old dogs

Step 2 is establishing what my Significant Learning Goals are for the course. There’s a worksheet for this one as well on p11 of the SDG. The task here is to identify two to three main items in each one of the six areas (foundational knowledge, applications, integration, human dimensions, caring, and “Learning-how-to-learn”) of the significant learning taxonomy that Fink has proposed in his text. This selection is to be guided by constantly considering the phrase “Two to three years from now after this course is over, I want and hope the students will ____________.”

1. Foundational Knowledge

• What key information (e.g. facts, terms, formulae, concepts, principles, relationships, etc.) is/are important for students to understand and remember in the future? I have the ABET syllabus to guide me on this response as well, however from my memory I would say A) measurement terminology – accuracy, reliability, etc, B) sources of measurement error, C) transducer fundamentals and selection, D) dynamics of measurement systems, E) statistics and data analysis, F) documentation of work and good report writing.
• What key ideas (or perspectives) are important for students to understand in this course? The purpose of measurements is to provide knowledge for decision making regarding product characteristics and performance, or for control purposes. Critically evaluating the quality of measurements is important. Documenting the measuring process and reporting the analysis and conclusions is what provides evidence of quality. The choice of transducers for measurements will be constantly changing throughout an engineer’s career, the sophistication of analysis will be increasing as well. Engineers will need to know when to hire an expert and to understand what the expert tells them.

2. Application Goals

• What kinds of thinking are important for students to learn? see the sublist below
• Critical thinking, in which students analyze and evaluate? YES!!
• Creative thinking, in which students imagine and create? yes, but this one is a very tenuous connection in my mind at the moment. I’d like to incorporate some open ended challenge questions for lab, but the time commitment to evaluation and guidance of this exercise is scary
• Practical thinking, in which students solve problems and make decisions? YES!!
• What important skills do students need to gain? Working with various transducers to obtain quality measurements. See ABET syllabus for list of standard types. How to communicate the measurement process, results, analysis, and conclusions in a clear and concise method.
• Do students need to learn how to manage complex projects? Not so much in this course, but the preliminary skills built in lab will feed the ME4444 Senior Capstone Design course, which is the “complex” project. Incorporating the certain “management” skills such as introductory design of experiments would be a luxury in this first pass of redesign of the course.

3. Integration Goals

• What connections (similarities and interaction) should students recognize and make? see detailed list below
• among ideas within this course? hmmm
• Among the information, ideas, and perspectives in this course and those in other courses or areas? the dynamics of measurement systems relates to physical modeling and first principles such as the physics of heat transfer and dynamic motion, and more complex considerations such as mechanics of materials for strain gage applications. One can map how this course ties into future courses as well.
• Among material in this course and in the students’ own personal, social, and/or work life? Many students have experienced circumstances when an engineering measurement could have provided needed information for a crucial decision. Identifying such is an opportunity for “reflection.” some students have already gained exposure to measurements in the workplace via their co-op, intern, or job background.

4. Human Dimension Goals

• What could or should students learn about themselves? How do they handle ambiguity, or inconclusive findings. Are errors with the equipment or with the process? How patient are they with difficulties? Who will they blame if something goes wrong? How much perseverance will they demonstrate in the face of adversity? Will they be critical in matching analytical expectations to experimental realities?
• What could or should students learn about understanding others and/or interacting with others? Students can learn to appreciate the necessity for teamwork in verifying quality work. Can all students do all work or can more be learned from dividing the work among groups and then correlating the findings. A student can learn how to coach someone else through the process of dealing with trouble in a calm and systematic manner.

5. Caring Goals

• what changes/values do you hope students will adopt? developing a sense of ownership of quality of work and desire to improve that work at all times. To be committed to providing quality evidence for either themselves or others to use when making decisions
• Feelings? hmm
• Interests? want to know more about how modern sensing technologies can influence the measuring process
• Ideas? generate creative concepts for new measuring solutions

6. “Learning-how-to-learn” Goals

• What would you like for students to learn about: see list below
• how to be good students in a course like this? fostering inquisitiveness, take joy in new things, appreciate the challenges of failure as an opportunity to learn more
• how to learn about this particular subject? what professional tools of the trade are there for undergraduates to go ahead and make use of, what professional development in this field is all about, where new information is likely to be found, what companies are doing to promote new innovations
• how to become a self-directed learner of this subject, i.e., having a learning agenda of what they need/want to learn, and a plan for learning it? an exercise could be to envision how you will apply this skills and information acquired in this course into a new setting, such as ME4444 a year from now.

Read the book, its really good. If you don’t have time, you can always try the 37 page Self-Directed Guide (SDG) to Designing Courses for Significant Learning.

I am in the Initial Design Phase otherwise known as Building Strong Primary Components. There are three phases Initial, Intermediate, and Final. there are 12 total steps to the design process, 5 in the Initial Phase.

