From my experience so far, USC Engineering does a nice job incorporating critical thinking into its curriculum.
The only engineering classes I've taken are AME 101 and the Engineering Academy class. In AME 101, as I'm sure you all remember, we had to do two design projects. No matter how cumbersome some of the instructions for the project appeared (excessive testing, documentation, etc), they were there in a way to promote critical thinking (as well as teach us proper design procedure, etc). For example, for the spaghetti bridge project, before doing anything else, we had to test our spaghetti and perhaps test different brands of spaghetti and find out which was strongest for its weight. We also had to research different bridge designs to understand which would be best for the project.This closely mimics the part of critical thinking that involves finding out about your topic so you are educated about the subject matter. Furthermore, we had to test different designs and make improvements to them; this is like the part of critical thinking that involves analysis and synthesis of ideas. Finally, after actually testing our bridge in competition, we had to develop a report which communicated our ideas, processes, and findings (results) to others. This is the communication aspect of critical thinking.
In Engineering Academy, we always talked about the ethics of engineering, different problems facing the world, and how to solve these problems. We rarely did any numerical work in that class; rather, we focused on collaborating to find solutions to various issues we were presented with. This is a direct practice of critical thinking skills, and I feel like I learned a lot about engineering in that class. This didn't include calculating the tension in a rod; instead, I learned about what engineers actually do and how they apply their knowledge to real world problems.
The only engineering classes I've taken are AME 101 and the Engineering Academy class. In AME 101, as I'm sure you all remember, we had to do two design projects. No matter how cumbersome some of the instructions for the project appeared (excessive testing, documentation, etc), they were there in a way to promote critical thinking (as well as teach us proper design procedure, etc). For example, for the spaghetti bridge project, before doing anything else, we had to test our spaghetti and perhaps test different brands of spaghetti and find out which was strongest for its weight. We also had to research different bridge designs to understand which would be best for the project.This closely mimics the part of critical thinking that involves finding out about your topic so you are educated about the subject matter. Furthermore, we had to test different designs and make improvements to them; this is like the part of critical thinking that involves analysis and synthesis of ideas. Finally, after actually testing our bridge in competition, we had to develop a report which communicated our ideas, processes, and findings (results) to others. This is the communication aspect of critical thinking.
In Engineering Academy, we always talked about the ethics of engineering, different problems facing the world, and how to solve these problems. We rarely did any numerical work in that class; rather, we focused on collaborating to find solutions to various issues we were presented with. This is a direct practice of critical thinking skills, and I feel like I learned a lot about engineering in that class. This didn't include calculating the tension in a rod; instead, I learned about what engineers actually do and how they apply their knowledge to real world problems.
I disagree with your statement that the engineering academy taught us much. I thought it was fact-level information for the most part. However, presenting the ethics of engineering was a solid gesture in the way of making students form their own stances on ethics.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that different professors had different approaches to teaching the class.
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