Collaborative Research: Design for Impact - Creating Effective Student Activities that Faculty Will Use

培养学生对基本概念的理解是工科本科教育的首要目标。人们一直发现，诸如概念问题、启发模型的活动和基于探究的教学等创新方法在促进概念转变方面更有效。然而，这些创新的方法在设计时将教育有效性作为首要(或唯一)考虑因素。致力于了解如何设计这些活动以增加工程学教师采用这些活动的研究相当少。当今工程改革面临的主要挑战不是制定更有效的教学策略，而是找到方法让教师采用我们已经知道的比大多数本科工程学课堂上仍然存在的传统方法更有效的教学方法。该项目通过确定开发教学模块的方法来应对这一挑战，这些教学模块对学生的学习收获和教师的适应性都是有效的。本项目是为化工、机械等工科专业开设的一门重要基础课--传热学教材的研制。它正在将学生学习基本概念的研究与采用和改变的研究结合起来，以开发教授更有可能在课堂上实际使用的材料。由不同类型机构的教授组成的小组正在评估这些材料的“可用性”，他们与不同范围的工科学生群体合作。该项目正在进行的评估是监控下载最频繁的活动，并将这些信息与促进教师采用的因素联系起来。关于创新扩散到大学课堂的文献指出了几个阻碍采用新方法的因素。这些问题包括教师对(1)准备时间、(2)上课时间、(3)有效性、(4)学生抵制、(5)僵化的教学环境和(6)无法使创新适应他们的需求的担忧。因此，有必要制定办法，尽量减少这些已查明的障碍，以便更广泛地采用有效做法，从而产生广泛影响。这个项目的发现将为未来促进教师在其他STEM领域采用新的教学实践的努力提供参考。

Developing students' understanding of fundamental concepts is a primary goal of undergraduate engineering education. Innovations such as concept questions, model-eliciting activities, and inquiry-based instruction have consistently been found to be more effective for promoting conceptual change. However, these innovative approaches were designed with educational effectiveness as the foremost (or only) concern. Considerably less research has been devoted to understanding how to design these activities to increase their adoption by engineering faculty. The primary challenge facing engineering reform today is not primarily to develop more effective instructional strategies but to find ways to get faculty to adopt instructional techniques that we already know to be more effective than the traditional methods still found in the majority of undergraduate engineering classrooms. This project addresses that challenge by identifying methods of developing instructional modules that are simultaneously effective for student learning gains and faculty adoptability. This project is developing instructional materials for heat transfer, an important foundational course for chemical, mechanical and other engineering majors. It is combining the research on student learning of fundamental concepts with research on adoption and change to develop materials that professors are more likely to actually use in their classes. The materials are being evaluated for "usability" by a panel of professors at different types of institutions who work with a diverse range of engineering student populations. Ongoing evaluation of the project is monitoring the most frequently downloaded activities and relating this information to factors that promote faculty adoption. The literature on diffusion of innovation into the college classroom identifies several factors that inhibit adoption of new approaches. These include faculty concerns about (1) preparation time, (2) class time, (3) effectiveness, (4) student resistance, (5) inflexible teaching environments and (6) inability to adapt innovations to suit their needs. There is therefore a need to develop approaches that minimize these identified barriers so that effective practices are more widely adopted and consequently provide broad impact. The findings of this project will inform future efforts to promote faculty adoption of new instructional practices in other STEM areas.