The Value of Project Based Learning

Have you ever wondered what your life will really look like after graduation? What you’ll be doing 8 hours/day or more at work? Seems really long! I had similar questions running through my mind when I was at Normandale Community College. Everyone reminds you that you do not need to remember what you are learning because you’ll never use it at work. So what do people really do at work? And how is school value added?

I knew I wanted to be an engineer because Math and Physics were my strengths and specifically an aeronautical engineer because it felt good to design cool things. But what do engineers really do? Will I enjoy it as much as I enjoy Math? Will I be using Math and Physics at work? Right before graduation, an opportunity presented itself – Twin Cities Engineering.

Twin Cities Engineering is a project based, integrated Engineering program under Minnesota State University, Mankato that was to begin at Normandale as a partnership. This program originated as a result of a sister program, Iron Range Engineering, located in Virginia, MN which had existed for about 2 years. It was project based so I didn’t think twice about joining the program. It felt like the right thing to do. I took a leap of faith and applied to the school.

During my last semester at Normandale, I took an introduction to Engineering class as a requirement into the program. I remember telling my professor, Kurt Korkowski, that I was excited to join Twin Cities Engineering, a project based learning program, and he was excited for me and asked me to send him the essay I wrote to Twin Cities to as a part of the application process. He read the essay, underlined the errors, which was basically almost everything and said, “This is good, not the best, but that’s what you’ll learn in the program.” I thought to myself “Whatever. I don’t need it in my engineering career anyway”. When I look back, I had the weakest writing in the world - Not that it’s excellent now.  My instructor emphasized communication; both writing and presenting as essential skills to an engineer. He brought engineers to class to talk to us about their experiences and how important communication is, made us read novels and prepare presentations. Why do we need all these? We just want to be engineers, not journalists. Everyone complained of wasting time to learn the non-technical information. I didn’t know how to write, I wasn’t good at presenting. What did I put myself into? Throughout the whole 19 years in pursuing my engineering degree, no one mentioned that I should be a good communicator. There is a reason I am not a communication major.

I was born and raised in Kenya. I came to the United States in November 2009. Started at Normandale in January 2010 and got into the Twin Cities Program during the spring of 2013.Clearly, I was still adapting to the culture. English was my fifth language. It was definitely challenging to communicate and expres my thoughts.  I realized a lot of things needed to be worked on in the short period of time left (2 years) before graduation.

I was then accepted and started as a first cohort with three other male students.  We all struggled to learn both the program and the various competencies (classes) at the same time. We spent the first month in Iron Range Engineering to “imitate” what they do in the program. The ride wasn’t easy. I struggled with my writing. I felt like I wasn’t contributing to my team as I should. I was left behind. I decided to take the next semester off and went back to the Community College to take a writing class. This worked perfectly for me because I used that semester to complete three of my other general classes that were left so I wouldn’t have to take an extra general class during the program. After that semester, I made a decision to move to Iron Range Engineering, the sister program, which was 3.5 hours away from the cities since the program was accredited. Twin Cities wouldn’t be accredited until after the first cohort graduated.

Iron Range Engineering was started by Ronald Ulseth, who is also currently the director of IRE. He has passion and determination to make sure that his student leaves IRE as an all rounded engineer. Roughly 90% of students secured jobs before graduating. That is the place I wanted to be. But what made IRE better than a traditional school?

Project-based learning

Each semester for the 2 years, a student has to work on a design project. It could be an industry or personal approved project. The students will express interest in what projects they want to work on and Ron will then communicate with partnered companies and gather projects. At the beginning of the semester, students will pick what projects to work on, be in a team, or work on their own. A project could also be an internship or a co-op. These projects are semester long projects and are broken down to 3 major phases; scoping, technical, and final.

During the scoping phase, teams/individuals meet with the client contact to scope and define the problem. The technical phase involves doing all technical work (thermodynamics, fluids, heat transfer, and structural design etc.) to solve the problem. Options are then generated and presented to the client. At the final phase, these options are narrowed down to the final solution using different criteria and evaluated against the problem defined during scoping stage. At this point the solution is then presented to the client as a final client meeting.

