Empowering Cadets To Take Ownership Of Their Learning – Perspectives From The U.S. Air Force Academy

Engineering faculty must not only facilitate learning the specific knowledge embodied by their major field, but also the progression of their students to higher levels of learning. Freshmen generally require significant guidance while learning core subjects of their engineering discipline. As students progress through their undergraduate program, courses require more synthesis of the core subjects to the solution of increasingly openended problems. Most engineering programs culminate in capstone design experiences for the students. Such capstone experiences are intended to be the ultimate expression of ill-defined problem solution for the students prior to graduation. A critical element in the student’s maturation through the learning process is that they become, to quote ABET, “independent life-long learners”. To this end, the Department of Engineering Mechanics at the US Air Force Academy adopted the title phrase as the focus area for their students or cadets as they are known. Empowering cadets to take ownership of their learning, when applied to the classroom, has nearly as many interpretations as there are faculty members. The following is a presentation of techniques tried by our department faculty to address the department’s focus area and the results. Despite what often may appear as diametrically opposed approaches, each method has its own advantages and disadvantages. All methods provide key insights for engineering educators as they strive to produce the independent life-long learning engineering graduate.