We detail an exploratory study of faculty members’ perceptions of activities associated with undergraduate engineering
programs in university-based makerspaces. Our study examines the affordances and constraints faculty perceive regarding
teaching and learning in these spaces and, specifically, how makerspaces support engineering faculty members in
accomplishing the goals and expectations they have for undergraduate students’ learning and development. We found
that makerspaces inspired faculty members’ curricular and instructional innovations, including design of new courses and
implementation of practices meant to result in more team-based and active learning. Faculty perceived student activities in
makerspaces as fostering of student agency and development of engineering skills, knowledge, and affect. Faculty also
identified concerns related to the teaching of engineering in these spaces, including the need to change their instructional
practices to more fully engage students and to balance the sophisticated tools and resources with the rigor of completing
complex engineering tasks. We use structuration theory to illuminate how faculty act, rationalize, and reflect on their
teaching practices and goals in relation to structures present in university-based makerspace. Our study is intended to
inform faculty and administrators working to engage students through interactions in makerspaces or similar innovations,
and to consider how access to and impact of these structures support undergraduate engineering education.
more »
« less
STEM Faculty Instructional Data-Use Practices: Informing Teaching Practice and Students’ Reflection on Students’ Learning
This paper explores the affordances and constraints of STEM faculty members’ instructional data-use practices and how they engage students (or not) in reflection around their own learning data. We found faculty used a wide variety of instructional data-use practices. We also found several constraints that influenced their instructional data-use practices, including perceived lack of time, standardized curriculum and assessments predetermined in scope and sequence, and a perceived lack of confidence and competence in their instructional data-use practices. Novel findings include faculty descriptions of instructional technology that afforded them access to immediate and nuanced instructional data. However, faculty described limited use of instructional data that engaged students in reflecting on their own learning data. We consider implications for faculty’s instructional data-use practices on departmental and institutional policies and procedures, professional development experts, and for faculty themselves.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1914906
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10356287
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Education Sciences
- Volume:
- 11
- Issue:
- 6
- ISSN:
- 2227-7102
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 291
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)We detail an exploratory study of faculty members’ perceptions of activities associated with undergraduate engineering programs in university-based makerspaces. Our study examines the affordances and constraints faculty perceive regarding teaching and learning in these spaces and, specifically, how makerspaces support engineering faculty members in accomplishing the goals and expectations they have for undergraduate students’ learning and development. We found that makerspaces inspired faculty members’ curricular and instructional innovations, including design of new courses and implementation of practices meant to result in more team-based and active learning. Faculty perceived student activities in makerspaces as fostering of student agency and development of engineering skills, knowledge, and affect. Faculty also identified concerns related to the teaching of engineering in these spaces, including the need to change their instructional practices to more fully engage students and to balance the sophisticated tools and resources with the rigor of completing complex engineering tasks. We use structuration theory to illuminate how faculty act, rationalize, and reflect on their teaching practices and goals in relation to structures present in university-based makerspace. Our study is intended to inform faculty and administrators working to engage students through interactions in makerspaces or similar innovations, and to consider how access to and impact of these structures support undergraduate engineering education.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract Supporting changes in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) instruction requires an understanding of the relationship between STEM instructors' conceptions and practices. In this study, the authors used the Teacher‐Centered Systematic Reform (TCSR) model as a framework to understand how instructors' conceptions are related to their instructional practices. This multiple methods study included interviews and classroom observations of 22 STEM instructors. We used qualitative methods to describe instructors' conceptions of how students learn and quantitative methods, including a hierarchical cluster analysis, to analyze the types of relationships that exist between their conceptions and practices. Results indicated instructors had a wide range of conceptions that exist along a continuum from teacher‐centered to student‐centered. While many faculty members perceived student‐centered practices as valuable, they conceptualized these practices in different ways. Instructors implemented a wide range of instructional practices, and these practices varied independently of conceptions. We identified three distinct clusters of participants based on the relationships between instructors' conceptions and practices: congruent lecturers, congruent active learning facilitators, and incongruent lecturers. In the first two clusters, instructors' conceptions were aligned with their instructional practices. However, incongruent lecturers thought that students learn through active learning approaches but primarily lectured in their courses. Instructors in this group described several personal and contextual factors that influenced the relationship between their conceptions and practices. The results include an in‐depth portrayal of one participant in each cluster. We found that student‐centered conceptions may be necessary but are not sufficient for instructors to implement active learning. Implications focus on instructional and institutional change efforts. To promote instructional change most effectively, it is important to address each component of the TCSR model, including personal and contextual factors. A focus on conceptions and practices alone may not sufficiently support faculty members in overcoming barriers that limit active learning instruction.
