Outsiders looking in...

I know, I'm double posting...shame on me. But I did have some reflections, on Forsythe in particular, that I wanted to share since I missed some of the discussion in class. First let me say that I really liked the Forsythe chapter, in particular how she draws out several contrasts through her research.

The first of which is looking at the Lab's self-definition as scientists to avoid identifying too closely with other fields and not get credit for doing AI work.
However she calls her informants engineers based on likenesses to her perception of the "engineering ethos" which includes 1) classifying social problems as unimportant, 2) approaching problems practically (through trail-and-error) rather than theoretically, and 3) possessing poor face-to-face communication skills.

Compare this to Jonassen who writes about these very same things as being factors that make engineering problems messy and "real-world". He does not necessarily argue that engineers do have great communication skills, approach problems theoretically and classify social problems as very important. The difference is that he says the lack of these skills/tendencies is a problem, where Forsythe seems to take the attributes of the engineering ethos at face value.

The other significant contrast was in her conclusion that the difference in knowledge acquisition between social science and AI community is a direct result of how each group defines knowledge. She relates that in social science, knowledge is generally thought of as a constantly changing entity (result of ongoing construction and interpretation), thus their view is that knowledge acquisition is inherently challenging. Yet her experiences show that AI treats knowledge as static, non-situated and non-tacit, and thus get frustrated with a seemingly inefficient knowledge acquisition process.

There are certainly other ways to interpret these conclusions and other things that could be taken away from this chapter as a whole, but I think this where I will leave things for now.

What is Engineering in ENGR131?

On the first day of class in ENGR131, the first year engineering class at Purdue, we of course address the question, what is engineering?

The definition of the engineering profession as given by ABET is in the textbook and in the standard set of slides that get shared among all the faculty teaching the class.

"The profession in which knowledge of the mathematical and natural sciences, gained by study and practice, is applied with judgment to develop ways to use, economically, the materials and forces of nature for the benefit of mankind."

I think this gives a very narrow view of engineering and doesn't even begin to address the social and environmental constraints engineers must work under. I wanted to get another message out there to help balance some of the ineptitudes of this one, so I chose a quote from William A Wulf (former president of National Academy of Engineering).

"My favorite operational definition of engineering is 'design under constraint.' Engineering is creating, designing what can be, but is constrained by nature, by cost, by concern of safety, reliability, environmental impact, manufacturability, maintainability, and many other such 'ilities.' Engineering is not 'applied science.' To be sure, our understanding of nature is one of the constraints we work under, but it far from the only one, it is seldom the hardest one, and almost never the limiting one."

I still get goose bumps when I read this quote. Simple but so powerful. This quote really resonated with the message from Jonassen that workplace problems are more that solving math ands science problems. They are messy with social and political constraints that engineering grads are not prepared to handle. Dall'Alba set the stage for us by saying that skills and knowledge are not enough for skillful practice and Jonassen gave us the backdrop for a discussion of engineering education reform.

From toddler to engineering educator

To be quite frank, I have been feeling like a toddler lately. While transforming my views about education into an essay, I felt like a teething toddler learning to talk at the same time. The thoughts were there, but it was a painful process to translate those thoughts into words that others could understand. That pain was similar to the pain a toddler feels as her first tooth grows in. Education was my first tooth; engineering is my second. Ideally, those teeth will work together to chew through the topic of engineering education.

For now, I want to talk about our first dabble in the engineering aspect of the course. One of Jonassen’s themes and one recommendation in “Everyday Problem Solving in Engineering: Lessons for Engineering Educators” really resonated with me. The theme was about communication. I know from personal experience the lack of emphasis engineering programs place on effective communication skills, both oral and written. It also seems to me that without those written skills it becomes increasingly difficult to verbalize one’s ideas. I ran into this problem with the education essay. Rather than communicating with words, I was used to communicating with numbers and symbols. It was much easier to write, and even think, in formulas and diagrams than in full sentences. It made me wonder if this was happening to anyone else – engineering students, faculty, practicing engineers, etc. For those with similar experiences, we must ask ourselves several questions. How critical are these written and oral skills? And how can we, as future engineering educators, make the teething process less painful?


The second aspect of the article I found interesting was about problem-based learning. During the summer I interned at NASA Glenn Research Center, working with a curriculum specialist who was constructing problem-based learning units (PBIU’s) for K-12 students. Throughout the summer we brainstormed ideas about how to create PBIU’s that would fulfill Ohio educational standards in such a way that was active and engaging. One of my many tasks was to create a challenge for NASA’s Human Space Flight Explorer Post, a year-long after school program for high schoolers. The challenge was to be incorporated in the Mars Exploration unit, using Lego Mindstorms (robots). I ended up creating a very open-ended activity in which the two teams of students were only given a mission – to find Martian soil and test for moisture content. They needed to design their own robot, choose which sensors (light, soil moisture, motion, etc.) to use, create and implement a computer program to complete the mission, and finally report their findings in a press conference. Before the end of the summer my mentor wanted to make sure this was feasible, so with help from my sister we tested the activity. This is when I realized the tremendous effort problem-based learning requires from teachers. In order for students to learn what the state says they should learn, the teacher needs to be aware of the possible outcomes to assess what the students actually learned. So here’s my big question: is this feasible?

Well, I feel much better now. After getting my thoughts out in this blog post, my new teeth aren’t hurting so much. Have a great weekend!