Preparing undergraduate 'learning assistants' to teach in design courses

工程不仅仅是应用数学和科学来解决现实世界的问题和创造新产品；它包括设计思维，一个创造性的，协作的，但系统的过程，工程团队通过它来设计产品或解决方案。出于这个原因，许多本科工程专业要求一年级学生学习工程设计导论课程，在这门课程中，学生们组成团队设计产品或解决方案。由于这些课程可能很大，大学通常会聘请本科生或研究生助教来帮助学生团队取得进步。然而，这些助教往往面临两个主要挑战。首先，虽然简单地告诉学生团队该做什么很容易，但对于助教来说，培养学生的设计思维要困难得多，而设计思维可以让学生克服障碍，找到自己的解决方案。其次，反映工程专业的大学工程专业中，女性、某些少数族裔学生和低收入背景学生的比例非常低；助教通常需要确保这些代表性不足的学生（以及来自各种背景的安静学生）能够公平地参与到学生团队中。在这个项目中，马里兰大学的研究人员和工程教育工作者正在测试一种在工程设计课程中教授助教的新方法。助教要修一门教育学课程，培养学生团队的设计思维和所有团队成员的公平参与。因此，这些助教的学生更善于参与协同工程设计，这为他们进入这个行业后成为更好的工程师奠定了基础。具体来说，项目人员正在根据科罗拉多大学的学习助理模式，为本科助教教授一门3学分的教育学课程。教育学课程整合了一般STEM学习辅助教育学课程的主题，如学习的认知科学、课堂话语的促进和元认知，以及针对工程设计的主题：设计审查、设计思维、设计中的专家与新手实践、工程认识论、团队合作和公平。关于教育学课程效果的研究解决了两个主要的研究问题：(1)助教与工程设计专业学生的互动如何影响学生的即时行为，学生认为助教对他们的长期成长有什么影响，在(a)设计思维和(b)平等的制定方面，体现在沟通、团队合作等方面。(2)教育学课程如何影响助教的教学信念和与学生的互动。关于助教如何注意和回应(a)学生的设计思维和(b)对公平的威胁。研究团队正在采用基于设计的研究方法，这是一个迭代循环(i)收集和分析数据，（ii）形成关于助教如何以及为什么没有学习特定思想或在课堂教学中实施这些思想的假设，以及（iii）通过修改下一轮教育学课程来测试这些假设。数据包括从教育学课程中选择的课程作业；助教与学生团队互动的录像以及助教离开后学生团队的活动；学期后对录制的学生团队进行调查，了解他们与助教的经历；对助教进行了多次采访关于他们做出的特定教学决定。这项工作为旨在为工程设计课程准备助教的课程和计划的创建和改进提供了信息。

Engineering is not just the application of mathematics and science to address real-world problems and create new products; it involves design thinking, a creative, collaborative, yet systematic process by which engineering teams design products or solutions. For this reason, many undergraduate engineering programs require first-year students to take an Introduction to Engineering Design course in which teams of students work to design a product or solution. Because these courses can be large, universities often employ undergraduate or graduate teaching assistants to help the student teams make progress. However, these teaching assistants often face two major challenges. First, although it is easy to simply tell the student teams what to do, it is much harder for teaching assistants to cultivate their students' design thinking, which can enable students to surmount obstacles and arrive at their own solutions. Second, university engineering programs, reflecting the engineering profession, include disproportionately few women, students from certain minority groups, and students from lower-income backgrounds; and teaching assistants often need to make sure that these underrepresented students (as well as quieter students from all backgrounds) get to participate equitably in the student teams. In this project, researchers and engineering educators at the University of Maryland are testing a new approach to teaching the teaching assistants in engineering design courses. The teaching assistants take a pedagogy course intended to prepare them to foster the student teams' design thinking and equitable participation of all team members. As a result, the students of these teaching assistants become better at engaging in collaborative engineering design, which sets them up to become better engineers once they enter the profession. Specifically, the project staff is teaching a 3-credit pedagogy course to undergraduate teaching assistants, based on the Learning Assistant model from the University of Colorado. The pedagogy course integrates topics from general STEM learning-assistant pedagogy courses, such as the cognitive science of learning, facilitation of classroom discourse, and metacognition, with topics targeting engineering design: design reviews, design thinking, expert vs. novice practices in design, engineering epistemology, teamwork and equity. Research on the effects of the pedagogy course addresses two overarching research questions: (1) How do teaching assistants' interactions with Engineering Design students affect the students' immediate actions, and what effects do students think the teaching assistants have on their longer-term growth, with respect to (a) design thinking and (b) enactment of equity as reflected in communication, teamwork, etc. (2) How does the pedagogy course influence teaching assistants' pedagogical beliefs and interactions with students, with respect to how the teaching assistants notice and respond to (a) students' design thinking and (b) threats to equity. The research team is taking a design-based research approach, an iterative cycle of (i) collecting and analyzing data, (ii) forming hypotheses about how and why the teaching assistants did and did not learn specific ideas or enact those ideas in their classroom instruction, and (iii) testing those hypotheses by modifying the next round of the pedagogy course. Data include selected coursework from the pedagogy course; videorecordings of teaching assistants' interactions with student teams and what the teams do after the teaching assistant leaves; post-semester surveys of the videorecorded student teams about their experiences with the teaching assistant; and multiple interviews with the teaching assistants about particular instructional decisions they made. This work informs the creation and improvement of courses and programs that aim to prepare teaching assistants for engineering design courses.