To Map or to Model: Evaluating Dynamism in Organically Evolving Faculty Development

摘要

Applying interactive teaching strategies within undergraduate STEM education has become an increasingly important endeavor for faculty. However, changing teaching strategies is not always easy, even when faculty are motivated to do so. Therefore, examining faculty change processes is critical to understand how and why a teaching change has occurred. This paper examined faculty change processes and faculty outcomes during an NSF-supported faculty development project. One purpose for this study was to discuss how the project evaluation applied two different tools to understand the mechanisms underlying change and how the program components and mechanisms contributed to the project outcomes. One tool was a logic model, which is an evaluation tool. A second tool was a conjecture map, which is a research tool grounded in design science. Thus, a second purpose for this study was to explore the juxtaposition of the two tools. We compared and contrasted the contribution of each tool in terms of how the tool facilitated the evaluative understanding about faculty development processes and outcomes. Our results demonstrated that faculty development is a complex and dynamic process that can be elucidated by using multiple tools.