Category / Teaching/Learning

by shannonchance

Engineering with the Greeks (and Irish, and Finns)

The Prezi presentation I delivered at SEFI.

SEFI attendees 2012 — I’m at the lower left.

The SEFI conference was one of the most fun conferences I’ve ever attended.  They claim to be a family and it certainly felt that way.  This was my first conference with engineers.  I suspect this special feeling of belonging may be specific to the European Society of Engineering Educators (SEFI).  It also helped in making me feel welcome that the whole Irish delegation claimed me as their own!

The Irish group included the Dean of our college at the DIT (Mike Murphy), a recent PhD who teaches at the institute of technology at Tallah (Eileen Goold), a lecturer from Trinity College (Kevin Kelley), and a scholar (Bill Williams) who has been working in Portugal for 18 years but hails from Cork (in Southern Ireland, near where my great grandmother set sail for Ellis Island). Also at the conference were Gavin Duffy and myself.

SEFI 2012 banquet — the Irish table, with friends from Spain.

Part of the reason I had so much fun at SEFI was that I knew a lot of people — or got to know them quickly. That’s because the Irish friendliness is contagious.  I couldn’t be the wall-flower I am at most conferences. Moreover, our Dean is really a great leader.  He knows everyone and he also know show to make people feel welcome.  The last night, after the conference dinner at the Hyatt, we all went for a beer in a quaint part of town.  A contingent of Finnish students came along with us.We sat outside in a gorgeous little plaza. When I say that Mike is a great leader, this evening provides an illustration.  Mike wanted to sing Irish pub songs and he managed to convince us all to sing despite our initial reluctance.

The Finns shared their songs and we found a few tunes everyone knew (What Can You Do With a Drunken Sailor and the ever-popular Bring Me Home Country Roadwhich is of course, about West Virginia, the state one half hour’s drive from my hometown).

Drs. Eileen Goold and Mike Murphy

We sang until the pub closed at 2 PM.  I’m quite sure the neighboring residents were glad to hear The singing stop.  On this particular evening, few of us could carry a tune. This level of zest is something I would never have endorsed in an American group… but when with the Irish, do as the Irish do!

During the conference, Gavin and I both made successful presentations.  I was the sixth presenter in my set, so I had to super-charge my presentation.  The audience was visibly drowsy when I stood up to present so I worked to energize the room. And I achieved a high level of engagement from most everyone.

At SEFI, I met a load (as the Irish would say) of interesting folks.  I even spent an entire lunch hour talking one-on-one with the current president of SEFI, Prof. Dr. Wim Van Petegem.  What an honor!

Perhaps I’ll be able to coordinate visits to universities in Belgium, Portugal, and Spain where I’ve made new connections.  All of them have Fulbright offices that may be able to help.

The plaza with our favorite watering hole… in the short brick building to the right. Much quieter the morning after our raucousness!

by shannonchance

Headed to Thessaloniki

I’m learning the ropes of budget flights in Europe because I’m headed to Greece for an engineering education conference. Heather and Dave warned me about baggage limitations in Europe! (No wonder people wear so little on vacation at the beach here! They’re not allowed to bring more than a Speedo with them!)

My bag was 2cm too deep. It fit in the bin, actually, but the wheelbase hung over.

Penalty = 50 Euro for that leg of the flight alone. More than that flight cost! Someone in the customs line gave me a helpful tip: checking the bag online saves a little money. Thus, I bought airport wi-fi service (5 Euro) and paid “just” 31.25 Euro to check it for the second leg. The upside is that now I have wi-fi to commune with you!

Better luck to me next time! And luck I may need….

I just realized that although I brought my Irish Residency permit and passport, I didn’t carry my work permit with me (it’s a full sized page and I don’t normally carry it). I sure hope I can get back into Ireland without it! I’d better go ask the Irish Fulbright Office for advice….

by shannonchance

Necessary Evil

I felt pretty good after an hour of transcribing.

The veggies I had for lunch were wearing off. I’d polished off the goat cheese Dave left me in the fridge.

I’d spent two hours transcribing interviews — and that puts a real strain on the back!  All told, I put in about five hours transcribing today. (I have so much more of it ahead of me this year. Manually transferring voice recordings into word files is excruciating — but it’s a necessary evil of qualitative research.)

Feeling wilted, I decided to treat myself to some veggie nut loaf at Mulligan’s Grocer, a restaurant I’ve mentioned before.  Yum!  This is one of Dave’s favorite meals in Dublin.  It perked me right up!

Returning home, I conquered the interview tape by 10:30 PM and found reason to celebrate when I got some good news from Google Alerts.  William and Mary just published a story about the class I taught this summer.  Check it out!

by shannonchance

Mixing Soup Under a Fine Dublin Sky

Fulbrighting is in full gear here!

The weather is grand — chilly but sunny.  And, surprisingly, it was a day without rain.  That hardly ever happens.  We usually get at least a few drops every day.  As they say, “if you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes” … it’s certain to change.  They also say Ireland has four seasons in a day.  Dave and I have definitely experienced that.

