Engineering - Other (59) One of the challenges that engineering faculty face in preparing to teach their courses is to balance content with pedagogy. While fundamental concepts in engineering have not changed much with time, the contexts in which concepts can be applied and understood is dynamic and changes with each new generation of engineers. Additionally, for any one engineering topic, the technical content typically has multiple forms of representation such as a mathematical model, a textual statement, or numbers that estimate magnitude. Hence, the struggle for engineering educators is to identify the best pedagogical practice to deliver varied representations of engineering content to maximize student learning. As they are planning for their class sessions, faculty often think in terms of abstracting, decomposing, and transforming information to present to their students. The instructional planning that faculty perform impacts the way that they teach and ultimately impacts student learning. In this project, investigators are examining the reflective journals of several faculty as they plan and implement their classes. The relationship between planning and implementation is being examined as well as the relationship between planning and student learning. The results from this study will inform engineering educators as they prepare to teach, to improve student motivation and learning.
