FOUNDATIONS: Integrating Evidence-based Teaching and Learning into the Core Engineering Curriculum

这是一个名为基金会计划的制度转型项目。它在一个越来越容易接受的环境中运作，在很大程度上建立在早期在较低级别的STEM课程中使用循证教学的最初努力基础上。该项目正致力于对史蒂文斯理工学院的教育实践进行重大变革，所有工程学学生在史蒂文斯理工学院的头两年都要学习数学、科学和工程方面的核心课程。它正在利用核心教职员工和学术管理人员的经验，最近实施了由教育研究提供信息的改进教学做法。基础计划将提供培训、支持和认可，以使参与的教职员工能够系统地进行这一改变。培训和支持包括为教员提供与研究型课程设计和教学法的理论和实践相关的专业发展，因为这些课程是以STEM核心学科为基础的。将提供训练有素的课程助理，以帮助改革教师进行过渡。改革指导员在过渡期间将得到形成性评估专家的协助。还将支持反映和衡量进展并分享这一信息所需的必要教员时间和内部结构。基金会计划在内部和外部与同事一起进行宣传，以促进这项工作早期阶段以外的传播。该计划的一个显著特点是针对深入和可转移的学习，无论是在学科领域内还是跨学科领域。为了连贯地实现这一结果，团队将从强调建模开始。学生能力和自我效能感的相关预期改善预计将导致最大的教育收益，并提高所有学生群体对学士学位的坚持性。作为实施基础计划的一部分，正在制定一套政策和行动，以统一教师表彰和奖励制度，以充分认可改革教师所做的努力。奖励制度的这些变化将支持宣传工作，预计将获得教职员工和行政部门的支持，从而变得制度化和可持续。拟议的计划将有助于建立知识库，了解大学，特别是那些专注于研究的大学如何首先概念化，然后实施有效的模式，将主要核心STEM课程的教学转变为基于证据的方法。它将进一步阐明能够促进此类方法的深度和广度的关键教师推动者。创新扩散模型被用来指导这一制度变迁过程的研究。该小组将调查和评估同时以个人和组织环境为目标的战略的有效性，以及今后几年从已定义和规定的变化到紧急或适应性变化的计划演变。全职、非终身教职教师的角色被明确包括在内。该计划将有助于确定和评估课程内容和教学实践，例如建模，从而在关键的STEM基础课程中促进学科内和学科间更深入和可转移的学习。

This is an institutional transformation project called the Foundations Program. It is operating in an increasingly receptive environment, building substantially on initial earlier efforts to use evidence-based teaching in lower division STEM courses. The project is working towards a major transformation in the education practices at Stevens Institute of Technology in the core courses in mathematics, science, and engineering taken by all engineering students in their first two years at Stevens Institute of Technology. It is leveraging the experiences of a core group of faculty and academic administrators in which improved teaching practices informed by educational research have been recently implemented. The Foundations Program will provide the training, support, and recognition to enable the participating faculty to make this changes systematically. Training and support include the provision of professional development for faculty participants related to the theory and practice of research-based course design and pedagogy as these are grounded in core STEM disciplines. Trained course assistants will be provided to reform instructors to aid in the transition. Reform instructors will be assisted during their transition by formative assessment experts. The necessary faculty time and internal structures needed to reflect and gauge progress and share this information will also be supported. The Foundations Program plans to use advocacy with colleagues, internally and externally, in order to catalyze diffusion beyond the early phases of this work. A distinctive feature of the program is to target deep and transferable learning, both within and across disciplinary domains. In order to achieve this result coherently, the team will begin with an emphasis on modeling. The associated expected improvement in student competency and self-efficacy is expected to lead to the strongest educational gains and also improve persistence to the bachelor's degree by all student groups. Integral to implementation of the Foundations Program, a set of policies and actions are being put in place to align the faculty recognition and rewards system to fully recognize the efforts being made by reform instructors. These changes in the reward system will support the advocacy efforts and are expected to gain traction with the faculty and administration, thereby becoming institutionalized and sustainedThe proposed program will contribute to the knowledge base on how universities, especially those with a research focus, can first conceptualize and then implement an effective model to transition teaching in major core STEM courses to evidence-based approaches. It will further illuminate the key faculty enablers that can promote depth and spread of such approaches. A diffusion of innovations model is being employed to guide the research on this institutional transformation process. The team will investigate and assess the effectiveness of a strategy that simultaneously targets both individuals and the organizational environment and the planned evolution in later years from defined and prescribed changes to emergent or adaptive changes. The role of full-time, non-tenure track teaching faculty is explicitly included. The program will contribute to the identification and assessment of curricular content and the teaching practices, such as modeling, that can promote deeper and transferable learning within and across disciplines in the critical foundational STEM courses.