Description
Key Learnings
- Explore the value in teaching and learning engineering, especially in businesses advancing engineering education.
- Learn about best practices and get tips for learning and teaching Autodesk products as a student, mentor, or professional.
- Discover the trends and opportunities of using Autodesk products for career development and engineering education.
- Learn how to implement the new tactics of creating future-proof engineers by teaching ahead on the rapidly evolving field of engineering.
Speaker
SOUMIL GOYAL: If I read the terms of service in Autodesk TinkerCAD platform, I now realize that you have to be 13 years old or older to make an account. But when I was beginning my engineering adventure about six years ago and I made my account, I was 12. So yeah, a juvenile lawbreaker. I was too under age. Even now speaking for Autodesk University, this big program with C-level executives, inventors, professionals, companies, et cetera, I may be under age here as well.
But this is what gives me the unique perspective, the perspective of a current engineering student who wants to be a future engineer showing my views on how to advance the future of engineering education. Don't worry, this is not to be some boring lecture of me telling you engineers are problem solvers or engineers should be teammates. Nor will this be me telling you companies should do better social media, or any basic beginner level advice. All of this you already know.
Instead, I will take you along my personal journey as a passionate and, in my opinion, successful student of engineering to see from my beginnings to my future, what unique approaches need to be taken to advance the future of engineering education. In other words, since I am the closest person to the world of engineering education, I will give you my insider secrets on how we can better build the next wave of innovators, inventors, and problem solvers.
So hopefully you will learn a little bit about me and learn a lot about this vital topic. Let's begin. Let's start at the beginning. When I was small, smaller than when I was developing those TinkerCAD Pro Skills, I would refuse to claim that I want to be an engineer. My father is an engineer and he doesn't do anything fun. He doesn't do anything of the things that I want to do. He goes to office, he stays there for some hours, and then come back. And sometimes he'll just occasionally bring printouts of family documents we need, which he took from the company printer.
Instead, I wanted to do LEGOs. But in real life, of course, I was so good in the toys like building blocks, LEGOs, and all of those. I was making impressive structures, detailed masterpieces. And I wanted to be like that. I wanted to be the inventor type guy. Use my big boy knowledge in maths and science to tackle some new problems in whatever legendary invention I come up with each day until it's finished and ready to make a buck billion, of course.
But you may realize that this description of using some knowledge to solve a problem is the essence of being an engineer. The issue was I didn't quite understand the role of an engineer because as in the words of Dennis K. paddock an engineer recipient of the Meritorious Award for Professional Service in Canada, he says "We need to educate the public on what we are and what we do."
This means that we need to answer why is engineering important and what is an engineer to anyone. You may ask, why would anyone care that a silly nine-year-old boy doesn't know what even an engineer is? Isn't that their fault? Firstly, we must realize that its young minds that lay the foundation for future minds. This means that with so many activities, interests, and all, compelling parents and students from an earlier age that engineering is important is vital to build that foundation.
Because just in case those will be our next problem solvers, we need to make sure that they know "who we are and what we do." How do you think it's possible to solve this? Well, firstly, oh, well firstly, we need to leverage the concept of some already existing infrastructures. For example, LEGO has a simple CAD type of assembly platform. This either runs in the browser or it's a desktop app where you can try to assemble your bricks together and plan out your builds digitally before you do it in real life.
Let's say, a company like Autodesk's, made a contest where children create something cool in CAD, and the top three best models get their creation funded in real life. It's not a bad contest. And it links the concepts of engineering to the playtime and to the essence that the young kids might want. Now, maybe making CAD for nine-year-olds is too advanced, so we can take another concept one concept that you can see in this kind of funny cereal box over here. We see the wrestler John Cena on the box of this cereal.
Now, the link between pro athletics and cereals is probably very ironic. But you can see the path over here. If companies, like engineering companies, innovation startups, et cetera, whatever, if they were to put their logo, their likeness on a LEGO box, or a toy box, or any other of the resources that a nine-year-old may access. Then they will more effectively gain that connection that insight, which is that these activities that I'm doing in the mind of a nine-year-old is what an engineer wants to do, and I want to do these activities. Therefore, maybe, I want to be an engineer.
Now, let me discuss that after you realize that, hey, I want to be an engineer this is what I want to do, what are the main ways that you educate yourself about engineering through the process? This is divided into two main areas. Firstly, institutionalized. And secondly, individual. Institutionalized engineering education means that your learning comes through some established organization. Some examples of this are teams or clubs.
