Teaching Practices at Harvard Engineering

Abstract

In the previous chapters, we discussed critical components of effective learning curriculum. We pointed out that problem-solving skills are critical for engineers of this century. In particular, we pointed out the importance of systems thinking as the core of the learning, and the design process as the tool to achieve the goal of addressing large-scale human challenges.

1 Introduction

In the previous chapters, we discussed critical components of effective learning curriculum. We pointed out that problem-solving skills are critical for engineers of this century. In particular, we pointed out the importance of systems thinking as a core learning methodology, and the design process as the tool for addressing open-ended human challenges.

Connectivity among disciplines and people is critical to success in the systems-design model. On the one hand, people become isolated with the use of electronic gadgets and social networks, while on the other hand, work continues to be a social process requiring ever advancing technical tools. That work is happening within a new culture fueled by AI and machine learning, IoT devices, and digitally connected communities in smart cities. So, students should realize that seeking other perspectives, collaborating in research, and engaging others in problem solving, as they investigate the elements of the project, are critical to achieving success.

Since most human challenges are multivariable and made up of heterogeneous and interacting elements, with significant time evolutions, the problem-solving paradigm must shift to address these challenges as systems, thus examining them holistically and avoiding reductionism. Whenever possible, part of this paradigm shift is to move from analysis for empirical understanding to design through computation. In some situations, equations-based investigations should be replaced by simulations and statistical analysis.

2 Educational Structure at Harvard Engineering

Cognitive development and skill building are critical components of a 21st-century learning curriculum. Systems thinking and design engineering are ideal vehicles for introducing and developing these skill sets of the future. Beyond an emphasis on interdisciplinary learning, we focus on the complexity that arises in systems, as well as the philosophical and mathematical platforms for understanding complex challenges.

A new problem-solving paradigm is needed to address 21st-century challenges that are multivariable, made up of non-deterministic, heterogeneous, interacting elements with nonlinear dynamics. Such challenges must be examined holistically to avoid reductionism. A paradigm shift is needed from analysis for empirical understanding, to iterative design incorporating computation as well as physical making. We need to introduce elements of complexity and dynamic systems through courses and real-life experiences and should use data and computation to analyze different situations. Critical thinking, innovation, and design should be explicit cornerstones of the engineering design curriculum. We find that different courses have different emphases on the above-mentioned points. The overall key elements that are related to the discussions in Chaps. 5 and 7 include:

• An interdisciplinary approach by integrating concepts and practices from a wide range of fields including different areas of engineering, materials, applied physics, applied mathematics and design. The goal is to provide Harvard College students with a broad learning and enable them to become good citizens by working and collaborating to solve open-ended problems.

• Some of the courses emphasize project-based learning, giving students hands-on experience on real-world engineering problems. This approach encourages students to be creative and innovative and prepares them to be productive in the rapidly changing job market.

Design, as an intellectual branch of knowledge, formally started almost 100 years ago. The word design has different meanings in different contexts. We define design as the process and actions for defining and solving problems, to bring a human system from an inferior state to a higher performing state. Design connects artifacts to economic and socio-political dimensions. It also connects to business innovation and scientific discovery. Design connects to our cognition and emotions and allows us to form implicit and explicit integration of information.

When issues are complex, such as in cases of open-ended human challenges, the connection between design and engineering is even more critical. Through design and working on open-ended problems, the program emphasizes the ethical and social responsibility of engineers. Study cases are used to present ethics as a topic for discussions. Students are encouraged to consider the broader implications of their work and to use their skills to make a positive impact on society. These topics are discussed in Chap. 3 and emphasize an overall design mindset.

Design is forward looking and explores what can be. Engineering translates design solutions into realities. The concept of design engineering encompasses both imagining the future and building it. Design has organic links to both the arts and engineering. The boundaries between art and design are porous. Applied arts is a narrow example of connectivity between art and design. Design integrates aesthetics and functionality.

Designers make aesthetic design decisions, largely based on their intuitive judgments. What is pleasurable to the senses can be key to a successful design, whether in fashion, hardware, or a website. On the other hand, design necessitates integrating aesthetics with functionality and thus it connects artistic considerations to the artifact.

Engineering, as a problem-solving method, uses scientific and mathematical principles. Design, through the need for functionality, joins engineering with the arts. An integral part of design engineering is innovation; achieving transformative outcomes requires new syntheses and solutions.

