Spotlights

Links

Newsletter Archive

Help Guides & Documentation

The laptop initiative is a "golden opportunity" to change the way faculty present engineering and technology course work and thereby prepare our students for their future careers. Graduates now and more so in the future will work on design teams with colleagues not necessarily in the next office but in other countries. Their project managers may not be down the hall but a thousand miles away.

Technology has changed the way we communicate therefore why not use it to change the way we transfer knowledge and prepare the next generation of professionals. In order to accomplish this goal, the Electromechanical Engineering Committee decided to conduct a survey this past fall of the 4th and 5th year BELM students in preparation for next fall?s entering class. Primarily, we wanted to know how the present students would wish to receive information if a laptop had been provided to them. From that survey and committee discussions, the faculty are considering a variety of ways to have students become more active learners. Some of the possibilities are:

• Use a course management system to exchange student projects and designs and have them available for classroom discussion and analysis.
• Provide a better integration of class and laboratory projects.
• Modify class time to include on-line discussions with graduates about alternative solutions to student projects.
• Modify laboratory sessions so that simulations can be completed either pre or post scheduled laboratory time.
• Use laboratory time not for simulations but rather for taking measurements, collecting data and discussions of analytical, simulated and measured results.
• Provide some material on-line before a class or laboratory session.
• Post notes after class so students may review the material.
• Maintain an on-line and on-going course assessment process.
• Expand the mentoring program for first year students to included not only 5th year students but also graduates.

I believe the laptop initiative can make students more active learners if we use it wisely and are willing to modify how we present classroom and laboratory material. It is a technology that students are comfortable with and an opportunity for Wentworth to continue to be a leader in the delivery of technical education. This initiative should allow us to change how we teach and apply the quote "Faculty should not be the sage on stage but rather a guide on the side."