Category Archives: Contemporary Pedagogy

Engineering, especially at the undergraduate level, is not always a very inclusive field.  Engineering culture has historically been grounded in a very objectivist, positivist mindset.  A few semesters ago, I was taking a class on gender and identity in engineering.  … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I came across this article recently on how successful Finland’s education system has become through a focus on equity in education. There are no private schools in Finland, and there is no focus on excellence per se. Rather, there is … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Problem Based Learning (PBL) seems to make a lot of sense.  Students should be engaged in multifaceted problems that reflect real-world situations.  However, the disciplinary nature of most courses would seem to limit the extent of a PBL environment’s interdisciplinarity, and … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Last year, some colleagues and I entered the Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies’ diversity video contest.  We were all enrolled in an excellent class together (ENGE 6984: Gender, Ethnicity, Identity, and Engineering, taught by Dr. Holly Matusovich) … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Often when we speak about diversity in education, we’re thinking about visible diversity.  Can we walk into a classroom and see a balance of men and women, various racial and ethnic groups, etc.  Of course, diversity goes much, much beyond that.  In … Continue reading → Continue reading →

There were so many interesting blog posts on MOOCs over the last few weeks, a topic that I’ve blogged about in the past.  I think it’s worth considering the ways in which a shift towards MOOCs in higher education might … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Michael Wesch’s article, Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance, really resonated with me.  He astutely points out that when we say that some students aren’t cut out for school, we’re really saying that some students aren’t cut out for learning. … Continue reading → Continue reading →