For example, I currently and for many years have been involved in competition robotics teams. In other example of institutionalized engineering education are school courses. This is obviously comes from college. But it can come high school and even at the middle school level. The benefits of institutionalized knowledge is that, firstly, they're really good for teamwork.
Especially when I was talking about these robotics teams and all, the organized actions that make engineering type competitions are mostly about teamwork and running in a team solving their problem. There's very few individual events. So this is good to develop the collaboration skills that engineers need so vitally.
Secondly, these institutionalized engineering opportunities are run by companies mentors, teachers and organizations that have the sole focus of engineering education. This means that they have some good training and they have the knowledge to pass on to the students. Therefore, they are better guided. Thirdly also, another benefit of institutionalized engineering knowledge is that there's a motivation from a structured schedule and recognized competition. For example, if we go back to robotics teams, there is a structured schedule of competition dates.
By October 7th, you need to meet this deadline. By November 12th, you have to be ready for this competition, et cetera, right? Additionally, there's recognized competition meaning that students are motivated to actually get it done. Because they know that if they do well at this tournament perhaps they can go to the state level or perhaps they'll get a big trophy, like that.
This means that if you focus on institutionalized education, you see that the main burdens for giving that learning are on the schools, and companies, organizations, businesses, et cetera. This is what we have to keep in mind when we look further at some solutions in improving institutionalized engineering education.
But besides the institutions, there's also the individual. Meaning that the learning comes more independently and in a more student driven way. Some examples of this is if a student just tinkers at home, they disassembled motors or they disassembled the remote control cars and see what works inside. Another great example is a passion project, such as usually something that you make, engineer, design, or build around a positive change.
One example could be designing a wheelchair aid for someone with a specific disability. A lot of people have done prosthetic type of attachments or aids. Even I participated in one myself where I created an invention called the robust adaptive network. It was and still is a network of hundreds of drones and rovers that would go through a natural disaster zone and help by distributing supplies, giving internet connection, and responding with live firsthand data.
Now another example of an individual engineering education can come from a student's idea of a profitable invention, like a business. These ideas are very good to explore in students. Even if it doesn't seem very business viable it will be a very good learning opportunity for any student if they come across such an idea.
Some of the benefits of this individualized engineering education is first, since that student is likely alone exploring by themselves, finding solutions by themselves, they have a better understanding of their own passions and where they want to go. Secondly, there will be tons of unique teaching when you individually look at your own engineering path and you individually learn that you could not get from any course.
For example, you can see on this image in the middle I'm here standing with some prize certificate. And it was because of my project as I was talking about the robust adaptive network, the one with the drones and the natural disaster zone. But to even get this project started, I needed some resources. So I needed to go to people. I had to pitch my idea. I had to do some social networking to try to build some prototypes.
And I had to do a lot of work that you might not be able to get from any course any class, et cetera. And maybe the most important benefit of individualized education is self-reliance. It means if a student is able to develop well his skills in teaching himself the principles of engineering or innovation, and they're able to succeed by themselves, they are truly a self-sufficient problem solver and this will make them way above any of the normal people who didn't have this experience before, especially if they start and continue their individual projects for a long time.
Thinking about individual educations, we also need to see the burden on who is actually taking the responsibility for this education. And of course, it falls on the students, but likely it falls on the parents as well. Because these parents will need to have time for the student to have resources for the student, et cetera, to make it happen. So it's a family burden but as well as some external organizations that help a lot in individualized engineering learning, which I'll talk about a bit later.
So now that we've established these two major learning tracks, I want to go through some major milestones and hurdles that I've had on my journey, and show you how they were tackled, and how to improve in each area, especially since I was involved in both of these tracks. Firstly was the question of what should I make? What should I do? What problem should I solve?
Because what do creative, innovative kids hate the most? They hate common, boring ideas. I used to like drawing and painting a lot for a long time, and I still do enjoy some arts. But my main issue was I could never decide what to make. I would ask my parents what should I draw? And they say, OK, draw my face. And I say, no, faces are too hard. It won't really come out properly. And everyone draws faces that's kind of basic.
OK, they say draw a car. Well, I already drew a car before. I don't want to do that. Give me something new. OK. Go paint some scenery. Get a nice forest or paint a sunset. No, that's not interesting. It doesn't have enough uniqueness, blah, blah, blah. Basically, what we see is that the first hurdle to getting kids to work themselves to make ideas and to find solutions is that they don't know where to focus and they don't know where they should get inspired by to put their time.
