Context:
Effective reform of engineering education necessitates the widespread implementation and dissemination of pedagogical innovations globally. However, to ensure the successful propagation of these innovations, we need to better understand the adaptations that they undergo when adopted at a new institution, and the extent to which they differ from the original innovation. This includes understanding the student experience with the innovation.
Purpose or Goal:
This study examines the propagation and adaptation of Freeform, a learning environment for teaching an undergraduate dynamics course developed at a large Midwestern university in the United States. Specifically, our goal is to understand how students at an adopting institution used Freeform’s learning resources. Our research questions are: 1) What are the students’ archetypical patterns of resource usage at the adopting institution? 2) In what ways do those patterns differ from those of students at the original institution of Freeform? Methods
We conducted a model-based clustering analysis to answer our two research questions. The analysis was conducted on survey data from 50 engineering students at the Freeform adopting institution. This data articulated how frequently students used nine different resources of the Freeform ecosystem.
Outcomes:
Our analysis identified 4 resource-usage patterns in the Freeform adopting institution in comparison to 9 patterns for students at the institution where Freeform originated. In the Freeform adopting institution, the most frequent resources that students utilized were Teaching Assistants (TAs) and other students who were not enrolled in the course. This contrasts with the original institution where students relied mostly on the course lecturebook and their classmates.
Conclusion:
This study highlights the importance of taking into consideration the differences across institutions when propagating pedagogical innovations such as Freeform. Our results suggest that instructors should anticipate those differences so that the adoption and onboarding process can be optimized for success.
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Orchestrating a culture-aligned adoption and adaptation of an instructional innovation: A story of an engineering professor’s pedagogical decisions between innovation and school culture
Engineering education researchers and practitioners have driven instructional innovation in undergraduate engineering instruction. Much of the research about educational innovation has focused on undergraduate classrooms in large enrollment courses and/or research-intensive institutions. Propagation of innovations across settings, especially those quite unlike the original context, has received less attention in the literature. This includes liberal arts institutions, which collectively educate a large number of undergraduate engineering students in various contexts. Therefore, this study focuses on the implementation of an instructional innovation in a liberal arts institution that started a new engineering program to educate a regional engineering workforce. This qualitative study documented the experiences of one engineering instructor who adopted and adapted a blended learning environment for undergraduate dynamics designed to promote active and collaborative learning in undergraduate engineering courses. We analyzed interviews, documents, artifacts, visual materials, and field notes to examine the propagation of the instructional system in context with cultural features in local institution settings. Our findings show how an engineering instructor orchestrated a culture-aligned adoption and adaptation of an instructional innovation. Using reflective practice, the research participant adapted the implemented innovative instruction to their hands-on institution culture, such as adjusting expectations in content, adapting resources to students’ individual needs, adjusting uncertainty of problem solving, and adapting to a hands-on institution culture. This research highlights the important role of institutional culture in local adaptations of educational innovations, and it provides the community with an expanded way to think about innovation propagation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1915574
- PAR ID:
- 10355877
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASEE 2022
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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