Join Host Dave Goldberg, Wed, 3 April, 8pm ET on #BigBeacon Twitter Chat

Invitation. Students, educators, engineers, and employers, lend us your tweets by joining a #BigBeacon twitter chat at 8pm, Wednesday, 3 April on Twitter (hashtag: #BigBeacon).  Join me, Dave Goldberg, Big Beacon founder and president, for a lively discussion of the Holistic Engineer and Holistic Engineering Education. All are welcome to just listen or to contribute your thoughts.

How to do a twitter chat. If you don’t have a twitter account, sign up for one at www.twitter.com.  They’re free. If you do have an account, sign onto twitter with your account at 8pm ET on Wednesday night, do a search on #BigBeacon, and you’re in business. The stream of tweets from the chat will appear on your screen.  If you’d like to contribute your two cents (or more), simply send a tweet and append the hashtag #BigBeacon to your tweet and others listening in will see it.

How to make it even easier with tweetchat.com. If you’d like an easier way to go, simply use the www.tweetchat.com tool which tracks all the tweets with your specified hashtag and it appends your hashtag to outgoing tweets, so others will see them.

Resources for reflection before the chat. For those who would like to reflect on the topic ahead of time there are several resources:

• Holistic Engineering Education.  Dom Grasso & Melody Burkins edited volume Holistic Engineering Education has a number of papers in it discussing the need for a more holistic engineer and engineering ed.
• Missing Basics paper & video.  One of the papers in on the missing basics of engineering (here).  A related TEDxUIUC video is available here.
• BB manifesto.  The Big Beacon manifesto calls for a Whole New Engineer and a Whole New Engineering Education (here).

Questions for reflection before the chat. A number of open-ended questions for reflection follow:

• In what ways is the cold war consensus of the largely technically trained engineer serving and not serving the profession and the public in the 21st century?
• If the technically trained engineer needs to become more whole, what dimensions need to be developed?
• In what ways is a technically oriented engineering education adequate.  In what ways is it inadequate to the profession,the public, and to the individual so educated?
• In what ways does the term “well rounded engineer” capture what is mean.
• In what ways are the missing basics missing?  If they are missing, where does an engineer learn them, if at all, and how?
• The manifesto calls for 31 points of reform.  Which points are most important for to redress the current imbalances & why?

STOP looking at LOLcat pics and Join us for the #BigBeacon Twitter Chat, Wed, 8pm. Join what promises to be a lively conversation at 8pm ET, this Wednesday, at hashtag #BigBeacon on Twitter.  I look forward to seeing you there!