Board 133: Scaling and Assessment of an Evidence-Based Faculty Development Program for Promoting Active Learning Pedagogical Strategies
- Conference
- Location
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Tampa, Florida
- Publication Date
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June 15, 2019
- Start Date
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June 15, 2019
- End Date
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June 19, 2019
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topic
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NSF Grantees Poster Session
- Page Count
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17
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--32240
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/32240
- Download Count
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497
Paper Authors
Lydia Ross Arizona State University
Lydia Ross is a doctoral candidate and graduate research assistant at Arizona State University. Her research interests focus on higher education equity and access, particularly within STEM.
Lindy Hamilton Mayled Arizona State University
Lindy Hamilton Mayled is the Director of Instructional Effectiveness for the Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. She has a PhD in Psychology of Learning, Education, and Technology from Grand Canyon University. Her research and areas of interest are in improving educational outcomes for STEM students through the integration of active learning and technology-enabled frequent feedback. Prior to her role and Director of Instructional Effectiveness, she worked as the Education Project Manager for the NSF-funded JTFD Engineering faculty development program, as a high school math and science teacher, and as an Assistant Principal and Instructional & Curriculum Coach.
Stephen J. Krause Arizona State University
Stephen Krause is professor in the Materials Science Program in the Fulton School of Engineering at Arizona State University. He teaches in the areas of introductory materials engineering, polymers and composites, and capstone design. His research interests include evaluating conceptual knowledge, misconceptions and technologies to promote conceptual change. He has co-developed a Materials Concept Inventory and a Chemistry Concept Inventory for assessing conceptual knowledge and change for introductory materials science and chemistry classes. He is currently conducting research on NSF projects in two areas. One is studying how strategies of engagement and feedback with support from internet tools and resources affect conceptual change and associated impact on students' attitude, achievement, and persistence. The other is on the factors that promote persistence and success in retention of undergraduate students in engineering. He was a coauthor for best paper award in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2013. Last year he received the ASEE Mike Ashby Outstanding Materials Educator Award.
Eugene Judson
Arizona State University
orcid.org/0000-0002-0124-8476
Eugene Judson is an Associate Professor of for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. He also serves as an Extension Services Consultant for the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). His past experiences include having been a middle school science teacher, Director of Academic and Instructional Support for the Arizona Department of Education, a research scientist for the Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology (CRESMET), and an evaluator for several NSF projects. His first research strand concentrates on the relationship between educational policy and STEM education. His second research strand focuses on studying STEM classroom interactions and subsequent effects on student understanding. He is a co-developer of the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) and his work has been cited more than 2200 times and he has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals such as Science Education and the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Keith D. Hjelmstad Arizona State University
Keith D. Hjelmstad is President's Professor of Civil Engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University.
James A. Middleton Arizona State University
James A. Middleton is Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Director of the Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology at Arizona State University. For the last three years he also held the Elmhurst Energy Chair in STEM education at the University of Birmingham in the UK. Previously, Dr. Middleton was Associate Dean for Research in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education at Arizona State University, and Director of the Division of Curriculum and Instruction. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1992, where he also served in the National Center for Research on Mathematical Sciences Education as a postdoctoral scholar.
Robert J. Culbertson Arizona State University
Robert J. Culbertson is an Associate Professor of Physics. Currently, he teaches introductory mechanics and electrodynamics for physics majors and a course in musical acoustics, which was specifically designed for elementary education majors. He is director of the ASU Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) Project, which strives to produce more and better high school physics teachers. He is also director of Master of Natural Science degree program, a graduate program designed for in-service science teachers. He works on improving persistence of students in STEM majors, especially under-prepared students and students from under-represented groups.
Casey Jane Ankeny Northwestern University
Casey J. Ankeny, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at Northwestern University. Casey received her bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2006 and her doctorate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University in 2012 where she studied the role of shear stress in aortic valve disease. Currently, she is investigating cyber-based student engagement strategies in flipped and traditional biomedical engineering courses. She aspires to understand and improve student attitude, achievement, and persistence in student-centered courses.
Ying-Chih Chen Arizona State University
Ying-Chih Chen is an assistant professor in the Division of Teacher Preparation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.
His research takes two distinct but interrelated paths focused on elementary students’ learning in science and engineering as well as in-service science teachers’ professional development. The first focus involves how language as a learning tool improves students’ conceptual understandings, literacy, and representation competencies in science. His second research focus is on how in-service teachers develop their knowledge for teaching science and engineering in argument-based inquiry classrooms. This research is aimed at developing measures of teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) for adopting the argument-based inquiry approach, as well as developing tools to capture the interactive nature of PCK.
Kara L. Hjelmstad Arizona State University
Kara Hjelmstad has currently worked as a faculty associate and student teacher supervisor for Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. After earning a BA degree in elementary education and an M.Ed. degree in curriculum and instruction, she spent twelve years teaching K-5 and enrichment at the elementary level.
