Student-centered vs. Teacher-centered instruction – Twitter Chat Oct 8, 2014

Guest blog written by Scott Nichols

Greetings Big Beacon community members and Twitter followers interested in reforming engineering education: Come join me, Scott Nichols, to discuss how student-centered vs. teacher-centered instruction may influence the quality of engineering programs. We will get started on Wednesday, October 8^th at 8:00 pm, Eastern Time.

As the global economy rapidly grows, more and more STEM jobs are remaining unfilled. Studies show that there is shortage of professionals in STEM related industries and many suggest this is due to lack of exposure to students at the secondary level. With all students required to take a basic technology/engineering in order to graduate high school, is exposure really the issue? Could it be the type or quality of exposure the students are experiencing? As education in whole is experiencing going through reform, it is reasonable to suggest that engineering education has suffered due to different styles of teaching.

Both student-centered classrooms and teacher-centered classrooms have their benefits and downfalls, however it is reasonable to wonder if one style would hold a more powerful impact on students in the engineering classroom. Is a classroom that allows students to explore concepts from an inquiry-based prospective more appealing, meaningful, and attractive to students? Or, is it more beneficial to have an instructor equipped with a top-notch engineering background teach the students the ins-and-outs of the content? These are topics we will explore on Wednesday evening, so tune in for an intense Big Beacon twitter chat that will allow participants to voice their opinion.

Meet the Guest Host: Scott Nichols

A secondary STEM educator and Project Lead the Way Coordinator in Baltimore County, Maryland with a background in Mathematics and Engineering. Scott is dedicated to improving STEM education through making programs STEM courses and program more accessible to students; he is also interested in different styles of teaching may influence the quality of engineering education programs.

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.