Innovation is a mindset, a methodology, and a process, all in one. It leads to new behaviors and outcomes and creates system transformations at scale. The design engineering process enables innovative outcomes that are integrated, functional, sustainable, and aesthetic. The school provides activities to encourage an entrepreneurial mindset and provide courses that teach students how to create new businesses and bring innovative products to the market. In addition, Harvard established the i-Lab as resource for students to work together and obtain mentorship for their business venture including legal and IP.

In the twenty-first century, we need design engineering to emphasize creating technologies for society using observation and creativity. This is the spirit presented in Chap. 3 with a particular emphasis on systems thinking. We attempted to include a subject like ‘Arts, Technology and Society’ and a curriculum combining the humanities, social sciences, business, design, engineering, law, and policy. The integration of commerce and technology and the connections to liberal arts might become the underpinning of this curriculum.

New courses should attempt to address a particular human challenge, and thus they will be fertile grounds to create syllabi for new interdisciplinary courses, which support future dialogues among disciplines. In particular, the inclusion of the centrality of liberal arts and humanities in the development of technologies and commerce is an example of a such a syllabus, and it could be tailored to create future general education courses. The collaborative Master of Design Engineering (MDE) degree between the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Graduate School of Design (GSD), and the combined MS/MBA program between SEAS and the Harvard Business School (HBS) are two examples among several that will enrich and be enriched by interdisciplinarity.

3 Social Experience is an Important Factor in Solving Challenging Problems

Life experiences are enriching means when addressing social challenges. With these experiences, heuristics and related biases become familiar and are better understood. In addition, with different experiences students develop skills, and appreciation for what it takes to make something work and develop habits of thinking deeply to understand the social context of the challenge.

These are some of the factors that are gained from working for a living and engaging in topics of consequence. In the Harvard MDE program, enduring life experience is part of the selection criterion for admission to the program. Applicants write about their experiences and reflect on their career passion.

The MDE program provides students with design-engineering toolkits that are used in the first-year design studio. This toolkit encompasses networked objects and environments, soft and hard infrastructures, and strategic plans, all of which can be applied to address grand challenges and mitigate threats to our built and natural environments. Students are expected to collaborate and communicate with each other and with stakeholders, to successfully analyze a specific problem. With their special life experience, students are expected to bring new ways of understanding the problem, predicting its complications, and evaluating some possible solutions.

An important aspect in learning is to appreciate the problem, give it full attention, and have a passion to solve it. If the student has a social experience related to the problem being solved, they will do all it takes to solve the problem, because it has a meaning and it is related to their own life, either in the past or in the present. A student, for example, who is an immigrant in a country might look at challenging problems of immigration from a different point of view than a student who is a native resident of that country. Another example, a student who studies problems related to hunger and poverty might appreciate it differently from a student who already lived the situation and survived it.

Social experience is a golden key in knowledge acquisition because it creates different thinking avenues in one’s head, as the thinking is powered up by experience. In most cases, students who are not familiar with a problem they are assigned to solve, are asked to appreciate the problem by empathizing with the situation, interacting with the stakeholders, and diving deeper into the root causes.

4 Digital Transformation in Practice

For several years, Harvard University has been exploring and implementing digital transformation in its education curriculum. Harvard has leveraged digital transformation in its education curriculum including:

• Online learning: Harvard has developed many online courses and programs that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. These include courses offered through HarvardX and classes offered by the Harvard Extension School for students and professionals who are interested in obtaining training or degrees in particular subjects. Many HarvardX courses are free (Harvard University, 2023) and allow students to learn at their own pace and provide access to a wider range of resources and expertise.

• Feedback and data analytics: Harvard has been using student feedback to better understand student learning patterns and to tailor instruction to individual needs. This has helped to improve student outcomes and to identify areas where additional support may be needed.

• Technology-enabled pedagogy: Harvard has been exploring innovative teaching methods that leverage technology, such as simulations and Perusal, an online social annotation platform, where students read and annotate together, while taking the same course (https://www.perusall.com/). These approaches made learning more engaging and interactive, while also providing students with practical skills and experiences. This resonates with the ideas presented in Chaps. 4 and 7.

5 New Learning Methods for Undergraduates

At Harvard Engineering, we realize that the above-mentioned paradigm changes are not easy to digest and incorporate into a single course. In time, we wish that future curricula move in the directions outlined above. For now, we take small incremental steps and implement as much as possible of new learning within some courses.

