Transcript CASEE education

An Industry Leader's
View of Engineering
Education
Steve Kirsch
[email protected]
Agenda
• My qualifications
• Ideas on improving
- pre-school
- design and process
- feedback
Why should you listen to
me?
• I have no credibility in the field of education
• …but the EECS auditorium at MIT is named
after me
• I represent the customer
- A fresh perspective
Engineering a “better
education”
• 3 ways to make a better product
- Better parts (“raw materials”)
- Better product design and manufacturing process
- Use feedback for quality assurance (QA) and for ideas
on how to continuously improve
• Same is true of education
- Better educated students coming into the system
- Improve what we teach, how we teach it, and who
teaches it
- Ask students 0-15 years later for feedback and actually
use it to change the previous 2 steps
Improving the quality of
the incoming students
’95 TIMSS results
42 countries
Texas had state/local control…
imagine what a focus on testing
can do for the rest of the country!
The vision
All students in the USA receive the
best K-12 education in the world
TIMSS
12th grade
4th grade
How do we do that?
• Establish clear, measurable goals
- Example: For K-12, it could be NAEP or TIMSS
improvements
• Change what we do
- Copy what works
- Stop doing stuff that doesn’t work
• Measure and adjust
This isn’t rocket science.
It’s just that we don’t do it very well.
Changes required
• Understand why we have failed in the past
• Avoid those mistakes
• Realize that K-12 is a federal problem not a local problem:
the states have had their chance for over 200 years, yet no
state “stands out” of the pack (NAEP). State/local control can
make things dramatically worse, e.g., Texas’ results on TASP.
• Understand why other countries have succeeded and adopt
“best practices” of top performing countries. Copying first
to get to parity, innovating later.
• Have the leadership and courage to do things dramatically
differently than we are today
• Create a vision, clear goals, and a believable strategy
based on what has proven to work
Why isn’t there a checklist
for education that we
actually use?
• In aviation, a pilot uses an extensive proven
checklist to ensure a safe flight…
Why not offer a substantial on-going cash
incentive to enable schools to pass a proven
checklist of statistically proven replicable
requirements that ensures a quality
education?
Why don’t we run K-12
schools like airlines?
A. Airlines governed by national safety standards
(not set by airlines!)
B. All pilots are qualified and certified to fly the plane
type (no unqualified substitutes allowed!)
C. On-going pilot training is required
D. Pilots who don’t perform can be fired
E. Planes that don’t meet code can’t be used
F. Pilots free to determine how to fly the plane, but
not the destination
G. Require pilots to go through a proven safety
checklist (that ensures a successful flight) before
takeoff
How bad are things today?
• There are >50 state standards for what students are
to learn. Everyone else has 1 national standard.
• Alignment (standards, curriculum, materials,
assessments) is therefore virtually impossible
-Imagine if Bill Gates were forced to write Windows for
each state?
• We are set up to fail.
• There is no good reason we can’t have national
standards. That is step #1.
- NAEP is perfect proof of “de facto” national standards.
It can be done.
Changing how we teach
Why the sudden
discontinuity after 12th
grade?
K-12
College
Teaching style
Very structured
Very
unstructured
Teacher
training
2 years
0
Methods to improve the
process
• Set clear, measurable goals
-Understand very clearly what you are trying to
achieve
• Copy what works
-Copying is always the most efficient way to get
to world class performance
• Innovate later
- Innovation is required for progress AFTER you
are #1
Metric ideas
• TIMSS-like standardized assessment tests
• Self-perceived customer satisfaction
• Peer/supervisor rated satisfaction
• % employed after 2 years
• % who were fired in first 10 years
• Average salary improvement after 4 years
• % who got jobs after graduation
Wrong way: NCLB
• # of schools that NCLB was tested on before being
rolled out nationally
- ZERO
• Amount of improvement that can be expected from
NCLB
- Nobody has a clue. Could be negative.
- Even worse: we knew Bush’s model (TASS) failed
We should NEVER be experimenting on our kids at
mass scale like this!!
Why not treat education
policy like drugs?
• Efficacy
-Require proof of efficacy, i.e., it has to work
• Safety
-Require testing on a diverse population to look
for unintended consequences (negative side
effects)
• Scalability
-Prove that it can be rolled out in scale and still
work (e.g. GMP manufacturing standards)
Right way: NCEE’s
America Choice
• Research best practices
-Spend 11 years studying best practices in other countries
• Prototype
-Create a prototype approach based on the learnings but adapted
for the US market
• Test and validate
-Test it at few schools
- Get a third party to validate results by comparing to other schools
of similar profile
• Scale
-Roll out to more schools
• Re-test
- Measure again to make sure it scaled with same results and
without any unintended consequences
Changing what we
teach
Give people what they need to be
successful
The Kirsch diet
Is it good for you?
• Genetically, we are all virtually identical. So
shouldn’t this pie chart work for everyone?
You can just pick the foods you want, but
EVERYONE is required to stick to the %’s
Protein
Fat
Carbohydrates
MIT
• 360 units to graduate
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48 units humanities (pick from traditional subjects)
x units core subjects
y units elective
z units General Institute requirements
• They review this every 50 years, whether they need to or not
• Why aren’t there multiple pie charts? Does one pie really fit
all?
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executive
Manager
entrepreneur
researcher
engineer
MIT
• In 2004, they discovered that communication
is more than technical writing
Why aren’t we teaching soft
skills?
