Debra M. Gilbuena

Productively engaging student teams in engineering: The interplay between doing and thinking

A comparative case study examined two teams for instances of Productive Disciplinary Engagement (PDE) as they completed a complex, virtual process development project. Discourse from team meetings was analyzed to interpret how engagement unfolds, specifically classifying engagement in two dimensions: School vs. Engineering World, and task co-production vs. knowledge co-construction. Teams were found to move back and forth between School World and Engineering World as different aspects of the learning system become salient and instances of PDE were triggered when teams experienced productive frictions from interlocking components of the learning system.

Epistemological frames of graduate teaching assistants and instructors in studio-based engineering classes

Many engineering programs have recently seen a significant increase in enrollment and educators have turned to alternative teaching strategies to help cope with this increase. One such approach is to incorporate Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) led studios to complement lectures. We studied a chemical engineering department that has implemented a studio approach that provides students an interactive learning environment. In this exploratory qualitative study we interview Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) and instructors to investigate their perceptions of the implementation of studios relative to the designers objective and their teaching experiences. From the latter, we infer epistemological frames based on their responses to: how they prepare for class as a student, how they prepare for class as a teacher, and how they deliver the studio content.