A Rapid and Formative Response by the Engineering Education Faculty to Support the Engineering Faculty and Students Throughout the Extreme Classroom Changes Resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Conference
- Location
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Virtual Conference
- Publication Date
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July 26, 2021
- Start Date
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July 26, 2021
- End Date
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July 19, 2022
- Conference Session
- Tagged Division
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Faculty Development Division
- Page Count
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14
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--36606
- Permanent URL
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https://strategy.asee.org/36606
- Download Count
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309
Paper Authors
Lance Leon Allen White
Texas A&M University
orcid.org/0000-0002-1172-0500
Lance White is a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University in Interdisciplinary Engineering with a thrust in Engineering Education. He is working as a graduate research assistant at the Institute of Engineering Education and Innovation at the Texas Engineering Experiment Station at Texas A&M University under director Dr. Tracy Hammond. Dr. Karan Watson and Dr. Pavel Tsvetkov are his co-chairs. He completed his M.S. in Nuclear Engineering at Texas A&M University under Dr. Yassin Hassan working on experimental thermal hydraulics, and completed his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering at West Texas A&M University.
Donna Jaison Texas A&M University
Donna Jaison is a PhD student under Dr. Karan Watson in the Multidisciplinary Engineering Department at Texas A&M University, College Station. She is a Graduate Research assistant at the Institute of Engineering Education and Innovation(IEEI) at Texas A&M University under director Dr. Tracy Hammond. She completed her MEng. in Computer Engineering with specialization in VLSI from Texas A&M University, College Station. She completed her Bachelors in Electrical Engineering with a Minor in Mathematics from Mississippi State University.
Samantha Ray
Texas A&M University
orcid.org/0000-0003-3189-8899
Samantha Ray is a Computer Engineering PhD student at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on creating intelligent systems for tasks that require human-like levels of understanding. She has previously worked on human activity recognition (HAR) systems for promoting healthy habits and educational tools using sketch recognition and eye tracking.
Kelly Brumbelow
Texas A&M University
orcid.org/0000-0002-5681-4359
Dr. Kelly Brumbelow is an Associate Professor and the Assistant Department Head for Undergraduate Programs in the Zachry Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University. He has been a faculty member at Texas A&M since 2002, where his technical specialty is water resources engineering, planning, and management. Prior to this position, he completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Georgia Tech, where he taught undergraduate courses for 7 years. His professional activities have included projects in East Africa, Central America, the Middle East, Alaska's North Slope, and throughout the "lower 48 states." His current activities at Texas A&M cover a wide spectrum from K-12 outreach and recruiting to undergraduate curriculum design to retention, monitoring, and post-graduation engagement.
Sherecce Fields Texas A&M University
Sherecce Fields, PhD is an Associate Professor and the Associate Head of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University. Dr. Fields’ primary degree is in Clinical Psychology from the University of South Florida with areas of specialization in Child Clinical and Pediatric Psychology and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from Duke University. She joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 2010. Her research is focused on developing a bio-behavioral understanding of health-risk behaviors in adolescents and emerging adults, with the goal of developing effective interventions, specifically for use in disadvantaged populations. Dr. Fields’ research incorporates behavioral and clinical intervention methods and most recently has focused on the development of interventions that can be used with digital health technologies, including video games and other computer-mediated communication technologies for health risk behaviors including substance use, obesity, and diabetes. Dr. Fields has over 50 publications, proceedings, and abstracts. She has been the PI or Co-PI for over one million dollars in funded research from NIH, NSF and other agencies. Dr. Fields was the 2016-2018 recipient of the Ray A. Rothrock ’77 Fellow award from the College of Liberal Arts and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.
Luciana R. Barroso
Texas A&M University
orcid.org/0000-0002-3420-9449
Luciana R. Barroso, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Structural Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering, in the Dwight Look College of Engineering at Texas A&M University. Luciana has been with Texas A&M University since 1999, and in that time has taught multiple different courses ranging from the freshman to graduate levels. She has been active in academic program and curriculum development from the department level to the university level, where she served as co-chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) committee that determined the academic course of actions to be taken over the next accreditation cycle to addresses critical issues related to enhancing student learning. She has received funding for her engineering education research from the Department of Education FIPSE program and from the National Science Foundation (NSF) CCLI program. She also has been involved in several professional developments that were provided by the Aggie STEM Center to Texas ISD teachers. Her research interests include structural health monitoring and control, structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, and engineering education.
Karan Watson P.E. Texas A&M University
Karan L. Watson, Ph.D., P.E., is currently a Regents Senior Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, having joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 1983 as an Assistant Professor. She is also serving as the C0-Director of the Institute for Engineering Education and Innovation. She has served in numerous roles at Texas A&M University, including: Provost and Executive Vice President(2009-2017), Vice Provost (2009), Dean of Faculties and Associate Provost (2002-2009), Interim VP for Diversity (2009 & 2005-2006), Associate Dean of Engineering (1996-2001), and Assistant Dean of Engineering (1991-2006).
