The Missing Basics: Philosophical Reflections on a Complete Engineering Education

The Missing Basics: Philosophical Reflections on a Complete Engineering Education David E. Goldberg Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, IL 61801 USA [email_address] © David E. Goldberg 2009

Engineering Education Reform in the Air

Engineering education incomplete.

Many calls for reform.

Many lists the same: More “design,” “people” skills, “communication.”

Faculty resist “soft” skills as not “rigorous”

Here argue that problem is in part philosophical .

Engineering does not understand itself well enough to properly cultivate its young: ontologically or methodologically.

Begin with the End in Mind: Senior Design

Senior design as way to see the end.

General Engineering at UIUC established in 1921.

Grinter report of 1955: more math & science, less design.

UCLA conference 1962.

Ford Foundation grant 1966.

Money ran out 1971.

Industrial funding supports thereafter.

A Special Moment: Ready, Set, Go

These are seniors.

Should be engineers on the threshold.

Express preferences for projects.

Get assigned to a project: 3-member teams & faculty advisor.

Go on the plant trip.

Query: What don’t they know how to do?

20 years of coaching, here’s my list.

Failure 1: Inability to Ask

Don’t know how to frame or ask good questions.

Difficulty probing the problem.

Trouble querying what has been tried.

Problem learning about vendors and sources of information.

Historical terms: Socrates 101.

Failure 2: Inability to Label

Don’t know names of common systems, assemblies, and components of technology.

Engineers as technologically illiterate.

Worse: Difficulty labeling new artifact concepts or models.

Mainly comfortable with familiar categories and objects.

Historical terms: Aristotle 101.

Failure 3: Inability to Model

Don’t know how to model conceptually:

As causal chain.

As categorical list of types or kinds.

Pavlovian dogs when it comes to equations.

Need to understand problem qualitatively in words and diagrams prior to quantitative modeling undertaking.

Historical terms: Hume 101 or Aristotle 102.

Failure 4: Inability to Decompose

Don’t know how to decompose big problem into little problems.

Looking for magic bullets in equations of motion.

Most projects too hard: Companies don’t pay $9500 for plugging into Newton’s laws.

Historical terms: Descartes 101?

Failure 5: Inability to Measure

Don’t know how to measure stuff or collect data.

Engineering taught as abstract math/science exercise.

Ignore benefit of direct measurement.

Historical terms: Locke 101 or Bacon 101?

Failure 6: Inability to Visualize/Ideate

Don’t know how to draw sketches or diagrams when helpful.

Have trouble envisioning solutions.

Graphics education greatly diminished.

Historical terms: da Vinci or Monge 101.

Failure 7: Inability to Communicate

Finally finish the project.

Don’t know how to present or write for business.

“ What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

Historical terms: Newman 101.

The Missing Basics vs. the Basics

“ The Basics:” math, science, engineering science.

Missing basics (MBs): questioning, labeling, modeling conceptually, decomposing, measuring, visualizing/ideating, & communicating.

MBs as more basic than “the basics.”

No surprise: 5th century BC in Athens as pivotal place & moment in human thinking.

MBs as keys to

lifelong learning.

interdisciplinarity.

Do Engineers Need the Missing Basics?

Yes!!

Three reasons:

Engineering is more than math & science.

World is flat: Training category enhancers in world of category creators.

Qualitative reasoning necessary for great engineering, not just creating “cultured” or “well-rounded” people.

Engineering is More than Math & Science

Postwar: Engineering is applied science.

Von Karman: “A scientist discovers that which exists. An engineer creates that which never was.”

Koen: Engineering is heuristics.

Pitt: Technology is “humanity at work.”

Mesthene: Technology is “the organization of knowledge for achievement of practical purpose.”

Here: “Engineering is the social practice of conceiving, designing, implementing, producing, & sustaining complex artifacts, processes, or systems appropriate to some recognized need.”

Flat Worlds, Creativity & Missed Revolutions