Watching Video Clips Can Improve Emotion Recognition

June 2, 2020 admin Leave a comment

By Trina Nguyen

Abstract:

Humans are naturally social beings, often basing our interactions around the emotions of others. Proper emotion identification can strengthen interpersonal relationships as well as enhance daily social interactions. Thus, it would be beneficial if there were methods to improve our emotion recognition. Although we take into account many signs such as body language and tone of voice, we heavily rely on facial expressions to identify emotion. Yet, in recent literature there has been a lack of emotion recognition training regarding a large forefront of the face – the eyes. I examined whether humans could train to enhance their emotion recognition ability based solely on the eye region of the face. Participants were either instructed to watch short video clips depicting distinct facial expressions for a week or were not asked to complete any activities. All participant emotion recognition abilities were measured before and after the weeklong period. Improvement in the experimental group scores suggests that eye-to-eye emotion identification can in fact be improved with training. Additionally, making a conscientious effort to watch and notate emotion from video clips can be an easy and effective method to improve emotion recognition.

Keywords: emotion recognition, empathy, eye-to-eye emotion recognition, emotion training, emotion recognition ability, empathy experiment

Emotion recognition is an integral part of human social interaction. The skill of accurate emotion identification has a plethora of applications, from strengthening relationships to negotiating business deals. Therefore, training to improve our emotional recognition can in turn improve our everyday lives. Past studies regarding emotion recognition training have had positive outcomes, encouraging further exploration regarding new effective methods of training. Recently, researchers Matsumoto and Hwang (2011) have shown that the ability to perceive emotional microexpressions, facial expressions that last for less than a second, can be trained and retained, leading to improved social and communicative skills.

While Matsumoto and Hwang conducted successful training to improve recognition of microexpressions, there is significantly less data regarding emotional recognition training focused on human eyes. Researchers Wegryzn et. al (2017) pinpointed how observers rely heavily on the eye and mouth regions of the human face in order to successfully recognize emotions. Humans particularly rely on the eyes to determine basic emotions such as anger, sadness, surprise, and fear (Calvo et. al., 2018). This suggests that additional emphasis should be placed on the eyes when training to decipher emotions.

In this study, I explore whether identifying emotions based on the eyes of another person can be improved with training. Specifically, I explore whether training by watching short video clips with clear visibility of peoples’ faces and note-taking about the video clips can improve eye-to-eye emotion recognition. I hypothesize that this observing and note taking practice will be effective, leading to increased emotion recognition ability.

To quantify emotion recognition and improvement, I requested participants complete an online exam titled “Reading the Mind in the Eyes.” One group finished a week-long period of training by watching short video clips, while the other group did not do so. Score improvement in the experimental group suggests not only that emotion recognition can be improved with training, but also that observing and taking notes on video clips can be an effective training method. Hence, emotion recognition is a basic skill that can be improved upon with a simple activity that many can conduct in their own homes.

Methods:

There were eleven total participants in this study who were recruited via text message. During recruitment, I explained the steps of the experiment, but did not disclose the question of interest or my hypothesis to the potential participants so as to not introduce future biases while participants were completing activities. After an explanation of the steps and a guarantee of anonymity, the individuals replied with voluntary agreement to participate. All participants were young adults aged 20-21 attending various American universities. The participants were then separated into a control group in which no training was completed and an experimental group in which training was required. I used an online generator in order to randomly allocate the individuals to either the experimental or control group. The control group consisted of six individuals, two males and four females. The experimental group consisted of five individuals, one male and four females.

To begin, I asked all participants to complete an online social intelligence test titled “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” that contained thirty-six images of strangers’ eyes. Participants selected one emotion out of four options that best described the image seen. After each question, they were not told whether their selection was correct or incorrect as to not bias further selections. However, upon finishing, the test did allow participants to view their total scores. Following the completion of the test, I recorded the total of correctly selected emotion-image pairs out of 36 for each participant. This formed the base scores.

The control group was issued no further instructions after the initial exam to serve as a baseline of comparison for the experimental group. The experimental group underwent training by watching a short video clip without sound or subtitles from popular movies or television shows daily for a week. The video clips were administered each day via text message. The video clips I selected were all found on “YouTube”. Each video clip had obvious emotions of focus, such as sadness, anger, or happiness as well as clear visibility of the actors’ faces. A detailed list of which video clip played per day can be found in the appendix section.

I asked the participants to view the clips without sound in order to encourage emotional recognition based on the character’s eyes and not due to audio stimulation. In addition, I requested subtitles to be turned off so as to not distract the participants from focusing on the facial expressions of the characters. Participants were also required to make daily journal entries cataloging the characters and the emotions the characters expressed to verify that the activity was completed thoughtfully and to encourage more attention to the exercise. (Journal entries included in Appendix.)

A week after the completion of the initial “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test, I had both the control and the experimental group retake the same original exam. Then, I recorded the new scores and calculated the difference between the second score and the base score for each participant. I averaged the difference in scores for the control group and the experimental group. The average differences were then compared.

Results:

When no training is completed, eye-to-eye emotion recognition ability does not improve. A compilation of the quiz scores of the control group can be found in Table One. Little score difference was observed between the first and second exam for the control group, suggesting that the participants’ emotion recognition ability had no change. The average base test score for the control group was 28.83/36 while the average score for the control group the following week was 28.5/36, a .33-point decrease (Table One). Only one participant (5A) in the group increased in score. However, the remainder of the participant scores in the control group either remained stagnant or decreased. This demonstrates that the eye-to-eye emotion recognition ability of the participants was not altered.

However, training to read emotions by watching short video clips does appear to increase eye-to-eye emotion recognition. The experimental group scores increased by an average of two points, suggesting that training does improve emotion recognition ability. The average base score for the experimental group was 27.6/36. After a week of observing and journaling about video clips with emotion present, the new average score was 29.6/36 (Figure Two). Interestingly, no participants in the experimental group decreased in score. All participants had increased scores except for one participant (3B) whose score remained the same. Because there was a marked difference in the average score changes between the control and experimental (-.33 vs. +2), there is evidence to show that eye-to-eye emotion recognition can indeed be improved with training, and that watching video clips and journaling is a valid method to do so.

