Nádúr Daonna (Natureza humana): An Intervention to Work with nature in the Intellectual Development of First Year Engineering Students

For most of the 20th Century there has been a debate among psychologists, educationalists and others as to whether nature or nurture determined the personality and capabilities of the adult person. Only in the last decade has an answer been found for that perennial question: the adult is the product of both nature and nurture. The genotype, the genetic inheritance from parents provides a template, but the expression of the genotype, the phenotype, depends on the interaction between the individual and their environment. Nothing is written in stone: the young child beginning education has almost infinite possibilities. In order for this to be realized, the educational system must act so as to maximise the potential in each individual's genotype. This is quite a tall order, and the resources required beyond most governments. There are alternatives to a tailor-made education for every individual, and that is to build upon what is known about the intellectual development of children and young adults and incorporate it into the current, far from perfect system. This intervention centered on an open-ended design exercise given to first-year Engineering students taking a traditional Physics module to see if it had a measurable effect on their understanding. The results have been modest, but significant. Small interventions do make a difference, and if introduced on a larger scale across all modules on the programme could help students achieve their potential. The initiative described in this paper was undertaken within a traditional first-year Mechanical Engineering three-year ordinary degree programme at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland. The learning activity required students to analyse an open-ended design problem, re-interpret it in their own words, and then outline and implement a workable solution. In preparation for this exercise, much of the relevant knowledge was encountered earlier in the semester in both the mechanics and physics courses, but not previously integrated in any way, nor applied to a real world problem. The students' conceptual understanding of the Physics involved in the exercise was tested before and afterwards, and analysed to see if any improvements had occurred. A statistically significant difference was found, validating the efficacy of this intervention, albeit with a small sample.