Developing Personal Matereyto Educate Future Engineers

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Developing Personal Mastery of Engineering Educators to

Educate Future Engineers

1. Dr.N.Asokan, Engineering Education Consultant, Faculty Trainer & Former

Principal. 19/ 2c Sri Sai Subramanya Apts, Temple Avenue, Sri Nagar Colony,

Saidapet, Chennai 600 015. [email protected] Mobile:9445191369.

2. Mr. Mohankumar, Associate Professor, Tulisiramji Gaikwwad Patil College of

Engineeering and Technology, Mohgon, Butibori, Nagpur.

[email protected] Mobile: 07373944029

Background

As we try to predict the future of the engineering profession and engineering education, we

must take into account some important factors. History has shown that changes in the

engineering profession follow changes in cultural, social, and political environments.

Evidence shows that these changes in the profession have led to technology breakthroughs

that helped or harmed social progress, depending on the political environment surrounding

them.

Engineering profession in the next decade will undergo dramatic changes, driven by not only

technological developments but also societal transformation. This tectonic shift will pose

challenges to all the stake holders, educational institutions, government, teachers and

students. Each one of them needs to gear up itself to address the challenges. It also calls for

change in mindsets so that the transition is smooth and successful.

Despite these changes, however, many of the challenges facing engineering educators have

remained remarkably consistent over time. The questions of what to include in curricula, how

long engineering education should last, how much specialization there should be at the

undergraduate level, how to prepare students for careers that include both technical and

managerial tracks, and how to meet the needs and expectations of society all seem timeless.

Past accomplishments of teachers guarantee nothing about future success and an almost

obsessive need for self-initiated teaching, learning and assessing process and continuous

improvement. There is a need for granular understanding of what is happening outside, with

stakeholders and in teaching, learning and assessing operations.

Developing personal mastery, it will be argued, is central to the quality of higher education

and educating future engineers. The paper looks at developing the personal mastery among

the educators in higher education to educate future engineers.

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Transformations of Engineering Education

Educator is the fulcrum, on whom quality of future education lies, particularly in highly

knowledge centric area like engineering education. The engineering profession has a trans-

organizational character. There is a need for a dramatic and fundamental transformation of

the educational process

Engineering education has been the subject of more studies and reviews, formal and informal,

than any other domain of professional education. In the pages of the Journal of Engineering

Education, which was launched by the Society for the Promotion of Engineering Education in

1893, one can track the ongoing debates about the nature and shape of engineering education.

History suggests that there is more self-awareness in the engineering community than in most

other professional communities about the educational enterprise that prepares new members

to enter the profession. The proper balance between science, engineering science, and design

is only one of the issues engineers and engineering educators have debated at length over the

last 125 years.

The history of past and present accomplishments in technology could teach the general public

why engineers deserved to be leaders in society (Fleming, 1920; McDonald, 1921; Pendred,

1923; Prelini, 1920; Waddell, 1903; Zwilgmeyer, 1925).

Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET)- sponsored EC 2000 project,

which identified 12 competences engineering students need upon graduation. These

competences include oral and spoken communication, teamwork, understanding of the global

and local contexts of engineering, and knowledge of contemporary issues (Caruana, 1999).

Seel (2000) suggests that cultural change in engineering education will be achieved only

when the nature of the conversation about engineering education has changed. Eckel and

Kezar (2003) suggest that transforming engineering education will require that the majority

of engineering faculty members change the way they think about engineering education.

The reformation in engineering education suggest that social and political changes cannot be

successfully adapted and adopted if current faculty are not actively encouraged and supported

to develop their personal mastery.

OPPORTUNITY AND CHALLENGE

This is the most exciting period in human history for science and engineering. Explosive

advances in knowledge, instrumentation, communication, and computational capabilities

have created mind-boggling possibilities for the next generation. The distinction between

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science and engineering in some domains has been blurred to extinction, which raises some

serious issues for engineering education.