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Presentation skills
Teaching skills
Leadership
Teamwork
Negotiation skills
Nonverbal communication
Decision-making
Company politics
Giving feedback
Receiving feedback
Sales skills
Attire
Philanthropy
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Behavioral change
Hiring and firing people
Interviewing skills
Social skills, e.g., how to get a
date
Basic project management skills
Managing complex projects
Organization skills
Coaching/mentorship
Working a room
Running a meeting
Conflict resolution
Public policy
“I would love to take such a course” - Tony Eng, MIT
Soft skills
• If there is one change you can make right
now to improve engineering education, this is
it
• Few offerings are comprehensive
• Even fewer universities (none?) require this to
graduate
• Don’t try to integrate it into existing course;
copy what works
- These skills have been taught very
successfully in standalone single-topic seminars
MIT hasn’t “got it” yet
(after 20 years of prodding)
• 6.UAT/6.ThT Preparation for Undergraduate
Advanced Project/Masters of Engineering Thesis
-Upon completion of the course, students will have
learned how to:
- propose and define research problems and think about
solutions
- critically evaluate technical presentations
- architect technical presentations
- present technical material in oral and written forms to
different audiences at different levels of detail
- give and receive constructive feedback
- write progress reports
Why not also teach basic
survival skills?
• Basic investment skills
- Do you know why a stock goes up when they
announce bad news?
- Do you know why most people who trade
stocks frequently lose money?
• Personal relationships
What else should we teach?
• The answer is in the feedback section!
Changing who is doing
the teaching
Faculty changes
• Require a 6 week training course for new
faculty
- West Point does that
• Require people who teach engineering to
have “real world” experience in industry
- Example: take off a semester and get a full
time job
• Change incentives to reward collaboration,
teamwork, and teaching
- Not just individual research!
Measure and adjust
Creating a feedback system for quality
assurance and continuous
improvement
Education is an open-loop
op amp
Students in
College
education
Job
Students experience
out
Example of using feedback:
Why executives fail
• Interpersonal skills (CFO, VP Engr)
• Lack of teamwork
-Lack of confidence in the team to work together
(VP Sales)
• Inability to execute
-Use their knowledge and skills to lead a team
to success (VP Marketing)
What’s common?
• They failed on the soft skills
- Nobody failed due to a lack of understanding
of the basic subject matter in their core area of
expertise
- Everyone failed due to an inability to translate
their knowledge into action
The Paul Cook success
model
• Q: How do you spend your time?
• A: On people problems.
• So feedback should measure:
- what skills are the most used
- what skills they could use to be more effective
- what skills were required for success
- what skills led to failure
My experience at MIT was
lopsided
• Technical skills
- BEFORE<<AFTER
• People skills
- BEFORE = AFTER
Why isn’t there a feedback
system in place?
• What are our goals?
• Do we have metrics aligned to those goals?
• Do we know what they are?
• Is it used as a basis for compensation?
• Is it used as a basis for adjusting the process
and the design?
Methods for driving change
• Change the “change process”
-Internally driven changes at universities are typically done on geological time
scales
- To change, copy what has worked at universities who have solved the “lack of
change” problem
- Start simply: Pick one or two metrics for driving improvement
• ABET can drive changes
- Establish standardized customer satisfaction metrics
- Phase in a few key checklist items: Are new faculty members required to learn
how to teach?
- Phase in a few key optional items: Do students demonstrate mastery of soft
skills?
- … etc.
• CASEE could create and market a single “J.D. Power” metric for rating
engineering schools on customer satisfaction
- Could be coupled with a prize for “most improved”
- A single combined metric is easier to focus on
- Can be component metrics
Influence Public Policy
e.g., your vote on Nov. 2
Significant negative
impacts from Bush
decisions
• Cutting federal grants: NSF, etc.
• Putting our kids at a permanent disadvantage
-Deregulating mercury emissions from power plants has led to the
possibility of permanent brain damage in 15% of the children born
in the US today
- The requirement to remove 95% of the mercury emissions would
have costed 1% of the cost of the plant
• Ignoring/distorting science
• Cutting funding on his own education bill from what
Congress proposed
• Believing unbelievable test results (TASS) then using that as
a basis for national policy
• Unfunded mandates
Summary
• Improving education is a lot like building a better
computer:
- Quality components: Demand the highest quality
components from our suppliers; help them improve
- Customer driven design: Adjust the design of the
product to fit what people want to buy (a successful
career)
- Quality volume manufacturing: Improve the
manufacturing process by copying best practices and
making sure we have clear manufacturing specs (goals)
and that the products meet the spec (testing) at high
volume (scalability)
- Feedback: Take a look at the product after it’s been in
use for a few years to ensure quality and provide ideas
for improvement
Summary
• Nothing in this talk is new
• It’s just that we don’t do it (very well)
Leading indicators of
success
• A few clear, measurable goals established and used
• People skills being required to graduate
• Changes are prototyped and proven to work before scaling
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(no more NCLB)
Adoption of national standards (K-12)
Importing best practices from other countries
Federal incentives to adopt strategies that are proven to
work
New faculty are required to learn “how to teach”
Changes take a year instead of a century
Changes driven by customer satisfaction metric(s)
Latest copy of this talk
On my website at:
www.skirsch.com