From Caterpillar to Butterfly Transformation in Engineering Education

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From Caterpillar to ButterflyTransformation
inEngineering Education
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Re-Engineering the Classroom
redesigning an educational system is a
relatively easy exercise. Changing ones own
teaching, especially when it has been acclaimed
as successful by all the old standards, is very
much harder Edwin Mason in Collaborative
Learning

• Peer Instruction
• Socratic Dialogue Rediscovered
• Classroom Feedback Systems
• Studio Teaching
• Problem Based Learning (PBL)

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N A T A L I E
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Student Comments
with 100 people in the class you normally
just sit there without being involved... and add
to your notes. In that class everybodys
involved, you have to think about whats being
said...you have to stay awake...but its more
fun, you get more from it...better than just
sitting taking notes what fun it can be, it
can be light-hearted yet you still learn a lot
how quickly a two-hour class passed
compared to other one hour lecture classes
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Studio Teaching
The Strathclyde Active Learning Studio is a copy
of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studio
model
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PBL Mechanical Dissection
In the same way that students of medicine learn
the workings of the human body through clinical
dissection, engineering students can learn a
great deal about engineering components by
mechanical dissection
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1st Year MechEng Curriculum
Peer Instruction
Studio Teaching
Problem-Based Learning
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Just In Time Teaching (JITT)
WebCT
Puzzles
Warms-ups
Good-fors
Drum-Beats
Physlets
Homework-Helpers
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Educational Philosophy

• Constructivist
• Active, collaborative learning
• Student centred
• Dont assume they come to class prepared

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Constructivism Broadly Defined

• A method of teaching which accepts the idea that
  knowledge is not learned rather, it is
  constructed
• students are neither tabla rasa to be written
  upon nor empty containers to be filled
• learning is a process of the student, not the
  teacher
• A method of teaching that sees the students as
  actors rather than spectators.

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the study of physics, with its hard-nosed
sense of reality, has always been a promoter of
objective thinking. The teaching of physics must
continue to be guided by its philosophical basis
in theory, experiments, and objectivity, and not
be misled by the anti-science and anti-objective
philosophies of Kuhn and the constructivist
science educators
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Research-Based Evidence

• Instructional approaches that facilitate
  conceptual change can be effective classroom
  tools
• concept change / constructivism
• cooperative learning
• inquiry
• discovery
• discrepant events

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Are they prepared?

• Students come to class with alternative
  conceptions of the real world that are highly
  resistant preconceptions
• Alternative conceptions are
• misapplied conceptions based upon an Aristotelian
  world view.
• naive attempts to explain the natural world.
• highly resistant to change.
• Can you think of any?

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Examples from Mechanics

• Under the influence of constant force, objects
  move with constant velocity
• The velocity of an object is proportional to the
  magnitude of the applied force
• In the absence of a force, objects are either at
  rest or, if moving, are slowing down
• Heavier objects fall faster
• If an object is at rest, it cannot be accelerating

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Consequences of One Semester of Conventional
University Physics Instruction
Beginning 1st Semester (100 students)
Beginning 2nd Semester (60 students)
Belief
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66
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Other
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Figures courtesy of Alan Van Heuvelen
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You are throwing a ball straight up in the air.
At the highest point, the ball's

• Velocity and acceleration are zero
• Velocity is nonzero but its acceleration is zero
• Acceleration is nonzero, but its velocity is zero
• Velocity and acceleration are both nonzero

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Youre driving a car up a gentle slope. Put the
car into neutral and coast. At the instant of
zero velocity, abruptly put on the brakes. What
do you feel?

• Nothing
• A jerk
• Not enough information

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Consider a person standing in an elevator that is
accelerating upward. The upward normal force N
exerted by the elevator floor on the person is

• Larger than
• Identical to
• Smaller than

the weight W of the person?
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What is approximately the tension in the rope?

• 0 N
• 100N
• Depends how flexible the rope is

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What is approximately the tension in the rope?

• 0 N
• 50N
• 100N
• 200N

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Our goals are to advance our educational
objectives for our students and to structure our
classes in such a way that maximises the
likelihood that all students achieve these
objectives. We strive to create an environment
in the lecture hall that is conducive to student
participation in the processes of articulating,
reflecting on, and evaluating their ideas. We do
not take for granted that students will acquire
or enhance these habits of mind working
independently outside of class.
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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What are the constraints on transformation?

• Individual tendencies
• Beliefs
• Values
• Knowledge
• Attitudes
• Situational variables
• Time structure
• Departmental norms
• Expectations of content coverage
• Lack of instructor time

Mellisa Dancy Charles Henderson Beyond the
individual instructor systemic constraints in
the implementation of researched-informed
practices. PERC Conference 2004
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Transformative Management

• Active leadership
• Give up control and aim for influence
• Cognitive complexity
• Engage academics
• Study your campus like a work of art
• Interpretative strategy

Robert Birnbaum How Academic Leadership Works.
Jossey-Bass, 1992.
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Active Leadership

• Make good teaching a leadership priority
• Become a partner in the venture
• Have faculty lead the change
• Put your money where the rhetoric is
• Reward good teaching in ways that matter
• Make good teaching an institutional
  responsibility
• Make teaching ability a criterion for hiring

Madeline Greene In How Administrators Can
Improve Teaching. Jossey-Bass, 1990
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