Pedagogical “Seasoning” for Engineering Class Using Analogy, Message, and Theme in the Story

Engineering subjects typically do not refer to the Bible directly and may refer to technical things as neutral or independent of Christianity. In the Bible, Jesus frequently used analogies in His teaching. Through analogy, Jesus revealed truths to His audience in an effective way to enlighten and teach them. Moreover, Jesus used analogies to make sense only to a selected and chosen audience such as His disciples and to hide the meaning from other people. Jesus was successful in making His audiences listen to His teachings and understand His heart. With the use of analogy, an audience understands ideas and a message in a greater way because those analogies are close to and connected with their everyday lives and common sense. Similarly, analogies can open the eyes of an audience of students in a class, helping them to learn key ideas and concepts with the help of indirect comparison and similarity. An analogy can be effectively used when it is carefully selected and embedded into the class materials. Eventually, the learners should receive motivation and experience ‘Aha!’ moments to think about Christian truth in their engineering subjects. In this paper the authors introduce pedagogical practices conducted at LeTourneau University in various classes. These practices can make the class more alive and provide motivation to make the students think about Jesus and His Kingdom in a given engineering subject. Specifically, the authors examine one course, an Electromagnetics class with its devotional, class catch phrase, and analogies. Finally, the authors note how a course can be renewed and refreshed as it adopts a pedagogically applied analogy and class theme over messages throughout the course work. The authors are convinced that conducting such analogies will bring more passion and dynamics into the classes. This pedagogical approach encourages students not only to learn information and deepen their knowledge but also to connect their work with their beliefs and deepen their motivation.