Although the increase in the scores of the experimental group may be due to prior exposure/familiarity with the exam, this is unlikely because of the significant contrast between the control and experimental group results. All participants were required to take the exact same exam a total of two times. The control group, even with prior exposure, had a decrease in average score. Yet, the experimental group had a large gain in average score. However, participant 5A did increase in score despite being a part of the control group. Although familiarity may have played a role, there were many other factors such as testing environment, noise level, light level, etc. that may have affected the participant’s results. Because there are many varying factors, it is difficult to attribute the score increase to one or several specific factors. However, the control group’s overall average was lower, still supporting that training played a key role in score increase. Overall, this suggests that the increase in scores is attributed to the experimental group’s training and not simply familiarity with the test. Thus, training by watching short video clips can be an effective method to improve eye-to-eye emotion recognition.

Table One

Control Group Scores

Group One – Control
Participant	Gender	First Score	Final Score	Difference
1A	M	25	23	-2
2A	F	27	27	0
3A	M	28	27	-1
4A	F	29	29	0
5A	F	30	33	3
6A	F	34	32	-2
Average		28.83333333	28.5	-0.333333333

Table Two

Experimental Group Scores

Group Two – Experimental
Name	Gender	First Score	Final Score	Difference
1B	M	22	23	1
2B	F	24	27	3
3B	F	32	32	0
4B	F	33	36	3
5B	F	27	30	3
Average		27.6	29.6	2

Discussion and Conclusion:

Eye-to-eye emotion recognition ability can be improved with training. When the participants observed daily videos for a week while carefully noting the emotions they viewed on the actors’ faces, their scores improved by an average of +2. This improvement was much higher than that of the participants who did not watch any videos. The participants in the control group’s scores actually decreased by an average of .33. Thus, watching and journaling videos can serve as a simple method to improve emotion recognition ability. However, there were many factors such as the level of light, noise intensity, diet, variation in the time of day the exam was taken, etc. that may have interfered with participants’ performance on the quizzes. The participants took the quizzes in their own homes, so there was no method to control surrounding stimuli. There was also no method to verify whether or not the participant “cheated” by searching up images of emotions while taking the exam. In future experiments, it would be beneficial to have a set location for all the participants to take the exam at the same time with the same surroundings to ensure a similar test-taking environment for all and to deter possible cheating.

There were also many uncontrollable factors in regard to the training itself. Within the training group, it is likely that the videos were not watched at the same time every day because the participants were allowed to do the activity on their own time in their own homes. In future experiments, it would be beneficial to have participants maintain constancy when watching the videos and see if that further enhances emotion recognition. Additionally, as mentioned previously, light levels, noise intensity, and presence of others during training may have affected the training. There was no concrete method of determining whether the surrounding environment detracted or enhanced the training. Therefore, in future experiments, a set location can be determined to administer the training for the experimental group. Not to mention, the mental concentration of the participants during training likely varied. Although the journals were implemented to encourage thoughtful activity, there is no method of knowing how carefully each participant watched the video. Varying levels of effort can yield varying results. Thus, it may be interesting in future experiments to ask one group to take cursory notes, while requesting another group to write a detailed paragraph about the emotions they see in the video clips.

Notably, all participants were young college aged students, which is representative of a very small population. It is likely that training has different effects on different age groups. In addition, the sample size was quite small. It would be beneficial to have a larger sample size, so the results can be more indicative of a larger population.

Additionally, it would be remiss to not address that the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” exam and the video clips were in English and examined by English speakers. Language likely influences expression and determination of emotions, thus the results may not be applicable to non-American cultures or non-English speakers. Future work could explore the differences of various languages on emotion recognition ability and the differences of various cultures on emotion recognition ability. Future work could also observe if different cultures have different ‘typical’ facial expressions for common emotions such as sadness, anger, or happiness.

Although not emphasized or analyzed, as present in the data, men typically scored lower than the women when taking the exam. It would be interesting in future experiments to see if there is a difference between the sexes for eye-to-eye emotion recognition and if training affects the ability of the sexes differently.

Nonetheless, eye-to-eye emotion recognition is a beneficial skill that can likely be enhanced if desired. Improved emotion-recognition ability can strengthen interpersonal relationships by forming stronger bonds with others as well as increased empathy with others. We interact with others quite frequently, in many cases, daily, therefore it would be beneficial if we could understand and empathize with each other to a greater extent. Increased levels of empathy can in turn lead to greater communication, less problematic interactions, and perhaps a happier lifestyle.

References

Calvo, M.G., Fernández-Martín, A., Gutiérrez-García, A. et al. (2018). Selective eye fixations on diagnostic face regions of dynamic emotional expressions: KDEF-dyn database. Sci Rep 8, 17039. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-35259-w

Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H.S. (2011). Evidence for training the ability to read microexpressions of emotion. Motiv Emot 35, 181–191. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-011-9212-2

Wegrzyn M., Vogt M., Kireclioglu B., Schneider J., Kissler J. (2017). Mapping the emotional face. How individual face parts contribute to successful emotion recognition. PLoS ONE 12(5): e0177239. https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal.pone.0177239

Appendix

Video clips:

Day One: The Bachelor – Hannah Ann Breaks up with Peter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOW6sFi1PAc

Day Two: The Notebook – Bird Scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7_F5P5PygM

Day Three: Mean Girls – Meeting the Plastics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re5veV2F7eY

Day Four:Anger Management – Rage on a Plane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzUc3Eqzzos

Day Five: Friends – Seven: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NLVior-nLs

Day Six: Avengers Age of Ultron – Black Widow Flirting in a Bar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycNVhd1IOzA

Day Seven: Hunger Games – Saying Goodbye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAal6-tvckw

Journal Entries

Participant 1B:

4/2/20:

4/3/20:

The Notebook (1/6) Movie CLIP – If You’re a Bird, I’m a Bird (2004) HD

Man
- Attracted and Cocky
- Trying to act slick and cool
- Fake hesitancy
Woman
- Playful and excited
- Trying to be persuasive
- They are kissing

4/4/20:

Mean Girls (1/10) Movie CLIP – Meeting the Plastics (2004) HD

Blond Woman Middle
- She seems a bit surprised
- Seems like she is questioning the news questioning
Blond Woman Left
- Seems like she is questioning the news questioning
- Seems like they are convincing her to do something that is not right
Brunette Woman Right
- Seems surprised
- Seems like they are convincing her to do something that is not right
Brunette Woman Alone
- She is telling her something new
- She seems excited
- She seems nervous

4/5/20:

