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Session 2215

ExCEEd Teaching Workshop: Fulfilling a Critical Need Allen C. Estes, Steven J. Ressler United States Military Academy

Abstract

In response to the need to develop Civil Engineering faculty as effective teachers, the American Society of Civil Engineers developed the landmark faculty development initiative ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) which includes the ExCEEd Teaching Workshop (ETW). The ETW is an intense, hands-on, high quality five-day workshop consisting of seminars, demonstrations, practice classes, critiques, and social events. Three ETWs have been conducted in 1999 and 2000 on the campuses of the U.S. Military Academy and the University of Arkansas – Fayetteville. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive where participants cite substantial improvements in their class organization, presentation skill, and rapport with students as a result of ETW. This paper summarizes the content of the ExCEEd Teaching Workshop (ETW), assesses its effectiveness, highlights changes in the program as a result of the assessment, and outlines the future direction of the program.

I. Introduction

Many new engineering faculty members at major institutions are assigned a classroom, a course of instruction, and students to teach without any formal training on how to teach. The result is often a trial and error approach where real students suffer the consequences. Seymour and Hewitt1 concluded in a study of 355 students at seven institutions that poor teaching (inadequate organization, ineffective presentation, inaccessible faculty) was the most common student complaint and was a cause for many to leave math, science and engineering programs. In response to the clear need for faculty training, the American Society of Civil Engineers has developed the ExCEEd (Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) Teaching Workshop (ETW) which is entering its third year of existence. The ETW was developed from the Teaching Teachers To Teach Engineering (T4E) originated at United States Military Academy (USMA) and sponsored by the National Science Foundation2. In 1999, a group of nine educators formally evaluated ETW as part of a Program Design Workshop3. The ETW continues to develop and improve as a result. This paper summarizes the content of the ExCEEd Teaching Workshop, assesses its effectiveness, highlights changes in the program as a result of the assessment, and outlines the future direction of the program.

The ETW is a highly intensive, hands-on, five-day workshop consisting of seminars, demonstration classes, and small group labs. The focus of the workshop is basic teaching skills and the goal is to improve teaching and learning in civil engineering programs. The ETW philosophy is to learn by doing. As such, most of the workshop consists of small group labs in which each attendee teaches and is critiqued on three separate classes. The workshop objectives are to teach and demonstrate the best methods of teaching and learning; have participants apply the best methods of teaching and learning in practice sessions; teach and demonstrate learning

Proceedings of the 2001 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2001, American Society for Engineering Education

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Estes, A., & Ressler, S. (2001, June), Ex Ce Ed Teaching Workshop: Fulfilling A Critical Need Paper presented at 2001 Annual Conference, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 10.18260/1-2--9247