Finessing the Introductory Standards Workshop: Efforts Toward Active Learning

The opportunity of introducing engineering students to technical standards literature is a rewarding experience for the engineering librarian. Librarians must be careful not to rely too much on the lecture as an educational technique. This paper describes creative efforts to introduce active learning techniques to the typical one-hour workshop. Following a shorter lecture, workshop attendees will be given topics to tackle in small groups. The lecture will include ideas for discovering standards of possible interest such as literature searching (databases such as Compendex, which indexes standards or full text databases like IEEE Xplore and ASTM Compass), references in handbooks or specialized encyclopedia entries (or other monographs), articles on design of artifacts (products), discussions with colleagues/bosses, product descriptions when sourcing materials for a design, labels on items or cartons, or searching a standards supplier database. Attendees will work on the problem of finding related standards to a given engineering scenario. Scenario possibilities include 1) standards information needs for a small business for innovative piezoelectric products, 2) locating standards related to tissue engineering, and 3) standards need to be gathered for a university research group that explores microgrids. Scenarios have the possibility of appearing contrived unless academic librarians reach out to engineering professors for possibilities that could be explored for engineering design courses and capstone project courses.