Book that might be interesting for our "What is Engineering?" discussion.

I came across this book title just tonight, and while I obviously haven't read the book, I can only assume that it is relevent to our upcoming discussions of "What is engineering?" - and probably more centrally, who decided??

Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women, and Modern Machines in America, 1870 - 1945, by Ruth Oldenziel.

Apologies if this is familiar material to you........

Guiding questions: what is engineering?

Next week we're starting to move into the space of asking "what is engineering?"  A couple of guiding questions for you to consider as you read Figuoeira, Jonassen & Strobel, and Koen:

1. What does each argue about the "nature" of engineering? (What would be their answer to the question, "what is engineering?" How about their answer to what engineers know and how they know it?)
2. How does each build their arguments?  What evidence do they use to convince their readers?  What was persuasive (or not) about their arguments to you?  Why?
3. What does each suggest (particularly indirectly) about the aims and process of engineering education?

We look forward to reading your thoughts.

YouTube wishlist

So you wanna make a youtube video!  Put in the comments here the things you wish you could do in movie-making software (or something else associated with making your youtube video).  Our current list:

• Translation between Windows Movie Maker and iMovie (or from Windows to Mac)
• Titles and credits and text over images
• How to use software remote
• How to import powerpoint files into movie format
• Merging/gluing video files together
• Special effects, like green screen
• Recording narration

What else?

Tips on peer-reviewing

Today we started peer-reviewing our first drafts of our first essay for this course.  Some guidelines for reviewing your peers' work:

As a reviewer:

• Critique the argument, rather than the person. Ex: "This argument seems to be missing a step, can you please explain this part?" rather than "You skipped ideas in your argument."
• Specific comments related to the objectives are helpful, rather than "it is good." (Full stop.)  Keep in mind our criteria of grounding, clarity, engaging, and organized.
• As a reviewer, ask for clarification on confusing points. (Psst: clarity.)
• Hearing your work reviewed is an emotional experience.  Be gentle.
• Think about providing your feedback in a "sandwich" format (good thing, critical thing, good thing) or as warm and cool feedback (warm=good, cool=critical, avoiding extremes of hot and cold).
• Provide help in seeing the places that need grounding, and in seeing places in the literature that can provide that grounding.
• Focus on ideas, not copyediting.
• Focus on the argument, not whether you agree with the argument (in terms of the values represented). (Psst: organization.)

As a writer:

• Help the reviewer know what you want feedback on.  Ex: "I know this specific section doesn't make much sense yet, but I'd like some feedback on whether the overall argument is clear."
• Don't expect your reviewer to copy-edit.  Get help elsewhere for this -- the writing lab may be a place for such help.
• If the feedback you are getting from your reviewer is not helpful -- courage!  You are welcome to redirect them by emphasizing what would be more helpful.  However, recognize that sometimes they may have valid points even if you were hoping for feedback on something else.
• Ask for reviewing feedback from others, including family members, friends in other programs, graduate colleagues, other colleagues.  Peer reviewing can happen outside this class more frequently than we do it inside the class.

The groups we had on 9/23/10:

• Julia, Diana, Jeremi
• Corey, Nikitha, Tatiana
• Lorie, Beth, Xingyu
• Tosin, Dan, Benjamin
• Mariana, Nichole, Jeff
• Angela, Ruth, Tamecia
• Natalie, Xin, Hadi