I’ve learned never to leave the apartment without a small umbrella and a waterproof jacket of some sort.  There’s little humidity in the air here in Dublin.  Gavin joked yesterday that humidity tends to fluctuate between 0% and 100%.  (Scientifically speaking it’s probably more like 30% and 100% since 0% would be unGodly dry, but the idea is right on.  A hundred percent is, of course, when the air can no longer hold the water and it rains or snows.)  I’ll include a few random photos of the Dublin sky, snapped as I walked to various buildings at DIT today (the buildings are spread out all over town).

In the past couple of days, Sima, Gavin, Brian Bowe (their doctoral supervisor), and I have been trading articles on design theory, design process, and qualitative research methods in preparation for our work.  We’re exploring differences and similarities between phenomenology and phenomenography.  Fascinating, eh!?  Well, fortunately, we think so!  (I’m trying to make time to read a stack of articles and chapters while also preparing to give a conference presentation next week and making final reviews of the article that will be published next month by SCUP, the Society of College and University Planners.)

Among other activities today, I met with Gavin to discuss definitions of “design” and their relationship to epistemology (the way individual understand “knowledge” and what it means “to know”).

Computer Science lecturer Damien Gordan walked past and joined the conversation (see photo).  I’m looking forward to talking with him again soon.  So energetic!

Chatting with Damian Gordon from Computer Science, who, like us, also does educational research.

Everyone here is amazingly welcoming.  Gavin’s office-mate, Kevin, gave me a his own personal HP printer (his wife has just purchased a new one).  The librarian at Bolton Street, Brian Gillespie, checked me out a book using his library card, since mine’s in the works. The Head of Mechanical Engineering and Product Design asked me to submit a paper for his upcoming conference.

I could go on… but there’s even more exciting news.

In a few days, Gavin, the Dean of the College, and I will all fly to Thessaloniki, Greece for a conference sponsored by SEFI (the society of European engineering educators).  Gavin will be presenting two papers and I will be presenting two as well.  One of the papers we wrote together, so we’ve got a total of three presentations to deliver between the two of us.  Strangely, all three of these presentations fall in the same time block.  We’ll get to see exactly how many places we can each be at one time!

When the conference ends, Gavin will zip back to Dublin mid-week to teach classes.  I don’t have to be in a specific class next week, and my flight choices all required a lengthy stop-over.   So… I took full advantage of the opportunity.  I chose Rome as my through destination and I scheduled a stop over for three nights on the way back.  I’ll return to Dublin in time to work Saturday and Sunday.

I have a huge amount of homework to complete for the following week (the same week my Mom and her two neighbors are arriving for a visit).  But I can’t fall behind in my work.  Gavin and I must stay on our toes in order to complete our study in time for the January 7 journal deadline.

Oh, yes, Sima phoned today to discuss lecturing schedules and research plans.  She’s been following the blog and she called with a very excited tone.  She’d not noticed the BYOF sandwich board right outside their building, and neither had the other lecturers.  They learned about it from my blog and got a big laugh.

I should have taken a photo in the window of that pub yesterday.  The students were just back and they hadn’t packed lunches either.  So, there were plenty of students in the pub, but few had BTOF (Brought Their Own Food).

On a parting note, I also had to stop for some produce today and I leave you with the following delightful image+thought=idea.  The veggie assortment pictured below was labelled as “soup mix.”  How cool!

‘Course I’m gonna steam my veggie assortment instead… and I think I’ll do that right now!  Apologies for any typographical errors… but I need to go eat… and work on that SEFI presentation… YIKES!

Soup Mix — Irish Style!

by shannonchance

My Partners in Crime

Sima with work by fourth year Architectural Technology students.

It was a fabulous first day of school!  I’m off to yoga momentarily, but I thought I’d post some pics of my collaborators.  Meet architecture lecturer (i.e., professor) Sima Rouholamin and engineering lecturer Gavin Duffy.

The photo of Sima is from the March 2011, when I visited her studio as a guest critic.

The photo of the students, Gavin and I was taken March 2012.  The students had built robotic cars and were racing against each other at mid-terms during their spring semester.  They were placing for seeds in the end-of-semester competition.  I’ll get to watch the entire competition unfold this time around….

Electrical engineering students with Shannon and Gavin.
by shannonchance

Always Learning to Teach

I love teaching students to design!  I’m also fascinated by theories about how students learn.  At the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) , I’m going to be researching:

  • How students’ ideas about “knowledge” and “knowing” mature over time.
  • How DIT professors are helping students become more flexible problem-solvers.
  • How DIT’s faculty has transformed its electrical engineering curriculum using a hands-on approach to education known as “student-centered, problem-based learning.”

I’m happy to report that these topics are of interest to the engineering education community… DIT’s Gavin Duffy and I have already been invited to present our work in Greece this September and to publish an article in the Journal of Engineering Education.

You can read more about the Fulbright in press releases by William and Mary and Hampton University.

Electrical Engineering students prepare to compete in the mid-semester round of “Robo Sumo,” March 2012.