Collaborative Research: Preparing Engineering Faculty to Make Academic Change Happen

在科学、技术、工程和数学(STEM)教育界，人们一再呼吁改变我们教育学生的方式。这些要求变革的呼声超越了课堂经验，延伸到课程、共同课程经验和机构层面。然而，尽管发展了以研究为基础的教学策略，创新的联合课程项目，以及来自各种基金会和公司的多年资金和开发，STEM教育的变化并不普遍。缺乏系统性的变革表明了STEM教育界迄今所追求的变革方法的一个重要问题。改革的目标是课程和课程层面，重点是教与学的方法。然而，这些有益的活动并没有在激励、沟通、协作和说服方面培养必要的知识、技能和能力(KSA)，这些都是在更大、更制度化的层面上进行变革的基础。这些变革策略在组织心理学和行为学等其他学科的文献中都有很好的记载，但并没有以一种严格、容易理解的方式纳入STEM教育的对话中。这里提出的工作试图通过回答以下问题来解决这一具体问题：我们能否克服阻碍新思想传播的限制，我们能否通过关注变革推动者本身的技能和变革专业知识来克服适应有效实践的障碍？该项目将研究通过NSF革命化工程部门(RED)计划在校园内从事变革的变革推动者。共同绩效指标将通过将在红色接受者年度会议期间提供并通过每月电话会议得到支持的定制改革课程，为红色接受者提供学习和发展KSA的机会，研究表明，这些KSA对于有效的变革管理至关重要。联合PIS还将在两年内跟踪这些代理人的工作，记录他们在焦点小组面谈期间对其努力的反映。从这个ENGING项目期间收集的定性数据中，合作绩效指标将开发丰富的案例研究，强调促进STEM变革所需的KSA；这些案例研究将作为希望在校园内做出重大改变的教职员工和管理人员的榜样。这个渴望项目的方法代表着变革性的研究，不能很好地融入其他资助机会，因为变革管理KSA目前没有很好地融入工程教育。通过展示变革管理KSA对工程教育中有效变革项目的重要性，该项目将为教师和管理人员提供一种新的变革模式。因此，这项工作解决了对高风险、高回报、截然不同的方法的迫切关注，这些方法开发了新的专业知识，并采用了新颖的学科或跨学科视角。

Within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education community, there are repeated calls for changing the way we educate our students. These calls for change extend beyond the classroom experience to the curriculum, co-curricular experiences, and institutional levels. And yet, despite the development of research-based teaching strategies, innovative co-curricular projects, and many years of funding and development from a variety of foundations and corporations, change in STEM education is not pervasive. The lack of systemic change points to an important problem with the approach to change that the STEM education community has pursued thus far. Change has been targeted at the course and curriculum levels, focusing on teaching and learning methods. These beneficial activities have not, however, fostered the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSA) in motivation, communication, collaboration, and persuasion that are the foundation for change on larger, more institutional levels. These change strategies are well documented in the literature of other disciplines, such as organizational psychology and behavior, but have not been brought into the conversation within STEM education in a rigorous, accessible way. The work proposed here seeks to address this specific problem by answering the following question: Can we overcome limits that prevent the diffusion of new ideas, can we overcome barriers to the adaption of effective practices, by focusing on the change agents themselves in terms of their skills and change expertise?This project will study change agents who are engaged in making change on their campuses through the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Program. The co-PIs will provide RED recipients the opportunity to learn and develop the KSAs that research suggests are essential for effective change management, through a customized change curriculum that will be delivered during the annual meeting of RED recipients and supported through monthly conference calls. The co-PIs will also follow the work of these agents over a two-year period, capturing their reflections on their efforts during focus group interviews. From the qualitative data gathered during this EAGER Project, the co-PIs will develop rich case studies that highlight the KSAs required to promote change in STEM; these case studies will serve as models for faculty and administrators who wish to make significant change on their campuses. The approach of this EAGER project represents transformative research that does not fit well into other funding opportunities, because change management KSAs are not well integrated in engineering education presently. By demonstrating the importance of change management KSAs to effective change projects in engineering education, this project will provide faculty and administrators with a new model for change. Consequently, this work addresses the EAGER focus on high risk-high payoff, radically different approaches that develop new expertise and engage novel disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspectives.