More Like this

1. Developing a Model of Professional Agency Toward Change in Engineering Education for Early Career Scholars

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34416  

   Faber, Courtney ; Lee, Walter ; Strong, Alexandra ; Bodnar, Cheryl ; Smith-Orr, Courtney ; McCave, Erin ( June 2020 , 2020 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   As the field of engineering education continues to evolve, the number of early career scholars who identify as members of the discipline will continue to increase. These engineering education scholars will need to take strategic and intentional actions towards their professional goals and the goals of the engineering education community to be impactful within their positions. In other words, they must exercise agency. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to investigate how the agency of early career, engineering education scholars manifests across different contexts. Our overarching research question is: How do institutional, individual, and disciplinary field and societal features influence early career engineering education faculty member’s agency to impact engineering education in their particular positions? To investigate how faculty agency manifests across different contexts, we adopted a longitudinal research approach to focus on our own experiences as engineering education scholars. Due to the complexity of the phenomenon, more common approaches to qualitative research (e.g., interviews, surveys, etc.) were unlikely to illuminate the manifestation of agency, which requires capturing the nuances associated with one’s day-to-day experiences. Thus, to address our research purpose, we required a research design that provided a space to explore one’s acceptance of ambiguity, responses to disappointments, willingness to adapt, process of adapting, and experiences with collaboration. The poster presented will provide a preliminary version of the model along with a detailed description of the methods used to develop it. In short, we integrated collaborative inquiry and collaborative autoethnography as a means for building our model. Autoethnography is a research approach that critically examines personal experience to explore a cultural phenomenon. Collaborative autoethnography, which leverages collective sense-making of the data, informed the structure of our data collection. Specifically, we documented our individual experiences over the course of six semesters by (1) completing weekly, monthly, pre-semester, and post-semester reflection questions; (2) participating in periodic activities and discussions focused on targeted areas of our theoretical framework and relevant literature; and (3) discussing the outcomes from both (1) and (2) in weekly meetings. Collaborative inquiry, in contrast to collaborative autoethnography, is a research approach where people pair reflection on practice with action through multiple inquiry cycles. Collaborative inquiry guided the topics of discussion within our weekly meetings and how we approached challenges and other aspects of our positions. The combination of these methodologies allowed us to deeply and systematically explore our own experiences, allowing us to develop a model of professional agency towards change in engineering education through collaborative sense-making. By sharing our findings with current and developing engineering education graduate programs, we will enable them to make programmatic changes to benefit current and future engineering education scholars. These findings also will provide a mechanism for divisions within ASEE to develop programming and resources to support the sustained success and impact of their members. 

   more » « less
2. Collaborative Research: Supporting Agency among Early Career Engineering Education Faculty in Diverse Institutional Contexts

   McCave, E. ; Faber, C. ; Bodnar, C. ; Lee, W. ; Smith-Orr, C. ; and Coso Strong, A. ( January 2018 , American Society for Engineering Education: Proceedings of the 2018 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition)

   Given the infancy of engineering education as an established field and the recent increase in early career faculty aligning themselves with the discipline, it is imperative that the community better understand the experiences of these new faculty members. As a result, we will be able to enhance national efforts to train and develop faculty prepared to drive change in engineering education. Accordingly, this two-phased study will investigate how institutional context influences the agency of our research team and other early career engineering education faculty as it relates to facilitating change in engineering education. Faculty agency is important because faculty play a central role in making change, and there is a need to further understand the factors that influence their ability to do so. This work leverages collaborative inquiry and collaborative autoethnography to explore the lived experiences of our research team, which consists of six engineering education faculty with different roles and responsibilities who are positioned in varied settings at different institutions. We represent diverse perspectives with regard to our goals, visions, and training in engineering education. This project officially started in May 2017; however, we have been collecting data since August 2015. Our poster will present a summary of our current progress, which includes the use of the Q3 Research Quality Workshop to guide our plans for data collection and analysis. This was important to our work, because in Phase I of our study we are combining elements from auto ethnography and collaborative inquiry to explore our research questions. In addition to our study’s methodological impact, the results will provide the engineering education community with evidence-based insights on conditions that facilitate change efforts by early career engineering education faculty. By sharing our findings with current and developing engineering education graduate programs, we will enable them to make programmatic changes to benefit future faculty. These findings also provide a mechanism for divisions within the American Society of Engineering Education to develop programming and resources to support the sustained success of their members. 

   more » « less
3. Collaborative Research: Supporting Agency among Early Career Engineering Education Faculty in Diverse Institutional Contexts

