April 2012: Why should an engineering educator care about SoTL?

April 2012:  Why should an engineering educator care about SoTL?

Sir Ove Arup, a famous British Engineer, has this to say about Engineering problems: “Engineering problems are under-defined, there are many solutions, good, bad and indifferent. The art is to arrive at a good solution. This is a creative activity, involving imagination, intuition and deliberate choice.”  If one were to educate the next generation of engineers who will be entering an ever more technologically complex world it is imperative to ask whether we are equipping them with requisite knowledge and skills to select “good” solutions for “under-defined” problems. The knowledge required is beyond procedural. In fact  students  of today may have to actively construct new knowledge in their own future practice. Through my exposure to SoTL literature, I learnt that incorporating metacognitive learning strategies in the form of critical reflection can in someway provide the skills required to be a life-long learner.