Restructuring a Pedagogical Course to Benefit Engineering Ph.D. Students and Faculty

Abstract

Restructuring a Pedagogical Course to Benefit Engineering Ph.D. Students and FacultyEGR 9200 Teaching Engineering in Higher Education, an introductory course in engineering pedagogy for engineering Ph.D. students, was restructured to increase student engagement. Specifically, the class was converted to an inverted (flipped) format to increase active learning, and an assessment hierarchy was introduced where students created lessons on a pedagogical topic and delivered them to a partner, enabling partner-based and self-assessment prior to delivering an updated version of the lesson to the entire class. These changes resulted in a noticeable improvement in the quality of lessons and in student engagement. A second benefit from this restructuring is that the course materials (i.e., recorded lectures) were made available online to allow current faculty, specifically junior faculty, to learn pedagogical concepts alongside the rest of the class when a different instructor was used for each course offering.Finally, the posted online materials provide an opportunity for other faculty to learn pedagogical concepts on their own time. Collaboration with experts in diversity, equity and inclusion enabled additional materials for the course to promote the growth of underrepresented groups in engineering. Successes and lessons learned in the restructuring effort are outlined.