Educational Simulation and
Pedagogies of Engagement:
Encouraging the Academic Transition of
First-Year Engineering Students
Atsushi Akera (Rensselaer)
Pamela Theroux (SUNY Albany / Rensselaer)
IHSS1975
Social Dimensions of Engineering
Origins of “Social Dimensions of
Engineering”
CORE Engineering
Renaissance
Integrative Studies
Pilot Program
Rensselaer’s
First Year Studies Program
• Reserved for First-Year
Students
• Features
– 25 student sections
– Close interaction with
instructors
• Topics Courses
– “Minds and Machines”
– “Living in Cyberspace”
– “Social Dimensions of
Engineering””
Rensselaer’s
First Year Studies Program
• Defined Pedagogic
Strategies
• Faculty
Development
Workshops
• Critical thinking
• Writing & communications
• Teamwork & group work
• Personal instructional attention
• Focus on learning environment & community
• Diversity & diverse learning styles
• Appropriate use of instructional technology
– 2-day annual PAID
workshops
• Faculty Advisory
committee
– Community of
Teachers
“Integrative Studies”
Pilot Program
Proposed focus on a student’s
“academic transition”
• Team-taught strategy
– Humanities Faculty
– Student Life Facilitator
• Self-reflections on learning
process (6-10 sessions)
–
–
–
–
–
–
Goal setting
Reading
Writing
Class Discussion
Teamwork
Time management
“Integrative Studies”
Pilot Program
Actual Transition Topics
Fall 2005 Courses / Collaborations
• Varieties of Religious Experience
(Gordon/Gutmann & Virkus)
• Growing Up in America
(Gowdy/Gutmann & Trahan)
• Minds & Machines
(Van Heuveln - Masulo)
• Social Dimensions of Engineering
(Akera - Theroux)
Fall 2006 Courses / Collaborations
• Rhetoric, Democracy & Media
(Haskins & Redding)
• Minds & Machines
(Van Heuveln – Masulo)
• Social Dimensions of Engineering
• (Akera – Trahan)
1.
What are our goals for this course?
(goals)
2.
What’s the value of an academic
text? (reading)
3.
Why is it important to listen as well
as speak? (discussion)
4.
What makes for a good
presentation? (oral comm.)
5.
What is Dr. Akera looking for in the
weekly thought pieces? (writing)
6.
What makes group work work?
(teamwork)
7.
How do you deal with the midsemester crunch? (time
management)
EC2000
CORE Engineering
Renaissance
Core Engineering
Renaissance
School of Engineering
Core Engineering Office
Kevin Craig, Director
Rensselaer Colloquium
on Teaching and Learning
May 10-11, 2004
Objectives of the
CORE Engineering Renaissance
• Retention
• “Engineering” in first year
• Foundations
– Fundamental body of knowledge
– Foundational skills (modeling,
analysis, measurement)
• Develop technical curiosity
• Engineering practice
• Professional breadth &
development
Collaborative
Pairing
Educational Simulation &
Pedagogies of Engagement
Faustian
Bargain
Educational /
Entrepreneurial Simulation
Course Design
• 50% Team Projects
• 50% Individual readings
Course ePortfolio
“Technoscience” and
Heterogeneous Engineering
Peer Based Learning
• Substantial scale
• Open ended exercises
• Competitive modeling
• Diverse solutions
• Peer critique
• Past work archive
Self-Selected Units & Readings
• Paolo Freire
Self Selected Units & Readings
Schedule 2
3
Pedagogies of Engagement
• Appealing to student interests
– Entrepreneurship
– Technical content / reverse engineering
• Empowering students
– Open ended exercises
– Trust in ability to generate knowledge
– Self-selected units & readings
• Working from student skills & abilities
– Don’t assume they’re illiterate / can’t write
– Peer modeling works well here
Pedagogies of Engagement
• Peer based learning
– Major motivational strategy (peer impressions)
– Demonstration of humanistic knowledge as valued
• Educational simulation
– Brings “real world” knowledge to bear upon learning
process
– Synergistic with teamwork / group work strategies
• Self reflective sessions on learning process
– Learning how to learn
– Increased skills & tolerance for reading & humanities
– Necessary for “critical thinking” & “critical wisdom”
Vehicle for the Delivery of
“STS Concepts”
• Social construction
• Technoscience
• Valence
• Organizational dynamics in engineering
• Social relations of technology
• Ethics of complex systems
• Science & technology relation
• Historicizing engineering education
Associated Objectives
• Weekly writing assignments
• Oral communications & presentation
• Teamwork
• Economic globalization
• Interest in engineering practice
• Choice of engineering field & vocation
• Practical integration of STS concepts
Outcomes Assessment
Fall 2005 Assessment
