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Situating the Research to Practice Cycle For Increased Transformation in Engineering Education

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Conference

2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

New Orleans, Louisiana

Publication Date

June 26, 2016

Start Date

June 26, 2016

End Date

June 29, 2016

ISBN

978-0-692-68565-5

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

The Philosophy of Engineering and Technological Literacy

Tagged Division

Technological and Engineering Literacy/Philosophy of Engineering

Page Count

11

DOI

10.18260/p.25809

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/25809

Download Count

606

Paper Authors

biography

Jennifer Karlin South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

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Jennifer Karlin is an professor of industrial engineering at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and holds the Pietz Professorship for entrepreneurship and economic development.

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Cheryl Allendoerfer University of Washington

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Dr. Allendoerfer is a Research Scientist in the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.

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Rebecca A Bates Minnesota State University, Mankato

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Rebecca A. Bates received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Washington in 2004. She also received the M.T.S. degree from Harvard Divinity School in 1993. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Integrated Engineering program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, home of the Iron Range and Twin Cities Engineering programs. She is also a program director at the National Science Foundation for TCUP and HBCU-UP in the Division of Human Resource Development.

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Dan Ewert North Dakota State University

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Dr. Ewert has been involved in cardiovascular engineering for over 25 years in both research and instruction. He has consulted for major medical device companies in the area of cardiovascular engineering and performed research with US and international colleagues. He has a broad background in mechanical and electrical engineering, and physiology with specific training and expertise. His work includes modeling the cardiovascular system, ventricular assist devices, cardiac physiology, instrumentation systems and leadless cardiac pacing. He help developed and was the inaugural director of a project-based-learning engineering curriculum. He is now involved in discovery-based-learning on multi-disciplinary teams.

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biography

Ronald R Ulseth P.E. Itasca Community College

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Ron Ulseth directs and instructs in the Iron Range Engineering program in Virginia, Minnesota and he teaches in the Itasca Community College engineering program in Grand Rapids, MN. He was instrumental in growing the Itasca program from 10 students in 1992 to 160 students in 2010. In 2009, he worked with a national development team of engineering educators to develop the 100% PBL curriculum used in the Iron Range model. He has successfully acquired and managed over $10 million in educational grants including as PI on 7 grants from NSF. He has been in the classroom, teaching more than 20 credits per year to engineering students for more than 25 years. His specific areas of expertise are in active learning, faculty development, and learning community development. He has been awarded the 2012 Progress Minnesota award, 2012 Labovitz Entrepreneurialism award, and 2012 Innovator of the Year award from the Rural Community College Alliance all for his work in developing the Iron Range Engineering program. His degrees are in civil engineering (B.S., University of North Dakota), and mechanical engineering (M.S., University of Central Florida). He is licensed as a professional engineer in the state of Minnesota.

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Abstract

The educational research to educational practice cycle is an important framework for connecting the fundamental research in engineering education to the real world of the classroom and other learning environments. When applied consistently, the educational research to practice cycle bonds the two halves by elucidating new questions from practice and finding new answers through research, which is then applied in practice. Ideally, the educational researchers are grounded in the needs and changing context of the practitioner and the educational practitioner is using evidence from the research as a key component in their pedagogical decision making. While we have seen some gains through this model, large-scale, systemic transformation has been largely elusive. This paper situates the research to practice cycle in the organizational context to illustrate key barriers to transforming engineering education. This paper is designed to start a conversation within the engineering education discipline about how better situating this model in organizational structure and organizational change can make the research to practice cycle in engineering education more effective. It will define organizational structure and barriers to organizational change within the context of the research to practice cycle, including how organizational infrastructure allows researchers to craft evidence-based implementations that are more likely to succeed in a particular location and to identify a set of initial potential barriers to success. Awareness of the, often unintended, messages that the organizational infrastructure sends are an important part of managing change in our educational practices and discovering under-studied areas of engineering education. This paper also ties to on-going work by the authors to examine specific implementations of engineering education transformation and identify mechanisms to overcome organizational and systemic barriers to evidence-based changes in engineering education practice.

Karlin, J., & Allendoerfer, C., & Bates, R. A., & Ewert, D., & Ulseth, R. R. (2016, June), Situating the Research to Practice Cycle For Increased Transformation in Engineering Education Paper presented at 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana. 10.18260/p.25809

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2016 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015