"Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself." - John Dewey
"In the cave you fear to enter lies the treasure you seek." - Joseph Campbell Hero of a Thousand Faces
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Call to adventure
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Accept the challenge
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Conquer your fear
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Claim your treasure
However, the point of engineering programs is not to produce mathematicians; rather, it is to produce individuals that understand the scope and limitations of mathematical models so that students can practically and creatively apply such models scientifically to different problems and situations (Wilkinson, 2013)
Wilkinson, J. (2013). Using group-projects in the teaching of mathematics to electrical engineering students. In L. Thorley & R. Gregory (Eds.), Using group-based learning in higher education (pp. 155–160). Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page.
11-out-of-26 engineering majors tinkered with projects as children. Kruz and 10-out-of-26 engineering majors want a job. Kruz and Kellam 2018.
10-out-of-26 students want to check a box for Python experience, but 11-out-of-26 would enjoy tinkering and discovering.
The goal is to build a community that leverages tinkerers as problem-solvers and mentors to help the job-seekers answer a call to adventure
Creating the engineering design experience in Jupyter
I want them to understand and apply engineering design, learning Python is a bonus
without the struggle and discovery of design learning is an illusion
A student that memorizes a list of 100 Python functions and remembers 97 of those for a test has taken a shortcut from a position of "needing" information to "having" information
You can use technology, in this case Jupyter, to help make facilitate this shortcut, but I wanted to build a design journey.
They should spend time looking at a familiar idea in a new way e.g. take a projectile motion equation and turn it into a function.
They should compare answers and force themselves to ask for help. From colleagues, TA's, and myself.
They need to come up with a working function, but then be faced with the question. What does it mean? How do I use this huge/confusing/obtuse array of computer-speak.
Then, they draw from these past experiences: defining speed, defining energy, etc. and build an interpretation of this work. Make plots, print out values, verify their work.
Finally, they should be telling me what is important. What did they do? Why did they do it that way?