Anger Management (1/8) Movie CLIP – Rage on a Plane (2003) HD

Adam Sandler
- He is asking for something from the flight attendant, he looks like he wants it
- He is put off and upset
- He seems defensive after being accused of touching the lady
- Nervous in court
Flight Attendant Lady
- She seemed nice and enthusiastic about fulfilling the request
- She is having fun with her co-worker
- She is upset and in accusational
Air Marshal
- In disbelief of the story he is telling
- Doubting
- Threatening towards adam

4/6/20:

Friends: Seven, Seven, Seven! (Clip) | TBS

Man
- Seems angry as he tries to explain stuff
- Very intense in the way he tries to explain things to them
- Maybe upset about something
- Acting smarty with the blonde
- Is intent on listening and curious
Black Hair Woman
- Teaching and Receptive
- Explanatory
Blonde Hair Woman
- Chill and happy
- Awkward reaction
- Not buying into the advice

4/7/20:

Scarlett Johanson (Black Widow) Flirting with Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk)

Black Widow
- She seems like she is into him
- She is talking in a flirty way and then dips
Hulk
- Seductive
- Nervous
- Uneasy
Captain America
- He is is kinda trying to be convincing

4/8/29

The Hunger Games (2/12) Movie CLIP – Saying Goodbye (2012) HD

Prim
- She devastated and sad
- In distress and won’t let her go
Mother
- Serious and worried about Katniss
Gayle
- Giving advice and is trying to explain what to do
Katniss
- Sad but brave and reassuring

Participant 2B:

Video #1:

The girl looks distraught and upset and then her emotions turn to anger and frustration. At one point she looks irritated and confused. The man looks upset and guilty about something. The girl keeps looking up and licking her lips, while the guy won’t make eye contact with her. They both cry a lot.

Video#2-

The girl looks happy to be in the ocean and is trying to convince the guy to get in with her. He mouths the word no, but seems pleased with her. They are passionate and show affection. She seems turned on and he seems to be looking at her very lovingly.

Video #3

Lindsey Lohan’s character looks genuinely happy and shows some confusion. Regina George seems as if she’s sarcastically saying everything and is irritated and not genuinely happy. Gretchen wieners seems smiley and as if she’s trying to please Regina. The blonde one just looked confused and lost the whole time. Lindsey Lohan’s character also seems naive and innocent. Her smile is very pure and emits true happiness.

Video #4-

Adam Sandler looks content but grows more and more irritated with the flight attendant. The man next to him on the plane is a little suspicious and nervous he keeps looking back and forth between Adam Sandler and the flight attendant. After Adam Sandler touches the flight attendant she looks deeply disturbed and upset. The cop looks very intimidating and Adam Sandler looks scared. Everyone in the plane is curious as to what’s going on. Everyone else on the plane is terrified when the taser comes out.

Video #5-

The people alternate between looks of joy, happiness, suspicion, and confusion. The mans expression turns from distrust to surprise. It seems as if one of them is performing a magic trick.

Video #6-

Scarlet Johanson is obviously the one in charge and has the power in the scene. She keeps looking down as she speaks and won’t make eye contact with the man at first. Then she makes eye contact and he averts her gaze. He looks confused and in disbelief or denial about something. He looks as if he’s made a mistake but doesn’t know what his mistake is.

Video #7-

Prim looks sad and frightened and cry’s but Katniss tries to comfort her. She also seems scared but tries to be brave. Her and the boy exchange loving looks but both try to restrain themselves from showing their emotions. There is a somber tone.

Participant 3B:

Day 1: The Bachelor:

Peter: He looks really sad, regretful, and apologetic throughout the video. He seems anxious anticipating the girl’s reaction and worried that she might take it badly (?) and is trying hard to express himself

Hannah Ann: At first she seems like she’s smiling, like she doesn’t believe what the boy is saying but as time goes on it seems to set in more and she appears to be sad but disbelieving while also perhaps confused. At the end of the video she seems to accept what has happened and looks like she is trying to move on but is very sad.

Day 2: The notebook

Boy: looks at the girl admiringly and lovingly. He looks very happy and caring at her

Girl: looks flirtatiously at boy and seems carefree and blissful. Also very lovingly looks at boy but has a hint of mischief/joking manner in her expression

Observed emotions through facial expressions, noticing especially the eyes and mouths.

Day 3: Mean Girls

Regina: looks like she is superficially smiling and fake the whole time. Acts interested and friendly but has a disdainful expression at time. This is due to her lack of eye creasing when she smiles

The girls next to Regina look very attentive and eager to please, paying close attention and mirroring her expression

Cady: looks confused, cautious, and nervous. Seems afraid to say the wrong thing but eager to please. Looks sincere

Day 4:

Man: seems anxious as he tries to get the flight attendant’s attention, and perplexed/taken aback when she closes the curtain on him. He also seems slightly offended. When the people get mad at him he looks embarrassed and shocked, and then defensive, confused, and slightly intimidated

Flight attendant: looks annoyed and haughty. When her arm is grabbed she is angry and indignant

Police man (?): looks very angry

Judge and lawyer: look proud and resentful towards the man, like they think they are superior

Day 5: Friends

Man: looks upset and anxious about something. As woman 1 starts to talk, he seems perplexed and confused

Woman 1( black haired): looks assured and confident. Seems excited and emotional about what she is writing/chanting

Woman 2: looks skeptical and a little annoyed or over it after awhile. Also seems tired of it

Day 6:

Black widow: mysterious, appears disinterested but amused. Acts coy

Hulk: seems cautiously interested and vaguely intrigued. Also looks perplexed after captain America talks to him

Captain America: looks confident, friendly/pleasant, and knowing

Day 7: Hunger Games

Katniss: looks scared, anxious, and sad as well as stubborn/defiant

Girl: looks panicked and very sad

Boy: looks sad but accepting

Participant 4B:

I personally look at eyebrows, mouth, and body language for emotion. I think eyebrows become very expressive when angry or sad. The mouth is able to convey emotion through smiles or frowns. Closed body language such as crossed arms shows anger or anxiety, whereas more open stances seem relaxed.

Thursday, April 2

There is some unavoidable bias due to the title. Before watching the video, there is an expectation to see angry and sad emotions.

Girl looks disbelieving/skeptical at first

Boy is apologetic or upset

Girl is smug, but upset

Woman watching from small screen is disappointed

Main girl looks panicked/distraught

The characters watching themselves from the small screen look uninterested

Main girl is sad, but unsurprised

The boy came across as determined until the girl began crying, where he became ashamed

The girl then became accepting of the situation, whereas the boy seems sad

The girl is kind of mocking/taunting him, as if she is still sad but wants him to hurt instead

This worked, but now she can no longer hide from her face that she is still very upset

Girl watching herself from small screen finally shows emotion, looking sad/regretful

Friday, April 3

I’ve never seen The Notebook.

