Assessing Faculty and Organizational Change in a Professional Development Program with Workshops and Disciplinary Communities of Practice
- Conference
- Location
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Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
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June 23, 2018
- Start Date
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June 23, 2018
- End Date
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July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Continuing Professional Development
- Page Count
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17
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--29820
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/29820
- Download Count
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611
Paper Authors
Stephen J. Krause Arizona State University
Stephen Krause is professor in the Materials Science Program in the Fulton Schools 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, evaluating conceptual knowledge change, 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 a large scale NSF faculty development project. His team is studying how workshops on strategies of engagement and feedback with support from internet tools and resources affect faculty beliefs, classroom practice, and development of disciplinary communities of practice and associated student achievement. He was a coauthor for the best paper award in the Journal of Engineering Education in 2013 and this year has received the Michael Ashby Outstanding Materials Educator Award from the Materials Division of ASEE.
Keith D. Hjelmstad Arizona State University
Keith D. Hjelmstad is Professor of Civil Engineering in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at 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.
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 in Biomedical Engineering 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.
Lydia Ross Arizona State University
Lydia Ross is a doctoral candidate and graduate research assistant at Arizona State University. She is a third year student in the Educational Policy and Evaluation program. Her research interests focus on higher education equity and access, particularly within STEM.
Lindy Hamilton Mayled Arizona State University
Lindy Hamilton Mayled is a PhD candidate at Grand Canyon University. She is pursuing her PhD in Psychology of Learning, Education, and Technology. Her background in in K-12 education where she has served as a high school science teacher, Instructional and Curriculum Coach, and Assistant Principal. Her research and areas of interest are in improving STEM educational outcomes for Low-SES students through the integration of active learning and technology-enabled frequent feedback. She currently works as the Project Manager for the NSF faculty development program based on evidence-based teaching practices.
Kara L. Hjelmstad Arizona State University
Kara Hjelmstad is a faculty associate in Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University.
Abstract
To achieve more effective teaching and learning in undergraduate engineering education, professional development needs to promote change toward innovation of use of evidence-based instructional strategies (EBIS) in faculty beliefs and practice as well as change in organizational attitudes and norms. To develop an effective program, a strategy for change needs to be utilized and assessed at the individual level and the organizational level. Rogers Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) is an individual change model which consists of five steps of a progression towards any type of adoption of innovation change such as sports, business or teaching. The steps for adoption of change consist of awareness, interest, evaluation, trial, and adoption. Coburn’s organizational innovation (COI) change model for organizations consists of four components necessary to support broader change in an educational organization, which include the following. Depth is deep change in faculty beliefs and practice. Sustainability of Innovation refers to flexibility of innovation in differing contexts or disciplines. Spread of Innovation refers to change in beliefs, norms, and principles of individuals across an organization. Shift of Ownership refers to shift in ownership from external facilitators to internal ownership by individuals and their organization. These change theories have been used to develop and assess a large scale NSF IUSE project at a large southwestern university called Just-in-Time-Teaching with Two Way Formative Feedback for Multiple Disciplines (JTFD). The first year of the project has trained 43 faculty in four disciplines using a train-the-trainer model with one semester of 8 biweekly workshops followed by a second semester of 6 disciplinary community of practice (CoP) discussion sessions.
Assessment of elements of the two change theories was done with pre-post measurements of participants with surveys, questions and classroom observations. For the DOI model, Awareness of evidence-based instructional strategies (EBIS) increased an average of 31% for topics such as instructional design and active learning. For DOI Interest and Evaluation a survey was created using expectancy-value theory called Value, Expectancy, and Cost of Testing Educational Reforms Survey (VECTERS). For three EBIS strategies of real-world applications, student-to-student discussions, and formative feedback there were 4% to 12% gains for motivation (expectancy, value, and lowered cost). For DOI Trial 91% of faculty agreed or strongly agreed that “the topics discussed provided me with new ideas for implementation and/or reaffirmed strategies I am currently implementing.” For DOI Adoption, a classroom observation tool, RTOP, (Reformed Teaching Observational Protocol) showed a gain of 22% of classroom practice toward EBIS. For the COI model, Depth of Faculty Beliefs there was an average gain of 26% in faculty who said that they were sometimes or frequently using EBIS strategies of active learning, cooperative learning, objectives and Blooms’s taxonomy. For Sustainability 96% of faculty agreed or strongly agreed that the JTFD project has been successful in creating CoPs which support innovation, implementation, and open dialogue between colleagues.” For COI Spread of Innovation, 91% of faculty agreed or strongly agreed that “the topics discussed provided me with new ideas for implementation and/or reaffirmed strategies I am currently implementing.” For Shift of Ownership 100% of faculty agreed or strongly agreed that “the tools, strategies, and interactions in the JTFD project would be of value to their future instructional practice and career success.” Overall, assessment using the DOI and COI change models demonstrate faculty change and organizational change toward innovation through use of EBIS in teaching and learning.
Krause, S. J., & Hjelmstad, K. D., & Judson, E., & Middleton, J. A., & Culbertson, R. J., & Ankeny, C. J., & Chen, Y., & Ross, L., & Mayled, L. H., & Hjelmstad, K. L. (2018, June), Assessing Faculty and Organizational Change in a Professional Development Program with Workshops and Disciplinary Communities of Practice Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--29820
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