Eight different courses involving seven non-engineering faculty, an education consultant, and the engineering Principal Investigator are being taught based on the READ-USE-ASSEMBLE-CALCULATE-TEACH process related to relevant technological devices. The student-driven sequence incorporates student-faculty contact, cooperation among students, and active learning, gives prompt feedback, emphasizes time-on-task, communicates high expectations, and respects diverse talents and ways of learning. By matching appropriate devices to non-engineering courses with appreciable technical content, cross-college faculty collaborations are being used for co-teaching of or supplementation to existing courses in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHASS), the College of Education (CED), and the College of Design (COD). The efficacy of this cross college collaboration is being demonstrated by serving a diversity of students including (i) engineering and science students in foreign language courses, (ii) pre-service technology education students seeking teaching degrees, (iii) in-service, practicing teachers of technology education in grades 6-12, and (iv) industrial design majors.
Evaluation of these collaborative instruction efforts includes student questionnaires, independent laboratory observers, and interviews of participating faculty and a sample of students. Dissemination is being accomplished through presentations and publications in professional society meetings of language instructors, technology education teachers, industrial design professionals, and engineers. The final project product will be a compact disc (CD) containing all lab device chapters, as well as all publications and evaluations for this effort. The product CD distribution is being distributed to US engineering deans and engineering faculty involved in undergraduate laboratory instruction.
