Engineering Education – Emerging Trends and Innovations The Inverted (Flipped) Classroom Lessons Learned from a Second-Year Physics Course

How might one engineer a better learning experience? How could we apply the fundamentals of significant learning to the mathematically and scientifically rich environment of the undergraduate engineering education? These are some of the questions that the engineering education community has been working to address over the past 100 years. Consider the following quote “Why is it that, in spite of the fact that teaching by pouring in, learning by passive absorption, are universally condemned, that they are still so entrenched in practice? That education is not an affair of ‘telling’ and being told, but an active constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory.” Given that primary teaching approach in higher education continues to be a traditional one-way lecturing format, it is surprising that John Dewey wrote these words almost 100 years ago in 1916. However, as the supporting evidence for more active, student-led engineering education continues to grow, more and more professors and instructors are experimenting with alternate approaches to lecturing. This session will provide a brief overview of some of the main areas of recent innovations within engineering education, with a specific focus on the results of a recent two-year research study relating to the inverted classroom approach.

Biography

Micah Stickel’s love of physics began with the exceptional teachings of Mr. Stock and Ms. Ness at Humberside Collegiate Institute in the west end of Toronto. Since then he has gone on to study electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, receiving his PhD degree in 2006. In 2007 he joined the faculty of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Toronto as a lecturer. He has taught the second-year Electric and Magnetic Fields course numerous times and strives to bring the engineering realities into the classroom through demonstrations and discussions of current engineering developments of electricity and magnetism.