Girl is happy/excited

Boy is happy in a more subtle way, kind of nostalgic

Girl is flirtatious

The girl’s emotions are very open and exaggerated, whereas the boy is more subtle or guarded

Saturday, April 4

I have seen Mean Girls but will try to analyze emotions without bias. I can’t help but watch the video and hear the dialogue in my head though.

Regina looks determined and concerned

Cady looks happy, but confused

Regina is smug

Gretchen looks excited, but is then shot down by Regina

Karen looks confused the entire time, maybe concerned

Although Regina appears happy, it has underlying aggressive or accusatory tones due to the intensity of her stare (maybe biased by knowledge of movie dialogue)

Sunday, April 5

I have seen Anger Management before.

The old man (Buddy) and Dave (Adam Sandler) start out relaxed

The flight attendants seem carefree and happy

Dave starts to look uncomfortable or impatient

The main flight attendant seems condescending

The flight attendant is aghast/disgusted that Dave tapped her arm

The attendant becomes stern or angry

Dave seems apologetic

The man with the badge is very serious

Other passengers are shocked or concerned

Dave is becoming more frantic, where before he was calm

The man with the badge is becoming more aggressive in his anger, confrontational

Dave becomes very frustrated to a point of anger

Monday, April 6

I have never seen Friends.

The two girls are happy and interested/curious

The man seems angry, but not at the girls

The girls are sympathetic

The man seems doubtful

The girl with dark hair is acting earnestly and sincerely, whereas the blonde is teasing

The man seems confused or worried

Tuesday, April 7

I haven’t seen this movie, but the title of the video adds a bias towards flirty emotions.

The woman is uninterested by or wary of the man

The man is amused by whatever the woman is saying

The man is getting nervous as the woman speaks bluntly

The woman is now outright teasing (mocking) the man

The man is disappointed

The new man (Chris Evans) is smug

The original man (Mark Ruffalo) is either confused or intrigued by the other man’s statement

Wednesday, April 8

Wow, I watched The Hunger Games earlier today.

Prim is incredibly sad/distraught

Katniss wants to be strong, but both her and her mother are in shock

Katniss becomes very serious and stern

Prim is extremely panicked

Gale is being supportive, whereas Katniss starts to show fear for the first time

Participant 5B:

Day 2: Bachelor Video

The bachelor appears to be sorry for something because he is crying
Hannah Ann hands an engagement ring over and seems to be both upset and sad at the same time — they were engaged but are no longer
Both are crying hysterically
Hannah Ann has a look of disapproval and nods many times
Peter closes his eyes and licks his lips, almost in disbelief and unable to do anything — he knows he has messed up
After Hannah Ann walks away and Peter tries to talk to her again with sad eyes, you can tell she is done with him because she continually nods in anger and disapproval

Day 3: The Notebook

Girl runs into the waves and throws hands up into the air (she appears really happy)
The guy watches her in the water and nods, but this time he nods and smiles
The girl runs out of the water and jumps up and down, trying to get some sort of approval from the guy
The guy nods and she jumps into his arms after she gets the approval
They talk to each other and appear to be in love

Day 4: Mean Girls

The blonde girl in the center appears to be trying to prove herself to the girl sitting across from her
Blonde girl raises her eyebrows multiple times, trying to question the new girl
The brunette girl smiles and seems excited about something she is talking about, but then becomes sad and quiet after the blonde girl shuts her down
The blonde girl sits back in her chair and keeps talking, belittling the other girl
You can tell the blonde girl is the ring leader because all of the other girls look at her when she speaks

Day 5: Anger Management

Flight attendants are laughing and talking to each other, ignoring the man on the plane trying to get their attention
The man next to him is listening to a movie and is being obnoxious
The guest is obviously very frustrated, but he gets the attention of a flight attendant
The flight attendant takes this as anger and the man shakes his head that he wasn’t trying to be violent, but the flight attendant escalates the situation
More people see the interaction and start ganging up on the passenger
He ends up going to court against the flight attendants and it appears he loses; the attendants seem happy to get revenge

Day 6: Seven

Guy looks like he messed up somehow and the two girls look like they feel bad for him
He walks over to the couch and it seems like the girls are giving him advice
I think this episode is about dating?
The guy seems confused by what the girls are saying at times

Day 7: Black Widow

The guy walks up to the bar and seems to be talking to the girl first
But the bartender then seems interested in the guy because of her eye movement
They both take a sip of a drink and maintain eye contact, so I think they are interested in each other
Another man comes into the scene and he talks to the first guy
He appears to be commenting on the guy’s interaction with the bartender and how well it went

Day 8: Hunger Games

Katnis is leaving and says goodbye to her sister; it’s obvious that the sister is heartbroken
She tries to tell her younger sister to be strong and that everything will be ok
She then goes over to an older woman and tries to reassure her; they are both very upset and sad
When the guy comes in he hugs her and they have some sort of relationship
It ends with her leaving urgently

interdisciplinary thinking, Writing and Revising, Writing as Thinking

Novices get a say at sea level

June 9, 2019 admin Leave a comment

This is a revision of “Speak up and write,” which I published here yesterday. I did not replace that essay with this one, because I wanted to show what a revision might look like. If writing is thinking, then revision is thinking even more deeply. The words on the page give you a moment, overnight in this case, to evaluate what you said yesterday. This morning I woke up aware of what I meant to say yesterday –even though I did not quite know it yesterday!. I had become conscious of the connection between the three ideas of yesterday’s essay: Mount Everest, NASA, and of amateurs weighing in (speaking, writing, and acting) on topics of public importance. I took out my introduction (just a bridge, a comment, and not especially on point), I got rid of the tangential and probably distracting commentary on capitalism, I saw the obvious contradiction between my thoughts on the first two topics and my thoughts on the third, and I tried to figure out why it’s not a contradiction. My new draft is based on those realizations.

Writing is a form of thinking, and today I want to think about the pros and cons of expertise.

