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“That’s the power of creativity-infused STEM
education — turning students into active learners,
as opposed to those students who are programed to
mimic what we’re teaching them, and then when
the course is over, flush their memory.”
DR.
leaders as they connected the dots
between classroom knowledge and
real-world applications in project-
based lessons. Dr. Tiryakioglu noticed
his students retained the classroom
lessons better, and even learned more
advanced concepts at earlier stages.
When students working on a project
encountered a problem or an obstacle
that was beyond their current ability,
they had to learn a more advanced
method in order to overcome that
hurdle and keep the project moving
forward — “just-in-time learning.”
There were other benefits
Dr. Tiryakioglu didn’t anticipate
when he embarked on this
educational experiment years
ago. His students learned how to
work in teams; how to ask better
questions; how to communicate
with each other; and how to build
M U R AT
T I R YA K I O G L U
on ideas in ways that strengthened
the overall results. Many people call
these “soft skills.” Dr. Tiryakioglu
prefers the term “professional
skills,” because every professional
working in a STEM field should
have them. But these skills are not
typically taught in STEM programs.
“Traditional engineering programs
are viewed as two years of the ‘death
march,’ which is all science and
F E AT U R E S
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