Category Archives: news

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“Reflection in Engineering Education Workshop” at University of Washington

In the final year of CPREE, the consortium hosted a two-day workshop on “Reflection in Engineering Education,” attended by over 60 educators from 22 institutions across the U.S. and abroad. This workshop built on the documented CPREE reflection activities, as well as the CPREE team’s experience working with educators to integrate reflection activities into their teaching. Specifically, workshop participants were invited to:

  1. examine reflection activities that have been conducted by engineering educators,
  2. explore strategies for choosing or creating a reflection activity to integrate into teaching practices,
  3. practice adapting a reflection activity to one’s own teaching practice, and
  4. identify possible ways to use reflection activities in future teaching.

By the completion of the workshop, participants were able to take away a clearer understanding of reflection, a repertoire of sample reflection activities, an initial draft of a reflection activity tailored to their own teaching setting, and a network of like-minded colleagues.

Click the thumbnail below to download a PDF of the workshop workbook.

thumbnail of cover for reflection workshop workbook

news, research, resource

Reflection at ASEE 2016

Reflection was a cross-cutting thread again at the 2016 ASEE annual conference, as illustrated by the selection of papers below. The first three papers are work done by members of CPREE. As illustrated by the additional papers, there is broad interest in reflection in engineering education.

activity, general, news, practices

Digging in for the Second Year of CPREE

Having just wrapped up a strong first year, CPREE educators across our 12 partner campuses are gearing up for an exciting start to the second. From setting up mini-grants to facilitate awardees in implementing reflective practices of their own design to engaging other faculty members and instructors around them in questions of how reflective practices can benefit classrooms in a variety of disciplines, our members have been busy helping to bring meaningful change in engineering education across the country. We wanted to share some of their stories to highlight the important work they are doing as well as provide inspiration to others looking to do the same.

 Arizona State University – Polytechnic Campus – Kristy Csavina and Adam Carberry

It was exciting to read the mini-grant applications and learn of the reflective practices already adopted by faculty within the Fulton Schools of Engineering. We have successfully completed our kick-off meetings and have 12 new mini-grant awardees spanning across the six engineering schools at ASU. The team includes instructors, tenure-track, and tenured faculty with a range of discipline expertise as well as years of experience teaching. Each has used a form of reflection in their classrooms prior to CPREE, some more innovative than others. In addition to this, many faculty have already expressed interest in our new ‘mentor a colleague program’. We expect another 6-12 faculty to join our team between now and January 2016.

Bellevue College – Frank Lee

The reception of the CPREE Field Guide at the start-of-the-year Science Division meeting was very positive; many faculty new to CPREE expressed interest in participating and implementing a reflection activity in their course.

“At first when I heard about reflection I thought it would be fluff, but now that I see the activities, it looks very useful and am interested in doing [it],” said a Chemistry Faculty member.

We think there are many great ideas and applications in the field guide collection. We are attempting a preliminary grouping of the entries into common categories as a way to more efficiently direct educators to entries that might be of interest for their needs.

California Polytechnic Institute and State University – Trevor Harding

Our participation has doubled from 15 faculty and 2 students last academic year to 35 faculty participants this year. Our new members hail from the Humanities, Chemistry and Physics departments and bring with them highly divergent experiences with reflection, the experienced ones including it in nearly every course they teach while others are just beginning to explore what reflection is and how they might use it.

While reflecting on what they had learned, a participant in our collaborative inquiry dialogue group found that “[the] freeform discussions not only expand my horizons, but also remind me of the power of simply taking the time to sit down and talk with others.”

Clarkson University- John Moosbrugger

Having established our mini-grant fund, we now have 8 mini-grant awardees engaged in reflective practices and are looking to recruit more. In our ongoing efforts to invite more participation from faculty, we have found the most effective method is to meet with them individually. Often, we find that they are already incorporating or planning to include activities in their courses that are reflective in nature. The main “barrier” seems to be making the communication happen. Since we are situated on a geographically small campus, it is also more efficient to conduct face-to-face project meetings to figure out details to make the evaluation process work. An interesting side-benefit of this that we have discovered is that it seems to be “forcing” more detailed sharing of teaching practices among the participating faculty.