Engineering institutions today are facing a challenge they have never faced before. They must

prepare engineers for solving unknown problems and not for addressing assumed scenarios.

Therefore, the emphasis should be on teaching to learn rather than providing more

knowledge.

Teaching engineers to think analytically will be more important than helping them memorize

algebra theorems. Teaching them to cope with rapid progress will be more critical than

teaching them all of the technology breakthroughs.

As we think about the many challenges ahead, it is important to remember that students are

driven by passion, curiosity, engagement, and dreams. Although we cannot know exactly

what they should be taught, we must think about the environment in which they learn and the

forces, ideas, inspiration, and empowering situations to which they are exposed. In the long

run, making universities and engineering institutions exciting, creative, adventurous,

rigorous, demanding, and empowering milieus are more important than specifying curricular

details.

Need for Personal Mastery

Technical excellence is the essential attribute of engineering graduates, but those graduates

should also possess team, communication, ethical reasoning, and societal and global

contextual analysis skills as well as understand work strategies. Engineers able to

communicate with the public, able to engage in a global engineering marketplace, or trained

to be lifelong learners.

At the application end of engineering practice, there is a growing disconnect with engineering

education that begs for enlightened industrial engineering leaders and there is a need for a

new generation of faculty able to bridge the gap more effectively

There is a need for faculty to possess the mix of knowledge, skills and experiences to

determine how best to provide students with the knowledge and experiences essential to

engineering practice.

The half-life of cutting-edge technical knowledge today is on the order of a few years, but

globalization of the economy is accelerating and the international marketplace for

engineering services is dynamic. In such an environment, an engineering faculty cannot

recognize global trends and lacks the ability, instinct, or desire for continuous learning. As

well as delivering content, engineering institutions must teach engineering students how to

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learn, and must play a continuing role along with professional organizations in facilitating

lifelong learning,

A recent paper by Professor M.K. Khanijo (2004), senior consultant with the Engineering

Council of India, describes India’s motivation for signing on to the Washington Accord:

“Since GATS [General Agreement of Trade in Services] emphasizes recognition of

qualifications of professionals, it is in India’s interest to get its own system of recognition and

registration made acceptable at the international level. If this is not done, Indian engineers

will be at a disadvantage and may even be ruled out when they seek opportunities for

employment.”

The engineering profession will be more likely to capture the imaginations of young people,

thus moving engineering to the forefront as educating engineers rethink about their personal

mastery. Educating engineers will be among the most creative, energetic, and dynamic

professionals in the world to educate the young engineers of next generations.

Personal Mastery

Personal mastery (Peter, 2006) is the discipline of personal growth and learning. It goes

beyond competence and skills, though it is grounded in competence and skills. It is

continually expanding people’s ability to create the results in life they truly seek. It embodies

two underlying movements.

The first is continually clarifying what is important to us. The second is continually learning

how to see current reality more clearly. In moving toward a desired destination, it is vital to

know where we are now. Personal mastery is not something we posses. It is a process. It is a

lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their

ignorance, their incompetence, and their growth areas.

Higher education on a global scale experienced extraordinary change during the past 150

years in response to internal intellectual trends as well as external societal forces (Robinson,

2002). We’re not talking about good teaching or even outstanding teaching. We’re talking

about engineering educators with high personal mastery that facilitate such extraordinary

distance travelled by students along the learning journey that phenomenal outcomes are

consistently achieved by all learners. We’re talking about students remembering the impact

of these engineering educators for the rest of their lives

Hassan El Hares (1994) opinioned that both the ideal graduate and the model faculty member

for the 21st century will possess a number of desirable attributes. Engineering faculty will be

on the front line of any change, and encouraging and enlisting their support for engineering

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education innovations is essential. It’s based on faculties’ capabilities, their reliability, their

learnability, their strengths, and their talents. It requires healthy life style, warm relationships,

intense focus, fanatic discipline, and incisive thinking to effectively garnering attention and

holding interest for gadget –friendly world.

