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A Hands On Course On Teaching Engineering

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Conference

2008 Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Publication Date

June 22, 2008

Start Date

June 22, 2008

End Date

June 25, 2008

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Improving the Teaching Skills of Graduate Students

Tagged Division

Graduate Studies

Page Count

6

Page Numbers

13.47.1 - 13.47.6

DOI

10.18260/1-2--3555

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/3555

Download Count

442

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Paper Authors

biography

Susan Montgomery University of Michigan

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Susan Montgomery is a lecturer and program advisor in the Chemical Engineering Dept. at the University of Michigan. She earned a BSEChE from the University of Michigan, and PhD ChE from Princeton University. She is the ASEE Campus representative and faculty advisor to the ASEE graduate student group. She leads a team of students developing educational software for chemical engineering.

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Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract

A Hands-on Course on Teaching Engineering

Introduction

Most of the training future faculty receive in graduate school focuses on the research aspects of the enterprise. The typical new faculty member has little if any opportunity to prepare for the teaching aspects of an academic career. In this paper I share my experiences in nine offerings of a graduate course on Teaching Engineering. The goal of the course is to prepare graduate students for the teaching responsibilities of a faculty position, acquaint them with learning theories, give them a chance to discuss teaching issues and give them practice preparing materials for a course they might teach someday. These materials include: Educational objectives using higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, textbooks and other supporting material, detailed syllabus, sample 10 minute lecture, open-ended project and/or design activity, and hourly exam. In addition students develop teaching philosophy and teaching interest statements to help define themselves as teachers and for possible future job searches. One of the most successful initiatives in this highly interactive course has been the implementation of “teaching partners,” who support each other through the process, providing feedback on all materials developed. In this paper, I describe this course and provide suggestions for faculty considering teaching such courses themselves.

Course history

This course had its origins in my participation in the National Effective Teaching Institute, run by Profs. Richard Felder and Jim Stice in 1994 1. This was an excellent introduction to many learning theories and preparation for effective course instruction. A session at an AIChE National Conference soon after that in which Philip Wankat outlined his teaching engineering course provided the incentive for the author to create her own course. I also have benefited tremendously from participations in workshops organized by the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. Center staff have also provided a few workshops to the class itself, and in later years have joined us as discussants. The course has been offered 9 times to over 230 students and over 75 auditors. Wankat and Oreovicz’ textbook, Teaching Engineering 2, serves as the primary textbook for the course. It is supplemented by a number of readings available through the course website. In the rest of this paper students in the course will be referred to as “participants” to distinguish from the students in courses they might teach in the future.

Course objectives and components

The course outcomes are divided into three parts, as shown in Table 1. While Wankat and Oreovicz first address the preparation of course materials and then learning theories, I have found that starting with learning theories makes for a richer experience, as students can use this background in preparing the materials for a course they might teach in the future.

Montgomery, S. (2008, June), A Hands On Course On Teaching Engineering Paper presented at 2008 Annual Conference & Exposition, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 10.18260/1-2--3555

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