Georgia Institute of Technology – Caroline Noyes and Ruth Poproski

We are getting the word out and there is already a general consciousness on campus that the Center for Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) will be devoting this year to reflection. We have been discussing the role of reflection in memory and learning at our book club meetings and have had good attendance so far. The mini-grants are getting ready to roll out and we are looking forward to welcoming new awardees. We are also already planning our retreat in the spring and have located an exciting speaker.

Green River College – Janet Ash and Jeff McCauley

The Green River Reflection Activity Team (RATS) met for a two hour kick off of year two activities. Ten faculty and one classified staff member participated in planning our campus wide CPREE efforts, which include both a study group on reflective practices and classroom activities in the fall quarter involving four departments. Laura Moore-Mueller of our Math division commented that this meeting was the best student focused event she had participated in the entire week. The faculty in this group embraced the opportunity to wrestle with the challenges of incorporating reflection into their classrooms and the new members brought freshness and new perspectives. One of them is a relatively new English teacher that teaches Technical Writing to our engineering students, but also teaches creative writing to the humanities/social science students. She shared some of her reflective classroom practices that utilizes Harry Potter as the catalyst! Another enthusiastic new member is a veteran IT professional with years of industry experience eager to use the field guides he sees as urgently needed for his students.

Highline College – Rich Bankhead

In our opening week event, “Building a Community of Reflective Educators,” we discussed the definition of reflection with 17 faculty in both STEM and non-STEM discipline. Together, we explored why students are sometimes not successful in class, leading to discussion of how we can avoid “telling” our students what it takes to be successful, and instead motivate them towards becoming better students through personal reflection.  We also discussed the use of reflection for culturally responsive teaching, reflection in non-verbal formats, and how reflection can serve our diverse campus community. There was a great deal of interest, to the extent of one of the discussions running overtime!

Our second opening week event, a “birds of a feather” round-table conversation focused on reflective teaching was equally successful. An attending computer science faculty member who was initially unconvinced that reflective activities could be tailored to the needs of his classroom was a great deal more excited by the end by the activities we have planned.

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology – Patrick Cunningham and Ella Ingram

We started off our activities with a module on reflection presented by Patrick Cunningham at our Summer Teaching Workshop. While it was well received by all participants, one new faculty member in Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE) got particularly excited about the use of reflection to help students build meaning. He had spent several years in the industry and saw the significance of helping students understand the importance of course topics and how they connect to people’s lives and even their own lives.

Just the other day, Patrick Cunningham was approached for an informal conversation about reflection by his colleague Richard Onyancha. Richard is involved in global engineering and has been thinking about how to engage students in processing experiences doing engineering in a global context, including traveling abroad, and had thought of speaking to Richard. We were pleased to realize that CPREE at Rose-Hulman is becoming a resource that people think of.

Seattle Central College – Doug Faust

We have been rolling out our mini-grants and preliminary data indicates that is costs about $5 to create and administer a reflective experience for a student.  Everyone seems to be impressed by this number, and if you consider that any given reflection may change a student’s academic trajectory, it is impressive.  You could say that one of our ‘a-ha’ moments is realizing that an experienced educator can choreograph an ‘a-ha’ moment for a student so efficiently.

We have also noticed that the mini-grant system is a very effective way of getting people involved in the project. The PI informally polled some of the educators and they reported that by letting them choose the mode and techniques of the reflective practice, they felt that the project was supportive of their existing teaching instead of disruptive and invasive.

