An Industry Leader's View of Engineering Education

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An Industry Leader's View of Engineering Education

• Steve Kirschstk_at_propel.com

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Agenda

• My qualifications
• Ideas on improving
• pre-school
• design and process
• feedback

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Why should you listen to me?

• I have no credibility in the field of education
• but the EECS auditorium at MIT is named after me
  
• I represent the customer
• A fresh perspective

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Engineering a better education

• 3 ways to make a better product
• Better parts (raw materials)
• Better product design and manufacturing process
• Use feedback for quality assurance (QA) and for
  ideas on how to continuously improve
• Same is true of education
• Better educated students coming into the system
• Improve what we teach, how we teach it, and who
  teaches it
• Ask students 0-15 years later for feedback and
  actually use it to change the previous 2 steps

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Improving the quality of the incoming students
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95 TIMSS results42 countries
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Texas had state/local control imagine what a
focus on testing can do for the rest of the
country!
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The vision

• All students in the USA receive the best K-12
  education in the world

TIMSS
12th grade
4th grade
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How do we do that?

• Establish clear, measurable goals
• Example For K-12, it could be NAEP or TIMSS
  improvements
• Change what we do
• Copy what works
• Stop doing stuff that doesnt work
• Measure and adjust
• This isnt rocket science. Its just that we
  dont do it very well.

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Changes required

• Understand why we have failed in the past
• Avoid those mistakes
• Realize that K-12 is a federal problem not a
  local problem the states have had their chance
  for over 200 years, yet no state stands out of
  the pack (NAEP). State/local control can make
  things dramatically worse, e.g., Texas results
  on TASP.
• Understand why other countries have succeeded
  and adopt best practices of top performing
  countries. Copying first to get to parity,
  innovating later.
• Have the leadership and courage to do things
  dramatically differently than we are today
• Create a vision, clear goals, and a believable
  strategy based on what has proven to work

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Why isnt there a checklist for education that we
actually use?

• In aviation, a pilot uses an extensive proven
  checklist to ensure a safe flight
• Why not offer a substantial on-going cash
  incentive to enable schools to pass a proven
  checklist of statistically proven replicable
  requirements that ensures a quality education?

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Why dont we run K-12 schools like airlines?

• A. Airlines governed by national safety standards
  (not set by airlines!)
• B. All pilots are qualified and certified to fly
  the plane type (no unqualified substitutes
  allowed!)
• C. On-going pilot training is required
• D. Pilots who dont perform can be fired
• E. Planes that dont meet code cant be used
• F. Pilots free to determine how to fly the plane,
  but not the destination
• G. Require pilots to go through a proven safety
  checklist (that ensures a successful flight)
  before takeoff

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How bad are things today?

• There are gt50 state standards for what students
  are to learn. Everyone else has 1 national
  standard.
• Alignment (standards, curriculum, materials,
  assessments) is therefore virtually impossible
• Imagine if Bill Gates were forced to write
  Windows for each state?
• We are set up to fail.
• There is no good reason we cant have national
  standards. That is step 1.
• NAEP is perfect proof of de facto national
  standards. It can be done.

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Changing how we teach
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Why the sudden discontinuity after 12th grade?
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Methods to improve the process

• Set clear, measurable goals
• Understand very clearly what you are trying to
  achieve
• Copy what works
• Copying is always the most efficient way to get
  to world class performance
• Innovate later
• Innovation is required for progress AFTER you
  are 1

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Metric ideas

• TIMSS-like standardized assessment tests
• Self-perceived customer satisfaction
• Peer/supervisor rated satisfaction
• employed after 2 years
• who were fired in first 10 years
• Average salary improvement after 4 years
• who got jobs after graduation

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Wrong way NCLB

• of schools that NCLB was tested on before being
  rolled out nationally
• ZERO
• Amount of improvement that can be expected from
  NCLB
• Nobody has a clue. Could be negative.
• Even worse we knew Bushs model (TASS) failed
• We should NEVER be experimenting on our kids at
  mass scale like this!!

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Why not treat education policy like drugs?

• Efficacy
• Require proof of efficacy, i.e., it has to work
• Safety
• Require testing on a diverse population to look
  for unintended consequences (negative side
  effects)
• Scalability
• Prove that it can be rolled out in scale and
  still work (e.g. GMP manufacturing standards)

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Right way NCEEs America Choice

• Research best practices
• Spend 11 years studying best practices in other
  countries
• Prototype
• Create a prototype approach based on the
  learnings but adapted for the US market
• Test and validate
• Test it at few schools
• Get a third party to validate results by
  comparing to other schools of similar profile
• Scale
• Roll out to more schools
• Re-test
• Measure again to make sure it scaled with same
  results and without any unintended consequences

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Changing what we teach

• Give people what they need to be successful

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The Kirsch dietIs it good for you?

• Genetically, we are all virtually identical. So
  shouldnt this pie chart work for everyone? You
  can just pick the foods you want, but EVERYONE is
  required to stick to the s

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MIT

• 360 units to graduate
• 48 units humanities (pick from traditional
  subjects)
• x units core subjects
• y units elective
• z units General Institute requirements
• They review this every 50 years, whether they
  need to or not
• Why arent there multiple pie charts? Does one
  pie really fit all?
• executive
• Manager
• entrepreneur
• researcher
• engineer

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MIT

• In 2004, they discovered that communication is
  more than technical writing

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Why arent we teaching soft skills?

