Work in Progress: The Impact of Faculty Development Workshops on Shifting Faculty Teaching Beliefs and Classroom Practice toward Student Cen-teredness

摘要

JTFD (Just-in-Time-Teaching with Two Way Formative Feedback (JTF) to the Multiple Disciplinary program level) is an NSF-funded Improving Undergraduate Science Education (IUSE) project at a large southwestern university. In the present study, the JTF approach has been extended to include faculty from aerospace (AE), biomedical (BME), chemical (CHE), civil (CE), construction (CON), material science (MSE), and mechanical (ME) engineering disciplines across the lifetime of the project. This novel expansion introduces and sustains evidence-based instructional strategies (EBIS) to multiple faculty through a series of workshops throughout a 9-week training period. The JTFD project aims to introduce, sustain, and assess the use of EBIS and JTFD pedagogy to faculty to promote student centered learning within multiple engineering disciplines. The implementation of such pedagogy is analyzed to determine the way two-way formative feedback is implemented to modify classroom activities and enhance student learning. Two-way formative feedback allows students the opportunity to engage in content matter by identifying areas of reinforcement and refinement to ultimately enhance individual learning. The purpose of this paper aims to sustain a shift in faculty beliefs and classroom practice towards student-centeredness whereby facilitating professional development workshops with pairs of faculty members from multiple engineering disciplines.