Welcome

Welcome to the wiki page for the CAEE APS-SEED workshop sessions held at FIE 2008 and POD/NCSPOD 2008 in October, 2008.  Details about the workshop, the associated engineering education research (APS and SEED studies), and notes from the small-group discussions that took place during the workshop are below. 

About CAEE, APS, and SEED

The Academic Pathways Study (APS) is an extensive research study of engineering students conducted by the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE).  Find out more about CAEE by visiting our web site.  In addition, the following overview paper is a good place to start to find out more about APS:

Sheppard, Sheri, Cynthia J. Atman, Reed Stevens, Lorraine Fleming, Ruth Streveler, Robin S. Adams, Theresa Barker. 2004. Studying the Engineering Experience: Design of a Longitudinal Study. In Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, June 20-23, 2004. (PDF)

For more about the Studies of Engineering Educator Decisions (SEED) and related studies, see the CAEE web page about the Scholarship on Teaching Engineering element of the center.  The "Publications and Resources" page on the CAEE web lists more papers, including some reporting on APS and SEED findings in depth.

About the workshops

The FIE 2008 version of this workshop (Session F2J) was titled, "Linking research findings on engineering student learning and engineering teaching:  Implications for engineering education" (session abstract on FIE web site).  The POD/NCSPOD 2008 version of this workshop was titled, "Research on engineering learning and teaching:  Implications for engineering education" (session abstract in conference program).  These workshops we co-presented by Cindy Atman, Sheri Sheppard, Debbie Chachra, Ken Yasuhara, and Jim Borgford-Parnell, acknowledging the contributions of Deborah Kilgore, Lorraine Fleming, Ron Miller, Karl Smith, Reed Stevens, Ruth Streveler, and other CAEE team members.

Workshop attendees were provided an overview of CAEE and research findings about engineering students (from APS) and educators (from SEED).  In small groups, they then selected an APS finding to focus on and discussed its implications on undergraduate engineering education.  Attendees selected from the following three findings:

A.  Engineering students become increasingly disengaged in both engineering and non-engineering courses over their undergraduate years.

B.  Male engineering students have significantly higher self-confidence than female students in math, science, and open-ended problem solving.

C.  Among first-year engineering students, females tend to situate engineering design problems in a broader context than males do.

Discussion notes

Notes were combined from discussions at both conferences.  Square brackets indicate words added during transcription, based on the transcriber's guesses about the intended meaning.

Discussion related to Finding A (increasing academic disengagement)

• course design
• program-level decisions (overview of program)
• [students] overworked [See note below.]
• are measures [assessment methods] valid
• evaluation tools to detect true learning
• vertical alignment
• what do you know and [or vs.] what can you do
• coordination among professors to monitor and manage cumulative time spent related to courses [lectures, exams, labs, etc.]
• making class worthwhile, use of class time
  • considering whether [students'] physical presence is necessary
  • how to make class less boring
  • methodology in classroom
    • active learning?
  • whether students are penalized for not showing up
  • purpose of class time...includes building community?
• whether to put materials on line [before/after class]
• how to make content interactive, engaging
  • active/collaborative learning
  • giving students autonomy in selecting activities/topics
• level of student maturity
• assessment...assigning credit to participation, attendance?
• weighting of classroom elements
• asking students why an assignment was late, why they skipped class; examining how this reasoning might change over time
• homework assignments
• how closely to follow a textbook

other remarks:  See Wesch's "Visions of students today" video about contemporary students.

questions:  Is disengagement actually a reflection of students managing their time better?  What are the reasons for non-attendance and other forms of disengagement?  How is disengagement related to intention to go to grad school?  Are students disengaging from engineering or from the [whole] student experience?  How is disengagement related to class size, institution?  Engagement with what/whom (teacher, material, subject...)?  Is the problem of disengagement solvable, worth trying to address?

Discussion related to Finding B (gender and confidence)

• team/group formation for projects, in-class exercises
  • grouping students based on whether they're loud or quiet [extroverted/introverted]
  • mix of students assigned to work team/groups
• putting all female students into the same intro to engineering design
• peer feedback, esp. positive to identify strengths (e.g., in project work?)
• making each student accountable---and successful
• creating openness in classroom, in total learning environment
  • a safe place for questions
  • easy and safe to say "I don't know."
  • casting recognition of lack of knowledge/understanding as open door to learning
• making empowering comments in lecture to improve classroom culture:  cues, encouragement, interest in contributions
• acknowledging questions/contributions of women in classroom
• guarding against my own assumptions about characteristics of individual students
• avoiding constant use of "he" in case studies
• asking students to make formal presentations about design projects/case studies, etc.
• "cold calling" on silent students
• sharing performance data with students so they can see where they are
• providing feedback about performance data
• whether this and related topics (gender, social, etc.) should be discussed at all in classroom
• including projects or role-playing activities as opportunities for learning
• being cautious not to generate over-confidence in feedback to students

questions:  How is confidence related to ability?  Is male confidence actually overconfidence?

Discussion related to Finding C (gender and consideration of broad context)

• team formation:  gender balance, concerns about isolating women
• prompting first-year students to examine broad range of contextual factors, looking beyond technical; indicating equal importance of close and broad context
  • e.g., as in-class exercise, assigning separate groups to examine close and broad context, then coming together for discussion of both
• referring to and asking questions about social context, equity, consequences
  • e.g., acting as "devil's advocate" to raise contextual issues
  • not shutting down questions about these topics when raised by students (women or men)
• considering necessity of covering less technical material in order to address contextual issues

Discussion related to SEED findings

Regarding terms faculty use to refer to the people they teach

• "learner" as "education-speak" word
• referring to non-major students as "non-believers"
• other terms:  "developing students", "developing individuals", "developing adults"
• "dynamicists"
• term "student" incorporating "learner" [implicitly]
• "student engineers" vs. "engineering students"
• "digital natives"
• "my only hope for social security"
• "apprentice"

Regarding teaching decisions

• topics
• context (real-world)
• learning task
  • active learning
  • collaborative learning
• expectations
• projects vs. "homework"
• full curricula
• nature, frequency, and timing of assessment
• compliance vs. engagement
• time of class
• dealing with late-arriving students
• stopping discussion, e.g., answering questions, calling on students

Continuing the discussion

This is a wiki site, which means anyone with the wiki invite key can update or add pages as they see fit.  Feel free to clarify points or add links in the above notes, add remarks in the Comments section below, or, if you're really ambitious, add entire sections or pages to the site.  To get this wiki's invite key, contact a workshop attendee or the site maintainer.