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1. Board 157: Creating National Leadership Cohorts for Making Academic Change Happen: Sharing Lessons Learned Through RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Tipsheets

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--32275  

   Williams, Julia ; Litzler, Elizabeth ; Margherio, Cara ; Andrijcic, Eva ; Doten-Snitker, Kerice ( June 2020 , 2019 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   null (Ed.)

   Our work with teams funded through the National Science Foundation REvolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) program began in 2015. Our project—funded first by a NSF EAGER grant, and then by a NSF RFE grant—focuses on understanding how the RED teams make change on their campuses and how this information about change can be captured and communicated to other STEM programs that seek to make change happen. Because our RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Project is a collaboration between researchers (Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity at the University of Washington) and practitioners (Making Academic Change Happen Workshop at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), we have challenged ourselves to develop means of communication that allow for both aspects of the work—both research and practice—to be treated equitably. As a result, we have created a new dissemination channel—the RED Participatory Action Project Tipsheet. The tipsheet format accomplishes several important goals. First, the content is drawn from both the research conducted with the RED teams and the practitioners’ work with the teams. Each tipsheet takes up a single theme and grounds the theme in the research literature while offering practical tips for applying the information. Second, the format is accessible to a wide spectrum of potential users, remaining free of jargon and applicable to multiple program and departmental contexts. Third, by publishing the tipsheets ourselves, rather than submitting them to an engineering education research journal, we make the information timely and freely available. We can make a tipsheet as soon as a theme emerges from the intersection of research data and observations of practice. During the poster session at ASEE 2019, we will share the three REDPAR Tipsheets that have been produced thus far: Creating Strategic Partnerships, Communicating Change, and Shared Vision. We will also work with attendees to demonstrate how the tipsheet content is adaptable to the attendees’ specific academic context. Our goal for the poster session is to provide attendees with tipsheet resources that are useful to their specific change project. 

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2. Creating National Leadership Cohorts for Making Academic Change Happen: Sharing Lessons Learned Through NSF RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Tipsheets

   Williams, J. ; Litzler, E. ; Margherio, C. ; Doten-Snitker, K. ; Andrijcic, E. ; and Mohan, S. ( June 2019 , American Society for Engineering Education)

   Our work with teams funded through the National Science Foundation REvolutionizing Engineering and Computer Science Departments (RED) program began in 2015. Our project—funded first by a NSF EAGER grant, and then by a NSF RFE grant—focuses on understanding how the RED teams make change on their campuses and how this information about change can be captured and communicated to other STEM programs that seek to make change happen. Because our RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Project is a collaboration between researchers (Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity at the University of Washington) and practitioners (Making Academic Change Happen Workshop at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology), we have challenged ourselves to develop means of communication that allow for both aspects of the work—both research and practice—to be treated equitably. As a result, we have created a new dissemination channel—the RED Participatory Action Project Tipsheet. The tipsheet format accomplishes several important goals. First, the content is drawn from both the research conducted with the RED teams and the practitioners’ work with the teams. Each tipsheet takes up a single theme and grounds the theme in the research literature while offering practical tips for applying the information. Second, the format is accessible to a wide spectrum of potential users, remaining free of jargon and applicable to multiple program and departmental contexts. Third, by publishing the tipsheets ourselves, rather than submitting them to an engineering education research journal, we make the information timely and freely available. We can make a tipsheet as soon as a theme emerges from the intersection of research data and observations of practice. Permalink: https://peer.asee.org/32275. 

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3. The Researcher/Practitioner Strategic Partnership: Linking Theory and Practice for Change in Engineering and Computer Science Education.

   Ingram, E. ; Litzler, E. ; Margherio, C. ; Doten-Snitker, K. ; and Williams, J. ( June 2018 , American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   Our NSF funded project—Creating National Leadership Cohorts to Make Academic Change Happen (NSF 1649318)—represents a strategic partnership between researchers and practitioners in the domain of academic change. The principle investigators from the Making Academic Change Happen team from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology provide familiarity with the literature of practical organizational change and package this into action-oriented workshops and ongoing support for teams funded through the REvolutionizing engineering and computer science Departments (RED) program. The PIs from the Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity at the University of Washington provide expertise in social science research in order to investigate how the the RED teams’ change projects unfold and how the teams develop as members of national leadership cohorts for change in engineering and computer science education. Our poster for ASEE 2018 will focus on what we have learned thus far regarding the dynamics of the researcher/practitioner partnership through the RED Participatory Action Research (REDPAR) Project. According to Worrall (2007), good partnerships are “founded on trust, respect, mutual benefit, good communities, and governance structures that allow democratic decision-making, process improvement, and resource sharing.” We have seen these elements emerge through the work of the partnership to create mutual benefits. For example, the researchers have been given an “insider’s” perspective on the practitioners’ approach—their goals, motivations for certain activities, and background information and research. The practitioners’ perspective is useful for the researchers to learn since the practitioners’ familiarity with the organizational change literature has influenced the researchers’ questions and theoretical models. The practitioners’ work with the RED teams has provided insights on the teams, how they are operating, the challenges they face, and aspects of the teams’ work that may not be readily available to the researchers. As a result, the researchers have had increased access to the teams to collect data. The researchers, in turn, have been able to consider how to make their analyses useful and actionable for change-makers, the population that the practitioners are more familiar with. Insights from the researchers provide both immediate and long-term benefits to programming and increased professional impact. The researchers are trained observers, each of whom brings a unique disciplinary perspective to their observations. The richness, depth, and clarity of their observations adds immeasurably to the quality of practitioners’ interactions with the RED teams. The practitioners, for example, have revised workshop content in response to the researchers’ observations, thus ensuring that the workshop content serves the needs of the RED teams. The practitioners also benefit from the joint effort on dissemination, since they can contribute to a variety of dissemination efforts (journal papers, conference presentations, workshops). We plan to share specific examples of the strategic partnership during the poster session. In doing so, we hope to encourage researchers to seek out partnerships with practitioners in order to bridge the gap between theory and practice in engineering and computer science education. 