And this is where firstly, institutionalized education has a huge benefit. Because robotics competitions, such as the ones I was talking before, they have these games that you can design, build, and program a robot. For example, if you look in this top right corner, you can see this type of square arena. This was the game from Vex Robotics recently where you would design this robot.
So here on the left, you can see my team and I's robot that we built to play this game where you would take these small Frisbees and you would try to shoot them into your opponent's goal. And whoever shot the most Frisbees inside would win would win amongst other ways to earn points. So these kind of institutionalized competitions or organizations are very good places to come up with games that you can design, build, and program some type of machine and robot for.
These resources are very good for someone who may not have any idea of what to do on their own but know that they want to definitely do something. Additionally, there's also the responsibility on schools remember to also give institutionalized knowledge. And I believe that this is one area of improvement we can see in schools, which is using a top down learning model.
You see schools already give so many assignments and a lot of work. But the main issue is that they follow a bottom up learning model where they teach you some concept, they give you a formula, and then they say, OK, here's a word problem, or OK here's a passage. Apply what I just told you. In the world of engineering, usually the process is the complete opposite where a client or your boss gives you a goal a problem and some constraints. And then you have to go through this, make something work, try to find people to help you, and finally solve the issue.
Therefore, if we want to advance the future of engineering education, we can see some reform in our model of schooling by taking this top down learning model as Stephan Athan explained in his TED Talk where firstly the teacher presents a goal, usually a challenge, or a prize like a problem. He had given the example of when he was teaching in a college and he told his students or he divided the class into a group of students, and he told them each of you needs to make me a pulse oximeter, which is the device that goes on top of a patient's finger to measure their oxygen levels in the blood.
After that the students were given some constraints which was that he gave them some very obsolete parts that may not have had much documentation. And they were just random parts that didn't seem to correctly fit into a pulse oximeter. After this, the students were told to combat the challenge on their own in their groups. So they need to figure out what parts they were given. They need to try to assemble it together and see how they can meet the goal.
The teacher of course guided them throughout this concept or guided them throughout this challenge, perhaps by giving them some help with how to do some calculations, how to get some concepts, circuitry, et cetera. And with this learnings, the students were able to apply to their scenario. According to Stephan, those projects submitted at the end of the year for the pulse oximeter were the most innovative and brilliant projects he had ever seen.
The top down learning model not only is more fun for students as they get to engage in a real life scenario type of project, it's also great for teachers since they're actually teaching in a way that prepares these students for real world problem solving. This covers the institutional aspect of answering the questions what to make, what problem to solve by saying that there's many resources like robotics competitions that can help you come up with ideas.
Or even schools when they implement a better learning model can be a great resource to find a new mission for students. But there's also the burden on the individual. If we look at individual learning, there's a few main ways that you can find ideas, especially for students, on what to make and how should I practice next.
Firstly is some short term experiments and challenges. Maybe take an hour long project. Perhaps if there was some type of tutorial online by some company giving these small projects, one example that could come to mind is a project on how to launch a spoon furthest, then there would be something that kids could do to practice their engineering skills in a more guided manner.
Perhaps for a basic level of a spoon launcher you could just have some type of catapult. Or if you have advanced audiences as well, high school or maybe even college students, they could make a spoon launcher that lands exactly one meter. And they have to do some kinematics calculations and force calculations to see how to build the catapult perfectly and plan it out so that it only launches 1 meter away. No more, no less.
There's a lot of options and there's a lot of explorations in having many, many projects that someone could go and practice through. I didn't do very many of these so I can't really be sure of their main effects. But I'm sure it was very enjoyable. For example, one time that I did participate was in Prusa, a 3D printing company. They own a website called Printables.com, which is supposed to be a library of many 3D printable things. So the intention is I guess when you buy their printers, you can go to their website and keep printing anything you want. And they every few weeks come out with a new challenge on what the community should put and upload onto their website.
The intention is supposed to be that when you go into this challenge and you upload on their website, of course, their library grows bigger, it grows bigger, and their site will get more traffic. And if you're one of the top three model makers, you get some prize, such as some Prusa points or sometimes they give away 3D printer, or filament, et cetera.
