Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

In some of the talks I give to groups I ask "everyone that is a teacher raise your hand" and then I ask "of the teachers here, if you learned how to teach AFTER you left college, raise your hand". Most all teachers learn how to teach after teacher college. In college they learn a lot of stuff, including a lot of learning and teaching theories. They even get to do an internship called student teaching. But the real learning comes later, in the class, after graduation.

In engineering college it is commonly the same. Learning a lot of theory about a lot of stuff. Really learning how to be an engineer often waits until after college, after a lot of work, and hopefully under the mentor ship of a good engineer...hopefully.

So where does an engineering professor learn how to be a professor ?
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Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I can't believe this section has not gotten more attention:
From the article...
“You’d like to think that since these institutions are getting the best students, the students who go there would have the best chances to succeed,” he says. “But if you take two students who have the same high school grade-point average and SAT scores, and you put one in a highly selective school like Berkeley and the other in a school with lower average scores like Cal State, that Berkeley student is at least 13 percent less likely than the one at Cal State to finish a STEM degree.”

A 13% higher success rate of graduating a STEM student should be investigated.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Berkeley could easily improve their "success rate" by dumbing-down their curriculum.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Or by improving services to students, such as better teaching, tutoring, access to learning labs ...

Without an in-depth study of what goes on in the two programs, you can't say why one school has a better success rate than the other. Nor can you say what the "worth" of the degree is to those who complete the program.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Yup. Or whether Cal State's "success" rate is actually "better" than Berkeley's.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

This concerns me. I'm having trouble at a tough school. If my odds of success are better at decent-but-not-spectacular state schools, should I just go to those?

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I've thought a lot about our current educational process and wanted to share a few of my concepts for revolutionizing education (particularly collegiate engineering):

1. Direct Competition - As we have all experienced within FIRST, competition is an incredible motivator. Properly structured, competition can both make learning fun and motivate us to keep going farther than we might ever have thought possible. MIT's 2.007 competition is a perfect example. With regards to courses like statics, I could see integrating CAD products within physics simulation engines to create games requiring statics principles to excel.

2. Use Technology - Just imagine if every university recorded video of all the statics lectures covered this year and made them available to all the students. This would enable students to get multiple perspectives that best align with an individual student's learning style. The students could then rate lectures and submit questions for topics not covered (or not covered well). Within a short period of time we would have a comprehensive library of lectures comprehensively covering the material and from a multitude of perspectives. A useful byproduct of this approach would be to give the professor's more time to dedicate to game design (note that I'm not proposing this to eliminate the role of teaching but rather to recast the role of teacher).

3. Reduce Abstraction - Teaching fundamental equations and relationships is good but in my opinion equations need to be tied to a physical understanding of the world. Real-world problems would be used to teach how principles are applied and the limitations in doing so. Collaboration with industry would be a great way to bridge the issue with domain expertise.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

The flaw with comparing schools success rates is like the flaw of saying that an apple is much better than an orange. Unless what their graduates come out knowing is the exact same (and it's impossible for it to be, as the experience at a school is unique), saying X is > Y because of Z is impossible to verify because all the variables are qualitative.

I'm assuming you go to RPI? While a state school might have an accredited program just the same, small schools/programs like that excel because they're focused on producing far-more-than-competant engineers, rather than just a bunch of guys/gals that have a diploma with a BS in [field] engineering because they got by on a bunch of C's and some B's while partying for four years. Yes, it's tougher at some schools, because that's the primary point of going to one of those schools. If the latter was the goal, then you probably might want to transfer.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

As some one who recently graduated from the same tough school I can tell you that there are huge benefits to going to one of the tougher schools instead of a decent state school. Prior to graduating I had multiple offers from major companies, including some that were willing to hire me into non-entry level positions. I have friends who went to decent state schools (it should be noted that there are some state schools with extraordinary programs as well as private schools with poor programs) and they are were not as well prepared to enter the work force as I was. Going through RPI I thought some of the classes were crazy, one example, I wanted to take a signal processing class at another school while on co-op, however I could not find a class that RPI would accept because all of the classes at other schools took two semesters to learn what we covered in one.

I know I could have gone to a decent state school for a much lower cost and probably graduated with a higher gpa but I would have lost out on the Academic Intensity, Undergraduate Research, Professional Development, and Networking opportunities that a school like RPI offered. After 4 years in Troy, countless hours studying (often things I wil never use again like Mat Sci) and student loans that total the same as what my parents payed for there first house I can tell you that I am still confident that I made the best decision for myself and my career when I passed up my Full Scholarship to go to URI and went to RPI instead.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Sorry - Woodie beat you to it, here jump to the 26:00 mark to see super-produced educational material.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Thanks for the reassurance. I need that sometimes, this school is quite tough. :)

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

This is a great idea but it does lack to some extent in practicality, There is already a ton of information to cover in a semester, adding in these types of projects (in addition to what already exists, I completed atleast one design project a semester while at RPI) just increases work load.


