Student Involvement in Choice of Work in Progress: Course Activities and the Impact on Student Experience

Taru Malhotra; Carolyn G. MacGregor; Richard Li; Alexander Edwin Kay Glover

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Conference: 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Baltimore , Maryland
Publication Date: June 25, 2023
Start Date: June 25, 2023
End Date: June 28, 2023
Conference Session: Teaching Tools: Student Experience and Reflection (NEE)
Tagged Division: New Engineering Educators Division (NEE)
Page Count: 9
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--44299
Permanent URL: https://strategy.asee.org/44299
Download Count: 138

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Paper Authors

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Taru Malhotra University of Waterloo

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Dr. Taru Malhotra is a postdoctoral fellow in Engineering Education at the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Engineering. She completed her Ph.D. (Language, Culture, and Teaching) at the Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, Canada.

Her research focuses on faculty development, exploring instructor beliefs and practices in STEM courses, online and blended learning, student perception, engagement, satisfaction, and achievement, course design, instructional design, learning theories, and fundamentals in education (Teacher Education, STEM Education/ Engineering Education), and TA training.

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Carolyn G. MacGregor University of Waterloo orcid.org/0000-0002-2315-1536

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Carolyn MacGregor is the Associate Dean, Teaching for the Faculty of Engineering and an Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Prof. MacGregor has been actively involved in human factors research and consulting activities since 1980. She applies her engineering and psychology degrees to the study of human factors, product design, and virtual environments. Her primary research interests are in the navigation and manipulation of virtual environments and 3D simulations, usability testing and human-computer interactions, and pedestrian and driver safety. Past projects include the development of virtual trailblazing techniques for human navigation, as well as the development of the "veball”, a 3D input device with haptic feedback for manipulating virtual objects in 3D applications.

Professor MacGregor's main areas of teaching focus on human factors engineering, user-centred design, user research methods, and cognitive ergonomics. As a discipline, human factors engineering is a combination of engineering, psychology, kinesiology and anthropology. The field of cognitive ergonomics strives to understand how humans process and manipulate information so that their limitations and capabilities can be taken into account when designing effective tasks, interfaces, and systems.

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Richard Li University of Toronto, Canada

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Richard Li works at the Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) at the University of Waterloo. As the CTE Liaison to the Faculty of Engineering, he works closely with Engineering instructors to support their course design and delivery as well as their teaching development.

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Alexander Edwin Kay Glover

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Abstract

Student involvement literature suggests that offering students choices in course activities can improve their experience for several reasons: 1. Students take ownership and bring their individual learning styles to their courses, 2. The design of the course shifts from teachers as designers to students as partners in their learning process, 3. Students engage with the course, instructors, and peers at a psychological level i.e., they are motivated, 4. Students interact and engage more with the content, instructors, and peers, and learn better, and 5. Students report satisfaction with course experience (Applicant, 2022; NSSE, 2018; Douglas et al., 2006; Razinkina et al., 2017).  

This project leverages a mandatory teaching assistant training program to explore the effects of choice of activities on the student experience as measured by student learning, course engagement and satisfaction. Quantitative analysis of surveys and course performance, as well as qualitative analysis of student and instructor reflections, will be used to create a professional development workshop for Engineering instructors who wish to strategically integrate meaningful choice of activities into their course designs.

The research project underway has baseline data collected in the Fall 2022 and the intervention data to be collected in Winter 2023. The course offering is a two-week Teaching Assistant (TA) training program, which is a mandatory hiring requirement for teaching assistantships in the Faculty of Engineering (FOE). TA training in FOE is a pass/fail course and includes measurable deliverables such as pre-post quizzes, discussion posts, surveys, and open-ended responses to pass and receive a certificate.

In Fall 2022, students enrolled in the TA training (n=364) are considered the ‘control group’ (fixed activities) having received asynchronous online content, quizzes, weekly activities, and surveys. Similarly, in Winter 2023, students enrolled in the training will be assigned as an ‘intervention group’ (choice of activities) to receive comparable asynchronous online content, and quizzes, with the main intervention being weekly activities governed by student choice. Both the control group (fixed activities) and the intervention group (choice of activities) will have student learning and student experience assessed via pre-training and post-training quizzes (to measure content learning) and a survey (to measure course engagement and satisfaction).