In 2010, Kara began teaching courses and supervising student teachers at ASU. Kara is TAP certified, an evaluation system designed to improve teaching effectiveness and student achievement. The TAP evaluation involves classroom observations, coaching, and feedback/reflection for professional growth. Kara has worked with 60+ student teachers in various subjects at the pre-K through 12th grade level, and conducted over 100 TAP classroom observations.
Since the fall of 2016, Kara has been working with the JTFD Project, an NSF grant working to improve active learning in engineering education. She has completed 300 RTOP classroom observations in ASU engineering courses (civil, environmental, construction, chemical, aero/mechanical, materials, transportation, and biomedical engineering). The RTOP or Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol, is a rubric designed to assess student centered learning practices in math and science. Kara also provided instructional coaching for 37 engineering faculty grant participants, after their teaching observations.
Kristi Glassmeyer
Arizona State University
orcid.org/0000-0002-7665-7768
Kristi is a Ph.D student in Educational Policy and Evaluation at Arizona State University.
Sarah Hoyt Arizona State University
Sarah Hoyt is currently the Education Project Manager for the NSF-funded JTFD Engineering faculty development program. Her educational background includes two Master's degrees from Grand Canyon University in Curriculum and Instruction and Education Administration. Her areas of interest are in student inclusion programs and creating faculty development that ultimately boost engagement and performance in students from lower SES backgrounds. Prior to her role as project manager, Sarah worked as the SEI Coordinator for a local high school and has also developed an inclusion program for Migrant and Immigrant students that utilized co-teaching and active learning as keystones of the program. She began her educational career as a high school teacher, teaching courses in English, math, and science.
Abstract
This complete research-based paper explores a successful faculty development program aimed at increasing awareness and use of evidence-based pedagogical strategies among engineering faculty across multiple disciplines. Research demonstrates that student-centered, or active learning, strategies promote greater student learning and achievement. Despite this evidence, however, the majority of engineering faculty still employ teacher-centered strategies, or the traditional lecture method, in their classrooms. Therefore, there is a strong need for professional development to increase faculty awareness and use of student-centered teaching strategies.
The setting for this professional development program, which is funded through NSF’s Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program, is a large, public university in the southwestern United States. The program is entitled, “Just-in-Time-Teaching with Two Way Formative Feedback for Multiple Disciplines (JTFD)”. This large-scale program utilizes a train-the-trainer model, where two people from seven different engineering disciplines were recruited to become disciplinary leader pairs (DLPs). The DLPs go through the program under the direction of the project leaders/PIs. Then the following year, the DLPs become the “trainers,” where they lead their own disciplinary workshops and community of practice sessions for a group of faculty, ranging from 8 to 15 people. The program consists of 8 biweekly workshops, which covers Bloom’s taxonomy, learning objectives, interactive classes, active and cooperative learning, muddiest points, tech tools, and fostering inclusive learning environments. The following semester, faculty participate in semi-structured Community of Practice (CoP) sessions to discuss challenges and successes of implementing active learning strategies and to share ideas. There were two year-long cohorts which totaled 80 faculty who completed the program. In this paper, we discuss the creation and scaling of the program. In particular, we describe the structure and management of the program, strategies and topics covered, assessment/evaluation, and key takeaways.
The professional development program was evaluated through multiple methods, including surveys from faculty, classroom observations, and student achievement data. Data collection and instruments are discussed in greater detail in the paper. Key highlights include a 13% increase in average use of active learning strategies by faculty after participating in the program. There was also an average increase of 34% in use of formative feedback pedagogical practices after the program. Classroom observations were conducted on all faculty using the Reformed Teaching Observational Protocol (RTOP) instrument and showed an average shift of 7% from instructor-centered teaching practice toward student-centered learning practice. 100% of the faculty participants reported that the JTFD program would be valuable to future instructional practice and career success. All of the faculty also reported that they would recommend or strongly recommend this professional development program to their colleagues. A full discussion of the program evaluation is presented in the paper.
This paper describes the creation and scaling, structure and implementation, and assessment of a large-scale, successful professional development program. Full results of program evaluation and data will be presented in the final paper. Additionally, links to all program materials, such as workshops, readings, CoP guides, and assessments, are included in the paper. We will conclude by discussing key takeaways and lessons learned from the professional development program.
Ross, L., & Mayled, L. H., & Krause, S. J., & Judson, E., & Hjelmstad, K. D., & Middleton, J. A., & Culbertson, R. J., & Ankeny, C. J., & Chen, Y., & Hjelmstad, K. L., & Glassmeyer, K., & Hoyt, S. (2019, June), Board 133: Scaling and Assessment of an Evidence-Based Faculty Development Program for Promoting Active Learning Pedagogical Strategies Paper presented at 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Tampa, Florida. 10.18260/1-2--32240
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