Experiences And Lessons In Accelerated Learning

Focus: HOPE’s Center for Advanced Technologies and the NSF-sponsored Greenfield Coalition are partnered in a program aimed at radical and systemic change in manufacturing engineering/technology education. Among the targets for change are graduates more fully in-tune with the needs of 21st century manufacturing companies, integration of experiential and academic learning and compressed time for attaining the learning objectives of undergraduate. The latter topic is the prime focus of this paper. Against a backdrop of a brief description of the environment in which learning takes place within this program, results are presented from two highly compressed learning periods in Winter terms of 1996 and 1997, where substantial acceleration was achieved in completion of academic credits. The paper closes with an attempt to extract some lessons that will be incorporated in future compressed learning periods and may be applicable in other venues. The Stage: The Center for Advanced Technologies at Focus: HOPE produces both automotive parts and new manufacturing engineers and engineering technologists. It its production mode, the CAT operates an advanced-technology factory, employing the latest-generation machining centers and computer-controlled inspection apparatus in flexible manufacturing cells. A broad variety of power-train parts are produced from aluminum and cast iron castings, purchased in ascast form from foundries in several states. Characteristically, output products must be held to very close dimensional tolerances and high surface finishes. Current customers are Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Detroit Diesel and the Department of Defense. Parts are shipped to customers’ assembly plants in several regions of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In its educational mode, the CAT is a teammate in the Greenfield Coalition. This is one of the National Science Foundation engineering coalitions, established to create radical and systemic change in the content and methods of engineering education. Greenfield concentrates on exclusively on manufacturing. The degrees offered are Associate of Science in Manufacturing, Bachelor of Science in Manufacturing Engineering Technology and Bachelor of Manufacturing Engineering. The Greenfield university partners are University of Detroit Mercy, Lawrence Technological University, Lehigh University, University of Michigan and Wayne State University. The industrial partners are Cincinnati Milacron, Chrysler Corporation, Detroit Diesel, Electronic Data Systems, Ford Motor Company, General Motors Corporation and the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. The thirteenth partner is Focus: HOPE. P ge 375.1 All degrees are awarded by one of the partner universities, but all five partner schools contribute substantially to all three degrees. Thus, the degree-awarding school provides less than a majority of the credits for the degree. The AS degree is awarded by Lawrence Tech, the BSET by Wayne State and the BMfgE by Detroit Mercy. Up to the present, all of the students have been Focus: HOPE candidates. One of the long-term objectives of the Coalition, however, is to migrate some or all of the new instructional paradigm back to the partners’ home campuses and, thence, to other engineering and technology schools. By design, the coursework is highly interdisciplinary and presented through a variety of nontraditional methods. Lectures are minimized and computer-based-learning modules are heavily stressed. Learning is designed to be modular, in-context, inquiry-based and competencymeasured. Many of the modules are self-paced, employing only minimal instructor intervention. Greenfield courses vary widely in number of credits and in duration. Most of the courses are of two or three credits, but there are many at one credit and a few at four or five credits. Duration is planned around the amount of time for a ‘standard’ student to absorb the designed subject matter. Thus, planned duration of course varies from five to fifteen weeks. However, with the emphasis on self-pacing, methodologies are being devised to permit students to accelerate their learning and complete courses in shorter periods. Under this paradigm, ‘completion’ is defined as attainment of pre-defined learning objectives and standards, rather than by ‘seat-time’ or other passive measures. The Normal Learning Environment: By design and definition, there are no students at the CAT. There are ‘candidates’ -candidates to become manufacturing engineers or engineering technologists. A candidate is part student and part production worker. The key players in both operating modes at the CAT are the candidates; they are the students and perform key functions in manufacturing, from cell leader to quality technician to fixture designer. Candidates commit to an eight-hour production shift and a three-hour learning shift -every day. In addition, candidates, as well as all employees in Focus: HOPE. are