• Presentation skills
• Teaching skills
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Negotiation skills
• Nonverbal communication
• Decision-making
• Company politics
• Giving feedback
• Receiving feedback
• Sales skills
• Attire
• Philanthropy

• Behavioral change
• Hiring and firing people
• Interviewing skills
• Social skills, e.g., how to get a date
• Basic project management skills
• Managing complex projects
• Organization skills
• Coaching/mentorship
• Working a room
• Running a meeting
• Conflict resolution
• Public policy

I would love to take such a course - Tony Eng,
MIT
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Soft skills

• If there is one change you can make right now to
  improve engineering education, this is it
• Few offerings are comprehensive
• Even fewer universities (none?) require this to
  graduate
• Dont try to integrate it into existing course
  copy what works
• These skills have been taught very successfully
  in standalone single-topic seminars

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MIT hasnt got it yet (after 20 years of
prodding)

• 6.UAT/6.ThT  Preparation for Undergraduate
  Advanced Project/Masters of Engineering Thesis
• Upon completion of the course, students will have
  learned how to
• propose and define research problems and think
  about solutions
• critically evaluate technical presentations
• architect technical presentations
• present technical material in oral and written
  forms to different audiences at different levels
  of detail
• give and receive constructive feedback
• write progress reports

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Why not also teach basic survival skills?

• Basic investment skills
• Do you know why a stock goes up when they
  announce bad news?
• Do you know why most people who trade stocks
  frequently lose money?
• Personal relationships

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What else should we teach?

• The answer is in the feedback section!

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Changing who is doing the teaching
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Faculty changes

• Require a 6 week training course for new faculty
• West Point does that
• Require people who teach engineering to have
  real world experience in industry
• Example take off a semester and get a full time
  job
• Change incentives to reward collaboration,
  teamwork, and teaching
• Not just individual research!

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Measure and adjust

• Creating a feedback system for quality assurance
  and continuous improvement

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Education is an open-loop op amp
Jobexperience
Collegeeducation
Students in
Students out
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Example of using feedback Why executives fail

• Interpersonal skills (CFO, VP Engr)
• Lack of teamwork
• Lack of confidence in the team to work together
  (VP Sales)
• Inability to execute
• Use their knowledge and skills to lead a team to
  success (VP Marketing)

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Whats common?

• They failed on the soft skills
• Nobody failed due to a lack of understanding of
  the basic subject matter in their core area of
  expertise
• Everyone failed due to an inability to translate
  their knowledge into action

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The Paul Cook success model

• Q How do you spend your time?
• A On people problems.
• So feedback should measure
• what skills are the most used
• what skills they could use to be more effective
• what skills were required for success
• what skills led to failure

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My experience at MIT was lopsided

• Technical skills
• BEFOREltltAFTER
• People skills
• BEFORE AFTER

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Why isnt there a feedback system in place?

• What are our goals?
• Do we have metrics aligned to those goals?
• Do we know what they are?
• Is it used as a basis for compensation?
• Is it used as a basis for adjusting the process
  and the design?

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Methods for driving change

• Change the change process
• Internally driven changes at universities are
  typically done on geological time scales
• To change, copy what has worked at universities
  who have solved the lack of change problem
• Start simply Pick one or two metrics for
  driving improvement
• ABET can drive changes
• Establish standardized customer satisfaction
  metrics
• Phase in a few key checklist items Are new
  faculty members required to learn how to teach?
• Phase in a few key optional items Do students
  demonstrate mastery of soft skills?
• etc.
• CASEE could create and market a single J.D.
  Power metric for rating engineering schools on
  customer satisfaction
• Could be coupled with a prize for most
  improved
• A single combined metric is easier to focus on
• Can be component metrics

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Influence Public Policy

• e.g., your vote on Nov. 2

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Significant negative impacts from Bush decisions

• Cutting federal grants NSF, etc.
• Putting our kids at a permanent disadvantage
• Deregulating mercury emissions from power plants
  has led to the possibility of permanent brain
  damage in 15 of the children born in the US
  today
• The requirement to remove 95 of the mercury
  emissions would have costed 1 of the cost of the
  plant
• Ignoring/distorting science
• Cutting funding on his own education bill from
  what Congress proposed
• Believing unbelievable test results (TASS) then
  using that as a basis for national policy
• Unfunded mandates

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Summary

• Improving education is a lot like building a
  better computer
• Quality components Demand the highest quality
  components from our suppliers help them improve
• Customer driven design Adjust the design of the
  product to fit what people want to buy (a
  successful career)
• Quality volume manufacturing Improve the
  manufacturing process by copying best practices
  and making sure we have clear manufacturing specs
  (goals) and that the products meet the spec
  (testing) at high volume (scalability)
• Feedback Take a look at the product after its
  been in use for a few years to ensure quality and
  provide ideas for improvement

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Summary

• Nothing in this talk is new
• Its just that we dont do it (very well)

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Leading indicators of success

• A few clear, measurable goals established and
  used
• People skills being required to graduate
• Changes are prototyped and proven to work before
  scaling (no more NCLB)
• Adoption of national standards (K-12)
• Importing best practices from other countries
• Federal incentives to adopt strategies that are
  proven to work
• New faculty are required to learn how to teach
• Changes take a year instead of a century
• Changes driven by customer satisfaction metric(s)

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Latest copy of this talk

• On my website at
• www.skirsch.com