Students explore and cultivate their curiosity as a virtue through in-class discussion and out-of-class reflection and readings.

About the module:

Students explore and cultivate their curiosity as a virtue through in-class discussion and out-of-class reflection and readings. Through the first half of the semester, students learn about the course topic area before eventually being introduced to an open-ended final project where they will pitch their own biomimetic design concept. When this project is introduced, students spend time in class discussing what curiosity means, how they have used it so far, and how they can continue to be curious in their final project. Students then reflect on curiosity as a virtue near the end of the semester and their projects. Students continue to practice curious habits throughout the final project through student-selected readings and discussions.

How module was implemented:

The course is designed to integrate character education – specifically developing curiosity as a virtue – throughout the course. In this way, there is no freestanding module on learning curiosity, but instead, curiosity is seen as an integral disposition required to do well in the course and that the course material demands of students. The course has specific activities that focus on students learning about and discussing curiosity. The nature of biomimetic design, however, requires curiosity, a sense of exploration, and the ability to be interested in the world around one as a resource for engineering solutions. In this way, the course itself is a “natural” ground in from to develop curiosity. The activities below make students cognizant of this process, thereby engaging in students’ metacognition.  

Virtuous curiosity is defined as a virtue that involves “a willingness to explore the unknown, embrace novelty, and accept uncertainty” (Hulme, Green, and Ladd, 2013, 54). To be a virtue, curiosity must be directed toward good ends and the wellbeing of one’s self and others. Virtuous curiosity, then, is not just a disposition to approach each new situation with a curious spirit but also requires an outlook that inspires one to use their curiosity to benefit others.

This module includes 1 in-class discussion on curiosity specifically as well as numerous (5+) discussions on readings chosen by students. It also includes 2 curiosity inventory surveys (1 at the start of the final project and 1 near the end) and 1 homework assignment graded on a 25-point scale (rubric in folders below). 

Activities:

In-Class Discussion (Activity #1), occurs when introducing the Final Project, 45-60 min

(This was completed virtually in Zoom and was done with a Google Jamboard, but could be completed in person with sticky notes on a white board.)

Students are introduced to the open-ended final project and told this project will require curiosity. A single powerpoint slide is used for this introduction (Appendix A) which includes a mention of being curious.

Students brainstorm using a Google Jamboard (link sent to students). There are 6 slides each with a question at the top for them to answer. Students are told to stay on slide 1 until the instructor says to move to slide 2 and so on (this can be monitored in the Jamboard). The questions at the top of each slide are initially broadly about curiosity but eventually get more specific to class topics and intend to encourage brainstorming and exploration to cultivate curiosity as students consider their final project. The questions used are:

• What does it mean to be curious? How would you define curiosity?
• What other virtues may be necessary to have virtuous curiosity? Why?
• What is something you learned or explored so far that was particularly interesting?
• What are the most striking differences between nature and human designs?
• Have you been inspired by something you read or found?
• In what area of engineering do you think you want your Final Project to focus?

The outcome of this brainstorming from Spring 2021 is included in Appendix B.

Students discuss the outcome of the Jamboard and answer each question as a group with the Instructor.

Curiosity Inventory Initial (Activity #2), occurs after the discussion from activity #1 in-class before leaving, 5 min. Students complete a short, ungraded survey on Canvas at the end of class after activity #1. The instructions, questions, and possible answers can be seen in Appendix C.

Gathering Reading Topics (Activity #3), occurs during the initial 1-2 weeks of final project development when students are brainstorming, 30-60 min out-of-class. In class, we spend 5-10min looking at potential online repositories to help students brainstorm for their final project. For this class, those were biomimicry.org and asknature.org. We looked through these websites and discussed brainstorming for their final project. Students were then tasked to explore these websites (or others!) outside of class to help them brainstorm. In response to a Canvas discussion topic, they had to post the URL to a single blog post or article related to biomimicry and 1-2 sentences stating why they found that article or post compelling.

Reading Completions and Discussions (Activity #4), occurs at the beginning of each class for 3-4 weeks, 30 min out-of-class and 15-20 min in-class for each class. Over the next 3-4 weeks, students begin work developing their final projects using several guiding assignments and in-class lectures and activities. During this time, they have 6-8 class lectures that occur. Before each lecture, they are assigned 2-3 readings chosen by the professor or their peers via activity #3. They must use the Hypothesis tool which allows them to annotate these readings and leave comments that only those within the course and the professor can view and respond to. At the beginning of the following lecture, we spend 15-20min discussing the readings and what they found most interesting or compelling. These discussions are not structured, and students are encouraged to respond to each other and bring up any features of any of the readings that they want.

Homework Assignment: Cultivating Curiosity (Activity #5), assigned near the end of activity #4 and due on the final class day, 1 hr. Once students have completed the readings from activity #4, they complete this assignment which is shown in Appendix D along with the rubric. This assignment is worth 25 points (~2.5% of their final grade) so it is lower stakes.

Curiosity Inventory Final (Activity #6), occurs at the end of the final class time before leaving, 5 min. Students complete a short, ungraded survey on Canvas at the end of the final class. The instructions, questions, and possible answers can be seen in Appendix C.

Course Evaluation Questions, occurs during finals week as students complete their final project presentations, 5-10min. While students complete a full course evaluation which takes more time, two questions are added to examine curiosity in the course more closely. These questions are:

• Do you feel this course helped you to cultivate curiosity as a character virtue? If so, in what areas do you feel curious?
• How did this course help you to develop your curiosity?

ABET outcomes associated with this module:

• SO7: "An ability to acquire and apply new knowledge as needed, using appropriate learning strategies."The module learning objective is to practice curious habits and cultivate curiosity outside of the classroom and beyond course topics. This promotes brainstorming habits and idea development for students which are crucial to acquiring and applying new knowledge as needed.

Student responses to evaluation questions:

Question #1: Do you feel this course helped you to cultivate curiosity as a character virtue? If so, in what areas do you feel curious?

• “I do feel this course cultivated curiosity. There were many times after this class ended that I would throw ideas out to my friends and just admire how crazy nature is.”
• “Yes! I found myself doing a lot of research over the course of the semester, and even if I did not end up using that research for a particular purpose, I still enjoyed learning new things.”
• “Yes, it helped me to understand that solutions to problems can often be found in nature and sometimes in the places where you least expect.”
• “Yes this course has made me think about the world around me in a much different way.”
• “Yes, I am definitely more interested in the crossover between engineering and fashion, and have become more interested in nature!”

Question #2: How did this course help you to develop your curiosity?

• “I was pushed to think creatively and to explore things that I didn't know much about. It also exposed me to a lot of innovations that I didn't know existed.”
• “I liked that it was more open ended and I could really explore what I wanted to in multiple presentations.”
• “I love how tangible everything is that we learned about. I think a lot of the assignments caused me to go find information on my own, rather than just handing me information to process.”
• “Exploration into topics that would not typically be explored ‐ and learning to branch off of these topics/extend my research to new spaces.
• “I found myself wanted to learn more about certain things I had found in my research.”