As Chemical Engineering Professor Greg Evans explained, quantity hasn’t led to quality when it comes to developing effective team skills among engineering students.
“We provide our students with a lot of group experiences during their four years of study, but we haven’t always been intentional in teaching students how to be effective in teams,” he said.
Lectures and workshops are helpful, but the most valuable learning comes from fellow students. The challenge has been finding the right way to deliver honest and effective feedback.
Working with PhD Candidate Patricia Sheridan and Professor Doug Reeve (ChemE), Professor Evans is developing a new online learning tool to help students refine their group leadership skills in large classes.
Through a website, students can provide anonymous feedback to fellow teammates and use self-assessment tools to identify skills that could use further development. The assessment is based on 27 behavioural competencies that Sheridan and Professor Evans identified from earlier research on team dynamics. Depending on the responses provided, a student will be presented with web-based resources to develop their weaker skills. Over the course of a student’s studies, the website can develop a portfolio of their leadership experiences in group settings.
This project is one of two that recently attracted the financial support of the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HECQO). The arms-length provincial agency provided research grants to allow investigators in U of T Engineering to study and thereby improve the quality of learning for students in the Faculty.
Dr. Micah Stickel, a Lecturer in The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, will use his grant to invert the classroom experience.
As Dr. Stickel explained, the traditional learning dynamic involves students passively listening to lectures in the classroom while individual assignments are completed away from the supervision and support of instructors. Instead, he hopes to move more of his lectures online for students to watch prior to class. That will free class time for Dr. Stickel to work with students on problem sets and conceptual elements that have previously left learners struggling.
The new format will be used in ECE221, a mandatory second-year course for electrical and computer engineering students that focuses on electric and magnetic fields.
“The course is fairly difficult, both conceptually and mathematically. We use vector calculus to solve somewhat abstract problems, a combination which many students struggle with,” said Dr. Stickel, who explained it was those challenges that make the course perfect for testing the inverted classroom model. “It will support students in developing their conceptual understanding.”
Dr. Stickel will use a pair of conceptual tests at the beginning and end of the course, as well as another test in the following term to measure the breadth and depth of students’ learning.
The two projects are just a few of a broad range of research being conducted to improve and advance engineering education within the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering.
Once disparate and individual efforts, new collaborations are being forged as a result of the newly-established Practitioners in Engineering Education Research (PEER) group. Initiated by Mechanical Engineering Professor Susan McCahan, U of T Engineering’s Vice-Dean, Undergraduate, PEER was a response to a growing interest within the Faculty to conduct research related to engineering education.
“About a year and a half ago, I started getting a lot of calls from people all across the Faculty asking questions about engineering education research. The type of questions, and the rate, made it clear that it was time to get everyone together for regular discussions,” said Professor McCahan.
The group is modeled on the Wilson Centre in the Faculty of Medicine, which seeks to advance healthcare education and practice by sharing and conducting research on learning in the field. PEER meets monthly and features presentations on research that will soon be shared at a conference or published in a journal.
“The people around the table are there to provide ideas and to ask questions,” she said.
The PEER group includes faculty members, administrative staff and graduate students with an interest in the topics discussed. Recent presentations have included research on teaching math within engineering curriculum and identifying the individual qualities that support student success in engineering programs.
