In 2020, Montana State University initiated a five-year NSF-funded Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) project with the vision of transforming the traditional topic-focused course structure in environmental engineering into an integrated project-based curriculum (IPBC) that supports a climate of collaborative and continuous learning among faculty and students. The curriculum redesign process engaged faculty in an extensive consensus-building process to define desired student learning outcomes for the program. In the transformed curriculum, faculty collectively agreed to integrate systems thinking, sustainability, and professionalism competencies and to cultivate students’ identity as environmental engineers throughout the degree. To achieve these goals, there must be a level of shared meaning around the four constructs of interest—systems thinking, sustainability, professionalism, environmental engineering—to guide pedagogical decision making among faculty. A qualitative cultural assessment was conducted to investigate, analyze, and describe the shared meanings faculty hold around the four constructs. The goal of the assessment was to uncover areas of shared meaning with the strongest consensus within and across constructs. By eliciting and describing “definitions by consensus,” faculty will be able to generate consistency in teaching and assessment practices throughout the curriculum. The culture assessment process undertaken by the department and its outcomes will be of interest to other programs seeking to foster collaborative teaching and to enhance collective ownership of degree program learning outcomes.
more »
« less
RadGrad: Removing the "Extra" from Extracurricular to Improve Student Engagement, Diversity, and Retention
RadGrad is a curriculum initiative implemented via a web-based application that combines features of social networks, degree planners, and serious games. RadGrad redefines the traditional meaning of "progress" and "success" in the undergraduate computer science degree program, with the ultimate goal of improving student engagement, diversity, and retention. In this paper, we relate RadGrad to other curriculum initiatives, overview its key functionality, present results from an evaluation conducted during its first year of deployment, and discuss our lessons learned and future directions.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1829542
- PAR ID:
- 10180503
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 746 to 751
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
"Industry 4.0-based systems and subsystems are replacing current process and process control equipment in Florida’s manufacturing environment. The Florida State College System Engineering Technology (ET) degree pathway for developing engineering technology professionals is responding to this reality at the ET two-year associate degree, the 4-year ET B.S. degree, and post-graduate degrees as well as a statewide recognized path to the Professional Engineers license in Engineering Technology. The National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education program (NSF-ATE) supports this effort. NSF-ATE assets provided to FLATE and five partner colleges are directed to the formation of a statewide advisory board for the 20 colleges that offer ET degrees as well as supporting six overarching Florida ET education system target goals: (1) Adjust Florida Department of Education Standards and Benchmarks to include criteria that address Florida manufacturer-identified Industry 4.0 skills gap in its technical workforce. (2) Create a statewide streamlined seamless articulation environment from the Engineering Technology A.S. to B.S. degree programs. (3) Provide Professional Development that up-skills Engineering Technology Degree faculty as related to identified Industry 4.0 technician skill needs. (4) Create a short-term ET College Credit Certificate to prepare current and future technicians to apply these new skills in the manufacturing workspace. (5) Amplify the manufacturer's involvement with college engineering technology certificates and A.S.ET degree programs. (6) Create Post-A.S. Curriculum Advanced Technology Certificate (ATC) to facilitate skilled technician professional advancement. Statewide implementation of the curriculum changes is key to more robust programs and more work-ready technician graduates. This paper and presentation poster will share the strategies the project team is using to achieve its goals and objectives. It will also share the feedback received from the industry relative to industry 4.0 skills needed in their facilities."more » « less
-
Since the 1960s, the ACM has provided routinely updated guidelines for what concepts constitute a computer science curriculum, with the latest version currently in development in 2023. These guidelines have traditionally provided a model curriculum from which universities can choose to adopt or modify for their own purposes. What is unclear, however, is to what degree schools follow the curriculum recommendations that the ACM provides. While most faculty and students likely have knowledge of their own institution's curriculum, as well as what courses are offered at a small selection of other schools, the goal of the work presented in this poster is to distill a cohesive view of what computer science curriculums in their second and third years look like across a broad range of universities across a range of institutions. Our goal with this work was to answer the following question: What do computer science course requirements look like at a wide range of different institutions? We believe the work will help those who are trying to develop curriculum changes within their own institutions and aims to provide a more cohesive view of what trends and patterns exist in course offerings and degree requirements for computer science in the second and third years across a wide range of universities.more » « less
-
In engineering education in the United States (as elsewhere), it is widely recognized that the percentage of women and minorities who acquire engineering degrees is significantly lower than their representation in the general population. Many studies have investigated the cause of this lack of representation in engineering and other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) degree programs. It is widely recognized that the percentage of women and minorities who acquire engineering degrees is significantly lower than their representation in the general population. Adolescents' occupational identity development depends in large part on their internalized mental models of what a given type of professional “looks like,” their subjective sense of their own capacity to be successful at certain tasks and with certain types of knowledge, and the degree to which they feel as if they belong to a community of practice. This paper considers how the concept of “hidden curriculum” can be applied to how underrepresented students experience engineering education uniquely. The concept of the “hidden curriculum” is used to describe the set of structured learning experiences or conditions that occur beyond the design intent of the learning journey established by the explicit curriculum. The hidden curriculum is typically unintentional, unplanned, and less “controllable” than the explicit curriculum. Despite the difficulty in assessing hidden learning expectations, hidden curriculum consistently places expectations on students beyond the explicit curriculum. It is critical to understand not just what variables prevent underrepresented students from persisting, but also what factors encourage their persistence, as such persistence is critical to ensuring a more diverse engineering workforce. This work focuses on how minoritized groups specifically develop professional identity through the hidden curriculum. We consider their perception of belonging in engineering, their experiences of exclusion in various forms, and the mechanisms by which exclusion transpires. By better understanding the cultural dimensions of exclusion, we hope to advance efforts toward inclusion.more » « less
-
Curricular analytics (CA) is a quantitative method that analyzes the sequence of courses (curriculum) that students in an undergraduate academic program must complete to fulfill the requirements of the program. The main hypothesis of CA is that the less complex a curriculum is, the more likely it is that students complete the program. This study compares the curricular complexity of undergraduate physics programs at 60 institutions in the United States. The institutions were divided into three tiers based on national rankings of the physics graduate program, and the means of each tier were compared. No significant difference between the means of each tier was found, indicating that there is not a relationship between program curricular complexity and program ranking. Further analysis focused on the physics, chemistry, and mathematics courses, defined as the core courses of the curriculum. Significant differences in the number of required core courses and the complexity per core course were measured between the tiers; both were measured as large effects. Programs with the highest rankings required fewer core courses while having a higher complexity per core course. These institutions have more strict prerequisite requirements than lower ranking programs. This study also showed complexity was quantitatively related to curricular flexibility operationalized as the number of available eight-semester degree plans. The number of available degree plans exponentially decreased with increasing core complexity per course. Modifications to a curriculum at one institution were analyzed; a similar relationship between the number of available degree plans and increasing complexity per core course was found. Published by the American Physical Society2024more » « less
An official website of the United States government