Step 1 Identify important situational factors (Page 6/37 SDG)

p7/37 even has a Worksheet! to help gather this material into one location. Although right now, taking the time to fill in the list is not my natural style, I’ll give it a try. (Of course, you the reader realize I am using this blog to actually conduct the work, an external motivator, hmm… not very advanced of me). However, my tendency is to get distracted, so back to the list

1. Specific Context -

• How many students? 48
• Is the course lower division, upper division, or graduate level? junior level, 3credit hour
• How long and frequent are the class meetings? two 55 minute lecture and one two hour lab for “15 week” semester, really 14 weeks.
• How will the course be delivered: live, online, in classroom, in lab? in classroom for lecture as one large group and in lab with groups of nominally 16, so three lab sections
• What physical elements of the environment will affect the class? for group work in class, the desk arrangement is not easy; the room setup is for lecture delivery, with teaching station at front and lots of linearly lined up tables and chairs. There is a overhead mounted projector and computer support for the room. The stations in the lab are excellent and working in eight groups of 2 for hands-on is my preference.

2. General context -

• What learning expectations are placed on this course or curriculum by: the university, college and/or department? Ok, this is a ME major course only, so answering on behalf of the university and college is not really required. I do have the ME Dept ABET style syllabus for the course; I understand the particular content expected. But I would love to address the “critical thinking” initiative on campus, since assessing mechanical measurements is a great place to practice critical thinking. There are university needs to be met with such a course. Recently we were encouraged as faculty to really think about how we can use the IDEA course evaluation to garner feedback concerning how our course “stacks up” in helping the university meet these goals.
• What learning expectations are placed on this course or curriculum by the profession? good question hmm… perhaps I can ask the students what they think.
• What learning expectations are placed on this course or curriculum by society? ditto

3. Nature of the subject -

• Is the subject primarily theoretical, practical, or a combination? I say practical, as is all engineering. Yet theory is indeed a significant portion, so reviewing the syllabus , I would say 40% is theory and 60% is practical.
• Is the subject primarily convergent or divergent? Yeah right…ok, need to go to the book on this one for more explanation of the question
• Are there important changes or controversies occurring in the field? MEM and nano level devices for measuring are new developments. Also, the primary use of digital when much of what is still presented in traditional measurements is analog based means i can indeed see some areas to provide discussion of “changes”. Controversies, not really.

4. Characteristics of the Learners -

• What is the life situation of the learners (e.g. working, family, professional goals)? A good portion, 40%, of the undergraduates do work. this number may be low. Some do have families. By this point they are committed to graduating with an ME degree. How many will actually obtain ME jobs, perhaps 85%? We do have some students go on to graduate school, many do have jobs prior to graduation, and I sometimes hear about degrees in business, law, medicine.
• What prior knowledge, experiences, and initial feelings do the students usually have about this subject? We do not require a physics lab, so some of the actual measurements may be the first time use of some transducers. 25% or so seem to have good experience via HS or co-op regarding taking measurements and reporting them out. I do not think the initial feelings are “bad” regarding this course. Now if we were talking about Dynamic Modeling and Control (a combo of vibrations and control) that answer would change.
• What are their learning goals, expectations, and preferred learning styles? hard to avoid a flippant answer here… I do not know the answer to this one based on data, only biased intuition. so I will refrain from answering at the moment.

5. Characteristics of the Teacher -

• What beliefs and values does the teacher have about teaching and learning? LOL, no really I did! I immediately thought about my teaching philosophy I wrote in 1999 when I applied for this position. I will find that one and link to it. I’ll be working on framing my answer succinctly in another post.
• What is her attitude toward the subject? I really like this subject and I sought out teaching the course.
• What is her attitude toward the students? I like their energy and I want to enable their growth as thinkers
• What level of knowledge or familiarity does she have with this subject? High level, I consider myself to be an “experimentalist” in my research of random vibrations and diagnostics. I feel competent to teach this course.
• What are her strengths in teaching? flexible, willing to try new methods, techniques to convey the content, never satisfied with the status quo, always seeking to improve.
• SJP NEW QUESTION (not in Fink’s list)- What are her weaknesses? unable to clearly communicate expectations, tends to over-challenge the students without providing sufficient framework for developing new skills, can get frustrated and when under stress easily reverts to lecture mode of instruction.

old dogs can indeed learn new tricks! I hope so anyway.

More specifically, Lecture Style Teaching can become Active Learning. I am undertaking a redesign of a junior level measurements course in mechanical engineering. After reading (and re-reading) L. Dee Fink’s Creating Significant Learning Experiences I am ready to give it a go. It goes live in three weeks and of course I am not ready. But I intend to share some experiences in the creation of such a re-write with Fink as my guide.