iREDEFINE Workshop 2022

Students will be welcomed by the workshop organizer and given information about their schedule and expectations. They will introduce themselves to each other and participate in an icebreaker activity. The goal of this session is for the students to start making lasting connections with each other.

Students will network with department heads and chairs. In advance of the session, they will be asked to prepare an “elevator speech” to introduce themselves to others at the reception. Feedback on the “elevator speech” will be part of the icebreaker activity in the above opening session.

Students will display research posters and discuss their scholarly accomplishments and career plans with department heads and chairs.

The objective of this session is for the participants to understand two key components of effective teaching: having clear learning objectives and employing active learning. Specifically, participants will: (1) be able to define Learning Objectives and explain why they are important, and (2) define active learning, explain why it is important, and describe ways to implement it that range from simple to sophisticated. The session will conclude with a list of advanced resources, but will primarily emphasize practical methods on which beginning teachers can or should focus their efforts in order to get a good start on a lifelong, effective, teaching career. 

Speakers:

John Booske
Professor
University of Wisconsin, Madison





 

The goal of this two-hour long session is to demystify the academic interview process and increase the iREDEFINE Fellows’ confidence in their ability to be successful in their academic job search. ECE department heads will be available for one-on-one mock interviews, asking students typical academic interview questions. The interviewers will give the iREDEFINE students immediate feedback on how they handled the question.

The ECEDHA conference includes ECExpo which is an exposition of laboratory equipment, project ideas and components, textbooks, and other latest tools for engineering education. It is a great opportunity for iREDEFINE students to initiate their contact with industry which will be an important aspect of their work as faculty members. In addition, by learning more about lab equipment used in ECE courses, iREDEFINE students will be more attractive to their prospective institutions.

If you have strong opinions on future directions in the learning experiences ECE programs offer to our students, you should attend and contribute to a dialog on challenges presented by colleagues from ECEDHA member departments. We would like to hear from everyone interested in making some big, not incremental, changes in how we help our students navigate the challenging pathway to becoming a successful electrical and/or computer engineer. There was a preview of the session held as part of the ECEDHA Summit on 8 February. If you were not able to attend, a recording of the session is available on demand on the ECEDHA website. If you would like to do more than just attend the session, and you have ideas for the future of ECE education or even just questions or comments on present strengths, weaknesses, opportunities or threats, you can prepare a short (5 minutes) Soapbox Video to share with the ECEDHA community. All videos submitted will be available on the ECEDHA website. If you want to do more than attend but prefer not to prepare a video, you can share your thoughts with Ken Connor (connor@rpi.edu) who will make sure they are included in the dialogue.