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Preparing Future Engineering Educators through Round-Table Practicum Course Discussions

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Conference

2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Indianapolis, Indiana

Publication Date

June 15, 2014

Start Date

June 15, 2014

End Date

June 18, 2014

ISSN

2153-5965

Conference Session

Preparing Future Educators

Tagged Division

Graduate Studies

Page Count

9

Page Numbers

24.1000.1 - 24.1000.9

DOI

10.18260/1-2--22933

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/22933

Download Count

443

Paper Authors

biography

Stephanie Marie Kusano Virginia Tech

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Stephanie Kusano is a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2010 and her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering in 2012, both from Virginia Tech. Her research interests include informal learning, design education, and assessment. Her teaching experience has primarily been with first-year engineering workshops.

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biography

Homero Gregorio Murzi Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0003-3849-2947

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Homero is currently a PhD Student and Graduate Teaching Assistant in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is also an assistant professor in the Industrial Engineering department at the National University of Tachira in Venezuela. He holds a Bachelor and Master degree in Industrial Engineering from the National University of Tachira in Venezuela and a Master in Business Administration from Temple University. Homero was member of the Fulbright program from 2011 to 2013.

Homero's current research interests are in active learning pedagogies, cultural differences, teamwork, and entrepreneurship education.

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Prateek Shekhar Virginia Tech Orcid 16x16 orcid.org/0000-0001-6552-2887

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PhD Student
Department of Engineering Education

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Timothy Kinoshita Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

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Christina Seimetz Wade Virginia Tech

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Christina Seimetz is a PhD student in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech. She also serves as program support staff for the Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity where she is involved with recruitment, outreach, and retention programs specifically targeted towards females interested in engineering. Ms. Seimetz earned her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and her M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

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Richard M. Goff Virginia Tech Department of Engineering Education

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Richard M. Goff earned a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech and Co-Director of the NSF I/UCRC Center for e-Design, a multi-university industry cooperative research center. Richard has been teaching and engaging in research in engineering design education for over fifteen years. Dr. Goff is the recipient of several teaching and outreach awards. His passion is creating engaging learning environments by bringing useful research results and industry practices into the classroom as well as using design research results to inform engineering practice.

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Debarati Basu Virginia Tech

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Abstract

Preparing Future Engineering Educators through Round-Table Practicum Course Discussions To create outstanding engineering educators, there has been a push for earliertraining of engineering faculty, starting early in graduate school, in hopes that newfaculty are better prepared when asked to teach as primary instructors. Many engineeringgraduate students are assigned or choose graduate teaching positions, often being placedin front of a classroom with limited teacher training or scaffolding. Graduate teachingassistants (GTAs) are often overwhelmed by the multiple, and at times conflictingresponsibilities of students in graduate school. This paper describes a semester-long graduate practicum course in an engineeringdepartment at a large state research university that acted as a structured forum for GTAs.This experience provided a sense of guidance for graduate students who are working tosimultaneously balance being researchers-in-training, students, and novice engineeringeducators. In weekly group discussions, students discussed a variety of topics relating tocourse development, pedagogies, and classroom experiences. This paper identifies thevalue of having a space for engineering educators to share all aspects of their teachingexperience. The engineering education practicum course is a semester-long graduate course,primarily offered to engineering graduate students who are teaching undergraduateengineering courses. The objectives of this practicum course includes: 1. Creating organized and rhetorically effective syllabi 2. Articulating correspondences and differences between education theory and education practice 3. Performing peer reviews of other instructors and constructively discussing peer performance 4. Productively reflecting on individual teaching practices to enhance or improve the student learning environment 5. Drawing on classroom experiences to develop useful formative assessments 6. Developing a teaching portfolio that articulates and illustrates each individual's teaching philosophyThe class met weekly for 2 hours and 45 minutes, and was typically a casual round-tableenvironment where students discuss a variety of topics related to teaching in engineering.While some class discussions were prescribed by the course instructor, many were self-selected by the students in the class. Class discussions were often supported with relevantengineering education literature. Student reflections of their teaching experiences werealso discussed weekly, as well as documented in student journals and e-Portfolios. Inaddition to teaching evaluations conducted by the course instructor, students conductedteaching evaluations of their peers, and a self-evaluation of a video recording of theirown teaching. This practicum course was found to be helpful to graduate students who arenovice educators because the course provided a space for learning through sharedexperiences. Experienced teachers could also participate in class discussions to sharetheir experience and their teaching approaches to help develop new GTAs for their futureprofessorial careers. The effectiveness of this engineering education practicum courseindicates that it has potential as a useful approach to GTA training and prospectiveengineering faculty training. This course could easily be implemented in otherengineering departments with graduate students pursuing academic careers. Engineeringeducation literature has recommended pre-career preparation for future engineeringfaculty, and the engineering education practicum course has been identified as aneffective approach to guiding novice engineering educators into future professorialcareers.  

Kusano, S. M., & Murzi, H. G., & Shekhar, P., & Kinoshita, T., & Wade, C. S., & Goff, R. M., & Basu, D. (2014, June), Preparing Future Engineering Educators through Round-Table Practicum Course Discussions Paper presented at 2014 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis, Indiana. 10.18260/1-2--22933

ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2014 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015