Engineering-Other (59) A growing number of engineering programs have developed innovative educational programs to prepare students to create and deploy low-cost, environmentally and socially beneficial solutions. Often, these programs use experiential approaches to provide students with opportunities to develop technologies that will meet the needs of geographically, culturally and economically diverse customers. This project will provide training and support to faculty who are committed to doing work in this area, but need access to additional resources and a network of people who share a similar vision. The project will develop and offer a workshop to provide faculty with key information and resources to develop, implement, and enhance programs that focus on designing and commercializing breakthrough technologies that address basic human needs and alleviate environmental problems in an economically and environmentally sustainable way. The project addresses several significant needs in this emerging area of engineering education: 1) a mechanism for faculty to share and learn about best practices in educational innovations; 2) a hands-on opportunity to develop curricula and strategies for implementation based on information and feedback from experienced colleagues; and 3) an evaluation of the impact these activities have on teaching and curriculum, including the successes and challenges of implementing educational innovations in the university and in the field.
This project engaged engineering faculty in developing curricular initiatives that teach student innovators to develop market-based solutions to global problems. A faculty development workshop was held in June 2011 on the campus of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. Thirty-two attendees affiliated with 18 institutions attended. The four day workshop provided: (a) demonstrations by experienced entrepreneurship and engineering faculty of their educational innovations; and (b) hands-on opportunities to develop curricula and implementation plans with feedback from colleagues. A website was created after the workshop to disseminate related curricular materials (http://nciia.org/node/1649), including case studies of sample student projects, a knowledge map for faculty to identify and share contacts around the globe, and final presentations created by the attendees to summarize their proposed innovations (http://nciia.org/node/1659). The Sustainable Vision Connect Network, a global network of faculty with a common interest in addressing global poverty through technological innovation and entrepreneurship in and beyond the classroom, was launched in the spring of 2012 and now has 55 members. Several faculty disseminated their program innovations to the broader academic community through presentations and papers at the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance annual conference (Teaching for Impact Panel, Henderson, Gershenson, Kisenwether, Sulewski, and Gilbert, 2012) and at the National Conference for the Beginning Design Student (Workshop for Enhancing First-year Engineering Design Projects with Base of the Economic Pyramid Context, Kisenwether, Sulewski, and Barlow, 2012). An independent evaluation examining the impact of the workshop on faculty teaching practices, conducted the semester following the workshop, concluded that it provided faculty with valuable knowledge, teaching ideas, networks, and planning opportunities. Based on intermediate and long-term assessment measures, the evaluation concluded that the TeachingLab Workshop led to appropriate levels of institutional change at participants’ home institutions. Specifically, participants returned from their TeachingLab experience and began to implement learned educational design changes to classroom activities, course construction, and proposed programmatic efforts. At the time of the evaluation faculty from 8 of the 18 institutions were implementing new curricular initiatives they had developed during the workshop with their students. Results from this project have broadened the knowledge base about how to support faculty that are implementing innovative, field-based educational programs that are grounded in real-world settings across the globe. The workshop provided engineering educators with actionable information that enabled them to design and implement their own courses and programs, incorporating innovative teaching practices, acquiring program funding, institutionalizing innovative efforts, and developing field-based partnerships.