Expertise is an obvious necessity in many tasks, ancient and modern, artisanal and technical. It’s one reason that a college education, even in the United States, has become so focused and even vocationally oriented–and thus less exploratory, less experimental, less humanities-focused, and less “able to help students figure out their place in the universe and their moral obligations to fellow humans” (see Molly Worthen’s “The Anti-College is on the Rise” in today’s New York Times, 9 June 2019, for more on that). But our valuation of expertise sometimes lets us compartmentalize our participation in life too much.

First, the need for expertise. Many people were horrified recently to discover that there were crowded lines on the safety ropes to summit Mount Everest. In The Guardian’s “In Focus” podcast, “Death, carnage and chaos: a climber on his recent ascent of Everest,” (3 Jun 2019), a climber describes how people at that altitude can’t think straight, how they are each barely able to survive on the oxygen they carry, and how sick and injured climbers cannot expect to be saved by the others. They are all stuck on the same safety line, but everyone is at the end of his rope. This has always been true on Everest, of course, but now inexperienced climbers expect that their money can get them to the top. The others, in this life-or-death situation, do not always help them. Yes, there’s co-dependencies even in the best troupe of climbers, but every person must be an expert on key issues relevant to climbing mountains at high altitudes.

Now (well, as early as just next year, 2020) NASA is thinking of charging 58 million dollars (plus $35,000/day) for a trip to the International Space Station (Los Angeles Times, 7 June 2019). But I can’t help thinking of Everest. If something goes wrong–if people have to survive by their wits and what they know of space, science, and technology (think The Martian), or if there’s just a simple shortage of oxygen (think Everest 2019)–then will the “guest” astronauts survive? Even the experts with the greatest human gift of compassion will have to calculate that the survivors need to be able to, well, survive. Keeping the guests alive for another day will not solve the longer-term problem of getting the oxygen production back working, getting the ship’s communications up, getting the ship home to earth, or whatever else needs to get done. In short, sending amateurs to space is a lousy idea. Space survival requires expertise.

But life at sea level is possible for amateurs, and amateurs need to weigh in on the public debates we’re having on big issues such as economic inequality, the power of algorithms, and the climate crisis. Engineering and scientists are sometimes reticent to speak up, however, when the topic is not their area of expertise. I’ve asked ECE graduate students to read about the climate crisis, for example, and then I’ve asked them to opine. They generally won’t. They think it’s out of their area. They say they can’t evaluate all the evidence because they haven’t read it all. They say it’s a different methodology than they are familiar with. And yet, if anyone outside an Earth and Space Science Department can understand, evaluate, and appreciate the data, it’s another scientist or engineer. Also, recognizing what “scientific consensus” means might help, and there are many political, economic, and policy issues that must be discussed and then advocated for or against.

Becoming a specialist does not mean that you must voice no opinions on other topics. You are a citizen, a brainy one who asks important questions and knows how to go about answering many of them. Please, then, share your thoughts with the rest of us. Climbing Mount Everest and going to space may be the dreams of your childhood, but if you don’t have the expertise, then skip them. On the other hand, whether you understand the details or not, you can still use your voice and actions to advocate for the type of society in which you’d like to live.

Introductions: Plans and Hopes

Humans write for humans

May 25, 2019 admin Leave a comment

Here’s a new version of Writineering, now helpfully supported by UCLA and intended not just for graduate students in engineering but for writers at all levels who are eager to explore science, engineering, or technology. Academic writing is at its best when it borrows from public science writing, and writing for the public achieves more and better ends when it borrows careful, ethical data collection, analysis, and referencing from academic writing. We have many shared roots; good writing identifies its sources; and the best writing has an author’s thumbprint visible (see photo). As Jaron Lanier writes in You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, “there is no evidence that quantity becomes quality in matters of human expression or achievement. What matters instead, I believe, is a sense of focus, a mind in effective concentration, and an adventurous individual imagination that is distinct from the crowd” (50). And so while this is a software-dependent website, please remember that it’s for people, by a person. “Keep that in mind when writing anything” is recommendation #1.

Interviews with EEs, Presenting

Three Years Out: A Talk with S

June 26, 2018 admin Leave a comment

S and I talked via Google Hangouts at lunchtime on a Sunday. While my camera was poorly positioned, showing the bed (made; phew!), the mess on the dresser, a mirror weirdly reflecting the window behind the laptop, and me with my wet hair (how did I forget this was a video call?), hers only showed her face and the upper corner of a white room. She clearly does this more than I do, already revealing her professionalism. This state of affairs in itself highlights one reason that I wanted to have this conversation: what do professional engineers really need from academics like me?

S got her PhD a few years ago, and we know each other because she took EE 295 and participated in a short-lived EE Book Group. (We met for four or five quarters, and then people graduated before we’d repopulated the group.) She sees herself more as a mathematician than an engineer, and after two years in industry, she’s now in the first year of a two-year post-doc. She’ll soon begin applying for faculty positions.

As part of the run-up to the application process, S says she is trying to get invited to give talks at many universities, even if they are not hiring. She reminds me that “these talks have to be understandable to everyone in the audience, which can be tricky since most people aren’t working on remotely the same thing as you are, yet still need to feel included in the talk.” And this statement reminds me of what my neighbor, a UCLA physiology professor said later on that same Sunday when she was discussing a job candidate: “he didn’t connect the dots between his work and why I should care.”

But S sympathizes with the student experience, and the difficulty of moving from details to generalities. “School’s set up to put you in that tunnel vision,” she says. And she means this in more than one sense: school makes us focus on our area of expertise, “but it can also make us feel incompetent, since our ‘product’ isn’t directly benefiting anyone (yet).” When we enter the “real world,” it’s refreshing to see how competent we really are, if we’ve retained the skills we need for that broader world of work.

S benefited from going to an undergraduate engineering school that assigned many open-ended projects; she feels that she “would have been more cautious” if she’d gone through a more traditional program. She says that the projects “brought me out of my shell” and gave students more power of “self-determination.” Because it was a small school, she got “a lot of personal responsibility.” And because of an extracurricular role as a yearbook photographer—what sounds like the yearbook photographer–she says that she

had to go to all these events that I never otherwise would have gone to, just to take photographs of people. It really got me out of my shell; at first, I was afraid even to make phone calls to order pizza, but by the end we were all way more confident approaching strangers to get interviews for random projects.

In all these ways, S’s experience highlights the value of broadening one’s horizons, participating in many activities, meeting and talking to new people, and trying to communicate across disciplinary borders and other (often self-imposed) boundaries.