The most important steps for a successful design are (a) defining the problem in a systems context, (b) approaching it as a system with creative thoughts and without biases. Therefore, it is important to spend significant time framing the problem and also digging deeply into determining the root cause.

The following are some examples of engineering courses aimed at training students to work together as a team to address real-world problems.

5.1 Science and Cooking

Harvard Engineering offers a range of general education courses that incorporate the peer-to-peer learning concept into engineering curricula. An interesting course that emphasizes peer-to-peer learning is Science and Cooking—From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science (General Education), which became a favorite among students. Students from across the university departments and schools, such as business, chemistry, humanities, biological sciences, music, and social sciences, come to one classroom to attend lectures and work together on science projects. The class teaches scientific principles of chemistry, physics, and soft matter in conjunction with culinary skills. It also offers students the chance to apply the science concepts they learnt into the kitchen lab under the supervision of scientists and food specialists to observe and create new sciences in food.

Students have the opportunity to interact with scientists and chefs from around the world to learn the science behind each dish and engineer a science-based recipe. At the end of the class, students are expected to create a recipe to solve a specific problem in a dish or to simply create a better recipe. Each student is expected to apply the science laws they learned to create the recipe, which is the final project that they work on for several weeks. Experimentation and data analysis are part of the final project. The class teaches problem solving in a fun way that everyone loves! In addition, students get the opportunity to share their results with their peers and the public in a science fair.

Students were asked to evaluate the course in the middle of the semesters, and most of them expressed excitement about learning science by doing experiments. The question here is, what makes food science more interesting than plain chemistry science? One would think that both food and chemistry stem from one science which is chemistry, but what is it that makes students more interested in doing experiments on food to learn chemistry rather than just using chemicals to learn chemistry?

In the Science and Cooking course, students reported that they enjoyed the environment, which they described as the ‘diverse fun’ environment. One would think about the word ‘diverse’ as learning different things, but it was described by students as ‘learning new aspects from our peers about cooking that were explained in class scientifically.’ This indicates that students strive for ‘new’ ways to acquire knowledge, which comes from the ‘new’ disciplines that each student brought with them to the class. This could be interpreted as a transdisciplinary education coming from the domain knowledge and the general knowledge, which integration of system thinking. Although the course does not explicitly teach systems thinking, students naturally apply it as they analyze problems and devise solutions. Students were analyzing problems and fitting solutions without their knowledge of system thinking. One would think about employing interdisciplinarity in engineering education where sciences meet society and interact with arts and creativity (Fig. 9.1).

Fig. 9.1

Interdisciplinary education is a combination of accumulated systems thinking, domain knowledge, and general knowledge

But how do we make it ‘fun’? In the Science and Cooking course, students found the class ‘fun’ because they were visualizing the outcome and rewarded with a delicious taste! In the lab portion, students had the chance to eat their final outcomes, and who doesn’t like food?! The science was taught in the kitchen. Experiments were taking place in the kitchen, which is an unusual lab-setting, not a classroom, not a studio; it is a kitchen! Most people enjoy cooking in their free time, so in this course, both entertainment and science were mixed to make a ‘fun’ learning experience. One important thing in the cooking entertainment is trying new things, knowing that cooking is part of the culture, so learning through cooking is bringing different cultures to the same table to create a recipe.

5.2 Humanity and Its Futures: Systems Thinking Approaches

As citizens in a rapidly changing world facing increasingly complex challenges, the skills that tomorrow’s leaders need are increasingly crossing disciplinary silos. Humanity’s most pressing problems are interconnected, involve competing interests, and defy simplification into single disciplines. Reductionist approaches focused on linear understanding must be balanced against the integrative logic of systems-oriented thinking. Depth must be balanced with breadth.

This course gives students an appreciation for the complexities of today’s most intractable problems and, in so doing, helps students develop a methodology for navigating the world they face. After an overview of systems thinking and its emphasis on interconnections and feedback loops, the course explores several issues and the complications they generate. Over the course of the semester, several topics, including epidemics, inequality, human displacement, and food systems are addressed.

The course employs multiple methods of learning, with course preparation varying from reading novels to watching videos to reviewing academic papers. Each case includes an overview of the issue and why it matters, before exploring existing disciplinary approaches to address the challenge. Prior thinking is evaluated both in terms of its rigor and effectiveness. What worked and didn’t work? and Why?