The authors have identified nine characteristics of personal mastery namely Vision for

themselves, Performance with Purpose, High Energy, Storytelling, Fanatic Discipline,

Lifelong Learning, Trusted Relationship, Simplicity and System Thinking.

These characteristics have been deduced by authors by looking at the results of a number of

extensive research studies, out of their own experience and through engaging in deep

dialogue with a variety of engineering educators who have consistently delivered exceptional

outcomes over an extended period.

These characteristics are perhaps less tangible than expected. Many of the characteristics are

at the level of Talent, Knowledge, Skill, Identity and Belief.

Developing Personal Mastery

It’s important to realize that educators don’t become an educator with high personal mastery

in a day and educators also don’t become a educators with high personal mastery through

delivering outstanding ‘snapshot’ lessons upon observation. Being an educator with high

personal mastery is about consistently applying the principles of personal mastery on a daily

basis. The process of developing personal mastery has no end goal. Educators do not become

a Educator with high personal mastery once they achieve a certain level of competence. They

develop these characteristics increasingly and work on these aspects on a lifelong basis. It is

the continuous approach of creative growth, possibility, development of potential. It is

evolution.

Vision for Themselves

Successful people have a very clear idea of what they believe they can become, what they

think they are capable of, a ‘vision for themselves’ that exists long before the reality is

created. Visualize great outcomes for the lessons they taught, expect students to be inspired

for life, set high expectations in all domains of student contribution and don’t be afraid to

dream the impossible dream.

The sausage machine is a very powerful metaphor for life. If you want pork sausages out, you

put pork in. If you want beef sausages out, you put beef in. So, if you want a successful

teaching experience out, that’s exactly what you need to put in. Engineering educators high

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personal mastery realize that they are at the creative end of the sausage machine, choosing the

ingredients and turning the handle, rather than waiting at the other end for the sausages to

come out, hoping that they’ll taste nice!

Performance with Purpose:

It can truly be said that happens until there is vision. But it is equally true that a vision with

no underlying sense of purpose , no calling, is just a good idea – all “sound and fury,

signifying nothing”. Once educators have clearly conceived their core philosophy, it should

constantly be referred to in lessons so students begin to ponder their well-thought out ideas.

Having a reason for doing something is so important for the questioning mind. We have

evolved way beyond the ‘because I say so’ mentality. That doesn’t work very well for

engineering educators and it works even more poorly for students. At the level of focus,

educators just need to be constantly relating anything that they are actually doing to a bigger

purpose.

Learning Mathematics are poorly understood by students mainly because they are poorly

communicated by us as engineering educators. One metaphor that comes in handy is the

‘Weight Training For Your Brain’ approach. Educators explain that you don’t go to the gym

and lift weights so that you become good at weights, good at lifting things off your chest in

case you get run over by a trolley at airport or shopping mall. Not at all. You do weight

training so that you build up your muscles for health, to increase your energy, to get in good

shape. You end up with a stronger, faster and more powerful body.

Mathematics is weight training for the brain.

Exercising the brain makes it stronger, faster, and more powerful. There may be a few

students who don’t believe that Maths does this, but there won’t be any that will argue with

you over the benefits of having a stronger, faster and more powerful brain.

The learning must have an authentic purpose in order to get the most out of students. It must

be easy for students to see the value of their learning in a real-world context. The ‘How Can I

USE this?’ question must have an obvious answer.

High Energy:

The single most attractive personal attribute is energy. Engineering educators with high

energy give the impression of increase for all their followers. The impression of increase is

just that: students perceive educators as being able to bring more to their lives.

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More ideas, more knowledge, more fun, more money, more qualifications, better feelings,

more security, more confidence, more poise, more power, more control, more wisdom.

Engineering educators with high personal mastery give the impression of increase routinely,

without even being aware of it. Their students want to be around them - they won’t leave

them alone, they follow them around at lunch, they stay after school, they bother them at

every break time.

Story Telling:

The world’s religions are built on powerful stories. Our culture is defined by the stories we

tell—in movies, in books, in the media. Human beings just have a natural affinity for stories.

