-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Michael Mona James on An open letter to students of Materials Science and Engineering
- Ronit Hindoddikar on An open letter to students of Materials Science and Engineering
- Jyoti Thombare on An open letter to students of Materials Science and Engineering
- Laurence Cox on Why it matters
- Tara Tosic on On Project Leadership
Archives
- May 2021
- March 2021
- January 2021
- November 2020
- August 2020
- June 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- November 2019
- September 2019
- July 2019
- April 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- November 2018
- September 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
Categories
Meta
Category Archives: Education
Stalemate
Following the input from the Rating Conferences that I wrote about in the last blog the MSc curriculum revision project team found ourselves going around in circles: Core courses or not? And if so how many? And what makes a … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
Rating Conferences
Following the SWOT analysis of our master’s degree program, the next step in our curriculum development plan has been a series of Rating Conferences. Introduced as a tool for evaluating and developing curricula almost ten years ago [1], a Rating … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
A not (yet) successful experiment in walking office hours.
Faced with the thought of trying to establish interaction with 50 masked students spread to the far-flung corners of an enormous lecture room from behind a perspex screen with my glasses steaming up, I decided from the start of this … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
No peace for the wicked
Having coordinated the development of perhaps the most unsocially distanced bachelors’ curriculum imaginable, structured around groups of students working closely together on hands-on projects, only to have it debut during the throws of a major global pandemic, I felt pretty … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
Pandemic Planning
At the start of our curriculum revision process three years ago I read many pedagogical articles about project-based learning. In addition to espousing the benefits and relating success stories, some of these articles detailed risks; difficulty in ensuring that all … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
Online Courses versus Online Teaching
When the ETH moved all of its classes online six weeks ago I channelled my corona anxieties into scouring the literature for best practices in online teaching pedagogy, and I discovered a wealth of scholarly studies and practical information on … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
Why it matters
There’ve been a few times during the last couple of weeks, as we’ve been shutting down our labs to an accompaniment of tragic news reports of horrible human suffering around the world, that I’ve asked myself whether struggling on with … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
1 Comment
Sounding Board 2
It’s been almost two years since I introduced you to our Alumni Sounding Board, who have been helping us to keep in mind the industry perspective since the very beginning of our curriculum revision. Now that we are deep in the … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
Project-based learning and craft-brewed beer
One of the most enjoyable of my curriculum-revision tasks over the last weeks has been my participation in the “P2 team”, that is the Project team for Project-based learning (we could probably have done better with one very long german … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment
The Transition Period
“What’s going to happen with the second year students that I usually teach in the old curriculum when I’m teaching the new curriculum to the first years?” asked a colleague. YIKES! Somehow I had naively pictured our entire student body … Continue reading
Posted in Education, Materials Science
Leave a comment