Student-driven learning: Some differences between teaching and learning

Chris Rogers, PhD
Professor & Chair, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Tufts University


Historically, we have talked a lot about teaching, but not as much about learning. We know exactly what we have told the students but how do we know what the students learn? As a teacher, fundamentally we are trying to move a story or understanding from our head into the head of our students and often we do that by telling them our understanding. For those who have children, we know that just telling is never that efficient - instead parents use a combination of telling and listening (and begging, yelling, pleading). I will show some examples of what happens when I spent more time listening, and less time telling in my college engineering classes. The learning changes from more memorization to more problem solving; from thinking like a student to thinking like an engineer. I tend to use the LEGO building system because it is cheap and capable. I will show videos of cool LEGO builds students have invented - from robot puppets to flying machines to eye tracking devices - all with the students driving the learning. I will also show some non-lego projects, like robots playing the trombone or violin, or cooking meals, or painting portraits. In deference to Harry Potter, I will show my student’s version of the Marauder’s map (IoT class). But mostly, I will challenge the current perceptions of the college classroom - everyone striving to gain the same knowledge, and to get the right answer. What happens if we emphasize distributed expertise across the classroom and maximum solution diversity to any problem given (a standardized test has a diversity of zero)?

Biography:
Chris Rogers earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Stanford University, where he worked with Professor John Eaton on his thesis on particle motion in a boundary layer flow. Rogers joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Tufts School of Engineering in 1989. He is involved in a number of research areas, including particle-laden flows (a continuation of his thesis), telerobotics and controls, slurry flows in chemical-mechanical planarization, the engineering of musical instruments, measuring flame shapes of couch fires, measuring fruit-fly locomotion, and engineering education (kindergarten to college). At Tufts, Rogers has exercised his strong commitment to teaching by exploring a number of new directions, including teaching robotics with LEGO bricks and teaching manufacturing by building musical instruments. His teaching work extends to the elementary school level, where he talks with over 1,000 teachers around the world every year on methods of introducing young children to engineering.