Students learn to employ systems thinking using an interdisciplinary method to evaluate possible solutions. This future-oriented analysis emphasizes the necessity to zoom out and paint a mosaic of possible unintended consequences and roadblocks that may impede progress. By the end of the course, students would have developed a robust framework for integrating economic, political, technical, ethical, and social lenses into an analysis of complex problems and their potential solutions.

5.3 Aesthetic Pleasure and Smart Design: Janus Faces the Future

Engineers today can make almost anything they think of. Do we ask why we pursue one innovation over another? This course considers the personal and social drivers of innovation, including beauty and sustainable value. Complex or ‘wicked’ problems today demand interdisciplinary approaches that bring the humanities in dialogue with technology. Along with predicting the success of new products through existing needs and desires, innovation in its most spectacular cases comes close to art, making new and unpredictable things that generate new desires, markets, and behaviors. How will engineers today respond to the opportunities and obligations that accompany technological advances?

5.4 Engineering Problem Solving and Design Project

This team-based project provides an experience working with clients on complex multistakeholders, real problems. The course provides exposure to problem definition, problem framing, qualitative and quantitative research methods, modeling, generation and co-design of creative solutions, engineering design trade-offs, and documentation/communication skills. Ordinarily, the course is taken in the junior year.

6 Course Design Principles

The above mentioned courses (subjects) are designed to engage students, perhaps for the first time, in a unique learning experience designed to address large, complex human challenges. Students work on a problem that does not have an obvious solution, and that will likely have more than a single solution or mitigation. With that in mind, faculty attempt to provide students with helpful learning environments to perform their work. They will offer guidance as well as some ‘scaffolding’ and tools and techniques that might help the students to engage in the problem solving.

Students work as part of a project team, with a project manager that they nominate, and faculty approve. Students may decide to divide their team into task forces and address different aspects of the challenge at once. Faculty may guide the students and orient them toward fruitful answers for the most important issues, but it is expected that the students have significant independence in pursuing their problem solving. Once every week, the team presents their findings, and the faculty constructively critiques their work in an open forum.

6.1 Performance and Expectations

Students are required to attend and participate in all contact sessions and field trips and, in addition, there is significant work with their team outside the contact hours. Most students will work an additional 15 hours per week on average.

Each student’s performance depends on their work as well as the team achievements. So, team members must testify to the value of the individual’s work, and their contributions to the team. Faculty ask each of the team members for self-evaluation and peer evaluations periodically.

Students are informed that each individual’s creativity is essential for the success of the project and their working with others translates their creativity into useful outcomes.

Students are required to present in front of their peers and other members of the faculty, and on some occasions, students are asked to give a short summary or explanation on the spot. Students learn to perfect their presentations to become concise, clear, and effective. They learn to ‘visualize data’ and use statistical methods as well as qualitative research methods to obtain new information. Engineering skills are critical; students use them for creating designs and prototyping when needed.

Every project has a ‘client’ with whom the students work to obtain guidance for addressing their solution. The client is a source of information and a sounding board for ideas and solutions.

The outcome of the teamwork is a combination of prototypes, analysis, solutions, proposals, and recommendations. These will be presented jointly as a collective outcome by the team. By the end of the semester, the students present their ideas in writing. There will also be a description, instructions, and documentation for the overall output. During the semester, students are expected to use their notebook to keep detailed documentation of the work. All data, analysis, and comments are recorded in their notebook. Faculty may examine the students’ notebooks on a periodic basis.

At the end of the course, the students participate in a public oral presentation, at which the client assesses the work.

In the past few years, projects covered broad scopes that ranged from Renewable Energy at Harvard, Waste in Harvard Kitchens, Rodents at Harvard Residence Hall, Crime Mitigations in Springfield, MA, homelessness at Harvard Square, and mitigations of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in Japan.

6.2 Key Learning Outcome

For each course, each student must become proficient in integrating science and engineering concepts, to address problems of profound societal and environmental impact. Specifically, each student should have a very good understanding and demonstrated capability in the following areas:

• (a) Systems thinking

  • Knowing the foundations of systems thinking.

  • Understanding the functioning of systems dynamics, feedback loops and delays.

  • Being able to identify, explore, and map system relationships for interventions, while leveraging flexible and divergent thinking practices.

