Trial-and-error, googling and talk: Engineering students taking initiative out of class

Abstract

This chapter reports on the strategies that first year engineering students used to supplement and extend their laboratory and lecture learning about a 3-dimensional computer-aided design (3D CAD) software, SolidWorks. A capacity for self-initiated and self-directed learning as part of developing lifelong learning capabilities is widely recognized as a critical outcome for today's engineering graduates (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2009; National Academy of Engineering, 2004). This capacity naturally spans both formal and informal settings. We illustrate what this might look like drawing on two projects. One investigated the role ICTs/e-learning can play in tertiary teaching and learning (Johnson, Cowie, & Khoo, 2011) and the other investigated the nature, development and implications of software literacy (Khoo, Hight, Torrens, & Cowie, 2016). Engineering students in these studies reported a diverse array of self-initiated and self-directed informal learning actions including daily conversations with peers, out-of-class conversations with lecturers, trial and error in their own time, work through course materials, and use of YouTube videos and dedicated online professional discussion forums. Different students expressed a preference for different combinations of these approaches. Student informal learning therefore covered a patchwork of learning processes and outcomes within their formal learning programmes. Students asserted informal learning activities were essential to enrich and complement formal learning occasions if they were to develop adequate/sufficient understanding of and competency in the use of software to solve engineering design problems. In the chapter we pay particular attention to what students have to say about why they initiate these informal leaning activities and the significance students place on these activities. We conclude the chapter by speculating on implications for teaching and learning of blurring the formal-informal boundary, in particular the contribution informal learning has to make to learning in contexts that are usually seen as 'formal'.