Dr. Çetiner’s Blogs (Prof. Dr. Gültekin Çetiner)

Spoonfeeding
First let us describe spoonfeeding. The following are the definitions of spoonfeeding in dictionary.

What is SpoonFeeding (Spoon Feeding)?
Spoonfeeding as a noun
1. Spoonfeeding is simply feeding someone from a spoon by treating him/her as a baby
2. spoonfeeding (teaching in an overly simplified way that discourages independent thought)

Spoonfeed as a Verb
1. Spoonfeed (feed with a spoon)
2. spoonfeed (teach without challenging the students) “This professor spoonfeeds his students”

What is wrong with Spoonfeeding?

Nothing is wrong in spoonfeeding if one of the situations applies to you (see below). However, in education, things are different.

Spoonfeeding in Engineering Education
Spoonfeeding is the greatest harm to an engineering student. An engineer is expected to be innovative, creative in his/her career. How could someone expect these challenging task from an engineer in the real life if he/she was spoonfed during the engineering education?

An environment where an instructor simply rattles down information to be memorized and recalled during exams will kill creativity and reward a lack of critical thinking. A more ‘Socratic’ enviroment where the student is lead to ‘discover’ principles will assuredly lead to better understanding, retention, creativity, fun, ease of use, ability to apply in unfamiliar situations, etc…

By supplying readily available resources to engineering students in the classroom and solving some easy-to-digest problems in the classroom later to ask them in a similar fashion in exams by just changing some numbers may be seeming very attractive to students since they can easily pass the exams and obtain a good grade.

This kind of teaching can provide at most a second level of learning in Bloom taxonomy what we call as comprehension and in many cases memorization level only which is the first level of learning.

Some keypoints of Engineering Management Topics that we learnt in the first week are:

1. We had a seminar on online activities. We have covered many things for online activities in this session
2. A proper description of Engineering (old definition and modified ABET definition)
3. Identifying engineering as a profession and not an art
4. Description of Management
5. Description of Engineering Management
6. Some important facts about engineers and managers
7. Definition of Systems as a whole
8. Definition of Engineering Systems
9. Definition of Management Systems
10. Description of 9 elements of a system namely inputs, outputs, interfaces, constraints, boundary, goal of system (common output), components (subsystems), interralations, and environment
11. System analyst approach to engineering problems
12. 3 system errors namely a) Goal Displacement b) Functional Distortion c) Functional Distraction
13. 3 Management Levels (1st level, midlevel and top level management) their titles and roles
14. Skills required for different management levels (interpersonal skills, technical skills and conceptual or analytical skills)
15. Skills needed by different level of managers
16. Difference between effectiveness and efficiency
17. Difference between leader and manager
18. Clarifying ‘doing the right things’ and ‘doing the things right’ with regard to leader and manager
19. Managers’ roles to be played at different levels: Interpersonal roles (figurehead role, leadership role, and liaison role), Informational roles (Monitoring role, Disseminator role, and Spokesman role), and finally most important roles namely Decisional roles (entrepreneurial role, negotiator role, resource allocator role, and disturbance handling role)
20. Now we have to take Course Entry Exam (which will be closed within week)
21. We have also Quiz (Introduction to Engineering Management), Forum 1: Introduction to Management (Graded), and Engineering Management Puzzle opened starting from this week.

I hope it will be helpful.

Mr. Yasser Matbouli, one of my former engineering management students came for submitting his Summer Training report. When I received his report, I was shocked because it was not following any format in our university. It was written by a blog writer. He carefully noted all his activities as blog entries in his report with the dates and subjects. It was very interesting idea and I suggested him to rearrange everything according to our Engineering College format but also put what he had at the end of his report.

I congratulate him and give him a link as my vote for his site. You can visit him from http://www.ymatbouli.com/