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An Interview with Professor John Wadach: The Meaning of Project Collaboration in STEM

Professor John Wadach at Monroe Community College

Hannah: Today we'll be interviewing John Wadach, chairman of the Engineering program at Monroe Community College. I'll go ahead and start off with some questions.

How are you doing today?

JW: I'm doing great! I'm really excited about what you got here to show.

Hannah: First of all to get started, I'd like to have you tell me a little bit about yourself and what your role is within the tech ed. community.

JW: Ok well I've been at MCC for 30 years, and like I mentioned I'm now the chairman of Engineering Science and Physics and really been extremely interested for the last 15 years about Engineering design, design projects, and design competitions. That's where my interests lie and it seemed that they're in line with what you're having being able to offer with GradFly.

Hannah: What are your thoughts about the importance of collaboration nowadays centered around project-based learning?

JW: Well I think it's the whole name of the game is as engineering firms and so forth undertake projects its resources are no longer perhaps just in one place anymore. Maybe in different sites for a company but also probably working with other suppliers and engineers all over the world so this idea of being able to collaborate on a project is really what the workforce of today and tomorrow is going to be all about.

Hannah: And how do you feel about its effect in learning compared to say the typical classroom note taking environment?

JW: (chuckles) Alright, there's no comparison whatsoever both in the output of the student and in the motivation behind the student. If you ask students to do problems out of the book they'll grudgingly do it; they get an answer they don't get a lot of personal satisfaction from doing that and frankly they probably don't get a lot of learning out of it. Now put them in control of a project where they have to do their own independent research, have to synthesize the information, have to work with other people, and then actually make a working artifact or prototype, that's highly satisfying, it's motivating. In regular classes student attendance tends to drop toward the end of the semester. When we have projects in our courses the attendance actually increases, students want to be in class, they want to be successful. The project is just a self motivator and I can't think of better modality for education than putting students in control of their own education with projects.

Hannah: In trying to infuse the online community with our GradFly site, with the idea of project based learning, do you think this would be a great resource for students?

JW: I see it two-fold, both in the present and in the future for the student. We're involved with engineering competitions both statewide and nationally and what's really exciting is when students are at the competitions and exchanging ideas and collaborating there, but that's only just a very short glimpse of time for them to be able to do it. It's really exciting to perhaps have this platform where teams can be conversing and learning from each other during the design and build process rather than just at the culmination, at the competition. So that's really exciting in the present.

Now also I've always been a proponent of students creating a portfolio and that's been problematic because up to now, the student just kind of saved it on their own hard drive or something or printed things out, put it in a three ring binder, you know, low and behold overtime it gets lost, it's just not an easy thing to share. To be able to make copies and upload their work as they're doing it, will provide them with a more sustaining and more easily shareable format.

And the nice thing is if they're just uploading as they go, it's not a big onerous task. If you wait until you're a senior or if you're done after a few semesters and then try to think, “oh I want to try to make a portfolio,” that's a monumental task and you'll probably never want to do it. But if you got something, if you can easily get on, which GradFly is, easily upload as you go along you can keep, and what I like having seen in GradFly is you can see a chronology of the process which is really where the education is. A lot of times students will show or someone will show just their finished product, but it doesn't really give you a full insight into all the effort and thinking and processes that they went through and also the failures that came along the way. You know, a design process isn’t just linear start A go to B and everything worked out fine. As you gain new information and so forth you make different decisions. It's going to be really exciting to be able to see that kind of progression of the design with GradFly. So I can even see immediately at this year's competition having students bring GradFly in. We have a category known as "The Design Evolution" so you know this would be more than just a few things on a poster. You say, “hey look at my GradFly this is where we started here are some ideas we went along this path, saw that there's problems, we've made some changes we got some help from this place and we cited it,” and so forth... that's the exciting learning thing, and I think educators at our conferences are really going to be interested to see that kind of thing.

Hannah: That's great, that's awesome news, and we'd be more than happy to go out to ASEE and help you out!

JW: you know what's a great trip I hope you can come out, it's in Seattle this year.

Hannah: Oh nice, I've never been! (chuckles)

JW: It tends to be a little rainy there, but overall it's a really pretty city, it's in Puget Sound there, and it's not too far from Vancouver which is very very pretty and Victoria Island. I've been out there a few times. It's really pretty. Oscar if you're listening you have to get Hannah to be able to go out to the competition and we have to get Cedarville on there too.

Hannah: Yes definitely.

JW: If you can get Cedarville and we can have something going this year, that would be really neat. Do you have the contact? Do you know the person Clint Kohl?

Hannah: I do have the contact, and I have a meeting with him this week and we'll be talking. He's really excited about the idea.

JW: You know the other thing that would be helpful is, you know we write up rules and then as people get into the project they see that there's problems and sometimes it's hard to get the information out to everybody. That, "hey, you know, we're not using this component, you have to use this one now," or "here's some cool ways of doing of doing stuff..." So just to disseminate information and have people be able to go to one place or go into a forum or whatever that would be very very highly helpful.

And also the thing is we're always trying to attract new teams and if potential schools and students can see examples and know that there's resources they can tap into I think we can really grow this idea of project-based education.

Hannah: I do have one more question before the end of this interview, after taking a look at what we've built up to this point with our platform what are your thoughts about what we have now and if we were to make any additions or changes what would they be?

JW: Well I really like the idea because we can get started with it very easily right from the start. I'm really going to push for it with our freshman so that they can get started so as they progress through MCC by the time they graduate they've got a nice portfolio of stuff to go. Now it may be helpful at some point if there was a way to upload maybe some document or PDF or something like that so if someone wanted to look at in a more detailed explanation of what they've done or if you wanted to share with an employer maybe a little bit more of the engineering detail that you couldn't get maybe from a video or so forth, that might be a nice addition. A lot of times students are creating written reports with these projects so it's just another thing that could be shared would be nice.

Hannah: Great well John thank you so much for your time I do appreciate your input and I look forward to helping your students this fall!

#STEM #studentportfolios #MCC #DIY #genius

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