Criteria for Assessment
Primary Objectives
• P1 Critical Thinking
• P2 Teamwork
• P3 Synthesis & Retention
Content Based Objectives
• C1 Social Dimension of Engg
• C2 Social & Professional
Responsibility
• C3 Sense of
Engineering Workplace
• C4 Engineering Identity
FYS Objectives
• F1 Writing
• F2 Mentoring & Faculty-Student Relation
• --Effective Teamwork (see P2 above)
• --Professional Ethics (see C2 above)
• F3 Community Building
• F4 Diversity / Perspectives
• F5 Engaged Learning
• F6 Instructional Technology
Academic Transition Objectives
• T1 Reading Academic Texts
• T2 Presentations
• T3 Listening
• T4 Time Management
• T5 Learning Process / Reflexivity
Fall 2005 Assessment
Assessment Instruments
• Pre-post comparative essays
• Synthesis essays
• Weekly thought pieces
• Team projects
• Class participation
• Focus groups
• Student survey
• Instructors’ survey
Fall 2005 Assessment
Pre-Post Assessment
Fall 2005 Assessment
Assessment Rubric
Scale of +5/-5 assessment (for each objective)
• 5: Outstanding progress
• -5: Complete disengagement
• 4: Significant progress
• -4: Significant regression
• 3: Notable progress
• -3: Notable regression
• 2: Some progress
• -2: Some regression
• 1: Negligible progress
• -1: Minor regression
• 0: No change
Student work (examples)
To the question: “What is an engineer?”
(Post essays, Pre/Post Comparison)
•
“Engineers are driven both by an inherent desire to create and by the
economic necessities of society. Thus, when the requirements of
society are sometimes in conflict with the ideal of the engineer, the
engineer is often required to determine how far from the engineering
ideal the final artifact will diverge. The engineer is therefore not only a
creator of technical change, but also an integral player in the
development and evolution of society. These aspects of engineering are
certainly visible in many of this semester’s readings.” -EB
•
“I may actually have a less clear picture of what exactly an engineer is
after taking this course, than I did before. Though I knew there were
several different types of engineering, I did not have the picture in my
head of the broad range of careers that can be considered engineering.
Engineers span from the “computer nerds” that sit busily typing away in
the basements of companies, consumed by their work as in Kidder’s
Soul of a New Machine, to Thomas Edison’s charismatic nature in
Hughes’ Networks of Power, which causes him to follow a product from
its invention through its development, through the politics, to its
widespread use. Engineering can fly off in a third direction again,
where, as in Latour’s Science in Action, it begins to be confused with
science.” -HN
Student work (examples)
Demonstrates:
• A reasonably developed sense of engineering identity
• Some facility with STS concepts (sociotechnical, mutually
shaping, “integral”)
• Retention of knowledge
But also…
•
“An engineer is a person involved in the design and construction of
technical innovation. An engineer is someone inventive as well as a
very technically based way of thinking. They are involved in the most
important phase of construction. They are the ones who plan every
thing out and design the initial basis for all aspects of construction.” -IN
•
“An engineer makes society a better place to live in. An engineer
develops products that either the market demands or some new
technology that an engineer believes that society cannot live without.
An engineer sometimes tries to beat nature for human needs.” -SS
Fall 2005 Assessment (Outcomes)
Primary Objectives
Level 4-5
Level 3+
Regress
(-1 or less)
Critical
Thinking (P1)
20%
45%
-(0%)
Teamwork (P2)
10%
55%
--
Synthesis &
Retention (P3)
21%
47%
--
Fall 2005 Assessment (Outcomes)
Content-Based Objectives
Level 4-5
Level 3+
Regress
(-1 or less)
Social Dim. of
Engineering (C1)
30%
80%
--
Social & Professional Resp (C2)
15%
55%
--
Sense of Engg
Worksplace (C3)
30%
60%
--
Engineering
Identity (C4)
30%
55%
--
Fall 2005 Assessment (Outcomes)
FYS Objectives
Level 4-5
Level 3+
Regress
(-1 or less)
Writing (F1)
0%
50%
--
Mentoring (F2)
11%
26%
10%
“Community” (F3)
Diversity (F4)
15%
5%
40%
15%
25%
5%
Engaged (F5)
15%
25%
15%
Technology (F6)
(not adequately tested)
Fall 2005 Assessment (Outcomes)
Integrative Studies
Academic Transition Objectives
Level 4-5
Reading (T1)
Presentation (T2)
Listening (T3)
Time Mgt (T4)
Reflections on
Learning Proc (T5)
Level 3+
Regress
(-1 or less)
5%
35%
10%
22%
56%
--
(not adequately tested)
(not adequately tested)
5%
25%
5%
Thanks…
(questions?)