This award will fund a Teaching Strategies and Resources Workshop for geotechnical engineering faculty to be held in conjunction with the 2020 Geo-Congress in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The focus of the workshop will be specific to geotechnical engineering education and the courses that most geotechnical engineering faculty teach. The purpose is to help geotechnical faculty become more effective and efficient educators, with the ultimate goal of improving student learning. Recent research has shown that implementing active (or student-centered) learning techniques in the classroom increases student motivation, student achievement, and overall satisfaction with the learning experience in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses and may lead to increased retention of students, particularly women and underrepresented minorities. As civil engineering is a multidisciplinary subject at the intersection of science, math, communication, and leadership, educational outcomes include fundamental knowledge as well as professional ("soft" or "power") skills. Using active learning techniques in the classroom can enhance students' learning outcomes for technical skills while fostering critical thinking and professional skills such as leadership, teamwork, and effective communication. Active learning classrooms may also encourage collaborative and inclusive environments that enable students to build social support. Geotechnical engineering is a small subfield within the larger field of civil engineering. A perceived barrier for faculty to implement student-centered learning techniques in geotechnical courses is the time and effort required to develop new materials. As a highly specific discipline, it can be difficult to find active learning resources to incorporate into existing courses. This workshop will introduce faculty to existing geotechnically-focused active learning materials and resources. This project serves the national interest by better preparing the next generation of geotechnical engineers. In addition, it will advance the field of engineering education by disseminating evidence-based teaching practices to geotechnical engineering faculty. Implementing these practices into geotechnical engineering has the potential to improve the overall quality of geotechnical engineering education and thereby increase participation in the field.
The goal of the Teaching Strategies and Resources Workshop is to help geotechnical faculty at all stages become more effective and efficient teachers, so they can become better educators and improve student learning while maintaining high research productivity. Many faculty members hesitate to employ new teaching strategies due to the perceived effort required to implement them. The targeted outcome of the workshop is to help faculty teach better and teach "smarter" by incorporating existing evidence-based teaching materials and resources into their classes. The bulk of this workshop will concentrate on providing specific examples, developing new instructional materials, sharing geotechnical resources, networking, and discussing challenges unique to geotechnical education. Materials and presentations will be "take and go" so participants leave the workshop with examples and copies of usable materials. In addition, this workshop will help faculty better develop and implement outreach and education plans in research proposals. This aspect of the workshop supports the goal of building a foundation for a lifetime of integrated contributions to research and education. The intellectual merit of the workshop is to provide resources for geotechnical engineering faculty to become better, more effective educators with the ultimate goal of improving student learning. Additionally, the workshop will provide strategies for creating meaningful and achievable outreach and education plans for research proposals that have the potential to increase interest and improve student learning in the field. There are several broader impacts of the workshop. Most importantly, implementing evidence-based teaching techniques into geotechnical engineering has the potential to improve the overall quality of geotechnical engineering education and thereby increase participation in the field. Second, participants will leave the workshop with examples of materials that have already been prepared and are available for use in existing classes. Having these materials will enable faculty to immediately implement new activities with little additional preparation. Finally, an exam database will be developed and made available to workshop participants.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
