Order instructions
Length: Summaries roughly should be 10-15% of the original. Thus, if you are summarizing a ten page article, your summary should be one-to-two pages. Your evaluation should be brief yet complete, using PERSONAL EXAMPLES from your experience at work, in school, through reading/watching media, and other venues that inform your insights into why you agree with, disagree with, or wish to modify in some way the author’s main argument.
Protocol:
1. Follow general principles as covered in your Guidelines for Summarizing and Evaluating lecture.
2. Follow the template provided in your lecture. That means: Use those four headings to organize your summary/evaluation. You are summarizing when you identify the author’s THESIS, MAIN POINTS, and CONCLUSIONS. You switch from “summary” guidelines at that point and start using “evaluation” guidelines in the final memo/email heading, EVALUATION.
In short: THESIS/MAIN POINTS/CONCLUSIONS sections of your memo/email refer to the author’s argument, while you are speaking from your own experience, using first-person voice if you wish, in the EVALUATION section.
Assignment:
Summarize and evaluate David Jonassen and Chwee Beng Lee’s “Everyday Problem Solving in Engineering.” You can find the article attached
After summarizing Jonassen and Lee’s thesis, main points, and conclusions, answer the following “Question for Evaluation” (basically include the answer of the following question in the evaluation, come up with a general answer, ignore the PSU part obviously since you arent from here):
Section V of Jonassen and Lee’s article is entitled, “Implications for Engineering Educators.” Based on their overall argument throughout the article, assess your sense of the preparedness for solving problems in the workplace upon graduating from PSU. In particular, you might address the question of whether “problem solving” from your understanding of human behavior is any different for engineers than for others, and whether curriculum designed particularly for engineers needs to be specialized in the ways they suggest. In short, are the “problems” associated with effective problem solving pretty much universal elements of human interaction, and what makes us think that engineers have a better shot at getting it right than the “rest of us” whom, you’ll recall, Winsor wrote about in our article for last week.
