Facilitating Students’ Learning and Success in Electromagnetism, Reengineering Mistakes

This work in progress paper presents an approach to introducing the basics of Electromagnetism for 3rd-year students in Electrical Engineering. Electromagnetism is one of the essential subjects by faculty and programs in Electrical Engineering education. It has been the foundational knowledge, historically and practically, of many areas in Electrical Engineering as well as other fields. However, students often view it as a very theoretical, mathematically challenging, and conceptionally difficult subject.In this work, we present our experience in teaching Electromagnetism using an inquiry approach based on the Deweyan philosophical basis [1]. We also introduce the modified Kolbian cycle to the students to help them examine and reflect on their learning and intellectual journey in the class. The main perspective of the class is based on the premise: If we all learn from mistakes, why do we punish them and not reengineer them as an experiential learning process. This paper describes the foundational assumptions, methods, and tactics associated with this approach. We will examine some of the students’ work, reflections, and reviews. The approach focuses on how we encourage and facilitate the students’ journeys in getting more comfortable with the material and with their process of learning. It is important for the students to learn from mistakes, and not assume all mistakes processes are failures. We all learn from mistakes and expand our knowledge based on that. This is particularly true when learning Electromagnetism. Finally, we will present examples of the students’ reflections, on the challenges, and propose a pathway to apply this method to other classes in different areas.