• (b) Design process

  • Knowing the basic elements of the design process.

  • Using the design process to identify areas of opportunity.

  • Using the design process to understand critical design requirements and implement innovative and relevant solutions.

• (c) Project management

  • Collaborating effectively in interdisciplinary teams to accomplish significant objectives.

  • Delivering solutions within time boundaries to manage a project and use planning tools.

  • Professionally documenting and communicating design outcomes.

• (d) Communications

  • Providing effective feedback to others, as well as offering self-assessment.

  • Creating compelling presentations and representations.

6.3 Assessment of Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes can be compared to the needs of future real work projects and the expectations of the hiring agencies. A report by the World Economic Forum on the ‘Future of Jobs Survey’ presented a set of literacies, competencies and character quality that are critical for 21st-century successful persons (World Economic Forum, 2020). The curriculum and learning outcomes, for the four courses described above, match many of these requirements (Table 9.1). Most of what is indicated by the World Economic Forum is also consistent with the ABET accreditation requirements (ABET, 2022), which SEAS degrees have obtained (Table 9.2).

Table 9.1 Learning outcomes and required skills

Table 9.2 ABET learning skills

7 Design Engineering at Harvard

We hope to infuse critical thinking and design into a variety of intellectual experiences for Harvard students. The goal is to train future leaders in creative systems thinking and to provide experiences that develop and test innovative ideas for solving real-world challenges in a variety of human domains. The program expands students’ horizons by offering opportunities to explore uncharted territories in critical thinking and design. Students learn how to search for root causes beyond the linear Newtonian cause and effect, to express ideas through visualization, to obtain insights from descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive information using large data sets, to build physical and virtual prototypes, and to test the validity and impact of their solutions. One, however, should not over emphasize the physical aspects of these productions. In time, different types of productions would include new technologies to empower us and make us more efficient and capable. Such technologies will be built on integration among physical, biological, and digital domains and will create new knowledge in cognition and health, as well as in commerce.

The main goal is to employ interdisciplinary engineering education to address broad aspects of design, engineering, and the arts, and their relation to society. The program utilizes a variety of pedagogies for systems analysis and leadership, including the use of the studio teaching format and experiential learning. In some courses and experiences, students work as a cohort, create networks, and share knowledge. Courses from across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), SEAS, GSD, and HBS, as well as other schools, provide background support and scaffolding for problem solving.

Students have mentors from the faculty of any Harvard school and receive feedback on their work and achievements from both teachers and mentors. In addition, students participate in exhibits and forums and benefit from direct feedback from the public at large. Students cannot develop a deep sense of value without reflection, and mentors could enforce and participate in this process. Since mentors are most effective when they can discuss students’ achievements among each other, a mentorship event twice per year allows mentors to share experiences and reflections and discuss how to provide the best support for their mentees. The program creates cross-school, collaborative workshops on topical issues such as arts as informing tool, visual thinking, augmenting data, thinking in philosophical, and quantitative, and speculative modes.

The interdisciplinary emphasis on design engineering has the potential to be an innovative and distinguishing characteristic of Harvard education. The courses offered in design engineering are created with greater emphasis on bridging the gap between arts and humanity, solving human systems challenges, the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and data-driven innovation. These topics could evolve over time through periodic updates and provocations, some virtual and other physical, with the goal of lifting humanity to a higher collective and moral consciousness and engage students in the uncertainty of creating mitigations.

7.1 The Master in Design Engineering

In 2016, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Science in collaboration with Harvard Graduate School of Design created a new graduate program, the Master in Design Engineering, with the objective of bridging the gaps between technical specialization and practical, real-world solutions and enable broad understanding between technology and people (Harvard University, 2022b).

Students engage in addressing and solving major challenges facing society with transformative, interdisciplinary innovations. Some unique aspects of the curriculum of this program are an Integrative Framework for Technology, Environment and Society, and Independent Design Engineering Projects, and Collaborative Design Engineering Studio (Harvard University, 2022a). These courses focus on problem definition, diagnostic techniques, and the challenges of translating ideas into action.

