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“Improving Student Experiences to Increase Student Engagement” (ISE-2) was awarded to Texas A&M University by the National Science Foundation, through EEC-Engineering Diversity Activities. ISE-2 is a faculty development program focused on reducing implicit bias and increasing active learning, with the goals of (a) increasing student engagement, success, and retention, and (b) ultimately seeing greater increases for underrepresented minority (URM), women, and first-generation students. Ten faculty teaching first- and second-year Engineering courses participated in the first cohort of ISE-2 in Summer 2017, which consisted of three workshops and six informal “coffee conversations”. At the conclusion of the workshops, each faculty was tasked with completing a teaching plan for the Fall 2017 semester, to incorporate the strategies and knowledge from ISE-2 into the courses they plan to teach. Focus groups with the ISE-2 faculty were conducted in Fall 2017 to obtain feedback about the faculty development program. Classroom observations were conducted using environmental scans and the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS)1 to assess the classroom climate of faculty in the experimental (ISE-2) and control groups. Student surveys were also administered to students who were taught by ISE-2 faculty and control group faculty to assess student engagement and classroom climate. While the project is still ongoing, feedback from faculty regarding ISE-2 have been positive.
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DIY Classroom Observations: A Toolkit for Novice Classroom Observers
“Improving Student Experiences to Increase Student Engagement” (ISE-2) was funded by the National Science Foundation, through EEC-Engineering Diversity Activities, at Texas A&M University. The grant activity focuses on a faculty development program for faculty who teach first- and second-year engineering courses. As part of the evaluation plan, classroom observations were conducted by the ISE-2 team to assess the classroom climate and teaching practices of ISE-2 faculty participants and non-participant faculty peers. Since Spring 2017, the team has conducted 78 classroom observations. The ISE-2 evaluation team had expert classroom observers train novice observers. The observer training sessions became the basis of this DIY Classroom Observation Toolkit, which is available for people who are interested in conducting systematic classroom observations but have limited experience with qualitative coding and observational research. The goal of the Toolkit is for these individuals to teach themselves using the Toolkit components: a) an annotated bibliography introducing articles that are helpful to understanding and conducting classroom observations, b) training videos teaching viewers to conduct classroom observations using a protocol, and c) a series of sample classroom videos and validation keys for each of the sample videos. This paper serves as a user manual for the Toolkit, which can be accessed at http://bit.ly/diyclassobtoolkit.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1648016
- PAR ID:
- 10167909
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2019 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The Improving Student Experiences to Increase Student Engagement (ISE-2) grant was awarded to Texas A&M University by the National Science Foundation, through EEC-Engineering Diversity Activities (Grant No. 1648016) with the goal of increasing student engagement and retention in the College of Engineering. The major component of the intervention was a faculty development program aimed to increase active learning, improve classroom climates, and decrease implicit bias and deficit thinking. Faculty teaching first- and second-year Engineering courses participated in the ISE-2 faculty development program, with the first cohort (n = 10) in Summer 2017 and the second cohort (n = 5) in Summer 2018. This paper describes the content of each of these components of the faculty development program and provides access to a Google drive (still in development at the time of the abstract) with resources for others to use. The faculty development program consisted of three workshops, a series of coffee hour conversations, and two deliverables from the participants (a teaching plan at the conclusion of the summer training and a final reflection a year following the training). Anchoring the program was a framework for teaching in a diverse classroom (Adams & Love, 2009). Workshop 1 (early May) consisted of an overview of the ISE-2 program. During the first workshop, faculty were introduced to social cognitive biases and the behaviors that result from these biases. During this workshop, the ISE-2 team shared findings from a climate study related to the classroom experiences of students at the College of Engineering. Workshop 2 (mid-May) focused on how undergraduate students learn, provided evidence for the effectiveness of active learning strategies, and exposed faculty participants to active learning strategies. Workshop 3 (early August) integrated the material from the first two workshops as faculty participants prepared to apply the material to their own teaching. Prior to each workshop, the faculty participants were provided with pre-workshop readings to familiarize them with some of the content matter. Coffee hour conversations—informal discussions between the participating faculty and the ISE-2 team centered around a teaching topic selected by participants—were conducted on a near-weekly basis between the second and third workshops. Handouts and worksheets were provided at each coffee hour and served to guide the coffee hour discussions. After the last workshop but before the Fall semester, faculty participants created a teaching plan to incorporate what they learned in the ISE-2 program into their own teaching. At the end of the academic year, the faculty participants are tasked with completing a final reflection on how ISE-2 has affected their teaching in the previous academic year. In this paper, we will report the content of each of the three workshops and explain how these workshops are related to the overarching goals of the ISE-2 program. Then, we will discuss how each of the coffee hour conversation topics complement the material covered in the workshops. Lastly, we will explore the role of the teaching plans and final reflections in changing instructional practices for faculty.more » « less
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This Research Work-in-progress paper presents a project that intends to increase student engagement, retention, and success through the implementation of a faculty development program focused on implicit bias and active learning. To assess the extent to which the program resulted in transformative changes in instructor teaching, the project team conducted classroom observations using minute-by-minute environmental scans and the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS). The project team found that the COPUS could not capture all the behaviors that needed to be observed to assess the faculty development project. Thus, 12 emergent COPUS codes were developed to code the required behaviors. Each code is defined, examples are provided, and excerpts of classroom observations with and without the emergent COPUS codes are examined. The project team thinks the emergent COPUS codes, generally focused on faculty behaviors related to classroom climate, will be useful in other classroom observation projects.more » « less
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This research paper investigates how classroom observation tools can be effectively combined to promote engagement in STEM education. Specifically, it explores the integration of the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS) and a culturally responsive Classroom Observation Instrument (COI) to evaluate and improve teaching practices. COPUS, developed by Smith et al. [21], captures instructional dynamics and student-faculty interactions, while the Classroom Observation Instrument COI, created by Dr. Jennifer G. Cromley and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Developing Equity-Minded Engineering Practitioners (DEEP) research team [6], focuses on observing and assessing culturally responsive-related instructional practices. At Morgan State University (MSU), a Historically Black University (HBCU), coders formally trained by the UIUC DEEP team used both tools to analyze classroom recordings of faculty who had undergone professional development in engaging pedagogy. Findings indicate measurable improvements and balanced engagement in the classroom. This fusion of COPUS and COI tools offers a replicable framework for enhancing inclusive STEM instruction and cultivating more equitable learning environments.more » « less
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We compared 236 geoscience instructors’ histories of professional development (PD) participation with classroom observations using the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP) that describe undergraduate classes as Student-Centered (score ≥ 50), Transitional (score 31–49) or Teacher-Centered (score ≤ 30). Instructors who attended PD (n = 111) have higher average RTOP scores (44.5 vs. 34.2) and are more frequently observed teaching Student-Centered classes (33% vs. 13%) than instructors with no PD (p < 0.001). Instructors who attended PD that is topically-aligned with content taught during the classroom observation are likely to have RTOP scores that are higher by 13.5 points (p < 0.0001), and are 5.6 times more likely to teach a Student-Centered class than instructors without topically-aligned PD. Comparable odds of teaching Student-Centered classes (5.8x) occur for instructors who attended two topical PD events but were observed teaching a different topic. Models suggest that instructors with at least 24 h of PD are significantly more likely to teach a Student-Centered class than instructors with fewer hours. Our results highlight the effectiveness of discipline-specific PD in impacting teaching practices, and the importance of attending more than one such PD event to aid transfer of learning.more » « less
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