very linear, appropriate to a knowledge-based paradigm in which information and concepts are build sequentially. In the ES21C course activities are explicitly identified with different levels of learning and the sequence is dictated by the problem; this is familiar to all faculty from how research is conducted.
Comparison of a traditional and ES21C class in a fifteen week semester. Note that these are
Illustrative only. Both traditional and ES21C courses have a wide range of formats and structures.
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