Title: Creating the Skillful Learning Institute: A Virtual Short Course for Building Engineering Educators’ Capacity to Promote Student Metacognitive Growth
The Skillful Learning Institute is preparing a virtual short course experience for engineering educators to expand the explicit engagement of engineering students in their metacognitive development, which is currently lacking. Participants will develop a unique metacognitive activity for their context. The ultimate goal is to enhance the education of engineers through explicit metacognitive training, and we focus on instructors for their enduring and multiplicative impact on current and future engineering students, and secondary impacts on their colleagues. We have designed the short course as a series of three two-hour synchronous virtual workshops over a six-week period in the summer. The experience is designed to build instructors’ capacities to teach metacognition and to continue to use and develop engaging metacognitive activities. By eliminating the time and cost of travel, this project will enable populations that might otherwise be limited in attendance such as professional-track faculty, teaching focused faculty, community college faculty, adjunct faculty. more »« less
Metacognition is awareness and control of thinking for learning. Strong metacognitive skills have the power to impact student learning and performance. While metacognition can develop over time with practice, many students struggle to meaningfully engage in metacognitive processes. In an evidence-based teaching guide associated with this paper ( https://lse.ascb.org/evidence-based-teaching-guides/student-metacognition ), we outline the reasons metacognition is critical for learning and summarize relevant research on this topic. We focus on three main areas in which faculty can foster students’ metacognition: supporting student learning strategies (i.e., study skills), encouraging monitoring and control of learning, and promoting social metacognition during group work. We distill insights from key papers into general recommendations for instruction, as well as a special list of four recommendations that instructors can implement in any course. We encourage both instructors and researchers to target metacognition to help students improve their learning and performance.
To broaden efforts for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in biomedical engineering (BME) education—a key area of emphasis is the integration of inclusive teaching practices. While BME faculty generally support these efforts, translating support into action remains challenging. This project aimed to address this need through a 3-phase inclusive teaching training, consisting of graduate students, faculty, and engineering education consultants. In Phase I, graduate students and faculty participated in a 6-week learning community on inclusive teaching (Foundational Learning). In Phase II, graduate students were paired with faculty to modify or develop new inclusive teaching materials to be integrated into a BME course (Experiential Learning). Phase III was the implementation of these materials. To assess Phases I & II, graduate student participants reflected on their experiences on the project. To assess Phase III, surveys were administered to students in IT-BME-affiliated courses as well as those taking other BME-related courses. Phases I & II: graduate students responded positively to the opportunity to engage in this inclusive teaching experiential learning opportunity. Phase III: survey results indicated that the incorporation of inclusive teaching practices in BME courses enhanced the student learning experience. The IT-BME project supported graduate students and faculty in learning about, creating, and implementing inclusive teaching practices in a collaborative and supportive environment. This project will serve to both train the next class of instructors and use their study of inclusive teaching concepts to facilitate the creation of ideas and materials that will benefit the BME curriculum and students.
Meaders, Clara L.; Smith, Michelle K.; Boester, Timothy; Bracy, Anne; Couch, Brian A.; Drake, Abby G.; Farooq, Saima; Khoda, Bashir; Kinsland, Cynthia; Lane, A. Kelly; et al
(, Frontiers in Education)
Addressing common student questions in introductory STEM courses early in the term is one way that instructors can ensure that their students have all been presented with information about how to succeed in their courses. However, categorizing student questions and identifying evidence-based resources to address student questions takes time, and instructors may not be able to easily collect and respond to student questions at the beginning of every course. To help faculty effectively anticipate and respond to student questions, we 1) administered surveys in multiple STEM courses to identify common student questions, 2) conducted a qualitative analysis to determine categories of student questions (e.g., what are best practices for studying, how can in- and out-of- course time be effectively used), and 3) collaboratively identified advice on how course instructors can answer these questions. Here, we share tips, evidence-based strategies, and resources from faculty that instructors can use to develop their own responses for students. We hope that educators can use these common student questions as a starting point to proactively address questions throughout the course and that the compiled resources will allow instructors to easily find materials that can be considered for their own courses.
