Strong, A. C., & Watson, M. K., & Llewellyn, D. C. (2015, June), What Makes an Undergraduate Course Impactful? An Examination of Students' Perceptions of Instructional Environments  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington. 10.18260/p.25063

\bibitem{asee_peer_25063}
  Strong, A. C., \& Watson, M. K., \& Llewellyn, D. C. (2015, June), \emph{What Makes an Undergraduate Course Impactful? An Examination of Students' Perceptions of Instructional Environments}
  Paper presented at 2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington.
  10.18260/p.25063

Alexandra Coso Strong, Mary Katherine Watson, and Donna C. Llewellyn.  "What Makes an Undergraduate Course Impactful? An Examination of Students' Perceptions of Instructional Environments".  2015 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June.  ASEE Conferences, 2015.  https://peer.asee.org/25063 Internet.  14 Jun, 2025

\bibitem{asee_peer_25063}
  Alexandra Coso Strong, Mary Katherine Watson, and Donna C. Llewellyn.
  "What Makes an Undergraduate Course Impactful? An Examination of Students' Perceptions of Instructional Environments".
  \emph{2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 2015, June}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2015.
  https://peer.asee.org/25063 Internet.  14 Jun, 2025

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_25063
author = "Alexandra Coso Strong, Mary Katherine Watson, and Donna C. Llewellyn"
title = "What Makes an Undergraduate Course Impactful? An Examination of Students' Perceptions of Instructional Environments"
booktitle = "2015 ASEE Annual Conference \& Exposition"
year = "2015"
month = "June"
address = "Seattle, Washington"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/25063}
number = {10.18260/p.25063}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  -       What makes an undergraduate course impactful? An examination of            students’ perceptions of instructional environmentsMuch educational research has focused on comparing the efficacy of innovative teachingstrategies for enhancing student learning. Many authors have cited that pedagogies founded onlearner-centered teaching philosophies, including problem-based learning, collaborative learning,and experiential learning, have many benefits over traditional, instructor-centered tactics, such aslecturing. For instance, participation in non-traditional learning environments has been shown toincrease student motivation and sharpen practical problem-solving skills. Conversely, otherresearchers have demonstrated that students often prefer direct instruction over more learner-centered practices. Consequently, to successfully design an effective classroom environment, it isimportant to consider student perceptions of the teaching and learning process. Thus, the goal ofthis project is to explore the educational philosophies enacted in the most impactfulundergraduate classrooms, according to graduate students’ perceptions.To capture the characteristics of the impactful undergraduate engineering courses, graduateengineering students from a large, technical, research-intensive university are being recruited toparticipate in an online survey. The administered survey is based on theoretically-grounddescriptions of five different instructional environments, including two instructor-centeredenvironments and three more learner-centered environments. Participants are asked to reflect onthe instructional environment that best describes their most impactful learning experience duringtheir undergraduate studies. Open-ended questions are included to provide students with theopportunity to further justify or clarify their responses. Data analysis will be completed in thecoming months to explore trends among the instructional environments of the impactful coursesand several independent variables, including discipline, gender, and past educationalexperiences. Content analysis of the open-ended responses will allow the researchers to furtherexamine the components of these courses that contribute to students’ perceptions.In designing a course to provide significant learning experiences for undergraduate engineeringstudents, we have resources in the literature, through our colleagues, and through our ownpersonal experiences. This study aims to capture the stories of graduate students who are lookingback at their undergraduate experience and describing what made a specific undergraduatecourse particularly impactful. In addition, these results will relate the characteristics of impactfulcourses to five diverse educational philosophies and their associated instructional environment.Exploring these impactful classroom experiences can highlight connections between theliterature and student experiences as well as support new faculty who are considering the type ofinstructional environments they will strive to create in their own courses.Keywords: instructional environments, educational philosophies, impactful courses,undergraduate engineering education
AU  - Alexandra Coso Strong
AU  - Mary Katherine Watson
AU  - Donna C. Llewellyn
CY  - Seattle, Washington
DA  - 2015/06/14
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - What Makes an Undergraduate Course Impactful? An Examination of Students' Perceptions of Instructional Environments
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/25063
DO  - 10.18260/p.25063
ER  -