Rea Lavi- Doctor of Education
- Digital Education Lecturer and Curriculum Designer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Rea Lavi
- Doctor of Education
- Digital Education Lecturer and Curriculum Designer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Guest editing "Systems Thinking in STEM Education":
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/systems/special_issues/C1HMH58862
About
35
Publications
13,792
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Introduction
I love to help people solve problems.
I research, develop, and teach frameworks, methodologies, and tools for teaching real-world problem-solving, including problem scoping, system analysis and design, and creative idea generation. With overt a decade of of experience, I draw on concepts, methods, and tools from learning science, systems engineering, and applied psychology.
Current institution
Current position
- Digital Education Lecturer and Curriculum Designer
Additional affiliations
November 2019 - present
Position
- Lecturer and Curriculum Designer
Description
- Leading digital curriculum creation and pedagogy for Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics | Leading educational R&D and publication for New Engineering Education Transformation interdisciplinary undergraduate program https://neet.mit.edu
March 2016 - July 2019
Position
- Instructor
Description
- Designed and instructed academic courses and professional development workshops. Topics covered: complex problem-solving; creative thinking; entrepreneurship; systems thinking; conceptual modelling of systems. Taught hundreds of undergraduate and graduate STEM students, STEM high school teachers, and engineers (including Airbus SAS & Whirlpool Corporation)
October 2017 - July 2019
Position
- Instructional Designer
Description
- edX Professional Certificate program in model-based systems engineering (two MOOCs, active since 3/2019) | Institute nominee for the international edX Prize 2020 | ~10k enrolled of whom ~2k verified with paid certification | Designed syllabus and authored 60 screenplays | Designed learning assessment and developed hundreds of exercises | Collaborated with instructors, production team, and software developers
Education
May 2015 - August 2019
October 2011 - August 2013
October 2004 - January 2009
Publications
Publications (35)
Systems thinking is crucial for understanding and solving complex problems and is considered an important thinking skill in engineering. Active learning is considered an effective approach for fostering STEM students’ systems thinking. However, viable methods for teaching and assessing systems thinking with active learning across STEM disciplines,...
Qualified professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and STEM education are in increasingly short supply globally. Role models can help increase women’s representation in STEM, both at entry and senior levels. The study objectives were to identify the characteristics of role models in STEM higher education and careers...
The transformation of engineering education is necessitated by the crucial need to develop students’ transversal skills, often referred to as “21st century skills,” so they can address complex, global challenges. This special issue accompanies the in-person 9th International Research Symposium for Problem-Based Learning (PBL) on the theme of transf...
Integrating thinking skills into higher education pedagogy requires suitable models, methods, and tools for both instruction and assessment. Some of these tools apply one or more educational technologies. The articles in this special issue focus on higher education with four common themes: online or virtual courses and modules, science and engineer...
Education is always evolving, and most recently has shifted to increased online or remote learning. Digital Learning and Teaching in Chemistry compiles the established and emerging trends in this field, specifically within the context of learning and teaching in chemistry. This book shares insights about five major themes: best practices for teachi...
Scholars and international bodies have highlighted the need to foster undergraduate engineering students’ creative thinking and critical thinking. Case-based learning is a name for a host of pedagogical approaches which are student-centered, requiring the instructor to act as an expert guide rather than as a source of knowledge. These approaches ma...
As part of the design, development, and deployment of a massive open online course (MOOC) on model-based systems engineering, we introduced MORTIF—Modeling with Real-Time Informative Feedback, a new learning-by-doing feature that enables the learner to model, receive detailed feedback, and resubmit improved solutions. We examined the pedagogical us...
The New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program was launched in 2017 as a cross-departmental endeavor to reimagine undergraduate engineering education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). NEET prepares students to tackle authentic 21st-century challenges by learning about new machines and systems, engaging in making and disco...
