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Robotic Design Studio: Exploring the Big Ideas of Engineering In a Liberal Arts Environment（在人文环境下探索工程知识） {#29f5 .graf .graf—h3 .graf—leading .graf—title name=“29f5”}
We feel it is important for engineering to be part of a liberal arts education because:（文科生为什么要学一些工程的知识？）
- [At its core, engineering is about making things. Educational research based on constructionist theories of learning has shown that people’s richest learning experiences often come when they are engaged in creating, designing, and making things. So by helping people learn how to make things, we also help them become better learners. And yet, in large part because of the absence of engineering, design-based learning is mostly absent from the liberal arts curriculum.]{#ccf6}
- [There are many “big ideas” in engineering (e.g., feedback, control, managing complexity) that are important for understanding not only classic “engineered systems” but also for understanding biological systems and social systems. So by learning about engineering, students gain a foundation for understanding many other disciplines as well.]{#8cd3}
- [One result of a liberal education should be to allow students to understand and appreciate the modern world and to be able to make informed decisions about critical issues. In today’s world we constantly interact with a vast array of often intimidating and mysterious technological objects. When students become designers and builders of technology, rather than passive consumers, much of the mystery and intimidation vanishes.]{#0d4f}
We should be clear what we mean when we say we want our students to learn the “big ideas of engineering.” We are not arguing for a standard professional engineering training that emphasizes the mastery of narrow, though perhaps very practical, skills (e.g. C++ programming or web page design). Rather we seek to expose students to broader engineering concepts and general principles, such as:（我们希望学生学到更广的工程概念和通用原则）
- [Design and implementation cycle: The essence of engineering is imagining something, designing it, building it, and getting it to work. Robotics a rich and accessible domain in which to experience this process. Furthermore, in the course of their robotic projects, students learn that engineering is an iterative process in which they continually implement, test, debug, and refine designs. This process stands in stark contrast to many traditional experimental lab courses in the sciences, where students (unlike practicing scientists) rarely have a chance to design and iterate experiments.]{#718e}
- [Systems: A key challenge of engineering is that it often involves the design of a complex system with interacting parts, many of which may be quite different in character (e.g. mechanical, electrical, computational, etc.) Robotics projects naturally involve design in multiple domains and provide a context in which to explore classic systems issues, such as feedback and control, and techniques for controlling complexity, such as modularity (composing systems out of reusable mix-and-match parts) and abstraction (capturing and generalizing idioms). These projects also provide students with an opportunity to observe emergent phenomena, such as complex behaviors arising from simple rules.]{#9327}
- [Designing in the real world: Engineering is something that takes place in the world, not in a textbook. One of the most important lessons students learn from their robotics projects is that the real world tends to be much messier, noisier and more unpredictable than they expect from the idealized view that dominates textbooks and problem sets. Robotics projects also effectively highlight issues such as design trade-offs and managing limited resources.]{#2e6a} ::: ::: :::