Seattle University – Phil Thompson

At the end of July, we held a workshop for 11 faculty members intended to facilitate the creation of new reflection activities. Using the activity he devised at this workshop, Phillip Thompson conducted a pilot project for the reflection / assessment cycle in August-September. The activity had been designed for students who had engaged in a service-learning trip to a developing country. Three students who visited Thailand from June-August 2015 participated in both the reflection and the assessment. The exercise caused Dr. Thompson to wish he had started these student reflection essays ten years ago when he first began his work with students abroad.

Stanford University – Sheri Sheppard and Helen Chen

One group of educators we are working with is led by the Head TA (leading a group of nine TAs) for the Earth Systems introductory overview course for first and second-year students. Several of these graduate students attended our CPREE workshop in the spring and followed up with us again in the fall. Our initial conversation about where reflection activities might be incorporated into the course eventually led to a broader conversation about articulating course learning outcomes and identifying where and how instructors might envision change in student knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, etc. as a result of taking the course. Several questions came up: How might the product of a reflection activity represent evidence of learning impact? If there were several reflection activities embedded throughout a course, would it be possible map change or growth over time? How do reflection activities inform both individual student self-assessment as well as course or program evaluation?

University of Washington – Ken Yasuhara

One of the early “clients” that we are most excited about is a group of pre-engineering advising staff in the college. They are responsible for ENGR 101, a survey seminar enrolling over 400 students annually that has a format of weekly visiting presenters. We have discussed a wide variety of ways of increasing and enhancing the reflection and active learning components of this course. ENGR 101 is an ideal context for consortium activity, given that most enrollees are first-years and sophomores who are considering but are not necessarily already committed to an engineering major. Similarly, although at a smaller scale, another current client is designing and teaching a first-year seminar for prospective bioengineering majors as part of a university-wide effort to encourage student understanding and development of leadership.

activity, general, news, practices

Sharing the First Year of CPREE

At CPREE, we have just wrapped up our first year of activity on the 12 partner campuses. Over 100 educators from across the country participated in our mapping of reflection activities. Educators shared the many creative ways that they prompt students to reflect and our core team has captured those activities to create over 120 field guide entries. Along with capturing these activities, each campus hosted two or more events to engage educators, and sometimes students, in activities to further understand and promote reflection. With so many educators, activities, and events, it is difficult to highlight just one story from our first year. In this post, we wanted to share a brief story from each of our twelve campuses about their first year in CPREE. Our team is excited as we are well on our way to making a notable and long-lasting change in engineering education across the country.

 

Arizona State University – Polytechnic Campus –Kristy Csavina and Adam Carberry

While attending the 2015 Research in Engineering Education Symposium, Adam Carberry ran into the Senior Dean of Student and Academic Affairs at ASU, Dr. James Collofello. Dr. Collofello had attended the symposium based on a previous conversation with Adam. During a session run by the UW CPREE PIs it was noted that ASU was a participating institution and that Dr. Carberry was one of the ASU PIs. Dr. Collofello was sitting next to Adam and immediately suggested that they meet upon returning to ASU because he would like to leverage his office, the introduction to engineering course, and the Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Program to help expand the ASU CPREE efforts.

Bellevue College – Frank Lee

At Bellevue, the interview process itself was a great experience for all involved. We had a chance to take the time to reflect on our teaching and are looking forward to sharing the collection of field guides with campus faculty. We’re definitely anticipating a strong response from interested faculty based on those who joined our team after participating in campus events. The college’s Teaching Strategies Discussion Group leader allowed CPREE to present at a group meeting; during the meeting, the leader gradually became more and more enthusiastic about how integral reflection is part of the learning process.

California Polytechnic Institute and State University – Trevor Harding

From our discussion group there have been a number of aha moments for participants.  For some this has focused on what the conditions are for effective reflection.  Some of these conditions include the need that students believe in the value of reflection before they reflect, the time to reflect, safe conditions in which to share your reflection product, and so on.  Other faculty were thinking about what is appropriate to ask students to reflect on, and how safe will they feel if we ask them to reflect on something deeply personal.  Some faculty noticed that they had been thinking about reflection only for enhancement of learning effectiveness and had never considered that reflection could be used as a way to promote transformation in the lives of students more holistically.  Still others had noticed that they felt they were taking a risk in asking students to reflect on their experiences in a class because the students might turn it into an evaluation of the instructor.

