“ 7 Missing Basics of Engineering ”
One night this past week , I stumbled upon a Tedx Talk on YouTube titled “ 7 Missing Basics of Engineering .” The speaker was David E . Goldberg , a former professor at the University of Illinois . At the time of the video , Dr Goldberg put his teaching career behind him in order to promote better engineering education worldwide . He believes that “ design and practical subjects ” have been phased out of engineering training and practice and students rely too heavily on mathematics to solve their problems . Dr . Goldberg goes on to highlight the 7 problem-solving skills engineering students are lacking today .
# 1 Inability to ask good questions - Engineers need to ask good questions and understand what information is relevant .
# 2 Inability to label patterns in data - Engineers need to be able to collect and evaluate data .
# 3 Inability to model conceptually - Engineers default to plug data into equations without mentally visualizing a problem or “ think logically from step to step .”
# 4 Inability to decompose - Engineers are unable to “ break a big problem into little problems .”
# 5 Inability to experiment - Engineers tend not to conduct experiments today but would rather just use textbook theory .
# 6 Inability to visualize and ideate - Engineers are unable to visualize creative solutions or come up with original ideas .
# 7 Inability to communicate - Engineers struggle to properly present their solutions to clients .
The purpose of this Tedx Talk was to help engineers today reflect on how they conduct themselves and see if they can improve in one of these areas . I 100 % agree it is nice to get a problem where you can plug everything into an equation and get an answer , but it is important to work on these problem-solving skills because there isn ' t an equation for every problem .
https :// www . youtube . com / watch ? v = G _ Pjumo707Q
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