The important thing is that whether it's a contest or not, whether they're doing it for profit or not, Prusa, it was an interesting exploration because it took a few hours but I was able to practice my own engineering skills. For example, you can see on this slide, we have on the left side it's supposed to be a glasses cleaner. So the topic of this competition was modeled something that can hold someone's glasses, either sunglasses or reading glasses et cetera.
So I made this type of stand where it has these four yellow sponges. And to hold your glasses, you would put it in. And since you put it in, it automatically cleans your glasses when you take them out the next time. There was another one which was holiday decorations and they wanted it to be all inclusive for winter type holidays like Christmas, Hanukkah, et cetera.
So I had this type of panel display and this green portion inside you could turn it to change which festival you wanted. So right now it says Christmas, but you could turn it and it would say another one I think it had like 7 or 8 sides. So it had a lot of options that you could try on it. The main point is that these small projects were a great way to challenge yourself and to build some skills, especially in these online challenges CAD skills that help you advance your own engineering skill and therefore contributing to engineering education.
But of course, the short term is not where we should always look, there will also be some long term considerations we have to make. And that comes from passion projects as I was talking about before. Usually passion projects might take something about positive change and make it just like I had about my natural disaster drones.
But if companies encourage these long term passion projects, we can see that there's many ways for a student to continue and commit to one way and one resource of developing their engineering skill, keeping them more consistent, more on track, and most likely, more motivated. So let's say with all this, we finally answered the question, what should I do? What should I make? What problem should I solve? The student now has some sense of inspiration and direction.
We have to then answer the next question, why? Why should I do this? You see, I had my idea on the robust adaptive network for some time. But I had to ask myself why should I spend time doing anything about this for apparently no reason? Instead, I could be doing my homework, finding scholarships, college applications, learning cool things, or enjoying my times in hundreds of different ways.
The truth is students can prove can easily prove 10 reasons why they don't need to do something for every reason that you could give them why they should do it. You might say, oh, you should develop on your project because you may learn something. I say, it's not going to help me or I can learn this in other ways. Or I already know this, it's just CAD modeling. You might say, it might be fun. And I'll say, OK, TV is also fun. Or it doesn't look that fun. It looks like work. Or I don't have time for this fun. I need to do other things.
Luckily though, if you want to inspire and most importantly, if you want to motivate a student, there is a major soft spot for both parents and students that may be their strongest incentive to do anything. And that is their resume. Competitive students care a lot about their accomplishments, resumes, wins, applications, competitiveness, et cetera.
That's why students, whenever they see some opportunity, their main spark with these words like recognition, networking, competition, opportunity, they will do it. They might even spend more hours than a full time employee just getting one submission done for one application to see if they can have the chance to win.
This was also applicable to me when I had my idea of this robust adaptive network. I didn't do anything about it or anything much at least until I came across this competition called The Ambition Accelerator, which was hosted by the Taco Bell Foundation and the Ashoka Foundation. I saw this chance as a resume highlight, some nice recognition. They were offering a free trip to California and a chance to meet others like me at their convention and some prize money.
So I was in. And luckily, I put in that hard work because I did care a lot about winning. These students like me, they enjoy winning so much that I became a semifinalist in that competition. I also got the award of best voted idea, something like that. And I was able to participate in it. And once I got this initial motivation, this initial a little bit of prize money and a little bit of inspiration from my peers, I was able to continue this project on.
And now, even though I don't enroll this in many contests, even though I don't ask for scholarships or grants based on this anymore that much, I still continue the project because I had that initial main motivation. Same thing can apply with companies or organizations. One thing to note is that the contest doesn't need to be big. It doesn't need to be as big as the ambition accelerator I participated in that was sponsored by the Taco Bell Foundation and Yum Brands.
Instead, it just needs to be something that looks like the student should care about it. Because in the end, if they're just going for the resume highlight, all they have to do is write a line on the resume. So they'll care for something small as well. In fact, some students like to do small contests that'll make them easily win. But the main benefit is that once a student is engaged and they see that other people recognize their works and other people appreciate their efforts, it's almost certain that they will continue, and they'll continue to be motivated even after that initial poke by giving them a resume boost is gone.
In fact, I also like these cartoons over here, they say this type of guy is the student I'm talking about, they say this long of a resume or this guy who has 17,000 pages in his CV. It's pretty cool. But after this, let's say now they got the initial spark they also answered why should I do it and they want to begin. They might ask the question, how do I do it? Because I'm not an engineer. I don't have a lab. I don't have aluminum stock lying around my house. So how am I going to make what I want to do. How am I going to advance my idea?
