Our goal as educators is to strike a balance between our students' varied learning needs and the available tools. For instance, he uses a gaudy plastic toy dump truck to unlock the secrets of several kinds of force. A toaster offers a tangible example of redesigning a machine to reduce the number of parts required for manufacturing. From an initial focus on undergraduate design methodology courses, the collaborators have extended their enhancements to numerous other courses at their respective institutions. They also have applied enhancements at all levels, from freshman undergraduate to graduate courses.
Teamwork is one realm in which an understanding of learning theory can particularly pay off.
Wood personally selects the teams of three to six students for complementary strengths and for certain critical personality types, as does his Air Force Academy colleague. And if you choose at random, there's no telling what you'll wind up with. A specialist in engineering design, he is the June and Gene Gillis Endowed Faculty Fellow in Manufacturing.