Iron Range Engineering

A New Experience Here at IRE

Part II

By

Keith Koppen

            Some of you may remember a post that I left here on the Iron Range Engineering (IRE) blog about a semester ago; I had remembered my experiences some 25 years ago and how we registered for classes before the widespread acceptance of a thing called the Internet.  I exalted the adaptation of this tool to create the more seamless process of registration that students use today.  This is such a great improvement over what was, that it shocked me as a non-traditional student.  Now, here at my second semester at IRE, we will have more new experiences.

            The directors and instructors at IRE have used suggestions given to them over the past semesters to change and, in my opinion, improve the high quality educational experience presented to the student body.

            The first of these changes involves a new, intuitive, more consistent grading system of the competencies completed here at IRE.  Ron Ulseth briefly outlined this system on Monday January 13, 2014.  The system allows for a more objective assessment of students work.  It requires the student to take more responsibility in the completion of the assignments specified and the dates due.  It creates a HARD due date, like in a professional setting, but still allows for some flexibility.  The changes make for a more even grading system.

            Further changes are to the language used to describe the documentation for a client project, a reduction in the number of deliverable documents required for the projects, a reduction in the number of presentations, and the change in the weekly contemporary issues assignment.

            The contemporary issues experience now includes “TED talks”.   Each project team will select a “TED talks” video for the student body to watch at Monday Seminar and to reflect upon in their journals. (A more interesting and engaging assignment if you were to ask me.)  This leads me to what I consider the largest change here at IRE.  The final oral presentation will now change to the individual students delivering their very own “TED talks”.  We will no longer stand in front of the panel of instructors and present ourselves to them in slide show fashion.  We will no longer be obligated to stand and answer the questions we know but have the trouble verbalizing, and look like noobs in the process.  Instead we will each produce a “TED talks” video that is only around 18 minutes in length, on the subject of our choice, to demonstrate the engineering knowledge.  The video could also be used as a resume tool to a potential employer, an added benefit of this type of presentation.

            These new experiences seem to happen all the time here and are more the norm rather the exception.  Who would have guessed that an institution of higher learning would actually listen to the body of students they are teaching.  As I ended before, now IMAGINE what is to come next.

Proof read by Elizabeth Mcbride