The IEEE Teaching Excellence Hub is dedicated to providing professional development resources for those teaching engineering, computing, and technology at the university level, and is always on the lookout for inspiring stories to share! In this spotlight, we highlight Eldon Glen Caldwell-Marin, who is a recent recipient of the IEEE Education Society’s Distinguished Lecturer Award!
Eldon Glen Caldwell-Marin is a seasoned educator at the University of Costa Rica, with over 20 years of experience. Eldon was inspired to become an educator after witnessing how education transforms lives, opens doors of opportunity, and provides the key to human well-being through innovation and the creation of new knowledge! Eldon enjoys teaching robotics, smart systems, and any topics related to advanced manufacturing or logistics. These topics are transforming human life, and inspire creativity and innovation from his students.
The IEEE Teaching Excellence Hub was able to connect with Eldon for an interview, and learn more from his teaching experience, and his advice for future engineers and educators!
What piece of advice do you wish someone shared with you before you became an educator? What questions do you wish you had asked during your tenure track faculty interview?
Tip 1: The more you can encourage questions and curiosity in your learners, the better their learning will be, and yours with them.
Tip 2: More than just an answerer of questions and solver of exercises or exam problems, you must be a good questioner, guide, and facilitator of your students’ learning through the “know, do, and reflect” cycle.
What changes have you seen over the years in how students learn? Has your teaching style changed over the years?
Meaningful learning involves an emphasis on doing and critical thinking, rather than just to get information and memorizing. Cyber-physical information and interaction technologies based on AI mark a major trend in learning based on active experience that gives meaning to theorizing.
My teaching style has changed in terms of this macro-trend and the pedagogical sense is now more marked by ethics, critical thinking and reflection on what is done and not only by methodological tools or computer applications that change ever more quickly.
What resources do you use to learn about new teaching strategies? What have you implemented that has been most effective for you?
I did a Ph.D. in Engineering but also a Ph.D. in Education. So, I am learning to research Education processes applied to Engineering Learning. I develop pedagogical strategies to facilitate learning through experiences that involve critical thinking, especially with the use of simulation, robotics, and ludic activities.
In the era of ChatGPT, how do you feel AI has changed the Education Landscape?
I have been a researcher of AI for 20 years. AI could be a powerful tool both, learning and developing new solutions to big humanity problems (energy, waste, water assurance). ChatGPT helps us to avoid the “memorizing” approach of Education, but needs to be improved to achieve reliability and better human machine interaction.
How do you feel IEEE can best serve advances in engineering education?
IEEE must be the main resource of professionals, students, teachers, technicians and people who are engineering auto-learners and want to innovate and create new solutions. IEEE can bring free video tutorials, certifications as well as low cost virtual courses.
How has winning this award impacted your career, if any?
My designation as a DL [Distinguished Lecturer] is very recent. But I hope that this recognition will be a great motivation to convey to other people a message of effort in improving the opportunities for quality education for many people in the world who are now vulnerable to situations of poverty or lack of access to resources or job opportunities.
If you can share one thing about the future of Engineering, what would it be?
Engineering of the future will be transdisciplinary, cyber physical, and assisted by robots and artificial intelligence. Therefore, human value in engineering of the future is based on critical reasoning rather than on processing or application of technique. Inquiry-based learning and challenge-based learning will be the dominant models in engineering, because autonomous assistant systems will be the standardized procedural instrument.
Thank you to Eldon Glen Caldwell-Marin for sharing his knowledge and experience with us! To learn more about Eldon and his work, read his manuscript on the Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research website !