What we do
Engineering education has long been caricatured as a professor drily writing at the board while students scrabble to copy down the material verbatim. In the ERE department we believe we are not only developing students engineering foundation but we are also developing minds. Developing crucial critical thinking skills requires applying new approaches to engineering education. Here in the ERE department we employ multiple learning techniques:
ERE students build critical thinking skills through group discussion and
teamwork
- Freshman interest (FIGSs) groups bring a cohort of likeminded students into the program together. Bonding and building off each other strengths the students find emotional and academic support from their cohort. Recently, a NSF funded Scientific Leadership Scholars cohort has brought this concept to another level. The program members, all American Indian or first generation college students, take nearly all the same classes for their first year at HSU.
- Several of our classes employ just-in-time teaching techniques that require students to investigate material before covering the topic in lecture. Just-in-time learning builds students' confidence in their own abilities.
- Many of our classes, including our senior capstone design class, require students to work in teams. Open ended projects require the students to define the task, develop the solution and expand their critical thinking and communication skills.
- Our lectures are often interactive, employing active learning exercises. Rather than just require our students to remember a formula, we ask a student what the formula means, let the students discuss the formula with their neighbor, and then the class determines why the formula matters.
Research
Not only do our faculty implement cutting edge engineering education techniques, we are developing new ones!