In the spirit of Simon (1996), ‘everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones…it is the principal mark that distinguishes the professions from the sciences,’ frameworks engage diverse but complementary disciplines, perspectives, and techniques to help identify, diagnose, and constructively address consequential social challenges, sometimes referred to as ‘wicked problems.’ The disciplines or ‘frameworks’ explored include systems analysis, industrial design, scientific methods, behavioral and organizational dynamics, law, economics, manufacturing, culture, aesthetics, health sciences, anthropology, public policy, ecology, and the like. While individual frameworks are presented, the teaching goal overall is to help students identify problems that are both consequential and tractable, and select and apply the suite of frameworks best suited to addressing the problem at hand.

7.2 Collaborative Design Engineering Studio

The Collaborative Design Engineering Studio is a unique experience that features a project-based introduction to a range of ideas, methods, and techniques essential for the design engineer. In the studio, students learn through making. The overall objective of the design studio is to teach methods, techniques and strategies geared toward describing, characterizing, and addressing complex, multiscalar, interdisciplinary real-world problems. Pedagogy and design engineering methods include data visualization, system theory, modeling and simulation, group brainstorming, prototyping, multimedia communication, and presentation.

The nature of the MDE studio problems solving includes:

• Relevance to society, but intricate to break down and address.

• Data from multiple sources, which is often not immediately accessible.

• Inherent conflicts or dilemmas that prevent ‘simple’ solutions from succeeding.

• Tradeoffs that are difficult to understand.

• A complex network of stakeholders.

• Issues that are multiscalar, with direct impact on individuals as well as on organizations.

• Issues that are systemic in nature, involving complex networks of factors that influence outcomes. No systemic solutions have been proposed or successfully tested.

8 Summary

In this section, we discussed some of the courses and related experiences that manifest the spirit of design at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). SEAS has progressive design content as well as innovative learning processes. The mission of the school is to create educated citizens who can productively engage in society and become creators of mitigations for human challenges.

Content development is an ongoing activity and is enriched by the scholarly research in the different areas of engineering and applied sciences at SEAS. The educational processes have several elements that were developed over the past 10 years. Interdisciplinarity is viewed as a cornerstone, and several active learning courses were modified to include topics that are normally taught in different areas. Similarly, design and systems are considered critical for addressing social challenges.

Creativity is essential for creating system solutions that encompass technical and social innovations. The environments under which engagements take place are important enablers. Creativity can be driven by curiosity as well as exposure to challenges that are important enough to excite students and make them invest in new solutions. This was illustrated in the discussion of Science and Cooking.

Creativity is an essential part of design. Students are taught design principles as they are engaged in addressing human challenges as well as in their technical projects. In such engagements, students work to apply engineering principles and come up with interventions that may move the system to a more progressive state. This is the focus of the Engineering Design course (ES 96).

In general, significant attention is paid to the learning environment. Creating and designing are important elements to cement theoretical knowledge. Teaching labs were constructed to enable activity-based learning as well as teamwork. With scaffolding from experienced staff, students work together and build prototypes that address complex open-ended problems. Scaffolding is critical to enhance students’ confidence and move the projects forward at appropriate speeds.

Studios are an effective environment for engaging students in complex human challenges. This was part of our discussion where we pointed out the importance of peer-to-peer learning. In addition, implications of interdisciplinary learning with teams of students of different backgrounds were discussed too. Learning in open environments provides the needed informality that makes learners open to different perspectives and is willing to take risks to propose new ideas and ask questions without fear. Not feeling the risk of being critiqued or the pressure of seeking high grades, students accept the challenge and trying different solutions and enjoy reflections and new directions.

The MDE program provides many examples of these features. We pointed out that in the studio environment, the instructors are advisors and enablers of new learning. The ‘sage on the stage’ is transformed to become a critic and a friend. The learners are the ones at the focal point for creating new knowledge. At the same time, peer-to-peer learning creates comradery, team spirit and fun. With such conditions, student engagement is at a high level.

Many of these educational experiences are in an experimental stage. Issues related to accepting some of these models continue to come up, and some of the faculty reminisce about the old model and claim lack of rigor, but they are left to reconsider when they realize the significant retention the students have made under the new pedagogy. Further, not all students enjoy the flexibility, and some of them wish for a more structured curriculum. This is not surprising considering that most of the students grew up competing for grades and solving exercises in preparation for exams. However, the new pedagogy requires more time to cover all the required content. In fact, in most courses, students do not iterate on their solutions, leaving their innovations incomplete. It is not clear when this will be remedied. Unless most of the courses follow active learning paths, these deficiencies may continue to exist.