 

Clarkson University- John Moosbrugger

A colleague, Charles Robinson approached me, unsolicited, about activities in his course BR200 Introduction to Biomedical and Rehabilitation Engineering, Science and Technology. He wanted to include a question or two on a course feedback “survey” that would be useful to the project (CPREE project). He just became interested because of press releases about the project and announcements for the Brown Bag Lunches. I have his summarized student responses, and I may be able to make some use of them. What was gratifying to me was his enthusiasm to do something without being solicited.

 Georgia Institute of Technology – Caroline Noyes and Ruth Poproski

Of particular note, the faculty who are meeting weekly to discuss teaching and learning in large classes were able to come up with many ideas of how to implement reflection for learning in their large classes, ranging from 60 to 300 students.  Again, the quick and enthusiastic buy-in was surprising to us, given our sense of resistance in the past.  The main take-away from this is that the provision of evidence from the research in addition to examples of reflection activities that will be provided from the field guides generated by the consortium will go a long way in terms of getting faculty to understand and embrace the import and feasibility of using reflection to enhance learning, even in large classes.

Green River College – Janet Ash and Jeff McCauley

The CPREE project has made a notable mark in how we look at reflection within the many engineering classes that we teach and the benefits to students when reflection is present in the classroom. In the mechanics of materials and differential equations courses, it appears there was a notable increase in meaningful reflection and critical thinking by the students as the problems become more open-ended and more theoretically difficult. In a computer science course, an educator uses a survey; one question presents a list of potential reading strategies for students to consider as they prepare for class each week. As the students review this list weekly, they are reminded of how their own reading abilities can be improved and they were reading more successfully as the quarter progressed. A mathematics educator shared their post-quiz reflection with us for the field guide and two of us adopted that activity in our own classes. We were all delighted to see the activity helped students in all three, very different classes to improve their performance overall.

Highline College – Rich Bankhead

We use a reflective activity in our ENGR 100 class in which students design their own process for becoming a world-class engineering student. Reading the assignments at the end of the quarter is always refreshing. For example, a student wrote, “Engineering is a demanding field and this class has delineated what it will take to meet these demands…I can look back over each week’s exercises and assignments and see so much preparatory action and relevancy for years to come.” Another student wrote, “Understanding the different learning styles and how they applied gave me a better grasp on how I learn and what I need to do to be successful in the future. For example, I learned that I have a preference for reflective learning…”

Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology – Patrick Cunningham and Ella Ingram

We have a Rose-Hulman affiliated design and development firm, Rose-Hulman Ventures, that hires our students part-time during the school year and full-time over the summer to work on industry sponsored projects. Projects are led by full-time project managers and students work together on teams. I (Patrick Cunningham) met with Elizabeth Hagerman, Vice President of Rose-Hulman Ventures, in the fall to discuss role of reflection in student work experiences. At this point, it seems reflections are primarily informal and likely driven by the project managers. She invited me back to present about CPREE at a staff meeting with project managers to find out more from them and see what participation might develop from there. I will be visiting a staff meeting in January.

Seattle Central College – Doug Faust

Our group facilitator brought up the very interesting point that faculty choices of reflection activities may be informed by their own teaching goals and values. We look forward to investigating these connections during the campus-wide events and using this as a way to open dialogues with faculty about their teaching practice. In later discussions, the idea of grading reflective practices came up again and again. Fundamentally, faculty seem to understand and fear that students may not genuinely engage in reflection if it’s being graded. For example, the boiler-plate response “I need to study harder” written on exam reflections is coming from a place of wanting to satisfy a grader and not a genuine reflection. We’d would like to explore this more because it seems quite key in instructional design.

