Arlington, Virginia
March 12, 2023
March 12, 2023
March 14, 2023
Professional Engineering Education Papers
9
10.18260/1-2--45040
https://peer.asee.org/45040
126
Timothy A Wood is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Citadel. He acquired a Bachelor's in Engineering Physics Summa Cum Laude with Honors followed by Civil Engineering Master's and Doctoral degrees from Texas Tech University. His technical research focuses on structural evaluation of buried bridges and culverts. He encourages students through an infectious enthusiasm for engineering mechanics and self-directed, lifelong learning. He aims to recover the benefits of the classical model for civil engineering education through an emphasis on reading and other autodidactic practices.
Dan D. Nale is Professor of Practice in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Citadel. Dan received a BS in Civil Engineering from The Citadel and both a MS and PhD in Civil Engineering from The University of South Carolina. Dan a
Dr. Stephanie Laughton is an Assistant Professor at The Citadel in the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering. Her bachelor's is from Duke University in Civil & Environmental Engineering and her graduate degrees are from Carnegie Mellon University in the same. Dr. Laughton's research interests include engineering education, sustainability education, and nanotechnology applications in environmental engineering.
Many students come to college ill-equipped to master content in the higher education learning environment. Many have been trained by COVID learning practices to look to online video tutorials as the way to learn, and in some subjects, this is an acceptable practice. That said, an engineer must be able to learn using more reliable methods, and no one will pay for a service that can be mastered via YouTube video. Ultimately, innovative engineers throughout history have gained mastery of new concepts and built on the work of others by reading published works. Most course have an available textbook, though few students invest meaningful time in reading without an external inducement. One approach has been to make interactive textbooks intending for students to engage more deeply via interactive tools. However, upon graduation engineers need to be able to interact and synthesize non-interactive sources like codes and design guides. This skill does not magically appear at graduation. Most students will require some level of coaching to learn to read well, to read with the goal of increasing their understanding. Starting with the Mortimer and Adler's classic *How to Read a Book*, students can be taught to join the engineering innovators of previous generations in reading well and taking notes on their reading. The author's learning environment has benefited from a work-in-progress LMS-powered methodology for developing better reading and note taking practices. For completion credit, students are asked to prepare notes from textbook reading assignments and post them to a discussion board. They are also required to submit their notes from class to the same discussion board. Survey results show students seem to find value in the process. Faculty find students better prepared for classroom engagement.
Wood, T. A., & Nale, D. D., & Laughton, S. (2023, March), Shaping Good Old-Fashioned Students through Reading and Note-taking: A Work in Progress Paper presented at ASEE Southeast Section Conference, Arlington, Virginia. 10.18260/1-2--45040
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