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The Impact of Doubling Department Course Offerings on Faculty Load and Student Success

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Conference

2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access

Location

Virtual Conference

Publication Date

July 26, 2021

Start Date

July 26, 2021

End Date

July 19, 2022

Conference Session

Learning in a Socially-Distanced Environment

Tagged Division

Aerospace

Page Count

12

DOI

10.18260/1-2--37870

Permanent URL

https://strategy.asee.org/37870

Download Count

246

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Paper Authors

biography

Kathryn Anne Wingate University of Colorado Boulder

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Dr. Kathryn Wingate is an instructor at University of Colorado Boulder, where she teaches design and mechanics courses. She holds her PhD in mechanical engineering, and worked at NGAS as a materials scientist.

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biography

Alexis Wall University of Colorado Boulder

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Alexis Wall received her BS in Aerospace Engineering in 2020 from CU and is now a graduate student in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder. She has worked at CU's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics as a fault protection/systems engineer since 2017.

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Abstract

In the past 10 years engineering schools have seen increases in both student enrollments and student tuition. Further, numerous engineering departments have implemented evidence- based pedagogical practices that increase student success, engagement, and faculty and staff work load. Across the country engineering departments strive to strike the delicate balance between maintaining reasonable faculty/staff workloads while attempting to improve student success, measured through time to degree and student attrition metrics. The University of Colorado at Boulder Aerospace Engineering and Sciences Department has historically offered junior level courses once per year, all of which are prerequisites for a year-long senior projects course. For the past two academic years, the department has shifted to offering every junior course twice per year, theoretically allowing students that fail a course to graduate on time. This paper aims to study the impact of this change on both student success and department resources. It is found that offering courses twice per year did not have a large impact student time to graduation metrics, but did require more allocated faculty members.

Wingate, K. A., & Wall, A. (2021, July), The Impact of Doubling Department Course Offerings on Faculty Load and Student Success Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37870

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