Cunningham Reading and Getting Specific on Mystery Tubes - Kevin

Some thoughts on, "Epistemic Practices of Engineering for Education."

I really enjoyed this article.  It seems so obvious to look at the practices and knowledge base of professional engineers to develop new pedagogical approaches to engineering.  I am glad that the authors emphasize the social aspect of engineering.  In my experience, this seems to have taken a back seat to having students invent solutions.

The authors focus on the idea that engineers must be able to communicate their ideas to be successful.  I’d like to use this more in engineering lessons.  Maybe have students design different phases of a solution that need to be incorporated after they’ve been built.  This could also help address the idea of having to find a balance between constraints and criteria.  The parts of the individual designs might need to be scrapped due the constraints of the whole project.  

This makes me think that more emphasis should be put on the constraints of engineering projects in school.  Specifically, limiting resources seems more important than I previously thought.  I often give limitless materials to students, but this would probably never happen for a professional engineer.  Students would have to more carefully consider the criteria.  It could also help students think of themselves as “real engineers,” which the authors say is important.

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As promised, here are some of my specific takeaways Mystery Tubes.  I still think it'd be valuable to do a speed round of all of the project carts for everyone to practice.

Early on, Istopped saying, “Have you ever seen a mystery tube?”  Because they usually say no, so it just became another step in the way of them starting to handle it.  Very rarely, they would say yes and I'd say oh.. ok.. cool. welllll...  Just awkward and clunky.

So I'd say, “Hey, this is a mystery tube!” or “Check out this mystery tube!” or “This mystery tube if for you to explore!”

Sometimes I would go carnival-barker style and say, “Step right up!  Enjoy the wonders of the mystery tube!”  Anything to take the pressure off them having to come up and initiate conversation.

The typical response is, “What do I do with it?”

I tried lots of different responses.  Sometimes I’d say things like, “Whatever you want.”  And sometimes give them options like, “You can play with it or test it.”  But these didn’t seem to help anybody.  At best they were still confused and at worst I added more confusion.  I ended up sticking to two responses:

“See if you can figure out the mystery!”

“There are ropes on the side that you can pull.”

People are generally eager to start pulling the ropes, so the first response was usually enough. 

The next place people would get stuck was pulling two ropes at a time or not pulling them far enough.  I’d say, “Try pulling one rope at a time.”  For littler kids, it’s helpful to hold the tube for them.  “I’ll hold and you pull.”  That sort of thing.

My favorite part of the activity is waiting for the mystery face.  The face when the tube seems to break physics.  I let that moment sink in.  Sometimes they start showing the person next to them, or continue testing, or start describing what’s happening.  If they looked at me totally bewildered I’d say, “Yes!  You’ve discovered the mystery!  Now what do you think is going on?”

I think the rest of the facilitation for the activity is pretty spot on in the guide.  Just being really clear that success is in the making a model, not getting the “right answer.”  I also tried to stay away from leading questions, but I don’t know if it’s important.  Usually they start describing how it works and I’d say draw me a picture to help explain it.  And then instead of, “Do you want to make a model of your drawing?”  I’d just tell them,  “Now that you have an idea of how it works, see if you can build one out of this stuff.”

At the end, I focused on the question, “Does your model help explain the mystery?”  If yes, great!  If no, that’s also great!  We now know that the tube probably does not act like this model.  We can rule that out.  This is now a useful model to show somebody who is trying to figure out what’s inside.