AE3

Engineering Outlook

Find out more about AE3 on the Web at http://AE3.cen.uiuc.edu/

Reengineering Education
Back to Class with AE3

The AE3 Team, front row, left to right: Kelly Griswold, Sharon Scott, Scott D. Johnson, and J. Bruce Litchfield. Back row, left to right: Ray Richardson, Jared Berrett, Leslie Crowley, Laura Hahn, and Raymond L. Price.

Few graduates would list introductory engineering courses among their favorite college experiences—these courses more often evoke memories of crowded classrooms, lengthy lectures, and copious notes. A critical rite of passage for every engineering student, the foundation courses are necessarily rigorous, but does the learning environment make some of the courses unnecessarily difficult?

Could the courses be updated and redesigned to make the material more enjoyable for faculty and more engaging for students?

A team dedicated to improving education tackled those questions to develop Architecture for Change: A Systemic Initiative to Improve Student Learning (ARC), a model that just might put some foundation courses onto students’ most-favorite lists.

Helping faculty redesign courses is one of several activities of the Academy for Excellence in Engineering Education (AE3). The AE3 team grew out of a faculty retreat on enhancing engineering education in the early 1990s. The college followed up with Project for Excellence in Engineering Education, a weekly class and activities to support the scholarship of teaching among new faculty members. With funding from the General Electric Foundation, the project brought College of Engineering faculty together with faculty from the College of Education and Office of Instructional Resources. After just one year, the initiative was deemed promising and important enough to warrant academy status.

Initially, the AE3 team focused on faculty development and teaching methods, but other goals evolved to accommodate faculty needs—recognizing that faculty careers are multifaceted and success in one area often leads to success in other areas. These AE3 activities were grouped under the name "Teaching College" and encompassed planning, delivering, and evaluating classes as well as professional development. The team also extended help to teaching assistants. In addition, they introduced new classes and Web-based tools designed to support student development. In 1999, they began to provide leadership and assistance for redesigning some of the core engineering courses in general engineering, computer science, and theoretical mechanics.

The AE3 Team

The diversity of the team added the "richness and depth that allowed us to move in many directions," said J. Bruce Litchfield, an assistant dean in the Academic Programs Office of the College of Engineering and a founder of AE3. The team roster provides a hint of the scope possible in AE3.

Recognized for teaching excellence throughout his career, Litchfield serves as director. Taking co-director responsibility is Scott D. Johnson, College of Education, a human resources professor who conducts cognitive-based research and offers instructor development programs. Project manager Leslie Crowley is a writing specialist.

Doctoral candidates in the College of Education, Jared Berrett brings expertise in instruction and technology, while Ray Richardson is conducting research in the area of knowledge transfer.

Raymond L. Price holds the Severns Chair for Human Behavior and develops opportunities for engineering faculty and students to better understand human behavior and its importance to personal and professional success.

Contributing from the Office of Instructional Resources, Laura Hahn specializes in educational psychology, while Sharon L. Scott works with teaching assistants and faculty to develop their teaching skills.

The first large-scale investment in improving faculty and teaching on campus, the AE3 Teaching College is emulated in other colleges now, and the team recently launched a new National Teaching College workshop to share ideas for faculty development with universities across the country.

"It’s a big change," Scott said. "Ten years ago, there were no teaching colleges. Now we have one or the start of one in almost every area of campus, and many are learning from what AE3 put together."

A Community of Learners

A key challenge faculty members face in the Teaching College program is to question what they think they know about teaching. Although a few senior faculty have participated, the program attracts mostly new faculty who are setting up courses, conducting research, and juggling the myriad demands of a new career. Lacking formal instruction in education theory and practice, these faculty often resort to teaching the way they were taught. Typically, they focus on content—delivering a lot of it in great detail. That approach is difficult and time consuming for them and often torturous for students, Johnson said.

"We want them to shift their emphasis to learning: What concept or skill do they want the student to walk out the door with and how can they achieve that? That’s a major change in approach," he said.