Seattle University – Phil Thompson

Through our two on campus events, we have been able to connect over 20% of our science and engineering faculty to the CPREE project. We were able to share reflection activities, and spend valuable time discussing teaching with each other. The two events helped ensure our group of 16 educators to participate in our year 2 efforts. On July 21 and July 28 we held what turned out to be two very inspiring and motivational workshops on reflection. A group of 11 faculty developed new reflective activities for their courses. We also began developing assessment tools for each of these activities and are looking forward to implementing these activities in the fall.

Stanford University – Sheri Sheppard and Helen Chen

In each interview that we will do, we will try to find this one element that we find important in reflection, which is change.  We feel that it’s not enough to tell students to “go and reflect”, instead they need help with connecting their experiences to the course material, with challenging their beliefs and assumptions, and in deepening their learning.  How do we not rely on student’s testimonials and self-reports to assess the quality of their learning –because the challenge is that self–reporting will lead to confusion between student satisfaction and student learning.  Is there a measure that allows students to show us, rather than tell us, that they have attained greater understanding, that they have ability to apply their knowledge, and problem solving skills?

University of Washington – Ken Yasuhara

One of my initial (non-interview) meetings was with Sonya Cunningham, a staffer who runs a CoE program specifically designed to prepare financial aid-eligible freshman for majoring in engineering. Allowing myself to forgo rushing into an interview about a specific reflection activity freed me to talk with Sonya about the program and its recent history of major design changes. I learned that Sonya already incorporates reflection in numerous ways but was interested in streamlining her process, which we agreed to meet again to discuss. At the end of our hour-long discussion, she agreed to send me some of her program materials to inform my choice of a reflection activity to focus a mapping interview on when we next met. Perhaps more valuable to me than meeting the CPREE objectives of the meeting, however, was hearing about all of the thoughtful pedagogy and heartfelt energy that Sonya puts into this program. As I remarked on multiple occasions, she was remarkably well-informed about pedagogy, program design, diversity, and persistence issues. Our conversation left me so inspired and hopeful that I decided to drop a line to the associate dean whom she reports to. I have no illusions of being a power broker but know that good work too often goes unrecognized and unrewarded, and I figured it couldn’t hurt CoE’s chances of retaining Sonya or Sonya’s chances of career advancement. I count it as a good sign that the word I put in quickly made it back to Sonya, who thanked me many times.

news

Rose-Hulman Workshop on “Assessing Reflection”

By: Ella Ingram, PhD
CPREE Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology co-PI

Rose-Hulman’s CPREE learning community welcomed Dr. Rachel McCord of University of Tennessee – Knoxville for a day-long workshop focused on assessing reflection (held on July 21, 2015). The day began with a rousing and sometimes heated consideration of three papers (Moon, 2006; Kember et al., 2008; Stewart & Richardson, 2000), centering on the relative importance and roles of assessment and grading. Many questions were identified: What do educators need to know to assess reflection (their own KSAs–knowledge, skills, and abilities)? How does one separate reflection from content in submitted work? What is the purpose of the reflection experience in this particular course? How do we walk students through the reflection process? How do we influence students’ motivation to participate in reflection? What prompts can we use to encourage reflection in conversation with students? Our answers to these questions reveal the complexity of this topic and illustrate the variability found in the literature.

Dr. McCord encouraged the workshop participants to combine the reflection model of experience-meaning making-future action with a backward design approach for assessment planning (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998). Three questions guide the planning: (1) what is the purpose of reflection? (develop objectives), (2) What constitutes good or poor? (identifying evidence), and (3) What learning engagements will yield this evidence? (activity development). By working through these questions, the workshop participants clarified their mechanisms for assessing the reflection activities they plan for the next school year.