   McCave, E. ; Faber, C. ; Bodnar, C. ; Lee, W. ; Smith-Orr, C. ; Coso Strong, A. ( June 2018 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Given the infancy of engineering education as an established field and the recent increase in early career faculty aligning themselves with the discipline, it is imperative that the community better understand the experiences of these new faculty members. As a result, we will be able to enhance national efforts to train and develop faculty prepared to drive change in engineering education. Accordingly, this two-phased study will investigate how institutional context influences the agency of our research team and other early career engineering education faculty as it relates to facilitating change in engineering education. Faculty agency is important because faculty play a central role in making change, and there is a need to further understand the factors that influence their ability to do so. This work leverages collaborative inquiry and collaborative autoethnography to explore the lived experiences of our research team, which consists of six engineering education faculty with different roles and responsibilities who are positioned in varied settings at different institutions. We represent diverse perspectives with regard to our goals, visions, and training in engineering education. This project officially started in May 2017; however, we have been collecting data since August 2015. Our poster will present a summary of our current progress, which includes the use of the Q3 Research Quality Workshop to guide our plans for data collection and analysis. This was important to our work, because in Phase I of our study we are combining elements from auto ethnography and collaborative inquiry to explore our research questions. In addition to our study’s methodological impact, the results will provide the engineering education community with evidence-based insights on conditions that facilitate change efforts by early career engineering education faculty. By sharing our findings with current and developing engineering education graduate programs, we will enable them to make programmatic changes to benefit future faculty. These findings also provide a mechanism for divisions within the American Society of Engineering Education to develop programming and resources to support the sustained success of their members. 

   more » « less
4. Collaborative Research: Supporting Agency among Early Career Engineering Education Faculty in Diverse Institutional Contexts." American Society for Engineering Education

   McCave, E. ; Faber, C. ; Bodnar, C. ; Lee, W. ; Smith-Orr, C. ; and Coso Strong, A. ( January 2018 , ASEE annual conference & exposition proceedings)

   Given the infancy of engineering education as an established field and the recent increase in early career faculty aligning themselves with the discipline, it is imperative that the community better understand the experiences of these new faculty members. As a result, we will be able to enhance national efforts to train and develop faculty prepared to drive change in engineering education. Accordingly, this two-phased study investigates how institutional context influences the agency of our research team and other early career engineering education faculty as it relates to facilitating change in engineering education. Faculty play a central role in making change, thus there is a need to further understand the factors that influence their ability to do so. This work leverages collaborative inquiry and collaborative autoethnography to explore the lived experiences of our research team, which consists of six engineering education faculty who have different roles and responsibilities and are positioned in varied settings at diverse institutions. We represent a variety of perspectives with regard to our goals, visions, and training in engineering education. This project officially started in May 2017; however, we began collecting data in August 2015. Our poster will present a summary of our current progress, which includes the use of the Q3 Research Quality workshop to guide data collection and analysis. In addition to the methodological impact of our study, the results will provide the engineering education community with evidence-based insights on conditions that facilitate change efforts by early career engineering education faculty. By sharing our findings with current and developing engineering education graduate programs, we will enable them to make programmatic changes to benefit future faculty. These findings also will provide a mechanism for divisions of the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) to develop programming and resources to support the sustained success of their members. 

   more » « less
5. Qualitative Findings from Study of Interdisciplinary Education in Computational Modeling for Life Sciences Student Researchers from Emerging Research Institutions

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8659183  

   Madamanchi, Aasakiran ; Poindexter, Shenika V. ; Cardella, Monica E. ; Glazier, James A. ; Umulis, David M. ( October 2018 , 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   This Work-in-Progress paper in the Research Category explores the unique challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary education in computational modeling for life sciences student researchers at emerging research institutions (ERIs), specifically in predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs), and minority serving institutions (MSIs). Engineering approaches such as computational modeling have underappreciated potential for capacity building for the biomedical research enterprises of ERIs. We perform a bibliometric analysis to assess the prevailing use of computational modeling in life sciences research at MSIs, and PUIs. Additionally, we apply Social and Cognitive Theory to identify unique attitudinal, social and structural barriers for student researchers in learning and using computational modeling approaches at each of these types of institutions. Specifically, we use quantitative retrospective pre- and post-survey data and qualitative interviews of students who have attended a short-format computational modeling training course. We supplement these data with qualitative interviews of the students' faculty sponsors. Upon completion, this study will provide deeper understanding of issues related to computer science and engineering education at non-Research I institutions. 

   more » « less