Summary Notes on "A Teaching Workshop for Engineering Faculty," by K. C. Womack, L. R. Anderson, M. W. Smith, and K. A. Gorder, Journal of Engineering Education, ASEE, October 1994, pp. 371-375.

Summarized by J. T. P. Yao, 8/17/00

"The teaching workshop is broken into seven sessions. … The workshop sessions are held on a weekly basis covering a six week period [the last social session was held several weeks after the sixth period]. … In conducting this teaching workshop the faculty of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department [at Utah State University] were divided into three groups with 11 faculty each. Three undergraduate students were also included in each group to represent the student's point of view. Each group also had a group leader with responsibility to conduct each workshop session and collect the faculty homework. …"

"A. Attributes of a Good Teacher

… The discussion stressed integrity and student involvement as well as course organization and objective, texts, lecture techniques, tests and grades, and accessibility. … The students did not complain about courses being too difficult or faculty giving them too much work, they simply expected instructors to be organized, fair and accessible. …"

"B. Principles of Learning/Teaching

… The objective of this session is to have the faculty use these questions, and the answers that were developed, to revise their course material and teaching approach so that the students will be more motivated and excited."

"C. Use of Technology in Instruction

… The technology alone will not teach the course nor maintain the students' interest. … The general faculty response was that the basic lecture, using the chalkboard or an overhead projector, does not provide variety for the students and that the use of high technology equipment will be a welcome change for both the students and the faculty…"

"D. Faculty Expectations of Students

… Among the ideas presented to improve student retention of material were those of teaching courses using similar concepts concurrently rather than consecutively and the use of the 'just in time' philosophy - where a prerequisite course is taught just previous to a higher level course rather than two years before. The faculty agreed that using a mix of these two approaches would certainly aid the students in retaining material. … Other, less extreme, ideas that individual faculty can use to help students retain material for future applications are

·        State the course objective in the syllabus;

·        Review concepts learned in a pre-requisite course at the beginning of a new course;

·        Show students where they will apply concepts in the future…;

·        Have students teach concepts to each other."

… The use of open-ended questions … in homework, exams, and class discussion was considered by the faculty to be one of the best ways to teach the students to be problem solvers rather than 'plug and chuggers.' …"

"E. Non-Class Room Factors

… Some of the critical non-classroom factors noted by the students were:

·        Preparation for classes …

·        Timely reporting of student status …

·        Scheduling of office hours …

·        Interacting with students outside of the classroom …

·        Learning the students' names and acknowledge them outside of the classroom.

Faculty members that do these things make the students feel important and that the faculty do care about them."

"F. Application of Workshop Material

This last workshop meeting was a brainstorming session to get the faculty to use the information given them during the workshop. …"

"G. Student/Faculty Social

Several weeks after the completion of the formal workshop sessions, a picnic was held involving the students, faculty and their families. … This is an annual event… The result was a more casual atmosphere at the picnic, and increased interchange between the students and faculty."

"Overall, the faculty response to the 'Undergraduate Teaching Workshop' was quite good. … The success of the workshop depends on what the individual faculty members do with what they learned. … Measuring the success of the workshop will come primarily from input provided by the students, through monthly meetings with the department chair, course/faculty evaluations, and student participation in the follow-up sessions. Periodic follow-up sessions to this workshop are planned once a quarter. …"

[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 ..."]