Understanding Student Differences bers into formulas but they don’t know how to think!” And yet, most engineering departments have one or more faculty members Department of Chemical Engineering North Carolina State University who manage to get many of those same students to perform at remarkably high levels, displaying first-rate problem-solving and critREBECCA BRENT ical and creative thinking skills. Skill deficiencies observed in engiEducation Designs, Inc. neering graduates must therefore also be attributable in part to what instructors are doing or failing to do. An implication of these observations is that to reduce enrollABSTRACT ment attrition and improve the thinking and problem-solving skills of engineering graduates, engineering schools should attempt to Students have different levels of motivation, different attitudes improve the quality of their teaching, which in turn requires underabout teaching and learning, and different responses to specific standing the learning needs of today’s engineering students and declassroom environments and instructional practices. The more signing instruction to meet those needs. The problem is that no two thoroughly instructors understand the differences, the better students are alike. They have different backgrounds, strengths and chance they have of meeting the diverse learning needs of all of weaknesses, interests, ambitions, senses of responsibility, levels of their students. Three categories of diversity that have been shown motivation, and approaches to studying. Teaching methods also to have important implications for teaching and learning are vary. Some instructors mainly lecture, while others spend more differences in students’ learning styles (characteristic ways of time on demonstrations or activities; some focus on principles and taking in and processing information), approaches to learning others on