Extending Faculty Development through a Sustainable Community of Practice
- Conference
- Location
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Virtual On line
- Publication Date
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June 22, 2020
- Start Date
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June 22, 2020
- End Date
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June 26, 2021
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Faculty Development Division
- Page Count
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13
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--34655
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/34655
- Download Count
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301
Paper Authors
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.
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 and 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.
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 faculty development and evaluating conceptual knowledge and strategies to promote conceptual change. He has co-developed a Materials Concept Inventory and a Chemistry Concept Inventory for assessing conceptual knowledge and change for materials science and chemistry classes. He is currently conducting research in two areas. One is studying how strategies of engagement and feedback and internet tool use affect conceptual change and impact on students' attitude, achievement, and persistence. The other is on a large-scale NSF faculty development program and its effect on change in faculty teaching beliefs, engagement strategies, and classroom practice. Recent honors include coauthoring the ASEE Best Paper Award in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2013 and the ASEE Mike Ashby Outstanding Materials Educator Award in 2018.
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.
Kara L. Hjelmstad Arizona State University
Kara Hjelmstad has been a faculty associate and student teacher supervisor for Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University since 2010. Previously, she earned an M.Ed. degree in curriculum and instruction, and spent twelve years teaching at the elementary level.
From the fall of 2016 through the spring of 2019, Kara worked 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 instruction in math and science. Kara also provided instructional coaching for 37 engineering faculty grant participants, after their teaching observations.
Claire Fletcher Honeycutt Arizona State University
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.
Lydia Ross Arizona State University
Dr. Lydia Ross is a clinical assistant professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. She also serves as the executive director of the Association for Education Finance & Policy. She holds a PhD in Educational Policy and Evaluation from Arizona State University. Her research focuses on equity and access and in higher education, with a focus on STEM.
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.
Ke Liu Arizona State University
Abstract
Research has shown that creating communities of practice can help solidify organizational learning. With pedagogical shifts towards engagement-style teaching and active learning, institutions are working to create robust faculty development that will not only provide the necessary support for shifting pedagogical styles, but one that will also sustain what is learned and provide an opportunity for faculty to continue that discussion beyond the end of the professional development series. Communities of Practice (CoPs) create a way to continue to provide support for faculty that is collaborative, peer-engaged, structured, and non-evaluative. This study examines the extension of a faculty development program through a sustainable CoP across multiple disciplines in engineering at a large southwestern university. The IUSE NSF funded grant began in the fall of 2015 with the goal of shifting teacher-centered learning to student-centered learning through active learning and formative feedback. Once the workshop series concluded, the grant established ongoing CoPs that have been sustained for the past two years, and is currently entering its fourth year.
The initial program utilized a train-the-trainer model with multi-disciplinary engineering faculty participated in eight bi-weekly workshops and six biweekly CoPs for a year-long faculty development program. The trainers, disciplinary leader pairs (DLPs) who were chosen by the PIs, first completed the eight workshops and six CoPs before moving on to lead their own workshops with faculty from the same discipline the following year. Workshop topics included Bloom’s Taxonomy, learning objectives, interactive classes, active and cooperative learning, muddiest points, tech tools, and fostering inclusive learning environments. The subsequent CoPs followed a semi-structured format; in other words, each session had a chapter from Felder and Brent’s Teaching and Learning STEM: A Practical Guide but also provided opportunities for faculty to discuss the process of implementing active learning into their classes and sharing ideas.
At the conclusion of the workshop series, participants were encouraged to continue attending the CoPs. In the Fall of 2018, topics related to active learning were expanded to include sessions that faculty deemed important for the year. Topics from this semester focused on sharing tips on migrating course content to the new LMS. In the Spring of 2019, using faculty feedback, the CoP topics were expanded further and included: 3 Ways to Integrate Active Learning into Your Classroom in 10 Minutes or Less!; Asking the Right Questions: A Discussion of Building Tests to Improve Student Achievement; Psychology-Based Approaches to Improving Student Motivation; 5 Features You’re Not Using in Canvas (But Should Be). Based on faculty feedback through the use of surveys, the new topics were found to be of value and attendance remained steady with a slow increase. The Fall 2019 topics include Setting the Tone/Building Relationships on the First Day for the Engaged Class; Do My Students Know What I Want Them to Know? Using a Backward Design Approach to Assessment; Getting the Wayward Student Back on Track Using Midterm Formative Feedback and Assessment; Motivating Your Students to Finish Strongly: Ending the Semester Successfully. Attendance at the start of the semester is higher than the average attendance of the previous year. Results of this data analysis are ongoing and full results will be explored in the final paper. The preferred method of presentation is active lecture to engage the audience.
Hoyt, S., & Mayled, L. H., & Krause, S. J., & Hjelmstad, K. D., & Hjelmstad, K. L., & Honeycutt, C. F., & Judson, E., & Ross, L., & Middleton, J. A., & Culbertson, R. J., & Liu, K. (2020, June), Extending Faculty Development through a Sustainable Community of Practice Paper presented at 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual On line . 10.18260/1-2--34655
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