Another way to do both these things—explore beyond boundaries and communicate across them—is to review papers: “Be a reviewer for conferences, even the ones you don’t submit to,” S recommends. It’s valuable experience. During her time in industry, she did a lot of this, and she also had to give many “’broad picture” and “state-of-the-art” presentations for CEOs at the company. In one email, she writes:

Giving survey presentations was really great practice for me, because (1) it forced me to read a lot of papers on subjects I didn’t really understand and pull out the few things I thought would interest a general audience, and (2) it forced me to communicate to as broad an audience as possible. When I went back to academia, I realized this was a key skill that you don’t really learn in school—not that they don’t know how to prioritize their audience, but they’re not really under a huge amount of immediate pressure to do so.

One thing that surprised me about S’s industry job is that “they tried to figure out what [she] wanted to do and let [her] do it.” Not all industry jobs would be like this, but having your PhD probably puts you in a great position to be an explorer and motivator rather than a drudge at work. “Drudge” is probably the wrong word, since it means the person who does the “tedious and menial” work. But sometimes graduate students get in the habit of working alone in their cubicles. That alone-time can produce great work, but it’s under-appreciated if done in silence. It might not even be as useful as it could be if it were done in tandem with other people’s knowledge and goals.

S was surprised to discover that people interrupt talks in industry, and she’s productively imported this to her new academic position. She says, “at a company, people are really obnoxious and stop you every five seconds (because they’re your boss).” She adds, “if people don’t interrupt you, then you know you’ve had a bad meeting.” The advantage of being interrupted with questions is that you “get a better sense of your audience”—both what they know and what they care about. So instead of trying to overlook, ignore, or fill in the blanks herself as she listens to talks in her current university position, she’s become “the obnoxious audience person who keeps making the presenter stop and clarify things” and says that “actually, a lot of people told me this as a compliment!” I remember S’s digging down into some of our responses in the book group, so I can easily imagine the tone of her questions: not at all obnoxious, but not soft. Often, her questions and comments made the rest of us rethink or at least more carefully state our ideas.

I wanted to know what these jobs are like. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a post-doc (or at least this post-doc) spends her time “reading papers and writing ideas.” She adds, “One thing that post-doc freedom allows you to do is to have three-hour meetings with other colleagues to discuss random ideas, which I do with another postdoc every week.” There’s also some teaching (this year, S gave two lectures; next year, she’ll teach a whole course) and “a fair amount of mentoring.” So far, she’s not had to do much grant writing or traveling.

About the mentoring, S says,

I don’t really mind mentoring because . . . working one-on-one . . ., I find it easier to engage with the student and make sure we really exploit his or her talents and ambitions. Actually, we have one student here who is really kick-ass. He’s only a first-year master’s student, but he decided he wanted to learn really hard subjects by running reading groups and teaching us. So whenever I have a hard problem that I don’t really have time to look at, I just give it to him over Slack, and he answers it for me later that week. (Does that make me abusive?)

I’d say no, and here’s why. S’s attention to the specific “talents and ambitions” of each student suggests that her need for information and this student’s goals are fully aligned. She’s giving him exactly what he needs to develop in the ways he wants. And she’s giving him what she has already said is valuable: the chance to read many hard papers, practice pulling out the ideas that are useful for a certain problem or audience, and practice explaining them to others.

Because S is successful and spirited, I wanted to pass on some sense of her “philosophy of life.” While resisting offering one, S emphasizes flexibility and gratitude. Because “the whole process” of the job search is “unpredictable” and moves at erratically slow speeds and big leaps, “there really is an element of faith” and “you just have to try your best and try not to read tea leaves.” In her case, she spent six months working diligently to get a postdoc position, “negotiating with various professors” and “testing various sources of funding, etc.” and then, “out of the blue, a prof contacted me and almost immediately the offer went through.” S summed up her philosophy this way:

Maybe just try not to take anything too seriously, and try not to be hurt when things don’t go your way? It’s easy for people who have very high aspirations to be very upset when they see people achieve dreams in ways that seem like pure luck, but the fact of the matter is we are all really lucky to be alive, well-fed, and generally safe from war and famine. Actually, there was a podcast about this, which said it really well: we always feel the headwinds, but we never appreciate the tailwinds (a biking analogy!). So maybe my life philosophy is “don’t forget the tailwinds!” Or, less pessimistically, there’s way more in life to enjoy than can be found at the end of a career path!

Once again, her message is to take the bigger picture into account!

Reading Recommendations

Try this!

May 10, 2018 admin Leave a comment

I have a lot of what I consider great ideas for my engineering communication class, but I just don’t have the time to use them all. When I try, the course becomes a crazy quilt (and I mean “crazy”) of activities and assignments. It becomes way to complicated for students to keep track of.

If you’re not living it now, remember or imagine the life of a graduate student in engineering at UCLA. You are pulled in many directions, at the beck and call of your advisor, feeling squeezed between a set of challenging expectations, and trying to meet multiple deadlines. And then I show up to teach your required writing course, all “la-di-da, this is going to be so fun,” BUT you have to check the course website every few minutes to keep up with a large set of mostly-not-very-time-consuming but surprisingly many assignments. That’s just too high a cognitive load to add to the ones these students already have.

So, on the course front: simplify, simplify, simplify.

And here, at Writineering: get all those other ideas off my chest. If you have the time to try some, alone or with others in your labs, you’ll get multiple positive outcomes.

And you’ll be saving some stressed graduate students from my inflicting them with these ideas now!

So, just to get you started, here’s big, huge suggestion number one: Read Alan Alda’s book If I Understood You, Would I Have this Look on My Face: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating (2017). And then try out some of his suggestions.

While you wait for the book to arrive**, you can start trying to identify the emotions of the people you meet throughout the day. Nothing else, just spend a moment pondering their expressions and behaviors, and then think “grumpy” or “tired” or “cheerful” (or whatever else seems appropriate).

Why? For one, you’ll start to notice how often you just barge into a conversation without paying any attention to the other person’s receptivity or mood. Second, you’ll be developing a habit of attention. Third, you’ll probably get better at identifying moods, since your subsequent interaction will give you feedback about how accurate you were. And fourth, you’ll be able to choose your words more appropriately, and have a more productive conversation, with this information at hand. Let me know if you find other benefits, too!

