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jupytercon2020/proposal.md

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Brief Summary Outline Overview Engineers need student-centered learning to succeed Recognizing Engineering students' experience Compare Kant transcendentalism vs with Dewey's Pragmatism Compare teacher-centered learning vs student-centered learning How does Jupyter fit into student-centered learning? My journey of design with Jupyter in Education Building the journey of design into my Computational Mechanics Example for Linear Algebra How did Jupyter enable enhance this experience Conclusions Affiliation Past Experience Requests
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Brief Summary

In this talk I discuss the role of Jupyter in student-centered learning in new modes of post-COVID teaching. The Jupyter community embodies and enables the goals of student-centered learning. The Jupyter code is built by a cooperative community of programmers around the world. The educational applications include problem-based approaches, project-based inquiry, and building community. I use Jupyter notebooks to build resources for mechanical engineering students. I deployed these notebooks on a Jupyterhub server and distributed examples in Github. Students were able to focus on problem-solving and engineering design methodology in a free open-source software environment. There are three main strengths of Jupyter in the classroom: it is built for experimentation and is versatile, the Jupyter community builds resources and documentation together, and it provides a great way to build problem-based and project-based learning activities in hybrid-blended and distance learning courses. The benefits of building a Jupyter community in the classroom is that students are given the chance to experiment and build models, they are brought into the Jupyter community of free open-source software developers, and they experience an overall student-centered learning environment.

Outline

Overview

  • Student-centered learning is the preferred method of teaching
  • Student-centered learning includes projects, problems, asking questions, etc.
  • Main goal is to develop method of thinking and solution
  • Jupyter enables new ways to create student-centered learning:
    • Its open and versatile, I can use JupyterHub, send raw code, print out pdfs, etc.
    • Open resources available e.g. Barba and Clementi's awesome Engineers Code
    • The community is built upon communication and learning
    • Dewey claimed learning is building community through communication
  • Its everything I want in a learning resource

Engineers need student-centered learning to succeed

Recognizing Engineering students' experience

  • Both PBL and PjBL have shown to be effective in higher education\cite{carlile1998,morrison2004}. Students search, solve, create, and share approaches\cite{awang2008} using math models and measurements.
  • 11-out-of-26 engineering majors tinkered with projects as children. Kruz and
  • 10-out-of-26 engineering majors want a job. Kruz and
  • The most important ABET outcomes ranked by practicing engineers, employers, and recent graduates are 1-problem solving and 2-communication\cite{passow2017,evans1993}.

Compare Kant transcendentalism vs with Dewey's Pragmatism

  • Kant: Nature has fundamental laws that we strive to learn, but are ignorant of true meaning due to physical abilities

  • Kant: would consider a string theory ultimate knowledge as preferred to best-fit approximations from experience

  • Dewey: Method of thinking and solution is the most important part of knowledge Definition of thinking: Thinking is the accurate and deliberate instituting of connections between what is done and its consequences

  • Dewey: learning needs to be associated with a "genuine experience" e.g. writing code, making figures, writing a report, describing an observed phenomena

  • Dewey's preference for thought over knowledge is directly in line with the engineering design process

  • Engineers build with the tools in hand and approximate models to make better connections and control consequences

Compare teacher-centered learning vs student-centered learning

  • Assume knowledge exists and students need to gain it:

    • Teacher-centered learning
    • lecture
    • give assignments
    • criticize and evaluate

  • Community develops in an adversarial way: students-vs-teacher or not at all

  • Assume the thinking process is more important than the actual knowledge:

  • Student-centered learning

    • Project-based/Problem-based assignments
    • encourage collaboration
    • Work involves experimentation and tinkering
    • most importantly thinking

How does Jupyter fit into student-centered learning?

  • "Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself." - John Dewey
  • Chomsky on Dewey if we teach students using a Dewey, student-centered approach it would lead to an industrialist democracy
  • People would be motivated to question, learn, and grow continually
  • Leading to open innovations in a democratic
  • Jupyter and Python are free open source software built by an industrialist democratic$^{+}$ group
  • What better way to build student-centered materials than with a community that exemplifies the final goal of our student community?!

$^{+}$ Democratic in the sense that anyone can join the community and contribute, but of course there are leaders in certain FOSS developments

My journey of design with Jupyter in Education

  • Reflecting upon journey of design
  • I recognized a need and began experimenting
  • Became overwhelmed by information and found help
  • Built my JupyterHub server and Github course materials
  • Now I needed to quantify student engagement, success, etc.
  • The materials lower the threshold to get students coding, so I can focus on their engineering design process

Building the journey of design into my Computational Mechanics

Example for Linear Algebra

  • Students want to apply Linear Algebra to Engineering solutions
  • Familiar engineering situations and models are put transformed into matrices in Numpy
  • Students must interpret and seek help on deciphering these new approaches in three interactive Jupyter notebooks with short answers and medium HW problems
  • The final solution is often in the form of an array of data. What does it mean?
  • Students must print out data, plot values, and try new ways to get their model
  • Finally, students are given a finite element analysis project (just the solution)
  • They apply their knowledge and create a GitHub repository with a solution

How did Jupyter enable enhance this experience

  • Spring 2020 course
  • Hybrid class met in computer lab Tue/Thu for 30-min Jan-Mar
  • Students worked together on examples and homework problems
  • Myself and TA fielded debugging questions
  • COVID-19 quarantine in Mar ended lab sessions: convert to distance
  • Class logged into conference and chatted on Hangouts
  • We used GitHub issue tracker for questions, debugging, and communication

Conclusions

  • Engineers need student-centered learning to experience engineering design
  • Jupyter enables new ways to create student-centered learning:
    • Its open and versatile
    • Open resources allow change and distribution
    • I used open source tools to build a mini open source community in the classroom
  • Its everything I want in a learning resource

Affiliation

Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Connecticut Storrs, CT 06269

Past Experience

JupyterCon Pop-up Boston. Flipping the Classroom with Jupyter

Requests