Promoting Lasting Change in Teaching Practices Through a Summer Immersion Faculty Development Program

摘要

Despite decades of effort, and billions of dollars invested to improve engineering education, there is still a lack of knowledge on how to transform faculty into users of effective instructional strategies. This study concludes that instructional development programs have a good potential for promoting lasting change in faculty when the design is based on a one-month summer immersion period with a stipend, and when it is aligned with all the stakeholder's interests and concerns. After the faculty complete one week of workshops, the change process is compelled by the preparation of 60 standardized lesson plans for two courses (30 per course), per participant, plus the requirement that they experiment with the new techniques in the classroom. The study is based on N = 27 faculty members of civil, mechanical, electrical, computer, and industrial engineering, and physics. Faculty and student survey results identify several successful impacts of the program, including faculty adoption of research-based instructional strategies and increased faculty and student satisfaction. The success of the program is attributed to its incorporation of several best practices suggested by the faculty development literature. This article may be very practically relevant either to individual instructors who aspire to change their own teaching practices, or to Heads of School and Departments who want to improve the teaching and learning activities throughout their school as a whole, and who could use the description of the program as a suitable model to be followed.