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

这是一个机构转型项目，称为基金会计划。它是在一个越来越容易接受的环境中运作的，基本上建立在最初的早期努力，在较低的部门STEM课程中使用循证教学。该项目正在努力实现史蒂文斯理工学院教育实践的重大转变，在史蒂文斯理工学院的前两年，所有工程专业学生都将参加数学，科学和工程的核心课程。它正在利用教师和学术管理人员的核心小组的经验，其中最近实施了通过教育研究改进的教学实践。基金会计划将提供培训，支持和认可，使参与教师系统地进行这种改变。培训和支持包括为教师参与者提供与基于研究的课程设计和教学法的理论和实践相关的专业发展，因为这些都是基于STEM核心学科的。将向改革教员提供经过培训的课程助理，以协助过渡。改革教员在过渡期间将得到形成性评估专家的协助。还将支持必要的教师时间和内部结构，以反映和衡量进展并分享这些信息。基金会计划利用与内部和外部同事的宣传，以促进这项工作的早期阶段之后的传播。该计划的一个显着特点是针对深度和可转移的学习，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，团队将开始重点放在建模上。学生能力和自我效能的相关预期改善预计将导致最强的教育收益，并提高所有学生群体对学士学位的坚持性。作为实施基金会方案的组成部分，正在制定一套政策和行动，以调整教师的认可和奖励制度，充分承认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，并有望获得教师和行政部门的牵引力，从而成为制度化和可持续的拟议计划将有助于知识库的大学，特别是那些以研究为重点的大学，可以首先概念化，然后实施一个有效的模式，将主要核心STEM课程的教学过渡到以证据为基础的方法。它将进一步阐明可以促进这种方法的深度和传播的关键教师使能因素。创新扩散模型被用来指导这一制度变迁过程的研究。该团队将调查和评估同时针对个人和组织环境的战略的有效性，以及未来几年从定义和规定的变化到紧急或适应性变化的计划演变。全职，非终身教职教师的作用明确包括在内。该计划将有助于识别和评估课程内容和教学实践，如建模，可以促进关键基础STEM课程中跨学科和跨学科的深入和可转移学习。

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.