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Originally Posted by Dmentor
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..
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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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmentor
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)..
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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)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dmentor
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.
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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.