** A note about getting books. I have a lot of ways of accessing books, so I’m going to describe them here. You can probably find similar resources where you live, although the collections might not be as huge. First, I can order it new or used online. This is great: you own the book! But you also have to find shelf space for it, and you have to wait a couple of days. (Of course, you could read it, and then start passing it around to your friends and colleagues—this leads to fun conversations.) Second, I can go to Hoopla and connect to the Los Angeles Public Library, and they usually have the e-book or an audiobook that I can download. I can also go directly to the LAPL website, find the book, and it’s often available by download through Amazon or I can ask them to deliver the physical copy to my local branch library. If they don’t have it, I can check the e-resources of other local library systems (in my wallet are cards for the Beverly Hills Library, the Pasadena/Glendale Library, the Santa Monica Library, and the Culver City Library, but between LA and Beverly Hills, I can pretty much access what I need). You, too, can probably join more than one library system near you. Third, I can use the UCLA Library and even interlibrary loans to get almost any book for free. Sometimes interlibrary loans are a long wait, however.

Introductions: Plans and Hopes

Data on the need to define terms

April 5, 2018 admin Leave a comment

Often, engineering writers tell me that they do not need to define their terms because their audiences know what they are talking about. So this week, I did an experiment in two classes, one of 18 students and one of 23 students. They were to write down words and phrases that they need to use when discussing their work. And then we passed the lists to every other person in class, who each marked the words they did not know. They might have heard them before, but they would have to look them up, or they’d feel that the term was vague or ambiguous. In short, they’d like it to be defined. Here’s the data.

There were close to 400 unique terms, and about half of them were familiar to most people (no more than two people, or about 10%, were confused by them). But about half confused more people than that, and some confused over 60% of the people in the room.

I want to emphasize that everyone was a PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. at UCLA. They’ve all passed their preliminary exam. They are the most informed audience one might hope to have, beyond one’s lab partners. Yes, we sometimes talk to people in our very specific fields, but others should be able to understand us, too! When you go ranging around the literature for ideas, you’d like to feel that the authors are trying to help you!

I hope to continue this exercise with future classes, so I can collect more data.

One note: if there are several numbers to the right of a term, that means that more than one person put it on his or list list. In the smaller class, no term was listed by more than two people; in the bigger class, some terms were listed by four people.

EE vocabulary familiarity s18 Sheet1

Reading Recommendations

Your reading is as important as your writing

December 25, 2017 admin Leave a comment

While I’m trying to get us all to write as clearly as we can, some texts are just difficult to read. Those texts are still worthwhile; they may even be more important.

The difficulty may come out of not having enough experience with the genre or the content. It might be that the author is making a very tight distinction, one that’s hard to pick up. It might be that the content is deeply philosophical, or that the ideas are so surprising that the reader keeps trying to get the words to mean something more familiar.

But the difficulties do not mean that the text should be ignored. Yes, I want writers to be as clear as they can. I want them to be as easy to read as possible. But not all things are easy. And sometimes simplicity involves cutting too much out. Lots of material is complex. You know this in engineering, and you probably also have a pretty good idea that other areas—economics, ethics, cultures, psychology, even just describing a moment in the world the way that it happened—are complex, too.

Sometimes when you say “fine” in response to “how are you?” you mean it. But usually there’s a lot more that could be said. Keeping it simple is not always accurate!

I recommend this article by Tegan Bennet Daylight in The Guardian (12/25/17): “’The difficulty is the point’: teaching spoon-fed students how to really read.” Daylight is a college teacher in Australia, but the description of her experiences seems relevant to the ways that many students approach reading: if it’s not easy, completely “relatable,” then it’s not going to get read.

I’d love for you to go read this whole article, but I’ll still share my favorite paragraph with you. After citing a single first sentence of a novel, she writes,

If you are reading this essay, you’re a reader. You probably know this sentence, and if you don’t, you are comfortable with interpreting it. You can hear a character beginning to form: its romantic, optimistic, nostalgic voice; a voice yearning for simplicity; probably, in its deliberate imitation of a child’s singsong, the voice of a woman, a mother. You know it might take a few pages to learn just who this woman is. You’re skilled in this sort of patience.

That’s completely true. Familiarity with the process of reading a novel means that a person has the patience and anticipation to wonder what might be coming next. This works for novels, and it also works for science writing.

For example, I had always enjoyed reading as a kid, but when I moved to another country I did not have much access to books in English. There weren’t any English-language children’s books, so I started reading classics (Robert Louis Stephenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, etc.). They were hard. It was frustrating at first. I’d start a book and give up. Gradually, out of desperation, I pushed through a few. And I came to realize that it just took a few chapters to get used to the types of sentences characteristic of each author. I got “skilled in this sort of patience.”

And the same is true for academic writing in science and engineering. If a reader just starts at the beginning, they are likely to be overwhelmed by the jargon in the abstract. But knowing where to find help—which sections might be more elementary, where terms might be defined, etc—gives someone a leg up. And then patience, confidence that this CAN be figured out (but not read linearly, until much later) will lead to success.

Finally, read. Read books. Read the New York Times. Read the New York Review of Books. (And let me know what your reading, so I can read it, too! What DO working engineers read, that they talk about together?) Daylight concludes that she wants her students to “to discover that if they learn to handle language they’ll no longer be helpless, drowning in sugary gratification.” And she wants “them to see that reading breeds thinking, and thinking breeds resistance.” That’s what I want for my students, too. Read and be provoked to think and act. I want you to express yourselves–after taking some time to read and to think what that really means.

close reading

Introducing the hard stuff

November 26, 2017 admin 1 Comment

My class this quarter has gotten used to us talking about the “topography” of any piece of writing. It seems to be a helpful word in many situations, but now I want to discuss the varying levels (or altitudes) of difficulty as one moves through the landscape of the text. Sometimes the writing is hard, and sometimes it’s got to be easy (or the reader will give up). This variation is mandatory in public science writing, but you might be kind enough to give your readers a break in your academic writing, too.

In his (public-focused but pretty difficult) 2017 book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, Robert Sapolksy writes these two paragraphs as part of the introduction to an early chapter:

This chapter is one of the book’s anchors. The brain is the final common pathway, the conduit that mediates the influences of all the distal factors to be covered in the chapters to come. What happened an hour, a decade, a million years earlier? What happened were factors that impacted the brain and the behavior it produced.

This chapter has two major challenges. The first is its god-awful length. Apologies; I’ve tried to be succinct and nontechnical, but this is foundational material that needs to be covered. Second, regardless of how nontechnical I’ve tried to be, the material can overwhelm someone with no background in neuroscience. To help with that, please wade through appendix 1 around now.

