Category: Education and teachingPage 1 of 2
How do you make sure you get the most out of the investment you are making in your professional development? First you have to commit to doing the…
So many things that I am working on at the moment lead me to the conclusion that there is power in the gaps. But I feel like for…
[The following text is adapted from the after-dinner speech I gave at the University of Edinburgh Engineering Faculty’s away day. It was originally titled ‘How problem-based learning can…
I am just back from taking part in a Design Thread workshop at Imperial College, the aim of which was to co-ordinate activity between the various design-relevant courses…
As part of my Visiting Professorship at Imperial College I have been asked to think about how peer-to-peer assessment works in group works. Here are my thoughts. One…
Today I have been reviewing the action learning diaries that half a dozen people have sent me from Greece and Cyprus. They are getting ready for training in…
Last weekend 38 people came down to Hazel Hill for our annual Autumn Conservation weekend for two days of woodland conservation and human restoration. We design the weekend…
Yesterday at Think Up I ran a workshop training engineers in how to use selfie movies to tell communicate to people about engineering. The aim of the workshop…
From the latest edition of the European Journal of Engineering Education (Vol 40 (1)) I have just read the very interesting paper ‘Teaching Design in the first years…
One of the groups of students that Ben Godber and I teach at the University of Southampton is designing a stressed ribbon footbridge as their entry for a…
This year I have been experimenting with content flipping in my teaching. The idea of content flipping is that students first encounter the course material in their…
A couple of time in the last year or so I have used what I call the ‘seedling analogy’ to explain what I believe to be is a…
It was on a train to Bristol yesterday, travelling with my colleague Ben, that I articulated in I think the clearest terms yet the model of learning that through…
Planning is now in full swing for a Adventures in the Trees, a new project that I am excited to be involved with at Hazel Hill Wood. For…
Almost nine months since we were awarded funding from UCL’s Teaching Innovation fund, Paul Greening and I kicked off ‘Engineering Knowledge Club‘. The idea is to encourage students…
The letter came in the post yesterday. I can now call myself an Honorary Lecturer at UCL’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. Obviously the ‘Honorary’ bit…
Over the next couple of days I’ll be at Queens University Belfast to do two things: to kick off a new sustainability-themed student project, and to run a…
It was three years ago, standing in the middle of my first Big Rig structure that I first had the idea of getting engineering students to build their…
As I tweeted earlier this morning, today at Think Up I have been working on Build Camp, a concept for a week-long hands-on learning event designed to encourage…
Probably the best module I studied during my year at ENPC was not engineering-themed – but photography. The module was run as an English language course: the subject…
Today the Expedition-Imperial team met to plan their week at this year’s Constructionarium. The learning experience is intense on site at the Constructionarium, with students on their feet…
Today I made my last teaching visit to Edinburgh for the term. I will go back once more in the spring time to evaluate the work that I…
Yesterday I was at the Big Rig facilitating the annual low-carbon skills challenge at the Big Rig. This is the fourth year in a row that Think Up…
Today Think Up facilitated the Global Grand Challenges Student Day at the Royal Academy of Engineering. The student day is a prelude to the main Global Grand Challenges…
Today I have been working on content for a new creative design workshop for civil engineering students based on the Emirates Airline. The workshop is part of my…
I’m just back from the first of six workshops I will be facilitating at universities around the country about how to embed sustainability in undergraduate civil engineering courses….
The ability to design arguably sits at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, requiring as it does decent doses of creativity and evaluation. The foundations therefore of…
Most of my work this week has been around designing events that help engineering students develop problem-solving skills. My opposite number at a meeting today cited Fred Dibnah,…
For someone who has studied both chemistry and engineering, it is somewhat of a surprise that I have had so little exposure to the chemical engineering sector. I…