The study received ethics clearance from the University Ethics Committee. After the Fall 2022 course was complete and grades uploaded, students were sent an initial invite and a personalized link with a consent form to access their coursework for research purposes, and a student engagement and satisfaction survey. Participation in the study is voluntary and had no impact on their opportunity to earn credit in the TA training as the call to participate went out after the course was completed. The same call for participation process will be repeated in the Winter 2023 offering of the TA training.

Based on the findings from student responses and interviews with the TA training instructors, a professional development workshop will be created to share insights on the student-chosen activities as a pedagogical approach for meaningful student involvement and to facilitate students as partners in their own learning.

Citation
Format

Malhotra, T., & MacGregor, C. G., & Li, R., & Glover, A. E. K. (2023, June), Student Involvement in Choice of Work in Progress: Course Activities and the Impact on Student Experience Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--44299

TY - CPAPER
AB - Student involvement literature suggests that offering students choices in course activities can improve their experience for several reasons: 1. Students take ownership and bring their individual learning styles to their courses, 2. The design of the course shifts from teachers as designers to students as partners in their learning process, 3. Students engage with the course, instructors, and peers at a psychological level i.e., they are motivated, 4. Students interact and engage more with the content, instructors, and peers, and learn better, and 5. Students report satisfaction with course experience (Applicant, 2022; NSSE, 2018; Douglas et al., 2006; Razinkina et al., 2017).

This project leverages a mandatory teaching assistant training program to explore the effects of choice of activities on the student experience as measured by student learning, course engagement and satisfaction. Quantitative analysis of surveys and course performance, as well as qualitative analysis of student and instructor reflections, will be used to create a professional development workshop for Engineering instructors who wish to strategically integrate meaningful choice of activities into their course designs.

The research project underway has baseline data collected in the Fall 2022 and the intervention data to be collected in Winter 2023. The course offering is a two-week Teaching Assistant (TA) training program, which is a mandatory hiring requirement for teaching assistantships in the Faculty of Engineering (FOE). TA training in FOE is a pass/fail course and includes measurable deliverables such as pre-post quizzes, discussion posts, surveys, and open-ended responses to pass and receive a certificate.

In Fall 2022, students enrolled in the TA training (n=364) are considered the ‘control group’ (fixed activities) having received asynchronous online content, quizzes, weekly activities, and surveys. Similarly, in Winter 2023, students enrolled in the training will be assigned as an ‘intervention group’ (choice of activities) to receive comparable asynchronous online content, and quizzes, with the main intervention being weekly activities governed by student choice. Both the control group (fixed activities) and the intervention group (choice of activities) will have student learning and student experience assessed via pre-training and post-training quizzes (to measure content learning) and a survey (to measure course engagement and satisfaction).

The study received ethics clearance from the University Ethics Committee. After the Fall 2022 course was complete and grades uploaded, students were sent an initial invite and a personalized link with a consent form to access their coursework for research purposes, and a student engagement and satisfaction survey. Participation in the study is voluntary and had no impact on their opportunity to earn credit in the TA training as the call to participate went out after the course was completed. The same call for participation process will be repeated in the Winter 2023 offering of the TA training.

Based on the findings from student responses and interviews with the TA training instructors, a professional development workshop will be created to share insights on the student-chosen activities as a pedagogical approach for meaningful student involvement and to facilitate students as partners in their own learning.
AU - Taru Malhotra
AU - Carolyn G. MacGregor
AU - Richard Li
AU - Alexander Edwin Kay Glover
CY - Baltimore , Maryland
DA - 2023/06/25
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Student Involvement in Choice of Work in Progress: Course Activities and the Impact on Student Experience
UR - https://strategy.asee.org/44299
DO - 10.18260/1-2--44299
ER -