Faculty who adopt a learning-outcomes plan and incorporate some of the strategies they learn in AE3 sessions often find they save preparation time, and just as important, make their classroom interactions easier and more enjoyable for everyone, Litchfield noted.

"It takes time," he acknowledged, "but this is an investment in their futures. If they can get off to a good start, new faculty will work more effectively and efficiently. We want to help them succeed."

To that end, the AE3 team invites faculty to weekly meetings where they learn about a variety of teaching strategies, share their experiences as they apply what they learn in the classroom, air problems and concerns, and exchange ideas. In addition to exploring various teaching philosophies and innovative delivery tools, the AE3 team brings in speakers and plans sessions on mentoring, grant writing, and other skills that professors must have. As part of the AE3 goal to build a community of learners, participants are asked to select a topic to discuss at an end-of-semester seminar for colleagues. This is an opportunity not only to share what they have learned but also to expose more faculty to alternative ideas, such as using Web tools for homework or to find out how well students understand key concepts.

Twice during the semester, AE3 team members and Teaching College veterans observe new faculty in the classroom, and one of their lectures is videotaped. "The observations and videotaped exercises can be real eye-openers," Johnson said, "and that’s often when faculty realize that no matter how smart they are and how well they know their content, they have to keep thinking about what they’re doing and why."

To help faculty focus on what they want to achieve, the AE3 team encourages participants to create personal development plans. In these plans, faculty track their ideas and progress in the context of their own courses, research, and goals. They identify their strengths and, with help from the AE3 team, target areas for improvement.

Recognizing that teaching is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor, faculty are encouraged to assess techniques and approaches in terms of how they might work in their particular circumstances. "Part of this exercise is a personal search," Litchfield said. "Our role is to advise and guide, but we don’t tell faculty what to do or make choices for them. They find what works best for them."

The end goal, Richardson added, is for teachers to become "reflective practitioners." Reflective is a word the team uses often.

"It’s never too late," Berrett said. "We’re seeing more awareness of that even among those who have taught for 20 years."

Change at the Core

When the AE3 team looked for a way to reach more faculty and students, they hit on the idea of redesigning courses where faculty interact with the most students: the foundation courses that have enrollments of 200 to 900 students.

"Many of the big classes were a passive experience for students, which made it really difficult for them to be successful," Hahn said. "The typical attitude was, ‘I have to slog my way through this 100-level course with 500 other students; how am I going to survive?’ We looked at breaking that down and using techniques and strategies that help students be more active and involved in class and more motivated."

The model program, Architecture for Change: A Systematic Initiative to Improve Student Learning (ARC), evolved from this initiative. Taking a multifaceted approach, the AE3 team worked with faculty to develop curriculum changes that included outcome-based learning, planning, and objectives. They looked for ways to infuse lectures with interactive learning and instructional strategies. Recognizing the critical support role teaching assistants have in these courses, the team helped develop training and guidelines designed to make them more effective.

They also invited undergraduate students to enter a contest where they could submit ideas for changing some of their least-favorite aspects of courses.

In addition, the team introduced technological innovations, including Web tools that allow faculty and students to have meaningful interactions outside the classroom.

"Upper-level courses are revised constantly as faculty weave in their research, but these prerequisite courses have tended to be static," Price said, "so this is an opportunity to introduce newer design techniques and make the courses better. In the long term, it may help us retain students in engineering if they have a better experience in their first engineering classes."

To help students succeed in the new learning environment, the team developed a new course on emotional intelligence. The class guides students through discussion, exercises, and projects designed to improve interpersonal and team skills. In addition, AE3 is involved in developing an electronic portfolio system, a multimedia tool that students use to identify, document, and assess development of their skills. The team is collecting data from these and other activities, with a goal of tracking and assessing skill levels, how skills change, and some of the causes of those changes over students’ academic careers.

"It’s difficult to quantify teaching improvement, but we sense a general openness among the faculty now to improving the educational experience of undergraduates," Scott said. "They want our opinions and are responsive. It’s a positive atmosphere that’s being created, and that’s making a difference for students." —TMP

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