-
null (Ed.)This paper is based on a series of semi-structured, qualitative interviews that were conducted with students, by an undergraduate student and lead author of this paper, that focused on their experiences with educational technologies and online teaching pedagogy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As U.S. educators scrambled to adapt to online course delivery modes as a result of the first wave of the pandemic in the spring 2020 semester, those in the educational technology and online learning community saw the potential of this movement to vastly accelerate the implementation of online systems in higher education. A shift that may have taken 20 years to accomplish was implemented in two waves, first with the immediate forced shift to online learning in March 2020; and second, a less immediate shift to hybrid and online instruction designed to accommodate the different geographic variation in COVID-19 intensity, along with varied political and institutional ecologies surrounding online versus in-person instruction for the 2020-2021 academic year. With all of the rapid changes that were occurring during the spring of 2020, we wanted to investigate how students experienced and perceived faculty use of technology during this particular moment in time. This study documents this transition through the eyes of undergraduate students, and demonstrates the varied ways in which faculty navigated the transition to online learning. According to our interviewees, some faculty were thoughtful and competent and provided a supportive environment that paid attention to a students’ capacity for online learning, rather than maintaining traditional instructional practices. Others relied on practices from in-person instruction that were familiar, but appeared to be nervous in the new online teaching environment. Then there were those who seemed occupied by other concerns, where a focus on effective undergraduate teaching remained limited to begin with, and their approach to online instruction was driven by convenience. Our qualitative data clearly reveals that the ways in which faculty conducted their online courses directly impacted student learning experiences. In this study, we set out to document both the faculty instructional strategies in a hybrid/online environment and student accounts of those choices and their resulting experiences. While we continue to analyze this unique data set on this moment of transition in engineering education, we hope that this paper will also lead to policy recommendations regarding faculty adaptations to online instruction in general. We include some initial thoughts and recommendations below.more » « less
-
more » « less
Abstract Background An instructor’s conceptions of teaching and learning contribute to the establishment of learning environments that may benefit or hinder student learning. Previous studies have defined the continuum of teaching and learning conceptions, ranging from limited to complete, as well as the instructional practices that they help to inform (instructor-centered to student-centered), and the corresponding learning environments that these conceptions and practices establish, ranging from traditional to student-centered. Using the case of one STEM department at a research-intensive, minority serving institution, we explored faculty’s conceptions of teaching and learning and their resulting instructional practices, as well as uncovered their perspectives on the intradepartmental faculty interactions related to teaching. The study participants were drawn from both teaching-focused (called Professors of Teaching, PoTs) and traditional research (whom we call Research Professors, RPs) tenure-track faculty lines to identify whether differences existed amongst these two populations. We used interviews to explore faculty conceptions and analyzed syllabi to unveil how these conceptions shape instructional environments.
Results Overall, PoTs exhibited complete conceptions of teaching and learning that emphasized student ownership of learning, whereas RPs possessed intermediate conceptions that focused more on transmitting knowledge and helping students prepare for subsequent courses. While both PoTs and RPs self-reported the use of active learning pedagogies, RPs were more likely to also highlight the importance of traditional lecture. The syllabi analysis revealed that PoTs enacted more student-centered practices in their classrooms compared to RPs. PoTs appeared to be more intentionally available to support students outside of class and encouraged student collaboration, while RPs focused more on the timeliness of assessments and enforcing more instructor-centered approaches in their courses. Finally, the data indicated that RPs recognized PoTs as individuals who were influential on their own teaching conceptions and practices.
Conclusions Our findings suggest that departments should consider leveraging instructional experts who also possess a disciplinary background (PoTs) to improve their educational programs, both due to their student-centered impacts on the classroom environment and positive influence on their colleagues (RPs). This work also highlights the need for higher education institutions to offer appropriate professional development resources to enable faculty to reflect on their teaching and learning conceptions, aid in their pedagogical evolution, and guide the implementation of these conceptions into practice.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci11060291
