Shifting Pedagogical Paradigms: The Active Learning in Engineering Program

Abstract

Engineering education has a long and well-researched history; however, recent declines in the number of undergraduate students entering and matriculating through to graduation has commanded the engineering education community’s attention. To help counter the declining number of students entering and persisting in engineering, an engineering education reformation is underway where instructors use their engineering mindsets to transition from knowledge transmitters to designers of knowledge creation, learner-centered environments. However, many engineering instructors are not trained in such methodologies. As a result, engineering colleges and departments have made efforts to assist instructors in developing such pedagogical capabilities and efficacy.

Texas A&M University’s College of Engineering (CoE) sought to modernize their facilities as a means of supporting pedagogical change, which included innovatively designed learning spaces in the new Zachry Engineering Education Complex. The updated learning spaces catalyzed the need to provide instructors with faculty development to assist their transition into the newly renovated Zachry spaces, encouraging them to incorporate more evidence-based teaching strategies as a way of moving towards the College’s strategic goals.

Texas A&M’s CoE sought assistance to create a faculty development program to accelerate faculty’s use of the learning spaces Zachry affords. The Active Learning in Engineering Program (ALEP) was developed as a partnership between the CoE, the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE), and Instructional Technology Services (ITS). The ALEP aimed to prepare and support engineering instructors as they transition pedagogical paradigms into one that foster more learner-centered instruction for the newly designed Zachry. This study evaluated the effectiveness of the ALEP. Its results indicate the didactic instructional profile remains common across undergraduate engineering regardless of the substantial amount of support for more impactful evidence-based teaching strategies. Though this is the case, slight indicators of improvement can be detected, while not statistically significant, challenging institutions and disciplines to relook at policies and practices potentially perpetuating this status quo. Specifically, the researcher would recommend institutions reflect on and revise their pre-service and in-service faculty development for future and current instructors, incentivize and reward instructor’s implementation of evidence-based teaching practices, and the use of a research-based holistic framework for the review of teaching.