Educational Encounters of the Third Kind

Abstract

An engineer who becomes an educator in a school of software engineering has the mission to teach how to design and construct software systems, therein applying his or her knowledge and expertise. However, due to their engineering background, engineers may forget that educating a person is not the same as designing a machine, since a machine has a well-defined goal, whilst a person is capable to self-propose his or her own objectives. The ethical implications are clear: educating a free person must leave space for creativity and self-determination in his or her own discovery of the way towards personal and professional fulfillment, which cannot consist only in achieving goals selected by others. We present here an argument that is applicable to most fields of engineering. However, the dis-analogy between educating students and programming robots may have a particular appeal to software engineers and computer scientists. We think the consideration of three different stages in the educational process may be useful to engineers when they act as educators. We claim that the three stages (instructing, training and mentoring) are essential to engineering education. In particular, education is incomplete if the third stage is not reached. Moreover, mentoring (the third stage aimed at developing creativity and self-determination) is incompatible with an educational assessment framework that considers the goals of the engineer are always given by others. In our view, then, an integral education is not only beyond programming the behavior of students, but also beyond having them reach those given goals.

A Systematic Mapping Study On Software Startups Education

“…al. [35] and used bubble plots to combine and compare the different facets that were [15] Empirical Study Philosophical Paper Model Teaching 9.5 Järvi (2015) [22] Case Study Evaluation Research Lessons Learned Teaching 9.5 Schilling (2010) [42] Case Study Evaluation Research Guidelines Teaching 9.5 Zaina (2015) [47] Case Study Evaluation Research Framework/Method Teaching 9.0 Currie (2011) [10] Case Study Experience Paper Framework/Method Real Projects 9.0 Chesney (2014) [9] Case Study Evaluation Research Guidelines Real Projects 9.0 Izurieta (2016) [21] Case Study Experience Paper Framework/Method Real Projects 9.0 Zhang (2015) [48] Experiment Solution Proposal Model Teaching 8.5 de Lange (2016) [12] Case Study Validation Research Framework/Method Environment 8.5 Joseph (2006) [23] Case Study Evaluation Research Lessons Learned Multidiscipline 8.5 Daimi (2008) [11] Empirical Study Solution Proposal Guidelines Teaching 8.5 Chenoweth (2008) [8] Survey Experience Paper Guidelines Teaching 8.0 Ribeiro (2016) [37] Case Study Experience Paper Lessons Learned Environment 8.0 McMahon (2014) [28] Case Study Experience Paper Lessons Learned Teaching 8.0 Vitolo (2016) [45] Experiment Evaluation Research Lessons Learned Multidiscipline 8.0 Kaltenecker (2013) [25] Empirical Study Philosophical Paper Lessons Learned Teaching 8.0 Buffardi (2017) [7] Case Study Solution Proposal Framework/Method Multidiscipline 7.5 Porter (2015) [36] Case Study Solution Proposal Lessons Learned Multidiscipline 7.5 Bharadwaj (2014) [2] Experiment Experience Paper Framework/Method Teaching 7.5 Nguyen-Duc (2016) [30] Case Study Evaluation Research Model Teaching 7.5 Breytenbach (2013) [5] Case Study Experience Paper Lessons Learned Environment 7.5 Pauca (2012) [33] Case Study Solution Proposal Framework/Method Real Projects 6.5 Heintz(2014) [20] Case Study Experience Paper Lessons Learned Teaching 6.5 Ford (2004) [14] Case Study Experience Paper Lessons Learned Multidiscipline 6.5 Barbe (2010) ...…”

“…The overview of this systematic mapping study, detailed in Table 2, indicates that there is one study [39] contributing with tools, five studies [1,15,30,44,48] focusing on models, and seven studies [2,7,10,12,21,33,47] exploring methods and methodologies. By combining and summarizing this information, the main contributions to the field are: (i) Business Model Canvas -helps students define a vision for their business model.…”

“…The studies that presented software startup education models revealed interesting insights. Génova and González [15] claim that there are three stages in a complete engineering education process: instruction (traditional education environment, with exams and projects), training (when students receive a problem and choose the mean to solve it) and mentoring (when students are able to self-propose their own objectives). The authors postulate that "education is incomplete if the third stage is not reached".…”

No More "De-Root and Rule": The Need for Digital Roots [Editorial]

“…Plus ça change, as Weil might wryly observe, if she could see the U.K.'s current education system, in which: creativity is suppressed; meaningful learning is subordinate to meaningless performance metrics (cf., [19]); high-stakes testing and selection exacerbate inequality of both opportunity and outcome; competitive testing combined with peer and metric pressure exacerbate mental health and other wellbeing problems [20]; and the right to self-organize to accommodate local conditions is not recognized. These problems persist even unto tertiary education: rather than an opportunity for self-determination [21], a significant proportion of university undergraduates seem to think that the "learning game" involves the professors being in possession of marks, and the student's "role" in the game is to acquire their share of those marks. Marks for which they erroneously think that they have already paid in the form of their fees, 4 fueling first a sense of entitlement; and subsequently a sense of disillusion, when the scale of their debt, and the future expectation of indentured servitude, becomes manifest [15]: this sense destroys roots.…”

Developing engineering students’ willingness and ability to perform creative tasks

“…The course uses diverse tools to stimulate creativity in different ways. The student-centred pedagogy and creativity tools make the students set their own goals and become self-determined and creative (Genova and Gonzalez, 2017). The tools used during the creative workshops (Module 2) are assumed to stimulate students' creativity through workflow and enjoyment, triggering their inner motivations and willingness to create (BS).…”