Facilitating learning: believe in your students [engineering education]

This paper shares some of the author´s beliefs, ideas and experiences with regards to engineering education. Her underlying philosophy is that graduating engineers must be prepared for the quickly changing technical environment they will be entering. Students need an experiential learning environment that provides them with a more intuitive approach to engineering problems, which in turn encourages them to study theory. It is also possible with such an approach to encourage and teach team interaction, which is important in today´s industry. There are discussions and changes going on in many engineering schools that are similar to her beliefs. It appears that most of the effort is being spent on teaching and how to teach better. Although it is a subtle difference, she thinks the focus should be on learning, and how to help students learn better. The instructors should focus on teaching students to learn (coincidentally they learn the “material”) rather than focusing on “covering” specific material. The instructor thereby cultivates an effective learning process that enhances lifelong learning