Well firstly, I want to give the example of the institutionalized companies and institutionalized education in schools and on behalf of companies, especially when I was discussing about my robotics team experiences from before. You can see I've put a screenshot up here in the top from Autodesk's website and it reads Vex Robotics with Autodesk. Vex Robotics is one of the competition companies actually vex robotics was the one where I showed you where it has a square field and they were shooting Frisbees, the robots. It's this company.
So you can see that some companies like Autodesk already do a great job of partnering with the competitions and trying to support from their side as much as they can to improving the engineering education in this way. And it's truly an honorable way to do it. And in fact, one of the good things from Autodesk side is for example, in my robotics team when we see a website like this, and down below there's a link that says install Fusion 360, that's the one we're going to click.
Because another very cool thing they do is that it says Vex Robotics with Autodesk, and then later on below you can download all of the parts in that competition like the motors the electronics that are prescribed by the Vex competition in 3D files for CADing in Fusion 360 using the Autodesk product. So that's another benefit to Autodesk is that they get another user and maybe that user when they become an engineer and grow up they'll be familiar with how to use Fusion, AutoCAD, et cetera for working in the industry.
You can see also down below in this bottom left corner, we have the sign of Disco Bots. Disco Bots is my robotics team's name. And we have some sponsors on here like ExxonMobil, Shell, Bechtel, et cetera. These are also companies that sponsor individual teams, either by helping donating tools parts or just funds for them to continue because things like engineering, robotics, innovation, et cetera, it can get expensive. And just a school budget will not really help as much as it might seem.
So these type of initiatives are a great way for institutions like companies to push and support the engineering education, especially in the future when students are required to have or when engineers will be required to have more teamwork and more collaboration with each other, as I mentioned before, which is developed through the robotics teams. Additionally, you can see one more thing. I put the Fusion 360 Certified User Certificate over here.
That's because it was through Autodesk's interest in these robotics initiatives like FIRST Robotics or Vex Robotics that I learned Fusion 360. And after learning Fusion 360 even more, I was able to do this certified user exam actually on behalf of my school. So I believe Fusion 360 has the student license for students that try to work on their own projects. A lot of CAD companies do.
And it's a great initiative because obviously, as I mentioned before, it's good for the CAD companies that the students have a foundation in their own software. But additionally, it's good for the students as well because they get to earn the certificate. And as I mentioned before, students, especially competitive students, like that a lot.
But there's also another aspect to how you need to complete your goal or how you need to complete your vision in engineering education that comes from schools. Because schools have a lot of power in the education and they need to make sure that they're giving children correct direction, especially when it comes to high school to college level.
Because in the industry coming forward, it's seen that most engineers will have to be more interdisciplinary than before. Whether it's due to AI that's able to now do jobs quicker and easier, or whether it's due to just the trend towards vertical integration and companies where companies want to make everything in their house, and they want to handle all products themselves instead of subcontracting to others, we see that it's very important for engineers of the future to have more wider spectrum of knowledge rather than narrow specialized.
Because in any moment when the industry changes, if you're stuck as an engineer for this specific region that you aren't able to shift your view at any place else, you might be in trouble when a new wave of innovation comes. So it's important for colleges and high schools to focus on an interdisciplinary aspect when they teach engineering. Here, I've written some of the four big fields of engineering. Of course, there's countless more that you could count, the big ones being mechanical, electrical, material engineering and computer science or computer engineering.
The main one I want to focus on is this computer science because historically not many engineers focus on the programming or the coding aspects in the product development. But I believe that moving forward, employees will be more valued for their overall knowledge and being able to command a computer to do exactly what you want.
Additionally, being able to understand a project both from a software and a hardware side is a highly valuable skill. And I can talk about this through my robotics where there's some components if you design it, they might work structurally very, very well but you can't really program or you can't really do code on that effectively for it to be consistent. So there's many considerations that engineer of the future has to make.
And if the institutions of schools want to advance the future of engineering education, they need to make sure that they're looking at it from a more interdisciplinary aspect. Additionally, we see these are the institutional ways learning engineering education. But there's also going to be individualized, of course, ways to learn. And this is where some local resources come in.
So when I was initially trying to make my passion project of the robust adaptive network, I needed to find a place to start prototyping stuff because I had began with some CAD models, and I had some things ready. Of course. I searched some CAD online. I made it. I tried to use some stock off the shelf parts but some things obviously needed to be manufactured.
