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This paper discusses the instructional design experiences and processes shared by a multi-disciplinary group—including more than a dozen faculty, staff, and students—while developing a series of online courses on Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) for professional engineers, a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The team size, the complexity and uniqueness of the subject matter, the targeted learners, and the pre-determined research questions created a rare situation in which the team members collaborated and/or negotiated outside the realm of the traditional instructional design process. Over time the team went through two different types of instructional design processes, beginning with a waterfall-type process where the communication between the subject matter experts (SME) and the design team was somewhat limited and finally evolving to a collaborative process where the interaction between the two teams was more direct and immediate. The evolution of the design process and the dynamics between the SMEs and the design team resulted in several major design revisions implemented to improve the quality of the online courses. 

Research has shown that creating an online learning community is vital in Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) training programs and can be facilitated via the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework. For professional learners, an online learning community is influenced by their organizational affiliations. The purpose of this research is to explore learning experiences in groups of professional learners with different and homogenous organizational affiliations in an asynchronous online MBSE module. Through the case study methodology, this research examines four sources of data from two cases: Case 1—learners from different organizations (n = 7); and Case 2—overwhelming majority of learners from the same organization (n = 19). Results showed that learners from the same organization reported higher social presence, which, in turn, corresponded to a higher cognitive presence and higher motivation for future MBSE learning. Based on our findings, we recommend that organizations seeking MBSE adoption coordinate with online course providers to create cohorts to participate in the same offerings to facilitate the process of learning community building. We also recommend MBSE course providers facilitate social interaction on multiple communication platforms and create orientation activities for learners from different organizations to promote social presence. 

The Engineering Education departments at three large public universities are collaborating on an NSF-funded program to document the impact of the emerging EER&I community. This paper is a report on what has been learned to date. Goals of the program include (1) identifying the broader EER&I network, (2) identifying examples of EER&I impact, (3) organizing and hosting a summit of EER&I leaders to develop a systematic process for documenting the impact of EER&I, (4) piloting the process, and (5) compiling and disseminating best practices. Members of the community have been identified, including many who are conducting engineering education research without being part of a formal engineering education program, and some examples of the impact of engineering education research have been gathered. The summit has been held, and a process for documenting the impact of EER&I has been proposed. Results of the summit include a range of possible metrics that can be used to document EER&I impact and ways to communicate that impact. Some pilots have been conducted at the three collaborating schools and several other sites, and a few institutions are now preparing documentation. Results of the summit and the pilots will be shared. In their pilots, engineering education programs have been able to collect and analyze data that describe their efforts to impact how engineering is taught at the university level. Quantitative metrics include research expenditures, publications, number of graduates, positions graduates hold, faculty leadership in groups that influence engineering education policy, and so on. It has proven to be more difficult to demonstrate a direct causal relationship between those efforts and actual changes in the way engineering is taught in the traditional disciplines. The path to each change seems to be unique, and the most effective way to convey the impact is through telling each individual story. Thus, ongoing work focuses on generating a range of qualitative approaches that can be used to document and analyze these change processes. Collaborators on the NSF program are currently piloting ways to convey those stories to the many audiences interested in the results.