Empowering Engineering Faculty and adminstrators

In the article of "Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education", they talked about focusing on engineering faculty and administrators as the major changing agents for the increase of attention to teaching. In Educating the engineer of 2020, it specifically talked about the front-line role of engineering faculty member in supporting the engineering education innovations. We (Tommy, Marc, Junaid and I) discussed about why there is still not much increase in the emphasis on teaching innovation. Although we have realized that the present faculty reward system is very research-oriented, it has not moved much towards the teaching side.

I think the reason for the lack of this shift is still about the "customers" of our educational systems. Are the administrators really care about "students" as our "customers"? Are they really care about "educating people"? Or maybe in a sense, the administrators don't think students are the actual consumers of educational systems. Instead, whether or not research funding are brought in is more important than whether or not the professors are teaching the students in a better way. The point is whether we want to change or not depends on where our values are set upon.

Compare Svarovsky, Forsythe and Latour

By looking back the three papers, I am wondering how big the influence the perspectives of the author have upon their research results. On one hand, we seemed to blame the results from Svarovsky are very "plain to engineers", "it is not new to engineers", on the other hand, we seemed to blame Forsythe was kind of judgmental in a lot of the comments. But the good thing is the latter saw something we as engineers have taken for granted. As engineering educators, borrowing different lenses from other disciplines could render new perspectives to our own disciplines. We don't need to buy all the results, but to see things from different perspectives will certainly help our own development.

Class observation

ENGR 195 Dr. Imbrie Time: Oct 26 03:30 pm-05:20 pm Location: ARMS B061 The students in the class are honor students.

What makes Engineering unique?

Koen's idea about engineering as a way of thinking seems to generalize engineering so much that it essentially can be found and applied everywhere in our everyday lives. It causes me to dig into the essentially difference between an engineering way of thinking and other ways, for example, scientific way of thinking.

What makes an engineering way of thinking different from a scientific one? I think features like innovativeness and feasibility mark the engineering way of thinking. An engineer tries to create some type of new things or modify things based on their existent formats. On the other hand, features like curiosity and imaginativeness symbolize the scientific way of thinking. A scientist strives to discover embedded rules or principles. To me, "to create" and "to discover" make Engineering and Science different from each other.

Thoughts and Comments on epistemology and education (Noddings 5-7)

When reading Noddings and other comments on epistemology here, I sort of pondered on this question: How does epistemology relate to Engineering education? I like Noah's comments about the lack of classwork in education or training course in teaching practice in disciplines outside of education (herein specific, the discipline of engineering). I think A decent level of training or background knowledge in epistemology would certainly affect the practice of teaching in engineering.

For professors, understanding about some basic questions in epistemology could influence the teaching of engineering. Say, the definition of true knowledge.Is the knowledge that professors are teaching in class true knowledge or not? How true it is and under what domain or within what kind of limitation it will stay true? This is a basic question in epistemology. A professor in his teaching would potentially omit some premises or biases without a clear understanding or awareness of his own view in epistemology.

Thoughts on Dewey and Aristotle--Noddings chap 1-4

--It is neat to read Markc 's comment on Dewey about his rejection of Truth. I hold similar idea towards it. Dewey's assertion that knowledge is bigger than truth brothers me because I believe that the goal of natural inquiry or other format of research activities is to find truth. Without acknowledging the existence of truth, it is hard to expect any rational discovery from inquiry process.

--To me, the educational philosophy from Aristotle, especially the part on moral education, is of particular value to education in general. We think of education a lot of times as a way to obtain knowledge or a tool or format for growth. To be able to approach an issue with critical thinking is also part of our educational goals. Whereas, Aristotle pointed out that moral education should be present in young people's education before they could be trusted to analyze moral issues ethically. His educational ideas echoed with the character education model later in the nineteenth and twentieth century. The cultivation of basic traits of character builds the foundation of ethical rationalization. Startled by the growing tendency of unpleasing social practices, I consider that his moral educational model deserves re-appreciation.