So I tried finding some 3D printers. I was lucky that near me the Houston Public Library, because I live in Houston currently, the Houston Public Library had this initiative called Techlink where it's kind of a Makerspace. They have some 3D printing, they have a small laser cutter, some big computers that you can work on. And you can see here I'm just outside with my younger brother.
We're inside. Here's a MakerBot Method 3D printer that I use to prototype some of my parts and build things. And very fortunate that this service was available for free to anyone who wants to come in. As long as they go through the safety training and they have a library membership, they can come and work on these very expensive and very valuable tools.
So it's this local resources I was lucky to have to continue my project. After I was able to make these prototypes actually I was able to go to the mayor of Houston. And when I went to the mayor of Houston, they were able to award me a spot at this lab which is called the ion, i-o-n, in Houston. Can see they have a lot of 3D printers here much equipment. Here's another set of photos of it.
They have a laser cutter in the background right here on this left photo. They have some resin type of equipments. Here's a C and C in the background and some desktop computers. The main point of showing you this is to say that I was able to advance my project because I had access to these type of labs and these type of resources. It was very fortunate that these were set up for me before.
Because it would be incredibly difficult for me to have done as much as I did in my engineering education, especially when I'm talking about my individualized learning without these resources. So if companies are looking to find new talent and if they're looking to help teach broader communities, because this was not only open to students, this is open to older people, and middle aged people, and everyone.
So if they want to find this type of way to teach the community on how they can better their engineering skill, these type of facilities are going to be a huge help to any community. With this, I've covered the question on how do I do it. And so hopefully if it went well, if you have some resources near you or if some companies set up this type of ion Houston or Techlink lab near you, then you might be working on your project. You might go through some challenges. You might solve some problems.
And as you continue to work on it you'll have one final question, which is how do I continue this? Because I am on this path and how do I make my project go more forward, perhaps turn it into something real? In my case, with my drones, how do I present it back to the mayor of Houston or to a government and say use this to help in your next natural disaster.
Or if in case you're doing something like a business profitable idea, how do you next go to an investor and show that I have this many products, I have this here's how it works, and I want to take it to the next step. To be honest, to answer the question, how do I continue it, I cannot answer it very well. Because I myself am on this phase. I've had a lot of skills, a lot of tools. I'm pretty good at designing and building things. A lot of practice from my robotics teams, to small projects, to competitions, and my own passion projects.
My school has supported me well. I have some resources, some connections to people who have more resources. But I'm in development of my project and I also want to take it to the next level. So just the main thing I learned from continuing my journey as I am right now in building my further engineering education is the value of mentorship.
Because when you have a student or when you have a person who has come to such a far level, they have answered the question, what should I do? They have answered the question why should I do it? And they have figured out how to do it. It's definitely a significant accomplishment. And coming through after this, the main resource anyone can have is the value of experience.
So if you're a student, or a family member, or someone has some experience and you want to either you want to lend your own experience or you want to find someone experienced for someone you know who needs the mentorship, it's definitely going to be a great resource. Because coming after this, there's so many different paths depending on so many different variables that only working together and getting through even more advanced problems, problems that my perspective still hasn't met yet, is going to be the future steps.
So companies, schools, and any organizations have to focus on also taking it not just at the lower levels, not just organizing these contests, and not just getting students inspired, but perhaps having a branch, a helpline out for people who have some establishment, who have shown their dedication, and give them guidance on how to continue it.
For example, if a company like Autodesk had this kind of program, I or anyone else could approach them apply to the program, of course. And if my application gets accepted, I would have the opportunity to meet with someone perhaps online and discuss through their expertise and through my challenges how we can get through this project.
I've had some experience on this type of mentorship before, the one I was speaking about, through Georgetown University actually after learning that I got the semi-finalist in my Ambition Accelerator Challenge. And after applying to that mentorship program, I was accepted. And it was about three or four weeks long where an MBA graduate of business student would try to guide you through any issues you may have with your project.
So that student was able to tell me how I can set up myself as an organization, 501(c)(3) non-profit. He was able to guide me on how I can reach out to universities and other companies to try to gain more resources and continue my project, et cetera. Obviously, he was a more business oriented guy so that was his main domain.
But if there was also this type of service for technical minded technical focused conversations then it would be a huge help to any student or any passionate person to try to gain knowledge from and to try to advance their own projects. Perhaps the projects may make a huge success. For example, if my robust adaptive network ever saves lives in natural disaster.
