Review of “A Field Manual For a Whole New Education” by Goldberg and Somerville
In “A Field Manual For a Whole New Education”, (FM) Goldberg and Somerville follow up on “A Whole New Engineer” (WNE, see my reflection) to present a more concrete plan for effecting institutional change. They propose the creation of an “innovation incubator” within one’s institution and a structured series of sprints to reflect on values,…
The Flow of Cognitive Apprenticeship and New Tech Propagation
How can a teacher not only impart knowledge to students but also cultivate the mindset and skills necessary to learn independently? How can an engineer teach peers to integrate an immature technology into new applications while the best practices for its usage are being developed through their very work? The first question is central to…
Modularity in Curriculum Design
In the land of Surricula every youth must hear the sagas of stories from the sages before going out to the shore to fight the sea-goblins that dwell there. The sages inherited the sagas from their own elders and added their own twist to each story. Some stories depend on previous ones that others tell.…
An Open Software Engineering Curriculum Introduction
Technological civilization depends on engineers who can think creatively, work on teams, design experiments, build new products, support existing systems, talk to users, and contend with questions of the proper use of technology in society. How can people with technical talent and interest learn all of these skills? Does this learning need to happen in…
An Open Software Engineering Curriculum Overview
What is the right curriculum to achieve the envisioned outcomes for software engineers? I propose that such a curriculum has four interwoven disciplinary threads with the desired professional skills and mindset integrated into their courses. The four threads are: While these threads are presented distinctly for clarity of communication, the knowledge and skills they impart…
The Engineering Design Sequence
What are the different kinds of design meetings you might encounter? The Brainstorming meeting is one of the most important, but being prepared for all of the different design meetings and processes in the product lifecycle will help you anticipate the twists and turns of professional life. 1. Requirements Gathering and Inception: In this meeting…
A Generative-Evaluative Design Meeting Style
What is the right way to run a brainstorming or design ideation meeting? What comes naturally to most people is to sit in a circle and freely shout out ideas until one gets the approval of a few other members, with critiques of each interleaved with their generation. But there are better ways motivated by…
Mindset of the New Engineer
What is the intended resultant mindset of this “Open Software Engineering Curriculum”? We will call it ‘Systemically Sustainable Innovation’ instead of disruption. We will develop it by examining two works: “A Whole New Engineer” (WNE) and “Rethinking Engineering Education: The CDIO Approach” (REE), and showing how ‘Crystallized Engagement’ is its formative paradigm. Take the example…
The 80/20 of Team Cohesion
Olin excels at creating many opportunities for group projects from the very beginning of the curriculum and in extracurricular teams. Within those group projects, the Olin faculty attempt to impart some skills around team conflict resolution, proactive reflection on work styles, and advice on how to give feedback. I found much of it to be…
Review and Approval Systems
How should work be reviewed and considered as worthy to publish or put into production? Engineering teams building products need to have processes for review and approval. On student teams, these standards may be unclear. In a professional setting, there are a few major patterns with the most important artifacts like code and externally-facing documentation…
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