Twitter Chat Sep 3: Engineers – Mindful, Observant, Effective Listeners

Join us for our weekly #BigBeacon Twitter chat on topics related to engineering education. This week the topic is drawn from the BigBeacon Manifesto: #5 The Whole New Engineer is mindful, observant, and an effective listener.

As the new semester kicks off,  as we manage our projects, as we consider new design cycles, considering mindfulness, observation, and listening can be incredibly useful. For me, I am drawn to the idea that I must observe and listen to my clients, my team, and the evolving  business strategy, before I jump into action. This is difficult for me at times, because I like to just get to work. However, one of the skills that is critical
to success engineering design understanding the user, the need, the constraints, and drafting multiple ideas before committing to a singular action or trajectory. To do this, one must be MINDFUL first, to then be observant and listen effectively.

Some questions to prime us for this week’s twitter chat:

Are these skills important for your job?

Did you learn these skills in school or on the job?

How did you learn these skills?

How can we teach these skills?

What are some good examples of programs that are teaching these skills?

What are some good examples in industry of the use of these skills?

Join us on Wednesday, September 3at 8 PM EST for our weekly Twitter Chats. Follow #BigBeacon.

How to Twitter Chat

If you’ve never Twitter chatted before, don’t worry; it’s very easy. First, get a Twitter account if you don’t already have one, and log in. At 8 PM ET on Wednesday go to twitter.com and type #BigBeacon into the search box on Twitter. Thereafter all the tweets with the hashtag #BigBeacon will show up on your Twitter page. To participate, simply express your opinion by sending a tweet, and be sure to append the hashtag #BigBeacon so other members of the Twitter Chat see you are posting. Alternatively, automate the hashtag search and append feature by using the free service Tchat at http://www.tchat.io.

For more information on HOW to twitter chat, read a longer post here.

For more information on our weekly chats, read more here.

About Big Beacon

The Big Beacon is a Movement to Transform Engineering Education, and was organized to catalyze a global social movement around this goal. The Big Beacon connects dots among individuals and organizations to collaboratively disrupt the status quo, thereby bringing about change to align engineering education with the creativity imperative of our times.