The drive to encourage young people to pursue degrees and careers in engineering has led to an increase in student populations in engineering programs. For some institutions, such as large public research institutions, this has led to large class sizes for courses that are commonly taken across multiple programs. While this decision is reasonable from an operational and resource management perspective, research on large classes have shown that students suffer decreased engagement, motivation and achievement. Instructors, on the other hand, report having difficulty establishing rapport with their students and a growing inability to monitor students’ learning gains and provide quality individualized feedback. To address these issues, our project draws from Lattuca and Stark’s Academic Plan model, which incorporates a thorough consideration of factors influencing curricular activities that can be applied at the course, program, and institutional levels, and assumes that instructors are key actors in curriculum development and revision. We aim to revitalize feedback loops to help instructors and departments continuously improve. Recognizing that we must understand both individual and systems level perspectives, we prioritize regular engagement between faculty and institutional support structures to collaboratively identify problems and systematically establish continuous improvement. In the first phase of this NSF IUSE Institutional Transformation project, we focus on specifically prompting and studying the experiences of 8 instructors of foundational engineering courses usually taught in large class sizes across 4 different departments at a large public research institution. We collected qualitative data (semi-structured interviews, reflective journals, course-related documents) and quantitative data (student surveys and institution-provided transcript data) to answer research questions (e.g., what data do faculty teaching large foundational undergraduate engineering courses identify as being useful so that they may enhance students’ experiences and outcomes within the classes that they teach and across students’ multiple large classes?) at the intersection of learning analytics and faculty change. The data was used as a baseline to further refine data collection protocols, identify data that faculty consider meaningful and useful for managing large foundational engineering courses, and consider ways of productively leveraging institutional data to improve the learning experience in these courses. Data collection for the first phase is ongoing and will continue through the Spring 2018 semester. Findings for this paper will include high-level insights from Fall interviews with instructors as well as data visualizations created from the population-level data characterizing student performance in the foundational courses within the context of pre-college characteristics (e.g., SAT scores) and/or other academic outcomes (e.g., major switching within or out of engineer, degree attainment).
Jefferson, Anne J.; Loheide, Steven P.; McCay, Deanna H.
(, Frontiers in Water)
The CUAHSI Virtual University is an interinstitutional graduate training framework that was developed to increase access to specialized hydrology courses for graduate students from participating US institutions. The program was designed to capitalize on the benefits of collaborative teaching, allowing students to differentiate their learning and access subject matter experts at multiple institutions, while enrolled in a single course at their home institution, through a framework of reciprocity. Although the CUAHSI Virtual University was developed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of its online education model to such disruptions to classroom teaching increases the urgency of understanding how effective such an approach is at achieving its goals and what challenges multi-institutional graduate training faces for sustainability and expansion within the water sciences or in other disciplines. To gain faculty perspectives on the program, we surveyed (1) water science graduate program faculty who had served as instructors in the program, (2) water science graduate program faculty who were aware of the program, but had not participated, and (3) departmental chairs of participating instructors. Our data show widespread agreement across respondent types that the program is positive for students, diversifying their educational opportunities and increasing access to subject matter experts. Concerns and factors limiting faculty involvement revolved around faculty workload and administrative barriers, including low enrollment at individual institutions. If these barriers can be surmounted, the CUAHSI Virtual University has the potential for wider participation within hydrology and adoption in other STEM disciplines.
Cunningham, Patrick, Ellestad, Rachel McCord, Matusovich, Holly M., and Carrico, Cheryl. Creating the Skillful Learning Institute: A Virtual Short Course for Building Engineering Educators’ Capacity to Promote Student Metacognitive Growth. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10310764. 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference . Web. doi:10.18260/1-2--36875.
Cunningham, Patrick, Ellestad, Rachel McCord, Matusovich, Holly M., & Carrico, Cheryl. Creating the Skillful Learning Institute: A Virtual Short Course for Building Engineering Educators’ Capacity to Promote Student Metacognitive Growth. 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, (). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10310764. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36875
Cunningham, Patrick, Ellestad, Rachel McCord, Matusovich, Holly M., and Carrico, Cheryl.
"Creating the Skillful Learning Institute: A Virtual Short Course for Building Engineering Educators’ Capacity to Promote Student Metacognitive Growth". 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference (). Country unknown/Code not available. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--36875.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10310764.
@article{osti_10310764,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Creating the Skillful Learning Institute: A Virtual Short Course for Building Engineering Educators’ Capacity to Promote Student Metacognitive Growth},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10310764},
DOI = {10.18260/1-2--36875},
abstractNote = {The Skillful Learning Institute is preparing a virtual short course experience for engineering educators to expand the explicit engagement of engineering students in their metacognitive development, which is currently lacking. Participants will develop a unique metacognitive activity for their context. The ultimate goal is to enhance the education of engineers through explicit metacognitive training, and we focus on instructors for their enduring and multiplicative impact on current and future engineering students, and secondary impacts on their colleagues. We have designed the short course as a series of three two-hour synchronous virtual workshops over a six-week period in the summer. The experience is designed to build instructors’ capacities to teach metacognition and to continue to use and develop engaging metacognitive activities. By eliminating the time and cost of travel, this project will enable populations that might otherwise be limited in attendance such as professional-track faculty, teaching focused faculty, community college faculty, adjunct faculty.},
journal = {2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference},
author = {Cunningham, Patrick and Ellestad, Rachel McCord and Matusovich, Holly M. and Carrico, Cheryl},
}
Warning: Leaving National Science Foundation Website
You are now leaving the National Science Foundation website to go to a non-government website.
Website:
NSF takes no responsibility for and exercises no control over the views expressed or the accuracy of
the information contained on this site. Also be aware that NSF's privacy policy does not apply to this site.
An official website of the United States government
