Cheryl Allendoerfer

Awareness of and receptiveness to active learning strategies among STEM faculty

Despite strong evidence of the positive impact of active learning strategies, STEM faculty demonstrate a spectrum of receptiveness to incorporating active learning into their classrooms, and for a variety of reasons, engineering classes continue to be dominated by a passive lecture style. This paper draws on data from a four-year study that investigated the use of five social instruction strategies, including active learning. Twenty-four STEM faculty at 4 institutions were interviewed regarding their understanding of and attitudes toward these strategies. This paper focuses on the results of the active learning component of these interviews. Faculty most often interpreted active learning as what students do and viewed self-motivation as a key component of what students think while active learning. These results, while drawn from a small sample population, can nevertheless make an important contribution to understanding why passive learning remains predominant in the STEM classroom. This paper examines how the findings from this study can inform efforts to promote changes in STEM education that would bring more active learning to the classroom.

Mapping beliefs about teaching to patterns of instruction within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

In this paper, we identify beliefs about teaching and patterns of instruction valued and emphasized by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics faculty in higher education in the USA. Drawing on the notion that effective teaching is student-centered rather than teacher-centered and must include a balance of knowledge-, learner-, community-, and assessment-centered learning environments; we use qualitative interview data to explore how facultys reported beliefs about teaching are associated with their consideration of these four types of environments. Findings indicated that although a range of beliefs about teaching emerged, most were firmly located in knowledge-centered learning environments, with little or no focus on the remaining three learning environments. Furthermore, even patterns of instruction that were heavily student-centered were situated within a knowledge-centered learning framework. We argue that for student-centered instruction to be truly successful, faculty must consider all four learning environments in crafting and facilitating the classroom environment.

Special session - communities in practice in engineering education: what are we learning?

Engineering education research crosses multiple disciplines and as such there are no discrete or clear guidelines. Rather, it is evolving through practice - and the community is at a point in time where dialogue and community building are important next steps for advancing engineering education scholarship. The goal of this interactive session is to make visible and shared what we as a community are learning - a form of knowledge that has typically been outside the realm of formal presentations and publications. We will do this by creating an interactive knowledge creating community of practice forum on challenges of engaging in engineering education research and strategies for success. To anchor the forum, we will draw on the shared experiences of engineering faculty and graduate students who participated in a year long engineering education research program, the Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education (ISEE)

Credentialing in the CSET education change process

Efforts have been made to improve technical and professional skills in engineering graduates, but little widespread change in pedagogy has occurred within U.S. engineering education institutions. Our group studied the genesis and implementation of an innovative engineering curriculum (Iron Range Engineering) through a series of interviews with a wide range of stakeholders. Using a grounded theory approach, we found that to “shoehorn” an innovative curriculum into a traditional university setting required ad hoc solutions - almost akin to hacking a system. The findings in the study of this process also showed that the most common barriers to widespread educational innovation can be framed as credentialing issues, whether as excuses for not implementing change or as legitimate obstacles. At the root of the credentialing issue is the ubiquitous standard unit of effort-the credit hour, which was originally designed simply to measure faculty workload rather than student learning. This paper seeks to describe the breadth of credentialing in terms of scope and groups involved. Finally, we propose conversations that change agents in CSET education can use to turn credentialing into a lever for systemic curricular transformation.

The role of belonging in engagement, retention and persistence in computer science (abstract only)

Retaining students in computer science (CS) majors has been a persistent topic among CS educators for almost two decades. Discussion and research has largely focused on improving student engagement in the academic experience in order to provide a more welcoming and compelling introduction to the field. Research has identified a wide variety of factors affecting student engagement in general, which in turn affects key outcomes including academic achievement, retention and persistence. Feeling connected to a community and sense of belonging can substantially influence student engagement. Our study suggests that this sense of belonging can also help mitigate student perceptions that influence them to be discouraged, especially about their ability to succeed, and leave computer science. In particular, support from extra-curricular as well as academic communities may lead students to perceive that ability is not a binary, fixed constraint, but a malleable gradient that can be influenced by factors within the students control.

Work-in-progress — Investigating best practices in the research mentoring of underrepresented minority students in engineering

Few empirical investigations are available on the effectiveness of best practices in mentoring underrepresented minority undergraduate and graduate students in engineering research. We are collecting and analyzing narratives from 200 underrepresented minority participants on their personal experiences with research mentoring in engineering. Participants describe a specific, powerful, and memorable interaction with a research mentor that they found to influence their academic choices or career decisions. Interactions may be positive or negative. Findings will be used to develop resources for research mentors to improve mentoring.

Special session - communities of practice in engineering education: How do we investigate diversity and global engineering?

In todays context, we are all challenged to consider issues of diversity and global engineering in the context of engineering education. However, little explicit guidance has been given on how to conceptualize diversity and global engineering in meaningful ways, and how to develop research questions that allow us to rigorously investigate the issues at hand. This session will provide an interactive forum for exploring those questions, finding answers collaboratively, and moving ones own work forward. To anchor the forum, we will draw on the experiences of engineering faculty and graduate students who participated in a year-long engineering education research program, the Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education (ISEE). The session will build on a similar session offered at the 2005 FIE conference to expand the growing engineering education research community, extend the knowledge-generating work begun in the 2005 session, and add two new components: 1) a focus on the process of developing and refining a research question, and 2) an emphasis on studying diversity and global engineering issues.