This week I met with each of the students in my MicroPs class and discussed their lab assignment. The first lab assignment was primarily soldering components onto their PCB and verifying that all of the components worked. As part of these lab interviews, I get to ask each student a question about their project to try to test their knowledge. One thing I noticed is that many of the students didn’t own their project as fully as I would like. What I mean by that is that when I would ask what a button on their board does, then would respond by asking me if it does what they think it does. This is a very student sort of behavior, and I’d really like to teach them to be more confident and assertive in what they turn in. Today, I’m going to tell the class that they should not answer my lab interview questions with another question, but instead respond with confidence according to their best knowledge. Of course if you don’t know the answer, you really shouldn’t say something as if it’s true, but the right way to respond in that case is with full honesty that you don’t know the answer, but you suspect or believe it works this way.
When you design something, you should own that design. That is all.