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Teaching "How" Instead of "What"
The structure of many education systems stresses memorization and "teaching to the test." Students can succeed at these courses without being able to think critically about the material, apply it, or even remember it after the final. In the age of digital encyclopedias, this type of fact recollection is becoming less important.
I endeavor to teach students in a way that rewards problem solving and cooperation, rather than mental regurgitation. Although I will teach facts, I intend to concentrate on skills and concepts to encourage critical thinking. On assignments I will ask students to use the concepts presented in lecture to investigate seemingly unrelated problems. By designing an experiment or determining the most effective analysis, students will discover the broad applications of their newfound skills. (See "Example Problem Set" in evolutionsyllabus.pdf)
Fostering Collaboration and Equality
The success of a collaboration in academic or industry settings can be determined by the communication strategies of the people involved. My goal is to teach students how to work together respectfully and productively across disciplines.
The current environment of many engineering departments is discouraging to female and minority students for many reasons. Peers and mentors often have low expectations for these students' abilities due to stereotypes or lack of role models. Highly competitive courses favor strong personalities, aggressive tactics, and extensive previous experience. Furthermore, individuals with diverse backgrounds and interests can become discouraged by dry introductory courses with few applications.
In my opinion, these issues can be addressed if the first course required for engineering undergraduates, regardless of background, teaches students how to collaborate respectfully and productively. This course would have the following aspects, which I adapted from Harvey Mudd's successful computer science curriculum renovation.
Course title reflects the practical problem-solving and creativity that will be explored in the class: "Practical Computer Programming" or UC Berkeley's "The Beauty and Joy of Computer Programming"
Discourage macho and show-off behavior: Ask a subset of the class to work together to solve a problem in class, then ask the rest of the class evaluate both their ability to collaborate respectfully and the efficiency of their code. Students with prior experience or learning at an accelerated rate will be engaged with extra activities in appointments or office hours to prevent them from discouraging struggling students in class.
Espouse programming languages that are more forgiving and commonly used in other fields: Python or R.
Introduce all students to female and minority leaders in the field. Stress both the cleverness and the social impact of the methods developed.
The course should lead directly into in-school internships that allow students to gain confidence by applying their introductory skills and learning new ones, all in a protected environment.
Active Learning
As a tactile learner myself, I need to "get my hands dirty" to understand a subject, which makes passive lectures one of the most difficult ways to learn. Interacting with the lecture material, rather than just absorbing it passively, increases understanding and retention for most students.
Interactive Lectures
Physics education researchers have shown that rudimentary diagrams of complex ideas distract and even mislead students to incomplete understanding of basic concepts. For example, instead of a 2D diagram, showing a stereoscopic image of a 3D electromagnetic field improved students' scores. Comparative Biomechanics professors at Berkeley passed around demonstrations so that, for instance, the students would have an intuitive tactile understanding of the difference between a dashpot and a spring. By incorporating more effective figures and physical models, I hope to provide students with a tangible and personal understanding of the material, while moving their learning from passive to active.
Learning in Groups
In several courses at UC Berkeley, I noticed that the students who sat in interdisciplinary pairs achieved greater understanding of course material than solitary students. These pairs would depend on each other for small clarifications in lecture, and created deeper questions together to ask the professor. Additionally, working in pairs gives students the confidence to question a given interpretation of the material rather than just blindly trusting each word - an attitude necessary for scientific inquiry.
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