subject to strict policies on attendance, professional attire and personal decorum. There is also a zero-tolerance substance abuse policy. Candidates are paid for production shift, but not for learning shift; they also pay no tuition. At present, the entry pipeline for candidates is successful completion of the entire curriculum in Focus: HOPE’s Machinist Training Institute. This is a fifty-seven week, post-secondary program of forty-hour weeks on the job, divided equally between academics and hands-on instruction on conventional and CNC machine tools. Academic subjects include computer graphics (Autocad in the first term; Unigraphics in the second term), mathematics and communications. After over a thousand hours of machining instruction and practice, MTI graduates emerge as qualified entrylevel toolroom machinists. Graduates who elect to enter the job market are well-received, while those who opt for continued education in the CAT are well-prepared for university-level work. The typical candidate will be scheduled for six-to-nine hours per week of instructor-managed courses. The remaining learning shift hours are scheduled for self-paced coursework in mathematics, homework or private study. The mean course-load for candidates is approximately ten credits per term. The Greenfield academic calendar is divided into three four-month terms. P ge 375.2 Academic advising is highly hands-on. The CAT Education Team devotes much attention to getting to know the candidates personally and individually. Candidates are scheduled for coursework according to their individual learning styles and capacities, and it is accepted that these will change as the candidate grows in academic maturity. Thus, each term will have a new advising heuristic. Variability around the mean learning capacity is significant. The most aggressive learners pursue as many as twelve-to-fourteen credits of instructor-managed coursework per term, in addition to, perhaps, another three credits through self-paced study. The least aggressive learners undertake as little as two-to-four instructor-managed credits and one-totwo credits in self-paced study. When fully operational, the Greenfield AS curriculum will contain sixty-nine credits, the BSET one hundred thirty-two credits and the BMfgE one hundred thirty-seven credits. At the mean pace of credit accumulation, the ‘normal’ associate degree achievement time is seven-to-eight terms (two-plus years). The associate degree curriculum serves as the lower division for both baccalaureate degrees. Sixty-eight of the AS credits apply to the BSET and fifty-five lower division credits apply to the engineering bachelor’s degree. This leaves sixty-four upper division credits for the BSET and eighty-two last-two-years credits for the BMfgE. The ‘standard’ completion times are, thus, seven and nine terms, respectively. Burst Learning: Much of the pace in the CAT is dictated by production demands. As with any factory serving the automotive industry, production levels vary with customer demand for the finished product. In a just-in-time environment, there are often short-term variations in production schedules. Moreover, model-year conversion and change-over to newer products occasionally interrupt production altogether for a few days to a few weeks. By company policy, Focus: HOPE does not lay off candidates -they are our most important product -our raison d’être. Thus, when an extended production hiatus occurs, the company finds other tasks to gainfully occupy the candidate workforce. This provides an opportunity for a much higher level of concentration on learning for selected candidates. In the Winter terms of both 1996 and 1997, slack production demand created opportunity to free some candidates from manufacturing duties altogether and assign them to full-time learning. In this special environment, ‘full-time’ means three three-hour learning periods per day -triple the normal pace. The local parlance for a concentrated learning period is a ‘burst’, a term borrowed from encrypted telecommunications technology. Both burst learning periods were originally scheduled to last twelve weeks. As production ramped back up towards the end, both phased out gradually, and burst time was extended by up to two weeks or curtailed by one week for some of the burst candidates. The ‘official’ designation, in both cases, is twelve weeks. Fifteen candidates were selected for Burst 96 and fourteen for Burst 97. In both cases, the selection criteria were: candidates who had most effectively utilized the normal fifteen-hour learning week; candidates in good standing in manufacturing; adequate prerequisite base (especially in mathematics) to take advantage of accelerated coursework; positioned most closely to the next degree objective. In both bursts, the next objective was the associate degree. Because of the tremendous boost provided by the burst periods, the associate degree graduates in both years emerged from the burst groups. P ge 375.3 The associate degree curriculum in place for