Practices in Educating Undergraduate Engineering Students

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses some of the practices currently being used in educating undergraduate electronics and communications engineering students at the University of San Carlos on the subject of occupational safety and health. These practices include the content, delivery and activities best appreciated by those who have passed through the course. The paper relates that experiential learning and problem-based learning form the core instructional methodology. Students are being asked questions instead of being given answers. Training games and case studies promote teamwork and group processing. Yet, according to the paper, the , individual student knows that he is accountable for his own action and that his action may strengthen or weaken the performance of his group.

Outline:
Introduction
Course Content
Course Delivery
Course Activities
What more?
What now?

From the Paper:

"Problem-based learning is considered to be 'a natural technique to use in engineering because it models the way most engineers work in practice [2]'. This learning process is best exemplified in the mission briefings of this course. Mission briefings are the equivalent for midterm and final examinations. Mission briefing during midterm examination is an in-the-campus activity; while mission briefing during final examination is an out-of-campus activity. Each mission briefing is done by a team of four students with each being given a different task or problem to complete or solve at an allotted time period. Each member locates the venue of his task/problem, identify the task/problem, and formulate his method or answer. All members of the team then report to the instructor for debriefing. Each member of the team answers the questions posed by the instructor in relation to his assigned task or problem. The instructor may choose to ask the rest of the team for comments on the answers of the member being interrogated. For a four-member team, the final individual grade is computed by adding all tentative grades of all members plus the tentative grade of the individual and dividing the total by 5."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Occupational Safety and Health Center, Seven Main Issues and Problems Raised by OSH Experts, North Ave. cor. Agham Road, Diliman, Quezon City, URL : http://www.oshc.dole.gov.ph/infocorner.htm
• Karl A. Smith, Sheri D. Sheppard, David W. Johnson, and Roger T. Johnson, "Pedagogies of Engagement : Classroom-Based Practices", Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 94 No. 1, 2005, URL : http://www.asee.org/jee/upload/SamplePages_87-101.pdf
• Richard M. Felder and Rebecca Brent, Cooperative Learning in Technical Courses : Procedures, Pitfalls, and Payoffs, October 1994, URL : http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/Coopreport.html
• Richard M. Felder and Linda K. Silverman, "Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education", Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 78 No. 7, pp. 674-681, 1988, URL : http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/LS-1988.pdf (In June 2002, Dr. Felder inserted a preface on the online version of the article to inform the public about the changes of his personal views that affect the content of the paper.)

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