Rich Practice Defense

2020-08-16 Rich Practice Defense

  • When describing makerspace learning, it could be helpful to point out that this kind of learning is quite different from conventional school learning
  • As you define mechanism, perhaps explain what this definition excludes. Are there systems that do something but which you wouldn’t call mechanisms?
  • Slide 11: “Core learning mechanism” Do you want to use “mechanism” like this?
  • Slide 12: You claim that engineering design is about creating products, not learning. What about the field of “engineering education?” Is that mostly focused on postsecondary?
  • Slide 28: It would help to hear the research questions before you tell us about the groups in the study.
  • Slide 37: Drop the bar chart; add error bars on the line chart.
  • Slide 40: Why don’t we see charts for the no effect?
  • Slide 56: As you conclude with a proposal for “educational engineering design,” it would be helpful to know that traditional engineering design has a problem with transfer or has not attended to transfer or constructing more general knowledge. Is “educational engineering design” aimed at different goals or does it propose different methods?
  • As you close, I suggest not wandering into computational stuff, VR. Or at least bracket it as “future directions” so that it doesn’t confuse the main message.

General feedback:

  • Your transitions are logical, but I think it is worth spending more time on (and devoting slides to) the transition between studies:
    • Why did the question leading us into the study feel important?
    • How did the study answer those questions and raise new questions?
  • In study 2, use a consistent visual language for the groups. Currently, you’re using a 2-by-2, adjacent bar charts, and a double line chart. Would it be possible to commit to just one of these and still make your point? Consistent use of color could help here.
  • When you conjecture on the relationship between self-explanation and transfer, it would be help to get a little bit more mechanistic about transfer. (e.g. self-explanation could help students recognize where prior mental models can be applied in a new situation…)
  • Is the field of Engineering Education relevant? (I don’t know much about this, but I’m thinking for example about [1].

[1] Denning, P. J. (1992). Educating a new engineer. Communications of the ACM, 35(12), 82–97.