There are already schools and professors that do this, I spent a ton of time sitting in the student union watching vidoes of my professors solving equations as well as downloading lectures from simmilar classes at MIT, CMU and Stanford that were available online. Looking through iTunesU can provide some incredible resources. I do agree these videos are extrmely helpful especially when you have a professor who can't communicate clearly (Ian and Chris might be able to back me up if they took Diff Eq with Boudjelkha, the Schmidtt calculus videos were a life saver)



Top engineering schools are doing this, mostly in the last two years once you already have a decent theoretical back ground. I do however firmly believe that a solid theoretical background is the base of what makes a good engineer a good engineer. There are plenty of alented designers and technicians with all the real world experience that you can imagine, however these guys (and gals) are not engineers. In my engineering department there is a whole range of ability levels, both theoretical and practical. I agree that practical experience is great but just because something worked once in one situation doesn't mean it will work again, the number of times I have seen boards fail because the designer "just used what we always used" and the part wasn't up to the current spec for the circuit is astonishing. There is alot to be said for knowing not just what equations to use but why you use them and where they came from.

Engineering is inherently difficult, it requires a firm grasp of advanced math and science, as well as a practical knowledge of how real world situations influence the mathmatical models. Engineering is jsut not for every one, it is hard and college is alot more fun when you don't spend hours studying or in lab. I definitely didn't go out and party as much in college as I could have with an easier major but I still had a great time and made great friends, and now that I am collecting a paycheck as an engineer every 2 weeks I can assure you that the work is worth it.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Huh, and here I thought the reason that I made it through ME at Purdue was because the professors had undergone a rigorous revamp of their undergraduate engineering program after nearly loosing their ABET accredidation during the late 70's due to too much focus on research. I thought having the professors that wrote the textbooks that all of my friends from other schools were using was a big advantage, but it turns out must have been a lower standard...:yikes: (this is a joke/dig).

In reality, it is important to find a school that fits you well and has a solid program. "Fit" can mean a lot of different things to different people. Larger Universities tend to have more opportunities. That being said there is also a larger population, and one of the big opportunities is to get lost in the crowd (not good for many).

Ether:
I am not sure that a less rigorous schedule would in fact graduate more from some of the more selective universities. Frequently the students going to those schools MUST be the top of their class. When they go to a school where they become AVERAGE, this can be a very bad experience. From some of the stories I have heard from some highly selective smaller schools, the imposed pressure can reach incredibly unhealthy levels. There is a very dark metric for this unhealthiness.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

I think you may have taken my comment the wrong way. I didn't say to dumb-down the selection process. I said dumb-down the curriculum.

Anyway, it was intended in lighthearted way. Certainly not what I would expect (or wish) Berkeley would do.

Re: Why Science Majors Change Their Minds (It’s Just So Darn Hard)
 

Thanks! I'm not at all surprised that Woodie is still trailblazing. He is one of my heroes. His work with 270 shaped my thinking even while a high school student. His comments about equations and their relevance (at the 15:15 mark in the referenced video) are spot on. Equations without insight do not make an engineer. While there has been some progress over the last couple of decades in utilizing technology the traditional framework remains mostly in place. I suspect this has a lot more to do with organization momentum than critical thinking and problem solving though.

I wasn't intentionally proposing more work load but rather suggesting a change in the current work load and evaluation mechanism. The games don't have to be as elaborate as in FRC or 2.007. During my time at college, I only had one course that did this. It was an industrial engineering course that was outside my major that I took because the professor was one of the best in the world. The game showed the complications of supply and demand on the production process and was definitely a motivator for me.

Glad to hear this is catching on. Curious to hear your feedback on what the impact would be if the traditional lecture were removed and replaced with these video resources.

I've had the good fortune to have a complex engineering job which over the past couple decades has leveraged the vast majority of my college coursework in some form or fashion. I am thus painfully aware of the distinction between abstract theory and the practical implementation of theory. After mentoring numerous young engineers fresh from college, I've realized that this less than smooth transition was not unique nor has the problem gotten much better over time. Hopefully other engineering jobs don't experience this but it sure would be nice not to have to teach each and every new engineer what their coursework really meant when applied to this particular domain.