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Teaching or Learning? A Framework for Shaping Good Old Fashioned Engineering Students

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering Division (TELPhE) Technical Session 2

Tagged Division

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering Division (TELPhE)

Page Count

16

DOI

10.18260/1-2--44424

Permanent URL

https://sftp.asee.org/44424

Download Count

151

Paper Authors

biography

Timothy Aaron Wood P.E. The Citadel Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0002-3926-7314

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Timothy A Wood is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at The Citadel: The Military College of South Carolina. 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.

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Abstract

Engineering educators are struggling more and more with underprepared students. The typical approach has been to engage in teaching innovations with the goal of educating innovative engineers. But what if the issue is not the teaching, but the learning? To create a framework for educating innovative engineers, this paper seeks to catalogue how innovative engineers were educated. A framework for shaping self-directed, lifelong learners, developed by reviewing the learning strategies, activities, and mindsets of self-directed lifelong learners, can usefully evaluate learning activities developed for engineering students. Starting with the current need as identified by engineering societies and continuing through living expert learners, engineering giants, great American autodidacts, Renaissance and Reformation learners, the commonalities of lifelong learners clearly illustrate the features of the framework. Innovative engineers are committed to self-directed lifelong learning (typically through reading, notetaking, and practice), are curious about the outside world, and desire to shape that world according to its creation order. Lifelong learners also benefit from camaraderie between fellow learners and sympathy from faculty and mentors. From this understanding, engineering educators can develop activities and assignments that foster these attitudes and enforce practice in the activities of lifelong learners.

Wood, T. A. (2023, June), Teaching or Learning? A Framework for Shaping Good Old Fashioned Engineering Students Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44424

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