Or even if their project isn't very successful, all the skills they learned and the connections they make will truly help advance their own future of engineering education. So overall, what are the main takeaways? I've talked for so long. I've said so many things and given so many of the advice that I've seen from my own journey. So let's make a collection of them.
Firstly, towards companies. Companies need to start engaging from a younger age. This means that companies are, for example, I gave the point about the cereal box where companies try to make students recognize that this is what engineering is. This is what innovation is. This is what problem solving is. Here's what it entails. And if you're interested, here are the next steps because young minds are the foundations of their older minds.
Secondly, companies should try to support student competition teams. I gave the example of the Autodesk website and how they had that website that it supported the Vex Robotics competition. That's great. But even greater would be if they were able to support directly to the teams. Because I don't think the million dollar company of Vex Robotics needs help on their side. But it's going to be the small competition teams who need more resources, who need more parts, or to need or who need more mentorship to try to figure out compete and learn at the next level.
Thirdly, companies should also find needs in the communities and fill them with the tools that those companies might benefit from. I gave the example of the Techlink lab or the ion Houston lab. I was fortunate that I live in a big city, and I was close enough, and my parents were able to bring me to these labs where I was able to try to prototype my projects and try to learn so much from them.
But there's going to be so many communities that don't have access to any of this. So companies if they're the first one to reach there, and they know that there's a need over here that they can meet, they'll clearly be that established area leader of engineering education. And finally, companies should also provide some guidance to individual initiatives. Because if any student has come so far as to make a successful project and have all the foundations answer all those four main questions, the company should really try to stick with them because it's going to be a certain investment for either general welfare future, that student's future, and definitely the company's future.
Aside from the companies, we also must consider the burden on schools, the second main focus of institutionalized education. Firstly, the main thing schools can do is use more top down learning models. This is where schools engage in giving a goal first and guiding students to solve that problem instead of feeding students knowledge and then telling them to solve random problems.
This way students feel like they're learning in a real world environment and students are able to gain much more experience and skill from that type of teaching. Secondly, schools should teach interdisciplinary knowledge. Meaning that in the coming age engineers will be more valued for their range of knowledge, like a jack of all trades, instead of being over specialized on one area. So if schools are able to provide students with the tools to have interdisciplinary knowledge it will certainly help those students in a major way.
Thirdly, schools should also engage with student teams and initiatives. It's usually schools that are the starting grounds for things like my robotics team or giving me some space so that I can try to participate in my Ambition Accelerator competitions. So not only schools should take a passive or non-aggressive tactic towards these initiatives, but they should be more involved and they should try to encourage students to build more of these goals so that the students can be more ambitious and achieve more things.
And finally, schools should also try to create connections between students and resources. Schools have alumni. Schools have business partners. Schools have contacts with superintendents who have contacts with other business partners and other leaders, et cetera. So schools should try to leverage whatever connections they have to give the best for their own students. This way their students succeed, and also the school succeeds when their students are the ones that are achieving a high level accomplishments.
Finally, if we focus on individual education such as students and parents, we also see that they have some things that they need to do to advance the future of engineering education as well. Firstly, they need to find ways to try to incorporate some small projects, whether that includes just reverse engineering or disassembling something to see how it works. Or it could be like the examples I gave of the printables challenge on Prusa's website.
Additionally, they should consider engaging the student in a passion project because this passion project has the whole cycle that any engineer or entrepreneur would take part in from making the idea to creating the idea finding resources and trying to complete your project that hopefully can benefit society. Thirdly, students and parents should also find individual institutional opportunities for advancement. This means that they should look towards resources like robotics teams or look towards places like competitions to try to participate, try to gain recognition, and most importantly, try to learn from previous experiences.
Because engineering is not an isolated field. It fundamentally interacts with the full community. So only by interacting with the full community can you gauge where you are and how you can become better. And lastly, students and parents should try to scour their surroundings for accessible resources. This is the main example of the Techlink or ion Houston labs.
And if there's none near you, try to get in contact with some companies and try to show them that the benefits of trying to donate some equipment, donate some parts and tools, either to that initiative specifically or through the broader community at large. Either way, this is just-- either way all of these points may definitely help someone. Or they could also either benefit one student or benefit the full community at large.
But either way, it's just my perspective. The student's perspective. A student's perspective on advancing the future of engineering education. Hopefully it helps and thank you for listening.