Student engagement has been described as active involvement in a learning activity that significantly affects learning achievement. This study investigated student engagement in robotics education, considering it as an instant emotional reaction on interaction with the teacher, the peers, and the robotic environment. The objective was to characteri...
21st century skills are essential for career readiness. We investigated the development of students’ 21st century skills at a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research university: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. We designed a self-reporting questionnaire covering 14 skills and deployed it to approximately 1500 stu...
italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Contribution:
The authors present a methodology for assessing both novelty and systems thinking, as expressed in the same conceptual models constructed by graduate engineering students.
Background:
Companies worldwide seek employees with creativity a...
We have designed, developed and deployed a unique edX massive open online course (MOOC) environment for teaching Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) with Object-Process Methodology (OPM) ISO 19450. In this environment, OPCloud, an OPM cloud-based conceptual modeling environment, has been embedded in the edX environment. This has enabled us, as t...
Industrial and societal needs for engineering education have transformed in the past decades while traditional undergraduate engineering education has remained largely unchanged. In Fall 2016, the Dean, School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) chartered the New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET) program with the a...
This chapter presents Methodical Approach to Executable Integrated Modeling (MAXIM) and its implementation environment, OPCloud. The MAXIM framework enables concurrent modeling of the hardware and software system aspects, avoiding the need to make the painful and information‐leaking transition from the abstract, qualitative conceptual system archit...
Contribution: A rubric for assessing the systems thinking expressed in conceptual models of technological systems has been constructed and assessed using a formal methodology. The rubric, a synthesis of prior findings in science and engineering education, forms a framework for improving communication between science and engineering educators. Backg...
One challenge associated with introducing systems thinking in chemistry classrooms is the increase in content complexity that students face when they engage in this type of approach. Placing core chemical ideas within larger systems has promise, as long as students are not overwhelmed by the added complexity. Although there are many potential strat...
Systems thinking is a holistic approach for examining complex problems and systems that focuses on the interactions among system components and the patterns that emerge from those interactions. Systems thinking can help students develop higher-order thinking skills in order to understand and address complex, interdisciplinary, real-world problems....
Metacognition, or ′thinking about thinking′, can improve scientific literacy and practices. It involves knowledge of cognition, i. e., being cognisant of one‘s knowledge, and regulation of cognition, i. e., consciously controlling the process of knowledge acquisition. A self‐regulated learner can assimilate new knowledge, conduct inquiry, solve pro...
Collaboration is a key concept in the twenty-first-century skills. Collaborative learning is a process that include two or more learners that engage in a common task where everyone depends on and is accountable to each other. Developing collaboration skills of students is an important task that requires tools and training.
The purpose of this study...
Systems thinking is an important skill in science and engineering education. Our study objectives were (1) to create the basis for a systems thinking language common to both science education and engineering education, and (2) to apply this language to assess science and engineering teachers’ systems thinking. We administered two assignments to tea...
The present chapter concerns engineering education in higher education in a European context. It comprises two main strands: in the first, we present an overview of engineering education in Europe from historical and sociological perspectives, and in the second, we present country-specific examples of engineering education from three European count...
Over the last 15 years, educators and policy makers have argued metacognition is an important, even crucial, component in teaching, learning, and assessing meaningful understanding in science. Therefore, they have recommended that learning and applying metacognitive strategies become part of science curriculum starting as early as kindergarten, thr...
Object-Process Methodology (OPM) is a modelbased
systems engineering methodology which has been
recognized as an ISO 19450:2015 standard for automation
systems and integration. It is domain-independent and
intended for conceptual modeling of systems of various
kinds. We collaborated remotely with a team that had
implemented this methodology for mod...
In an age where job market requirements for technological training and professional skills are constantly evolving, the role of teachers is changing accordingly: from that of imparters of knowledge to facilitators of knowledge creation in students. In distance learning (DL) the teacher acts as a mediator between the DL system and the student while...
Questions
Questions (6)
Many educators hail active learning as a solution for helping undergraduate students acquire a variety of essential skills that are needed in today's workplace and which cannot be acquired through traditional learning methods (e.g., collaboration, communication, creativity, complex problem-solving).
