Affordances and Barriers to Creating Educational Change: A Case Study of an Educational Innovation Implemented into a First-year Engineering Design Course
- Conference
- Location
-
Salt Lake City, Utah
- Publication Date
-
June 23, 2018
- Start Date
-
June 23, 2018
- End Date
-
July 27, 2018
- Conference Session
- Tagged Topic
-
Faculty Development Constituency Committee
- Page Count
-
19
- DOI
-
10.18260/1-2--29762
- Permanent URL
-
https://peer.asee.org/29762
- Download Count
-
497
Paper Authors
Sarah E. Zappe Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Dr. Sarah Zappe is Research Associate and Director of Assessment and Instructional Support in the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education at Penn State. She holds a doctoral degree in educational psychology emphasizing applied measurement and testing. In her position, Sarah is responsible for developing instructional support programs for faculty, providing evaluation support for educational proposals and projects, and working with faculty to publish educational research. Her research interests primarily involve creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship education.
Megan Huffstickler Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Megan Huffstickler in an Academic Adviser in the Biology Department at Penn State. Her undergraduate work is in Chemistry, and she will be receiving an MS in Educational Psychology from Penn State in May 2018.
Joseph C. Tise The Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Joseph Tise is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Psychology program at Penn State University. His research interests include self-regulated learning, measurement, and connecting educational research to practice.
Thomas A. Litzinger Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Thomas A. Litzinger is Director of the Leonhard Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Education and a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State. His work in engineering education involves curricular reform, teaching and learning innovations, assessment, and faculty development. Dr. Litzinger has more than 50 publications related to engineering education including lead authorship of an invited article in the 100th Anniversary issue of JEE and for an invited chapter on translation of research to practice for the first edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Engineering Education Research. He serves as an Associate Editor for Advances in Engineering Education and on the Advisory Board for the Journal of Engineering Education. He was selected as a Fellow of ASEE in 2008 and of ASME in 2012. He holds a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Penn State, an M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from RPI, and a Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton.
Sven G. Bilén
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
orcid.org/0000-0002-5416-7039
Sven G. Bilén, Ph.D., P.E. is Professor of Engineering Design, Electrical Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering at Penn State and Head of the School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs. His educational research interests include developing techniques for enhancing engineering design education, innovation in design, teaching technological entrepreneurship, global product design, and systems design.
Abstract
This evidence-based instructional-practice paper describes a case study of the implementation of an educational innovation into a multi-instructor, multi-section first-year design course in the College of Engineering at Penn State University. Although literature from education and psychology fields provides many examples of how to enhance student learning, adoption rates for evidence-based instructional practices have been fairly low among engineering faculty. Even when teaching and learning centers are able to facilitate the adoption of evidence-based practices, encouraging a large fraction of engineering faculty to make substantial changes in instruction remains very challenging. This paper describes an educational innovation adopted by the engineering design program and the results of a qualitative study focusing on the affordances and barriers that emerged during the change process. The findings show that affordances that supported change were related to flexibility, fit of the instructional methods with the course, meeting a perceived need, ease of use, and financial incentives offered by the college’s teaching and learning center. A sense of community yet autonomy also encouraged faculty to participate. Barriers included implementation ambiguity, time required to implement and to prepare, and a perceived lack of expertise in some of topics involved in the innovation such as ethics. Faculty resistance to change, the logistical concerns of the course, and characteristics of the university, as well as interpersonal dynamics also impacted the likelihood of adoption. The results are discussed in terms of implications for faculty developers and teaching and learning centers.
Zappe, S. E., & Huffstickler, M., & Tise, J. C., & Litzinger, T. A., & Bilén, S. G. (2018, June), Affordances and Barriers to Creating Educational Change: A Case Study of an Educational Innovation Implemented into a First-year Engineering Design Course Paper presented at 2018 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition , Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--29762
ASEE holds the copyright on this document. It may be read by the public free of charge. Authors may archive their work on personal websites or in institutional repositories with the following citation: © 2018 American Society for Engineering Education. Other scholars may excerpt or quote from these materials with the same citation. When excerpting or quoting from Conference Proceedings, authors should, in addition to noting the ASEE copyright, list all the original authors and their institutions and name the host city of the conference. - Last updated April 1, 2015