(389b) Forget about Teaching: It Is All about Learning!

During recent times there has been a renewed effort in upgrading teaching methodologies, improving lecture methods, and bringing more hands on activities for the training of the future engineers. These are welcome efforts to develop individuals with better skills and more independent thinking capabilities. However, one possible weakness of these efforts is that they are still focused on the “teaching” aspects rather on the “learning” aspects. In fact, most of them are still based on the low effective and un-motivating lecture method! A single direction of communication, very polished presentation strategies for the material, and very little interaction with the learners are some of the key characteristics of this prominent teaching methodology. Many of the so-called “enhanced” methods seem to be an “enhanced lecture approach” rather than a new approach based completely on the learning needs of the students. No wonder that they “talking about leaving” for other more “rewarding” and exciting disciplines. Examples of these include management, economy, medicine, sports, music, and others. All of these disciplines have adopted student-centered and learned-based methods making the student the center of the learning process and leaving the instructor to a more facilitator or coaching role.

It is quite clear how a player can be developed to be a successful individual in a team sports, how a management student can become a successful player for a business or how a violinist will masterfully plays a Vivaldi concerto…Surely, not by “teaching approaches”, but rather but learning methodologies! It seems to be time for a parading switching from the old fashion teaching methodologies to modern and more effective learning approaches in engineering education that will impact the great majority of students. Good salaries, high demand in the profession and other factors seem to have contributed partially to the “old fashioned teaching status” in engineering education. Time and markets demands have changed…so we need to re-assess the instructional methods from a more fundamental point of view and with the students at the center of our new focus.

The author will present illustrative cases in a variety of professions that parallel well the much more needed “hands on” approaches in engineering education and will introduce the need for a switch to learning-based environments in this discipline. These will include basis aspects, training approaches, conductors, and possible assessment tools of these approaches. The author will draw on his knowledge and expertise on active and collaborative learning environments and the development of several of these successful engineering approaches.