Research Initiation: Factors Motivating Engineering Faculty to Adopt and Teach New Engineering Technologies

随着世界处于第四次工业革命的边缘，工程学院必须不断教授与行业相关的新工程技术，如新的软件工具或新的编程语言，以保持课程材料的相关性，并为学生树立终身学习和技术采用的榜样。尽管教师们经常在自己的研究中采用新技术，但这些技术并不一定是对行业内的实践工程师最重要的技术。该项目将帮助和阻碍工程学院学习和教授新工程技术的能力，这将为学院技术接受的模型提供信息，并提出干预措施，以增加教师对行业相关技术的采用。训练有素的工程师是我们国家应对第四次工业革命、维护我们长期经济稳定和国家安全的基本要素。在技术革命中，工程项目的成功取决于教师和管理部门的快速和灵活的反应。这个项目将有助于定位工程学院，使其能够在现在和长期内保持工程项目的相关性和工程毕业生的技能。本项目将发展对支持或抑制工程学院技术接受的因素的理解，包括开发这种接受的学院特定模型。其范围将集中于检查工程学院自愿采用和教学与工业相关的技术。以前对教师采用技术的研究主要集中在教学技术上，而不是学生将在他们的职业生涯中使用的技术。此外，广泛使用的技术接受模型（TAM）已被证明是有限的，仅占最终采用技术的变异性的60% （Lee et al., 2003）。因此，影响大学工程学院采用和教学行业相关技术的其他因素仍有待发现。研究中需要解决的问题包括：(a)影响工程学院采用新数字技术的动机是什么？(b)阻碍工程学院采用新数字技术的障碍是什么？(c)哪些制度政策和项目可以帮助教师采用新的工程技术？(d)哪些因素影响教师决定学习和采用哪些新的工程技术供其专业使用？(e)教师如何决定在他们的课程中教授哪些工程技术？与工程学院的定性访谈将用于收集数据，以确定相关变量，然后可以在随后的研究中进行测试。数据中确定的主题将用于阐述可能影响教师技术接受度的新结构。这些新的结构将最终导致更适用于工程学院的拟议修订的TAM，从而更好地理解这些学院的技术采用和使用。更重要的是，这些新发现将为解决如何在工程专业毕业生的相关课程中向学生教授技术工具和学习相关技能的挑战提供建议。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With the world on the brink of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, engineering faculty must continuallyteach new industry-relevant engineering technologies, such as new software tools or new programminglanguages, to maintain the relevance of their course materials, as well as to model lifelong learning andtechnology adoption to students. Although faculty regularly adopt new technologies for their ownresearch, these technologies are not necessarily those that are most important for practicing engineerswithin industry. This project will develop an understanding of what aids and hinders engineering faculty ability to learn and teach new engineering technologies, which will inform a model of faculty technology acceptance as well as proposed interventions to increase faculty adoption of industry-relevant technologies. Properly trained engineers are an essential element of our country to navigate the Fourth Industrial Revolution and maintain both our long-term economic stability and our national security. The success of engineering programs within the technological revolution depends upon a quick and agile response from faculty and administration. This project will help position engineering faculty to be able to maintain the relevance of engineering programs and the skills of engineering graduates both now and in the long term.This project will develop an understanding of factors that support or inhibit engineering facultytechnology acceptance, including the development of a faculty-specific model of such acceptance. Itsscope will focus on examining engineering faculty voluntary adoption and teaching of industry-relevant technologies. Previous studies of technology adoption among faculty have focused on instructional technologies, rather than the technologies that students will use in their careers. Additionally, the widely used Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been shown to be limited, only accounting for 60% of the variability in the ultimate adoption of a technology (Lee et al., 2003). Thus, additional factors remain to be uncovered that affect the adoption and teaching of industry-relevant technologies by university engineering faculty. The questions to be addressed in the research include: (a) What are the motivations that influence the adoption of new digital technologies by engineering faculty? (b) What are the barriers that inhibit the adoption of new digital technologies by engineering faculty? (c) What institutional policies and programs might aid faculty in the adoption of new engineering technologies? (d) What factors affect faculty decisions regarding which new engineering technologies to learn and adopt for their professional use? and (e) How do faculty determine which engineering technologies to teach in their courses? Qualitative interviews with engineering faculty will be used to gather data to identify the relevant variables which can then be tested in subsequent research. Identified themes in the data will be used to elaborate new constructs that may affect faculty technology acceptance. These new constructs will ultimately lead to a proposed revised TAM that is more applicable to engineering faculty, leading to a better understanding of technology adoption and use among these faculty. More importantly, the new understandings that are developed will inform proposed interventions to address the challenge of keeping the technological tools taught to students, and associated skills learned, in engineering courses relevant for engineering graduates.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.