Stories are the currency of our thoughts.

The stories don’t have to be dramatic, they don’t have to be captivating, and they don’t have

to be entertaining. And that’s comforting to a lot of us who don’t consider ourselves great

storytellers or dramatists

In order to be followed, educators have to be respected. In order to be respected, they need to

tell their stories. Students have got to know what educators have done, what educators believe

in, what educators stand for. Students have got to want what educators have got.

There are three reasons why this is crucial:

1. Students will respect educators more if they know something about educators.

2. Students will be interested in the learning topic if educators personalize it.

3. Major payoff that stories provide: inspiration. Inspiration drives action, as does simulation.

Stories cause mental simulation. Mental simulation can also build skills. A review of 35

studies featuring over 3,214 participants showed that mental practice alone—sitting quietly,

without moving, and picturing yourself performing a task successfully from start to finish—

improves performance significantly.

Stories are effective teaching tools. Story is part entertainment and part instruction. Story

reflects core message. Telling a story makes it relevant to educators and therefore relevant to

students by association. Because the story never ends, it develops. And that’s what keeps

people interested. Get a story.

Simplicity.

The educational system is very complex system consists of many variances, unknowns, and

uncertainties. Complexity can easily undermine confidence and responsibility.

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Simplicity has near universal agreement from leading thinkers in the world about its

importance. Simplicity is the force that has powered the Apple brand to success and also

driven politicians to win elections and world-changing social movements.

The process of prioritization is the heart of simplicity. It’s what we ( Heath, 2007 ) call

“finding the core.” Simplicity doesn’t mean dumping down, it means choosing. Some

concepts are more critical than others. And as the teacher, you’re the only one who can make

that determination.

Andrew Carl Singer teaches a class on digital signal processing at the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign. It’s a complex subject, and it’s easy to get lost in the mathematics. So he

works hard to find the core of his class. He said: what are the 3 things that they need to know

to both get the job and make the University of Illinois proud to have this graduate working in

this field?. By focusing on the core ideas of the course, I could keep the class on track to the

core messages I wanted them to learn. I also focused on this core message when deciding

what material to keep in the course and what should be left out.

Educators can communicate a lot of information in compact fashion: . For instance, take the

classic Bohr model of an atom. Educators explain it by saying, “Electrons orbit the nucleus

the way that planets orbit the sun.” It’s like the solar system but on a microscopic level.

Simplicity makes ideas stick by keeping students lean and focused. The model of a simple

idea is not a sound bite, it’s the Golden Rule—a one-sentence idea that’s sufficiently

profound that you could spend a lifetime living up to it.

Systems Thinking

System thinking (Peter, 2006) is a discipline for seeing the “structures” that underlie complex

situations. As we enter the “age of interdependence”,

humankind have the capacity to create far more information than anyone can absorb,

to foster far greater interdependence than anyone can manage

to accelerate change faster than anyone’s ability to keep pace.

All are concerned with a shift of mind from

seeing parts to seeing wholes,

seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping

their reality

reacting to the present to creating future.

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People have to develop the ability to see the whole and establish a frame work for seeing

inter-relationships rather than individual things- for seeing patterns of change rather than

static “snapshots”

System thinking forms a rich language for describing a vast array of interrelationships and

patterns of change. Ultimately, it simplifies life by helping us see the deeper patterns lying

behind the events and details.

In 1998, MIT established an Engineering Systems Division, which reflected a growing

awareness of the rising social and intellectual importance of complex engineered systems.

Indisputably, engineers of today and tomorrow must conceive and direct projects of

enormous complexity that require a new, highly integrative view of engineering systems. We

need to establish a proper intellectual framework within which to study, understand, and

develop large, complex engineered systems. As Bill Wulf [president of the National

Academy of Engineering] has eloquently warned us, we work every day with systems whose

complexity is so great that we cannot possibly know all of their possible end states. Under

those circumstances, how can we ensure that they are safe, reliable, and resilient? In other

words, how can we practice engineering?

