Nancy Simpson

Understanding and improving faculty professional development in teaching

Various entities within and related to higher education offer activities designed to promote professional development of faculty in the area of teaching. A critical challenge to these efforts is the lack of understanding of the actual process of faculty development in teaching. Insight into what faculty members believe about learning, assessment, and teaching, and how those views change, would assist efforts to improve faculty development opportunities. This paper describes the current status of assessment of faculty professional development activities related to teaching. Working from this foundation, it suggests how to improve assessment strategies and begin the process of measuring the impact of specific program activities on faculty beliefs and practices. In addition, it describes ways of investigating and drawing conclusions about professional development process paths in the area of teaching, variables that influence and enhance development trajectory, and roles of various types of faculty development activities in this process.

Frameworks for faculty development

Faculty development is pivotal to improvement in engineering education. Faculty perceptions of these efforts as well as their attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about learning and teaching, in addition to their experience and operational confidence regarding implementation of innovative approaches all impact translation of innovative approaches to actual classroom practice. Improvement efforts can be derailed due to faculty mental models that result in misunderstanding and/or misapplication of new content and pedagogy. Therefore, more understanding about the nature of faculty development activities is a necessary co-requisite for efforts to improve engineering education. The MESSAGE framework applies concepts from learning theory approaches to faculty development and offers structural factors to consider in developing learning activities for faculty members. The goal of this paper is to provide a framework for non-traditional approaches to faculty development as well as traditional approaches such as workshops and individual consultations and to explore these approaches within the MESSAGE framework

Active demonstrations for enhancing learning

Demonstrations can be very effective at engaging students, generating interest in a topic, and enhancing student learning. A key component to an effective demonstration is active student engagement throughout the entire process. This means students are involved in discussing the purpose of the demo; predicting what will happen during the demo; discussing who developed theories to help us understand what happens during the demo; and comparing observations to predictions, as opposed to simply passively watching a demonstration. Demonstrations can occur at three different stages of a course topic: as an introduction, as a wrap-up and an aid used throughout the class discussion of a topic. Depending on when they occur, different types of learning outcomes are achieved. This paper presents a model for infusing demonstrations into an engineering science class and the use of this model during a semester. Assessment includes components from both faculty and students, as well as from a faculty development professional who is an instructor in a different discipline.

Classroom demonstrations with multiple modes: Virtual + reality = enhanced learning

Demonstrations can be very effective at engaging students, generating interest in a topic, and enhancing student learning. Demonstrations can occur at three different stages of a course topic: as an introduction, as a wrap-up and an aid used throughout the class discussion of a topic. A key component to an effective demonstration is active student engagement throughout the entire process. This means students are involved in discussing the purpose of the demo; predicting what will happen during the demo; discussing who developed theories to help us understand what happens during the demo; and comparing observations to predictions, as opposed to simply passively watching a demonstration. This paper presents a model for infusing demonstrations into an engineering science class and the use of this model during a semester. Demonstrations in this class incorporate both software simulation and physical models of dynamic systems. While physical models provide a concrete example, computer simulations allow the exploration of ldquowhat-ifrdquo scenarios and greater meta-cognitive activities. Assessment includes components from both faculty and students.