Summary Notes on "The Future of Engineering Education: Part 6. Making reform Happen," by R. M. Felder, J. E. Stice, A. Rugarcia, Chemical Engineering Education, 34(3), 2000, pp. 208-215. (The paper in its entirety is available on the Internet at http://www2.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching/) [28 references]

 

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 8/24/00

"… The real challenge is to create a favorable climate for these changes at research universities - a climate that motivates faculty members to improve their teaching and the quality of instruction in their departments, supports their efforts to do so, and rewards their successes. In this paper, we suggest steps that might be taken to create such a climate."

"Evidence of the low status of undergraduate education at research universities for the past half century is easy to find. … Faculty members of the eight campuses comprising the SUCCEED Engineering Education Coalition were recently asked to rate the importance of teaching effectiveness to them, to their colleagues and administrators, and in their institution's faculty reward system, with 0 being not at all important and 10 being extremely important. On average, the 504 respondents rated the importance of teaching to them personally at 9.3, the importance to their colleagues and administrators in the range 7.0-7.3, and the importance in the faculty reward system at 4.7. …"

"On the brighter side, a positive shift in campus attitudes toward teaching began in the early 1980s and has grown steadily since then. ... Evidence for the growing importance of effective undergraduate instruction at research universities is abundant. … The dramatic progress made in recent years notwithstanding, most engineering classes still consist of professors talking and writing on the board and students sitting and listening (or not listening); rigorous assessment of learning and teaching is still not part of the culture of most institutions; faculty members are still not routinely given any preparation for teaching; and senior faculty are still advising junior faculty (often correctly) that if they spend too much time on their teaching they could be jeopardizing their future academic careers."

"… Instructors who have been teaching traditionally and wish to make changes might consider trying one or two of these strategies first …:

·        Motivate the presentation of each new topic by relating it to previously learned material and familiar applications…

·        Write clear instructional objectives for course topics…

·        Assign brief small-group activities in class…

·        Have students complete one or two out-of-class assignments in teams…

·        Periodically ask students to monitor and reflect on their learning, either in the form of minute papers … or using feedback forms collected at the end of a lecture period. …

·        Collect midterm evaluations of the class…"

"Students do not always welcome unfamiliar teaching methods with open arms, especially if the new methods push them out of the comfort zone in which the instructor tells them everything they need to know and then asks them to repeat it on the test. … Felder and Brent suggest several things instructor might do to hold down the resistance to student-centered instruction long enough for the students to start seeing the benefits of the approach for themselves.

1.      Start early, start small, and build. …

2.      Explain what you are doing and why. …

3.      Be flexible when implementing new instructional methods. …

4.      When all else fails, consult the manual. …"

 

"Excellent teaching has always enjoyed vigorous rhetorical support from university administrators but limited tangible reward or public recognition. Excellent research, on the other hand, yields summer salaries, funds for national and international travel, release from teaching and service responsibilities, merit raises, and most significantly, tenure and promotion."

"We believe that most university faculty genuinely want to be good teachers. Their desire is not motivated by the prospect of external rewards but by intrinsic motivators such as the sense of accomplishment that comes from equipping students with new skills and self-confidence. For all but the most dedicated, however, intrinsic motivation to teach as well as one can eventually diminishes if the campus culture offers little more than empty rhetoric and a few awards to demonstrate its commitment to excellence in teaching. …"

"… To avoid excessive repetition, in the remainder of this section well use 'teaching' to be a catch-all term covering classroom instruction, advising and mentoring undergraduate students, mentoring faculty colleagues and graduate students in teaching, and educational scholarship. To encourage and help faculty to improve their teaching effectiveness:

·        Provide funds for travel to education-related workshops and conferences.

·        Provide internal grant support … for faculty who propose to carry out a specific project related to their teaching effectiveness.

·        When giving new faculty start-up money, designate some of it for teaching related activities.

·        Purchase good books on teaching … and give them to new faculty members, perhaps in conjunction with an orientation workshop.

·        Establish and support an Engineering Center for Teaching and Learning that sponsors a variety of teaching improvements for new faculty, experienced faculty, and graduate students. …

·        Institute a Teaching Leaders program in which outstanding engineering teachers are identified and compensated for jointly facilitating teaching courses, seminars and workshops with faculty development personnel and serving as mentors to new faculty members.

·        Establish an Engineering Teaching Fellows program in which faculty members in their first few years of teaching receive observation and individual consulting by teaching center personnel and regularly attend seminars or learning communities devoted to good teaching and educational scholarship. …

To encourage faculty to redesign curricula and courses…:

·        Require faculty members seeking tenure and/or promotion to prepare a teaching portfolio…

·        Hold workshops or seminars for senior faculty involved in making T/P decisions to teach them how to evaluate teaching documentation.

·        Designate a specific percentage of merit raise funds to be based on teaching performance.

·        In preparation for evaluation, early in the school year have faculty determine a percentage for each aspect of their jobs … and goals related to each part. Base evaluations and salary recommendations on the predetermined percentage. …

·        Allocate a portion of merit salary money for outstanding teaching or mentoring.

·        Establish numerous small awards and several large awards … to reward excellence in teaching, advising, mentoring, and educational scholarship.

·        Recognize teaching achievements at faculty and advisory board meetings and in departmental and university publicity releases."

"The devaluation of teaching in the faculty incentive and reward structure of most research universities that began four decades ago has begun to reverse; however, much remains to be done before the educational reforms suggested in this series of papers can become part of the mainstream of engineering education. … Convincing faculty members that alternative teaching and assessment approaches lead to effective learning and addressing their concerns about implementation of the approaches are necessary but not sufficient conditions for educational reform. Before most engineering faculty members will be willing to invest much time and energy to improve teaching, they must be convinced that teaching improvement in truly valued by their institution and that their efforts will not limit their prospects for tenure and promotion. …"

[Readers who are interested in this article are encouraged to read the original paper in its entirety. Other summary notes on faculty reward systems are available on the Internet at http://lohman.tamu.edu under the heading "Summaries of Papers ..."]