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This section outlines the strategy that will engage faculty and students in the process of reform. Obtaining buy-in by both students and faculty is the most critical and the most difficult part of this project. The strategy to create and sustain buy-in is to:
- Make sure reform is interest-driven by creating and supporting professional development.
- Focus support primarily on young faculty, Ph.D. students, and senior faculty already involved or interested in reform, and align the needs and abilities of these groups.
- Support and reward reform by building sustainable institutional resources, alliances, and commitments that create systemic change.
The process of engaging students and faculty will build on the strengths inherent to the approach used. The breadth-on-depth approach allows reform to be implemented in any course, minimizing the impact of faculty who choose not to become engaged. The developmental model lets students have meaningful roles in curriculum reform efforts.
Faculty
Engaging Faculty through Interest Driven Reform: Donald Elger at the University of Idaho has investigated how the transformational change we seek can be accomplished [7], and found that faculty must find intrinsic interest in engaging in reform. This is accomplished by building professional learning communities among faculty and students [73]. During the first phase of the project Dr. Cheville formed an informal lunch group whose membership has grown to represent nearly half the colleges at OSU. This group is organized around faculty interests, shares information and experiences, and collaborates on funding opportunities. Dr. Cheville will expand membership of this learning community, include graduate students, and fund activities through the financial support pledged by the engineering college (see letter of support).
To sustain interest in reform, this project will provide professional development that engages faculty in the scholarship of teaching and publicizes this project state-wide. The Office of the Provost has committed to funding a campus-wide, semiannual workshop on student learning and engagement (see letter of support). This workshop will bring in nationally known speakers, including experts on the teaching techniques that will be used in this grant such as Just in Time Teaching [28] and Team Learning [29, 30]. A PI (Elliott) will serve as the first coordinator of the workshop, and participants in this project will be invited speakers. Additionally travel funds will allow faculty to travel to national workshops on teaching case studies [74], assessment, and other development activities.
Support and Reward Reform by Faculty: To support and reward faculty who participate in reform, the PI's have worked with the college and university administration to better manage institutional resources and change the promotion and tenure requirements. The PI's have worked with the engineering dean to set aside one quarter of the funds used to support undergraduate laboratory facilities as matching funds for competitive education proposals. This allocation of funds will reward faculty who engage in meaningful laboratory improvement and reform, and encourage participation in reform efforts. To change the institutional culture, the dean will form a committee to revise promotion and tenure requirements to explicitly include sound assessment practices, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and participation in accreditation and curriculum review. Both of these are outlined in the attached letter of support.
Graduate Students
Supporting Current and Future Faculty: Time is faculty's most valuable commodity, and can only be increased effectively by engaging motivated and competent students in supporting curriculum reform. Phase II of this project will engage graduate students in undergraduate teaching and support their development as future faculty. The planning phase successfully integrated students into both teaching and course development. Students can make meaningful contributions to courses based on the developmental model since the scholarship of teaching is done outside the classroom.
To engage graduate students in the scholarship of teaching and learning a joint teaching-research program for Ph.D. students who wish to pursue academic positions will be created. The structure of this program is shown below in figure 6. Students will participate in the research-oriented graduate program, but additionally be given opportunities to teach and develop curricular materials. A graduate course on effective practices in teaching engineering will be created and supported by the engineering college (see attached letter of support) and taught jointly by Cheville (engineering) and Bryant (education). Following successful completion of the class students will join one of the professional learning communities to develop mentorship with a faculty member. Students will participate in the campus wide workshops, and travel money is budgeted to allow them to travel to national workshops. In the final year of a student's doctoral work they will receive a stipend to develop curricular materials-a case study, project, formative evaluation, and collection of readings-based on their research. The doctoral students then implement the curricular materials in an undergraduate course, update their teaching portfolio, and publish their experiences. This program will be built in consultation with Jennifer Turns at the University of Washington, who has created effective ways of developing graduate teaching portfolios. This project will engage Dr. Turns as a consultant in helping to develop and assess graduate teaching portfolios, see attached letter of support.
Figure 6: Student timeline for joint teaching/research Ph.D. program that will be established.
Graduate students for this program will be recruited nationally. Dr. Fan will be responsible for coordinating recruiting materials, and the cost of this recruiting will be covered by the College of Engineering (see attached letter of support). The research/education program will be advertised nationally to recruit graduate students who have an interest in become future faculty to OSU. To attract top caliber students, the office of the provost will create a highly competitive interdisciplinary graduate fellowship for students who pursue joint SMET-education degrees as detailed in her letter of support.
Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate students will be involved in curriculum development to ensure the curricular materials created do not contribute to task overload. In the planning phase undergraduate students supported through REU fellowships created laboratory infrastructure and software, and beta tested class projects. For example, in the electromagnetics field course a team of four REU students built and tested micro-strip filters and patch antennas, wrote LabView code so students could remotely operate instruments, built an anechoic chamber, and developed finite element simulation models over the course of a single summer [75, 76]. Almost all of the students involved in these REU projects have gone on to graduate school. REU supplemental funding and student recruiting will be managed by Dr. Bunting. Support for undergraduate students has been obtained from the Office of the Provost in the form of a "Fifth year mentorship". This program will be eligible to undergraduate students whose scholarship support ends after four years. This program will provide a "safety net" for outstanding students who commit to research, extra-curricular design projects, or other career-building activities that extend the time it takes them to graduate. As per the PI's agreement with the Provost, support will require that senior students serve as mentors, or assist faculty in curriculum development and research projects. The mentorship program will have a significant impact on retention [4].
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