Throughout the process, everything is documented in writing and turned in to be graded. There are different skills developed as a result of working on a project.

1. Team work – Learning to work with other students who have different skill sets, providing your own and strengthening the weak areas.
2. Building relationships - Knowing how to relate with each other and learning how to solve problems that arise in a team.
3. Presentation – At least 4 presentations are done throughout the semester for the project.
4. Writing – Documenting the process of solving the problem.
5. Professional responsibility – Working with a professional (client contact) and learning to be a professional with others through communication, physical appearance, ethical responsibilities, etc.

Self-regulated learning

When a student is accepted to IRE, they do whatever they want – don’t get too excited. I mean they define what they want to be by graduation. IRE has core competencies (6 electrical classes and 6 mechanical classes) that are required to be taken by everyone. The student would then choose the advanced competencies (14 classes) which ultimately define what emphasis they will graduate with. The advanced classes are totally up to the student. They could be broad or specific. Usually when selecting competencies, it is encouraged to align them with the project the student is working on that semester. The competencies are usually 8 weeks (block). An average student takes 4 competencies a block totaling to 8 competencies a semester.  

Classes at IRE are not like traditional classes. They are more of a discussion than a lecture usually referred to as learning conversations. There are about 1-6 students per class session.  The student defines what they want to achieve by the end of the competency, deliverables and timeline. Instructors are there to facilitate, guide and provide resources to make the learning successful. Students control what to learn and how they want to learn and that’s why metacognition is so dear to IRE. It is important to learn how to learn in order to retain information for as long as possible. Defining what works for you helps not only in a class setting but even after graduation when required to learn new technical information.

Preparation for professional responsibilities

Some of the things IRE does to help prepare for the professional responsibility are;

1. Mock interviews – These are held every semester. The interview process is similar to real life interview process held by companies. It begins by the student turning in the jobs package (the job you’re interested in, resume, and cover letter). Within a week, the students get feedback on resumes and cover letters. Faculty would then hold phone interviews and the student would get feedback immediately. After a week or so, live interviews are held. Every student gets a chance to be an interviewer and an interviewee. This gives everyone a chance to see other people’s perspectives. All the interviews are taped and handed to the student at the end of the interview session. Mock interviews are used to practice and prepare students for real life interviews.
2. Ethics – During design reviews, ethical cases related to the design are discussed and evaluated.
3. Writing – The school works with high level communication professors who give advices on how to write good reports and best writing practices. All the documentation is graded.
4. Presentations – The professors also work on helping students to be experts at presenting. Also, everyone is required to present their IRE talk, similar to Ted talks, on topics of their own.
5. Seminars – Are held twice a week. During these times, ‘how to be a professional’ discussions are held such as dress codes, attendance, watch Ted talks, and discuss all the hot topics such as metacognition, learning about learning, marketing your brand, implicit bias, e.t.c
6. Metacognition – Learn the best way to learn by using reflection, interleaving, connecting to experiences, metacog memos e.t.c
7. Contemporary issues – Read and reflect on contemporary issues each week.
8. Professional Development Plan – Keeping a development plan for different aspects of improvement. This involves making goals and actions plan of how to reach the goals.
9. Volunteer – 15 hours a semester.

For me, attending this program gave me exposure to being an all rounded engineer and most importantly a validation of what I wanted to do in life. I gained more interest in the management part of engineering.  I have now graduated college with an emphasis in Engineering Management and have secured a job at UTC Aerospace System as a Facilities Engineer.  The transition was seamless on my end because I was used to working on a professional environment.

I have gotten a lot of compliments when it comes to professional responsibilities. My supervisor at UTC, Kyle Corniea mentioned, “During the interview, it was so easy to hire you compared to other candidates. The gap was large. The way you handled yourself, your experiences, background, and professional responsibility is unique.”

To me, it is a validation that there is a high value in a project based learning environment. I talk about IRE every day to my colleagues and wished they experienced what I have experienced. I feel really lucky to have gone through this experience. My ultimate wish is that all engineering students should go through this system because its value added. It would be great to have all engineering schools designed to work with companies like IRE because when they do, there will be an alignment between what the company wants and what the student can provide.