Twenty participants attended, a great number given short notice and summer schedules. Educators represented eight different academic departments and three support offices (including the RHIT president Dr. Jim Conwell). The mix of perspectives kept the discussion lively, and enriched the understanding of all.

Citations

Moon, J. (2006). Learning Journals: A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development. New York: Routledge.

Kember, D., McKay, J., Sinclair, K., & Wong, F. K. Y. (2008). A four-category scheme for coding and assessing the level of reflection in written work. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(4): 369-379.

Stewart, S. & Richardson, B. (2000). Reflection and its place in the curriculum on an undergraduate course: should it be assessed? Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 25(4): 369-380.

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. Alexandria: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

About the author. Ella Ingram, PhD, is a CPREE co-PI at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT). At RHIT, she is an Associate Professor of Biology & Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Center for the Practice and Scholarship of Education.

news

CPREE @ ASEE 2015

By: Brook Sattler, PhD
CPREE multi-campus coordinator

One of our highlights of the year has been the strong CPREE presence at the 2015 ASEE conference, which was held in Seattle from June 14-17. This strong presence included a workshop, a CPREE reception, CELT reception, and three CPREE related papers.

In the well-attended and very successful workshop (actually sold out and over 50 workshop attendees)–“Promoting reflection and reflection activities in engineering education”–the UW CPREE team and colleagues from 7 of the campuses guided workshop participants through a range of activities: exploring the power of reflection in learning; identifying what you might take into account when choosing, designing, and implementing a reflection activity; adapting a reflection activity to different contexts; and developing a plan for adapting a reflection activity.

After the workshop, attendees reflected on their experience in the workshop (yes, a good opportunity to “drink from our own Kool Aid”). Here are a few quotes from workshop attendees:

When reflecting on the prompt “One realization I had is,” some workshop attendees said:

  • “Reflection comes in many forms.”
  • “Reflection takes time but it is not impossible!”
  • “The excitement I have about reflection is shared by far more people than I initially believed.”
  • “Reflection is just as ‘technically necessary’ to engineering than most students perceive but they will eventually get it.”

When reflecting on the prompt “Something I’d like to know more about,” some workshop attendees said:

  • “How to assess reflection/critical thinking skills against expected or encountered intellectual development.”
  • “How to increase the values of reflection activities from students’ perspectives.”
  • “Good grading rubrics for reflection activities.”

When reflecting on the prompt “My next step with reflection is,” some workshop attendees said:

  • “Redesign some of my class activities. Design a rubric to evaluate the students’ reflections.”
  • “Find ways to train myself to make reflection more like a lifestyle and be intentional in finding opportunities to reflect…and share it with others when possible to reflect further.”
  • “Integrate new activities that highlight the flexibility of reflection.”

We also had three paper presentations that described our CPREE work :

There was strong interest across the engineering education community about reflection in general, and the CPREE activities in particular, with many people expressing interest in the field guide entries that will be available on the CPREE website.

news

Reflection at Stanford

By: Brook Sattler, PhD
CPREE multi-campus coordinator

On my year one visit to Stanford, I had the pleasure of spending time with co-PIs Dr. Sheri Sheppard and Dr. Helen Chen. In partnership with Stanford’s Center for Teaching & Learning, we hosted a workshop on reflection—“Brainstorming Strategies to Foster Reflective Practices in STEM Classrooms.”

In this workshop, we shared information about CPREE and how workshop participants could get involved in the project on Stanford’s campus. The main workshop activity was the “Reflection Mad Libs” activity. During this activity, workshop participants worked together to fill in these Mad Libs:

    1. Reflection helps ­__X___ to __Y___, in order to __Z___.
    2. Reflection helps __X___ to __Y___.
    3. Reflection is important because __X___.
    4. Graduates with reflection skills will be able to __X___.
    5. **Create your own**

****­__X___        ****__Y___, ***__Z___.

Over 20 students, staff, and faculty participated in the workshop; this diverse turn out led to rich conversations. I look forward to seeing how these rich conversations lead to more reflection integrated into the culture at Stanford.

