Distant Teaching and Learning of BTIPS: Application in Pandemic Situation
Authors: Bzymek Zbigniew M. 
Published: February 2021

The world’s technology is developing very rapidly. To anticipate the course and results of such development is a task that is very crucial for the success of many technological undertakings and expansions. Engineering design is the branch of engineering that should predict the results of that rapid development. It should equip society with the tools for directing and controlling that development. It is a complex task that faces big challenges. The main challenge comes from society advancement and from the technology development itself. If the directing and controlling are done right the development would bring many benefits to humanity and would make human life easier and more comfortable. Doing it right however requires increased knowledge of the new features of technology and more skills in its application. In the difficult pandemic situation that knowledge and skills should be even greater because the outbreak of the disease creates additional traps and dangers. These conditions have to be taken under consideration and accepted as normal. The role of engineering design is to predict what harmful elements would be coming from both technological and social sources. The real goal however would be to exceed the expectations and not only neutralize them but change them from harmful into neutral, and then from neutral into friendly and helpful.

Such actions follows recommendations of BTIPS (Brief Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) and is outlined in the BTIPS’s module “Prediction”. At the same time the developing civilization brings dangers for humans that were unknown before. These are bacterial and viruses’ attacks that limit personal relations between humans, requires new ways and new elements of communications, especially in internet contacts and in distant learning procedures. The contents of these components should be accurately predicted, well-orchestrated, well designed and precisely described.

Recommendations for introducing BTIPS as a tool of engineering education in new situation should be carefully proposed and illustration examples, using new communication tools, should be developed. These should be applied in engineering theoretical courses and in practical applications during the senior design course of study and in industrial practice. This should be precise, clearly anticipating difficulties, pointing possible errors and ways of avoiding them. Teaching examples of problem solving and personal ways of communications between individual students, between groups of students, as well as between students and instructors should be further discussed. The examples of design ideas and problem solutions generated by students in design courses that were described in previous works of the author and his co-workers [1] should be related to pandemic situation.

To define and formulate rules of teaching BTIPS in the pandemic situation is the necessity of our times. On every step of our lives we face the challenge of preventing harms and destruction that can be done by the contemporary surrounding world. The preventing actions can be designed by following rules of BTIPS and by apply approach recommended in its modules.

The proposal of utilizing BTIPS application examples using the internet as a tool of expression is described in this paper. All of these are pointed out and some recommendations and examples are called. Adding description of corrections to the engineering curriculum is necessary in the new situation. It is an intention of the author to demonstrate a fragment of practical distant lecturing by internet during the IMECE 2020 internet sessions using the internet network and distant support from UConn computer Laboratory in Storrs, CT. Some example solutions of the idea generation are quoted in this paper. The comments coming from author’s teaching experience will be given during the presentation and practical advices for students and instructors will be passed to the audience. This paper is a companion to IMECE 2017-70438 [1]. Some original examples given in the paper 79418 are recommended for following and will be run by internet in pandemic situation of IMECE 2020.