(pp. 21-2)

Notice several things here:

1. He offers “metacommentary” that communicates these messages: “What I’m about to say is important.” “This is complicated, but I’m doing my best to make it as easy and clear as possible.” “If you have not taken neuroscience, then go read Appendix 1.”

2. He offers motivating questions for this section: “how does the brain work?” and “how did the brain get the way it is?”

3. That last question is attached to the book’s overall argument in that first paragraph above: he is trying to explain all the factors that go into our behavior, factors that are immediately present and factors that happened long ago. If you’re going to make readers work hard at something, they need to know that there’s a really important reason for them to do so!

4. He uses numbers. Imagine that second paragraph without the numbers, and you will be seeing a less clear paragraph. It’s very satisfying for readers to know exactly how many ideas they are about to get, and then to tick them off. “Two. Okay: One, Two. Done!”

5. He uses the word “distal.” I probably would have avoided that. I had to look it up. It basically means “distant,” but it’s more specific to anatomy.

If you actually go read the rest of Sapolky’s book, you’ll see him describing the way that our emotional experience influences our intellectual decisions. If your readers get frustrated—especially if they think that this is more your fault than theirs—then they are going to be less likely to make positive evaluation. Their emotions, not just logic, will influence their decisions.

Writers on Writing

Freedom within expectations

April 16, 2017 admin 1 Comment

If you tell someone you’re an engineer, you might then get the feeling that they think that they know a lot about you already. Engineers—like people in many careers—have to contend with all sorts of presumptions about their personalities. That’s one reason why #ilooklikeanengineer was popular and important. That movement emphasized that women are engineers, but the presumptions can work against everyone. Engineers are not just (and not always) introverted and analytical. That’s just a stereotype. Engineers are all sorts of other ways, too: active, athletic, enthusiastic, assertive, creative, instinctive, chatty, disorganized, artistic, and friendly–and they have as many individual interests as there are individuals.

What this means is that you are always contending with a stereotype. If you are aware of it—and how could you not be?—you are always deciding if you want to conform to peoples’ assumptions or not. And you probably make different decisions in different situations. It’s sometimes easier just to let others think you are brilliant and quiet: they are giving you the benefit of the doubt, and you don’t have to explain yourself. Other times, it’s convenient and even maybe fun to break the stereotype: surprising people can get their attention. If you think back, you can probably think of many examples of yourself doing one or the other.

And here’s why I said all this: the same goes for genres of writing. Each type or category of text shares characteristics. Academic journal articles in electrical engineering are (1) about EE, (2) written in formal English using some language only known to people in the specific field (but not exclusively this type of language), and (3) follows a certain structure (AIMRaD, and then similar structures within each of those sections). If you were to look at a single journal article, you could define that journal’s genre of academic writing even more specifically. And then you could mimic it, structuring your own ideas in an article that fit the expectations of that journal.

But then think about your identity again. How much do you want to conform? If you looked at several articles in that journal, you would notice a range of acceptable writing choices. You would see characteristics they all share (posing a problem, giving a result, etc.) and you’d see variation (in how much context is offered, perhaps, or how many field-specific terms are defined, or the clarity of the figures and captions). Seeing this variation enables you to stop just mimicking a genre. Instead, you can take into account your own goals and values, and then make the decisions that allow you to stay within the general range of the journal’s expectations but still express yourself as you choose.

engineering pedagogy, Forum

Engineering education

August 21, 2016 admin Leave a comment

I’m always trying to think of ways to improve undergraduate education, and particularly undergraduate engineering education. This desire comes out of my own experiences entering UCLA as an undergraduate electrical engineering major. I took a bunch of random, disconnected classes. (I think my first quarter was the third class in a calculus sequence, introductory chemistry, and a cultural anthropology class.) After a year, I hadn’t learned much about what engineers did, I’d discovered chemistry was surprisingly difficult for me, and I had fallen in love with programming (in Pascal; this was 1984). For some reason, this random set of data encouraged me to switch to the Computer Science and Engineering major. After a bunch more physics and math, and a bit of computer architecture, I still had no idea what engineers did besides think about resistors. I got a part-time job at Hughes Aircraft as an Assistant Engineer, and I discovered that testing hardware was scary but that it was fun to follow engineers around and ask them questions so I could write down what they were doing and why. That experience, however, convinced me that I did not want to be an engineer–largely because I didn’t like working at a big defense corporation. But what if I’d had a different introduction to engineering, one that focused on what I could do with that knowledge, on imagining what I valued and how I could further those values with engineering skills, and one that centered on solving problems, not memorizing formulas for problem sets? I had actually entered engineering school with ambitious ideals for what I would accomplish, but nobody asked me about those, and none of my classes seemed related to them.

So when I read about a curriculum that immediately reveals to students how engineers think, and not only that, but also motivates socially conscious students to work hard in their engineering classes to bring about the changes they envision in the world, I am interested.

The book is A Whole New Engineer: The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education by David E Goldberg and Mark Somerville (with Catherine Whitney, who I assume did much of the writing!). They tell the story of the founding of Olin College of Engineering (started in 2000), the thinking behind the curriculum, and the ways that these ideas have been (and can be) borrowed by and adapted to much larger institutions. It’s a fascinating story in itself, and I’ll probably offer several posts on some of the key ideas. Here I’ll just add its general ideas about how to get students personally, intrinsically motivated:

“Autonomy: making meaningful choices is a cornerstone of intrinsic motivation” (159). This means letting students make some choices; it means trusting them. “Autonomy-supportive instructors . . . spend more time listening, give fewer directives, ask more questions about what students want, verbalize fewer solutions to problems, make more emphatic statements, and offer greater support for students’ internalization of the learning goals” (159).
“Purpose/Relatedness: Doing things that matter to your peers and to the world at large, increases intrinsic motivation” (163). This means both that students need to have sense of connection with a community for which they are designing their products, and they also need a sense of responsibility to the very people with whom they are working. Discussing the global influences of engineering, encouraging them to see how engineering has improved people’s lives (and when it has failed to do so), and having them work in teams are ways to accomplish this goal.
“Mastery: Being effective increases intrinsic motivation”(164). This means that students need to be given opportunities to get better. They need to do something, get feedback, and improve that thing. They need to be encouraged to reflect on their accomplishments, asking “What was done well?” and “What can be improved?” (165)

The book offers many stories, and both general and specific ideas about education, curriculum, and classroom practices. I recommend that every teacher read it. I’d love to know what you think.