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4. The RED Teams Start-Up Session: Leveraging Research with Practice for Success in Academic Change

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--35360  

   Williams, Julia ; Mohan, Sriram ; Andrijcic, Eva ; Margherio, Cara ; Litzler, Elizabeth ; Doten-Snitker, Kerice ( June 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   null (Ed.)

   At the start of their work for the National Science Foundation’s Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Program (IUSE/Professional Formation of Engineers, NSF 19-614), RED teams face a variety of challenges. Not only must they craft a shared vision for their projects and create strategic partnerships across their campuses to move the project forward, they must also form a new team and communicate effectively within the team. Our work with RED teams over the past 5 years has highlighted the common challenges these teams face at the start, and for that reason, we have developed the RED Start Up Session, a ½ day workshop that establishes best practices for RED teams’ work and allows for early successes in these five year projects. As the RED Participatory Action Research team (REDPAR)--comprised of individuals from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and the University of Washington--we have taken the research data collected as we work with RED teams and translated it into practical strategies that can benefit RED teams as they embark on their projects. This presentation will focus on the content and organization of the Start Up Session and how these lessons learned can contribute to the furthering of the goals of the RED program: to design “revolutionary new approaches to engineering education,” focusing on “organizational and cultural change within the departments, involving students, faculty, staff, and industry in rethinking what it means to provide an engineering program.” We see the Start Up Session as an important first step in the RED team establishing an identity as a team and learning how to work effectively together. We also encourage new RED teams to learn from the past, through a panel discussion with current RED team members who fill various roles on the teams: engineering education researcher, project manager, project PI, disciplinary faculty, social scientist, and others. By presenting our findings from the Start Up Session at ASEE, we believe we can contribute to the national conversation regarding change in engineering education as it is evidenced in the RED team’s work. 

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5. Unified Voice and Group Agency: Developing Teams to Transform Engineering Education

   Margherio, C. ( July 2021 , 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access)

   This research paper investigates how individual change agents come together to form effective teams. Improving equity within academic engineering requires changes that are often too complex and too high-risk for a faculty member to pursue on their own. Teams offer the advantage of combining a diverse skill set of many individuals, as well as bringing together insider knowledge and external specialist expertise. However, in order for teams of academic change agents to function effectively, they must overcome the challenges of internal politics, power differentials, and group conflict. This analysis of team formation emerges from our participatory action research with recipients of the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) grants. Through an NSF-funded collaboration between the University of Washington and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technoliogy, we work with the RED teams to research the process of change as they work to improve equity and inclusion within their institutions. Utilizing longitudinal qualitative data from focus group discussions with 16 teams at the beginning and midpoints of their projects, we examine the development of teams to transform engineering education. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from social movement theory, we highlight the importance of creating a unified team voice and developing a sense of group agency. Teams have a better chance of achieving their goals if members are able to create a unified voice—that is, a shared sense of purpose and vision for their team. We find that the development of a team’s unified voice begins with proposal writing. When members of RED teams did not collaboratively write the grant proposal, they found it necessary to devote more time to develop a sense of shared vision for their project. For many RED teams, the development of a unified voice was further strengthened through external messaging, as they articulated a “we” in opposition to a “they” who have different values or interests. Group agency develops as a result of team members perceiving their goals as attainable and their efforts, as both individuals and a group, as worthwhile. That is, group agency is dependent on both the credibility of the team as well as trust among team members. For some of the RED teams, the NSF requirement to include social scientists and education researchers on their teams gave the engineering team members new, increased exposure to these fields. RED teams found that creating mutual respect was foundational for working across disciplinary differences and developing group agency. 

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