Fanatic Discipline

Fanatic discipline is (Jim Collins 2011, p23) defines as consistency of action towards one’s

own vision.. Consistency with long term goals. Consistency with performance standards

above what is required. Consistency of method. Consistency over time.

True discipline requires independence of mind to reject pressure to confirm in ways

incompatible with values, performance standards, and long term aspirations. The only form

legitimate form of discipline is self discipline, having the inner will to do whatever it takes to

create a great outcome, no matter how difficult.

Discipline is not the same as measurement. Discipline is not the same as regimentation.

Discipline is not the same as hierarchical obedience. Discipline is not the same as adherence

to bureaucratic rules. Educators with high personal mastery are fanatically driven, infected

with an incurable need to produce great results.

Lifelong Learning

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In addition to producing professionals who have been taught the advances in core knowledge

and are capable of defining and solving problems in the short term, educators must teach

students how to be lifelong learners (Educating engineers, 2005, p2).

Lifelong learning is the "lifelong, lifewide, voluntary, and self-motivated" (Department of

Education and Science (2000) pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional

reasons. The term recognises that learning is not confined to childhood or the classroom, but

takes place throughout life and in a range of situations. Learning can no longer be divided

into a place and time to acquire knowledge (school) and a place and time to apply the

knowledge acquired (the workplace) (Fischer, Gerhard, 2000).

As Argyris (1985) says, there is a need to learn, arises from a “learning gap” between what is

known and what needs to be known. Learning involves a fundamental shift or movement of

mind. Lifelong learning is an activity to fill up the “competency gap” between what you want

and what is your current competency level to achieve what you want. It cannot be learnt

without the willingness to practice. The willingness to act towards what you want, to risk, to

fail.

There are three things important for practicing

1. Self discipline

2. Comfort with repetitiveness

3. If required, comfort with being alone.

Gerald Grow defines self directed learners as those individuals who are able to “Examine

themselves, their culture and their milieu in order to separate what they

Feel from what they should feel

Want from what they should want

Value from what they should value”

Learning (www.solonline.org) is a process of enhancing learner’s capacity, individually and

collectively, to produce results they truly want to produce. This definition has been helpful

because it emphasizes two crucial features of learning that are often misunderstood: 1. the

building of capacity for effective action, as opposed to intellectual understanding only; and 2.

the fact that this capacity builds over considerable time.

Trusted Relationship

The biggest crisis in our world today is one of believability. It makes it tougher to build a

successful business, find and keep a job, or convince anyone to do or believe in anything.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelong_learning#cite_note-2

http://www.solonline.org/

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There is nothing people care about more than being able to build better relationships with the

others around them. There was a phrase for this new skill . . . human relations. It started to be

used to describe the ability to get along with and influence other people.

Dale Carnegie’s success was based on the relationships he was able to cultivate with others,

and his ability to teach people to learn the same skill—what he called human relations.

In order to be more believable and more trusted—you need to be more likeable (Rohit, 2012).

Trusted people are more influential and successful. Trusted ideas are more likely to inspire

belief. The most important global currency isn’t made of paper anymore— it’s made of

relationships. People trust and choose to believe people they like. The key to success is your

ability to earn trust.

‘‘The more people trust you, the more they buy from you.’’

–David Ogilvy

Conclusion:

Why are educators teaching this stuff, when students could easily learn this on the internet,

from books, through games etc.?

Well, it’s because educators are an inspiration, students want something educators have got,

students see educators in action, talented, and pick up the fact that they believe in themselves,

they work hard, they think differently, they simplify the complexity, they have great personal

energy, they trust worthy, they are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to

produce great results and they tell great stories...

The educators of next generation should develop mastery to be globally competitive over the

length of his or her career. The message here is that our greatest contribution as engineering

educators are that ‘we must be what we want students to be.’

No People can rise above the level of its teachers- Cicero

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Random House.

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Developing Personal Matereyto Educate Future Engineers

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