Engineering Education and the Development of Expertise - Classes

Journal of Engineering Education 100 (January 2011) 1
knowledge and components skills as well as the ability to apply the knowledge and skills
to authentic problems. In engineering education, it falls to the instructors to design and
sequence the learning experiences that will promote such deliberate practice.
Instructors must also arrange learning experiences that help students learn to identify
the knowledge and skills needed for expert practice, as well as to develop that
knowledge and skill set.
CHARACTERISTICS OF EFFECTIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES
We will use the term effective learning experiences to describe learning experiences that
best support the development of expert professional practice. We define effective learning
experiences as those that support the development of deep understanding organized
around key concepts and general principles, the development of skills, both technical and
professional, and the application of knowledge and skills to problems that are representative
of those faced by practicing engineers.
The types of learning approaches that lead to deep understanding of the concepts and
principles of a domain are referred to as “deep approaches to learning” in much of the literature
on learning. This substantial body of literature began with a study of how students
read materials when they expect to be asked questions about them afterwards (Marton &
Säljö, 1976; Svensson, 1977). Those studies revealed that some students read text with the
intention to understand it, whereas other students focus more on the text itself. Differences
in intentions lead students to use different learning strategies as they read. The learning
strategies used by students whose intention is to understand are described as “deep”; the set
of learning strategies used by the other students are described as “surface”.
In their review of the literature related to deep approaches to learning, Entwistle and
Peterson (2004, p. 415) identified a number of strategies to promote deep approaches to
learning including: relating ideas to previous knowledge and experience; looking for patterns
and underlying principles; checking evidence and relating it to conclusions; and examining
logic and argument cautiously and critically.
Vermunt (1996) identified additional deep approaches to learning used by students
who he described as “application oriented.” These students “mainly pay attention to those
parts of the subject matter that have practical relevance” (p. 42). Application-oriented
processes include (p. 42): searching for relations between the subject matter and the reality
to which it refers; trying to apply in practice what has been learned in a course; and seeking
to fill in abstract lines of reasoning with concrete things.
Results from the National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored Center for the
Advancement of Engineering Education provide evidence from engineering students
about the characteristics of significant learning experiences. The characteristics, based
on interviews with students that asked them to discuss their most significant learning
experience, are consistent with the studies of deep approaches to learning. The characteristics
of significant learning experiences for engineering students included integrating
diverse knowledge and applying knowledge and skills to real-world problems
(Atman et al., 2010).
The early work on deep approaches to learning gave rise to a substantial body of research
that investigates the relationships between teaching approaches and students’ learning
strategies. Some of the key findings of this research are that:
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