Collaborative Research: Preparing Engineering Faculty to Make Academic Change Happen

在科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）教育界，不断有人呼吁改变我们教育学生的方式。这些变革的呼声超越了课堂体验，延伸到了课程、课外体验和机构层面。然而，尽管发展了以研究为基础的教学策略，创新的课外项目，以及各种基金会和公司多年来的资助和发展，STEM教育的变化并不普遍。缺乏系统性的改变指出了STEM教育界迄今所追求的改变方法的一个重要问题。改革的目标是课程和课程水平，重点是教学和学习方法。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），而这些正是在更大、更制度化的层次上进行变革的基础。这些改变策略在其他学科的文献中有很好的记录，比如组织心理学和行为学，但还没有以一种严格的、可理解的方式被纳入STEM教育的讨论中。这里提出的工作旨在通过回答以下问题来解决这个具体问题：我们能否克服阻碍新思想传播的限制，我们能否克服适应有效实践的障碍，通过关注变革推动者本身的技能和变革专业知识？该项目将通过美国国家科学基金会（NSF）革新工程部门（RED）计划，研究那些在校园中从事变革的变革推动者。通过定制化的变更课程，共同项目负责人将在年度会议期间发布，并通过每月的电话会议提供支持，为RED受助人提供学习和开发研究表明对有效变更管理至关重要的ksa的机会。共同调查官还将在两年期间跟踪这些代理人的工作，在焦点小组访谈期间记录他们对其工作的感想。根据在该EAGER项目中收集的定性数据，共同项目负责人将开发丰富的案例研究，突出促进STEM变革所需的ksa；这些案例研究将为那些希望在校园中做出重大改变的教师和管理人员提供榜样。这个EAGER项目的方法代表了不适合其他资助机会的变革性研究，因为变更管理ksa目前还没有很好地集成到工程教育中。通过展示变更管理ksa对工程教育中有效变更项目的重要性，该项目将为教师和管理人员提供一个新的变更模型。因此，这项工作解决了EAGER对高风险-高回报的关注，这是开发新专业知识和参与新颖学科或跨学科观点的完全不同的方法。

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.