Dr. Watson is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the American Society for Engineering Education, and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). Her awards and recognitions include the U.S. President's Award for Mentoring Minorities and Women in Science and Technology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science mentoring award, the IEEE International Undergraduate Teaching Medal, the WEPAN Bevlee Watford Award, the College of Engineering Crawford Teaching Award, and two University-level Distinguished Achievement Awards from The Texas A&M University Association of Former Students—one in Student Relations in 1992 and in Administration in 2010, and the Texas Tech College of Engineering Distinguished Alumni. In 2003–2004, she served as a Senior Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering Center for the Advancement of Scholarship in Engineering Education. Since 1991, she has served as an accreditation evaluator, commissioner, Board of Director, then President of ABET, and is currently Secretary/Treasurer of the ABET Foundation Board of Directors. She has also served as a program evaluator for J.D. programs for the ABA, for universities’ regional accreditation for SACSCOC, and for Business Schools for AACSB. She also has served as the Chair of the ECE division of ASEE, the President of the Education Society of IEEE, and the chair of the Women in Engineering of IEEE. She served as the Treasurer and a Board of Directors member for WEPAN.
Tracy Anne Hammond
Texas A&M University
orcid.org/0000-0001-7272-0507
Dr. Hammond is Director of the Institute for Engineering Education & Innovation and also the chair of the Engineering Education Faculty. She is also Director of the Sketch Recognition Lab and Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, is passionate about the university. She is a member of the Center for Population and Aging, the Center for Remote Health Technologies & Systems as well as the Institute for Data Science. Hammond is a PI for over 13 million in funded research, from NSF, DARPA, Google, Microsoft, and others. Hammond holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and FTO (Finance Technology Option) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and four degrees from Columbia University: an M.S in Anthropology, an M.S. in Computer Science, a B.A. in Mathematics, and a B.S. in Applied Mathematics. Hammond mentored 17 UG theses (and many more non-thesis UG through 351 undergraduate research semesters taught), 29 MS theses, and 9 Ph.D. dissertations. Hammond is the 2020 recipient of the TEES Faculty Fellows Award and the 2011-2012 recipient of the Charles H. Barclay, Jr. '45 Faculty Fellow Award. Hammond has been featured on the Discovery Channel and other news sources. Hammond is dedicated to diversity and equity, reflected in her publications, research, teaching, service, and mentoring. More at http://srl.tamu.edu.
Abstract
This paper describes an evidence based-practice paper to a formative response to the engineering faculty and students’ needs at Anonymous University.
Within two weeks, the pandemic forced the vast majority of the 1.5 million faculty and 20 million students nationwide to transition all courses from face-to-face to entirely online. Never in the history of higher education has there been a concerted effort to adapt so quickly and radically, nor have we had the technology to facilitate such a rapid and massive change. At Anonymous University, over 700 engineering educators were racing to transition their courses. Many of those faculty had never experienced online course preparation, much less taught one synchronously or asynchronously. Faculty development centers and technology specialists across the university made a great effort to aid educators in this transition. These educators had questions about the best practices for moving online, how their students were affected, and the best ways to engage their students. However, these faculty’s detailed questions were answerable only by faculty peers’ experience, students’ feedback, and advice from experts in relevant engineering education research-based practices. This paper describes rapid, continuous, and formative feedback provided by the Engineering Education Faculty Group (EEFG) to provide an immediate response for peer faculty guidance during the pandemic, creating a community of practice. The faculty membership spans multiple colleges in the university, including engineering, education, and liberal arts.
The EEFG transitioned immediately to weekly meetings focused on the rapidly changing needs of their colleagues. Two surveys were generated rapidly by Hammond et al. to characterize student and faculty concerns and needs in March of 2020 and were distributed through various means and media. Survey 1 and 2 had 3381 and 1506 respondents respectively with most being students, with 113 faculty respondents in survey 1, the focus of this piece of work. The first survey was disseminated as aggregated data to the College of Engineering faculty with suggested modifications to course structures based on these findings. The EEFG continued to meet and collaborate during the remainder of the Spring 2020 semester and has continued through to this day. This group has acted as a hub for teaching innovation in remote online pedagogy and techniques, while also operating as a support structure for members of the group, aiding those members with training in teaching tools, discussion difficult current events, and various challenges they are facing in their professional teaching lives.
While the aggregated data gathered from the surveys developed by Hammond et al. was useful beyond measure in the early weeks of the pandemic, little attention at the time was given to the responses of faculty to that survey. The focus of this work has been to characterize faculty perceptions at the beginning of the pandemic and compare those responses between engineering and non-engineering faculty respondents, while also comparing reported perceptions of pre- and post-transition to remote online teaching. Interviews were conducted between 4 members of the EEFG with the goal of characterizing some of the experiences they have had while being members of the group during the time of the pandemic utilizing Grounded theory qualitative analysis.
White, L. L. A., & Jaison, D., & Ray, S., & Brumbelow, K., & Fields, S., & Barroso, L. R., & Watson, K., & Hammond, T. A. (2021, July), A Rapid and Formative Response by the Engineering Education Faculty to Support the Engineering Faculty and Students Throughout the Extreme Classroom Changes Resulting from the COVID-19 Pandemic Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--36606
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