Welcome back to the Big Beacon twitter chat, where we explore ideas and community relevant to the transformation of engineering education every week. Look for hashtag #BigBeacon every Wednesday at 8 pm EST. We have an exciting lineup of guest moderators and topics for the fall semester, starting off with our discussion with Sal Alajek, B.Eng., Portfolio Manager at Engineers…
Tonight's twitter chat topic will be 'Citizen Engineers, Global Engineers, and Whole New Engineers'. Join us at 8 pm EST on twitter at #BigBeacon to join the conversation. All with interest in STEM education, engineering and engineering education are welcome! The Big Beacon proposes a world where the engineering profession is made up of Whole New Engineers, who are:…
Please join us at 8 pm EST on Wednesday May 29th on twitter, hashtag #BigBeacon for our weekly twitter chat. This week's topic is Rigor in Engineering Education. "Look to the left, look to the right. One of you will not be here at the end of this year." Thus began the engineering education experience of many of today's practicing…
Joy in engineering. That's right - joy in engineering. It might seem like a strange topic or an unlikely pairing. But the first point on the Big Beacon manifesto states that in order be an engineer who is appropriate to our time, equal to keeping pace with technology and solving the next generation of challenges: A Whole New Engineer finds…
MOOCs and Moola There was an article in the New York Times about how massive open online courses are popular and not yet profitable (here). To me this is reminiscent of the rush to place newspaper content online for free, which, later, many newspapers (including the NYT) regretted. The Wall Street Journal was one of a very few who…
Over the last few decades, much time and energy has gone toward reform efforts in engineering education. This work has yielded a great deal of insight into the relative effectiveness of different teaching approaches, and has led to calls for the adoption of experimentally validated pedagogies in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). What the work hasn’t addressed as much, though, is one key fundamental question: What are the underlying values in engineering education?
We need to address values because they are critical for enabling real change in engineering education. After all, if you try to make a change in pedagogy or content without addressing the underlying value system, you are likely to fail, as value systems are the social equivalent of immune systems. Additionally, the values we hold greatly affect the experience students have, and, accordingly, who they become.
Following are four core values — or pillars for reform — we need to address when discussing engineering education.
I just spent a beautiful day with hundreds of amazing Junior Enterprise students at the 2012 Junior Enterprise World Congress (JEWC2012) in Paraty, Brazil south of Rio de Janeiro. I was privileged to be able to give two talks at the conference, and you can see the powerpoint deck of the shorter of the two presentations, Three Steps Junior Enterprise &…