If this is the case, then why aren't more universities steeped in undergraduate courses that are project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, and so forth? Why do we see in so many universities the majority of undergraduate courses being delivered in more or less the traditional lecture-and-recitation style?
From my experience, the reason for sticking to the traditional style of instruction at universities often has little to do with available budget or with the ratio of instructors to students. It also has very little to do with the claim that only through the traditional approach can we teach fundamental concepts (it may surprise you to hear, but I've heard that reason from faculty).
The main reason I see for not implementing active learning is that this approach requires a level of pedagogical proficiency that traditional learning doesn't. And most faculty/instructors don't have that level of pedagogical proficiency, as they are simply not being incentivized to acquire it. What matters to their career success are publications and funding.
What are your experiences and thoughts on the reasons active learning isn't implemented more in undergraduate education? And what can be done about it?
Uses I’ve found for chatGPT in this regard:
(a) Creating syllabi for courses or workshops from published education research articles
(b) Comparing syllabi across different criteria and suggesting an integrated syllabus
(c) Extracting concepts and challenges for lesson/project ideas from transcripts of expert interviews/talks
And more…
All with the use of critical thinking guided by domain expertise, crafting precise prompts and checking through chatGPT's responses. It has saved me a lot of time and given me some ideas I didn't think about.
What have you found chatGPT useful for with regard to curriculum design and development?
Do you have any concerns about using chatGPT for such tasks?
Feel free to add any comment or opinion related to this topic.
My feeling/perception is that *most* (even the vast majority of) undergraduate engineering degree programs worldwide:
(a) Don't or barely include systems thinking in the learning objectives of their course syllabi.
(b) Are (still) heavily invested in passive instructional methods that tend not to foster students’ systems thinking. Meaning, lectures and recitations are the majority and the norm over active learning methods which involve application, collaboration, discussion, and reflection by students.
(c) Don’t provide instructors with the pedagogical training required to foster and assess students’ systems thinking.
(d) Don’t assess students’ systems thinking in any documented and consistent way. I’m not even getting into whether the assessment is valid, reliable, and cost-effective.
All the above are especially absent in the earlier years of the degree program.
Question 1: What are your thoughts about my perception of the landscape? Does it match what you know or feel?
Question 2: Is anyone aware of studies that survey systems thinking inclusion in undergraduate engineering curricula (worldwide, US, or in any other country)?
Looking forward to your comments, facts, and opinions on these questions or on anything else that comes to mind!
p.s. For a previous discussion on whether systems thinking should even be taught in first-year education, see here: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Should_we_teach_systems_thinking_to_first-year_engineering_students_or_should_we_wait_until_theyve_acquired_disciplinary_knowledge_and_skills
A critical thought about "critical thinking" in engineering education...
~Mainly drawing on my experience in USA and Israel~
I have noticed the term 'critical thinking' is used in engineering education with three possible meanings. These are somewhat related, though quite distinct from each other.
I have seen how this confusion and conflation of meanings has led to unproductive discussions and to misdesigned curricula.
(a) The most common meaning I've encountered, mainly from faculty with STEM-only background (and very little, if at all, in social science), is "a set of thinking skills/cognitive approaches for addressing complex problems in engineering".
(b) There is also critical thinking in the traditional (Western) philosophical sense, i.e., the cognitive ability for making reasoned arguments. I mostly hear older people, who I guess had some more classical/liberal arts education, refer to critical thinking in this way.
(c) Finally, there are Marxist/Marxist-adjacent approaches for challenging capitalist/Western conventions, traditions, power structures, modes of thinking and being, and so forth, which also reside under this term. This meaning is normally used, in my experience, by social science people or by engineering faculty with social science education/training.
Have you encountered anything similar? Perhaps you disagree with some/all the points I have raised here? Have you heard this term used to mean something else from those meanings I have detailed above?