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“Have you made good choices today?”

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Reflection activities can happen in many contexts and can be used to develop community  among students. Sonya Cunningham, of the University of Washington shared with us her activity “Have you made good choices today?” and it was also highlighted by the Seattle Times. See the article below!

stars-logo190x

 UW’s STARS helps low-income students shine

by Jerry Large, Seattle Times

Good students from low-income backgrounds soar to meet high

expectations at UW.

Usually when I think about helping kids succeed, I have in mind young children in the most dire circumstances, the ones who might not make it through school or might wind up in jail. But sometimes

even being an A student isn’t enough for a young person to reach her potential.

Ewurama Karikari and Trinh Ha were both top students in high school. Mount Tahoma in Tacoma for Ha and Bethel High School in Spanaway for Karikari. The freshmen made the winter-quarter dean’s list at the University of Washington, but might not have even attended the UW if not for a little help. Being there is good for their futures, and good for the UW, too.

Eve Riskin, professor of electrical engineering, told me the problem-solving work that engineers do benefits from the diversity of approaches that different life experiences create.

Riskin is also associate dean of diversity and access in the College of Engineering. And she sent me a note about a program just in its second year, called State Academic Red Shirt or STARS. She’d just gotten the winter-quarter grades and told me 11 of the 30 STARS students made the dean’s list. The Times wrote about the program last fall, but it’s been fine-tuned, so I asked what’s getting results.

The key ingredients are students who have shown they can stick to hard tasks, and a staff that brings tough love and high expectations.

We all know how competitive that access to the best education has become, and the stakes just keep rising. That’s particularly true in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) fields and at the most selective universities.

STEM programs cry that they’re not getting enough students, but they turn away large numbers of applicants because they want students who come out of high school prepared to plug into their programs without a hitch.

And that means they admit few students from low-income families who are likely to live in neighborhoods where educational opportunities are not equal to those in more upscale areas. The UW College of Engineering isn’t where it wants to be, but is more diverse than most of its peers because it makes an effort to bring in both underrepresented minority students and women.

A few years ago, I wrote about the college’s summer program for high-school students, Math Academy. It gave students a boost, but four weeks in the summer wasn’t quite enough to draw as many students into the college as it wanted. So the UW adopted the STARS idea (Washington State University did, too), paying for it with temporary grant money, primarily from the National Science Foundation.

Sonya Cunningham, who runs the UW program, said she gets a list in January or February of students who are applying to the UW as freshmen, and who attend schools with a significant percentage of low-income families.

She has current STARS students call them and talk up engineering. Then Cunningham evaluates them, looking for one trait in particular: perseverance. If they have good grades and grit, they have a good chance of succeeding in the intense program.

The students I spoke with said math work in the program was harder than they expected and even more challenging than what they later faced in class. The intent is to quickly get them up to where they need to be to compete with students who’ve had more math programs, a higher level of instruction and extracurricular enrichment.

Their first quarter, students get lessons in how to negotiate college, how to fit in with the culture. They work on academic and study skills.

Cunningham does proactive advising to head off potential problems (“Have you made good choices today?”), and from the start she molds them into a supportive community. She brought them together the week before classes started last fall and gave a $50 gift certificate to the first person who learned everyone’s names.

Ha won and said the students started bonding that week. “We can understand each other,” she said. And Karikari said, “We’re all really great friends and can call on each other.”

Two students fell behind during the fall quarter, and Cunningham applied some tough love. Some tears were shed, but the next quarter both were doing better. One of them went from a 2.2 GPA in the fall to the dean’s list in the winter.

Cunningham, who grew up in a low-income household in New York City, and who made it to college only because of the intervention of a teacher, feels a special kinship with the students. “This is coming full circle for me,” she said. “It’s my passion, and I love it.”

Karikari is interested in getting a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and Ha is interested in renewable energy and wants to work in industry. It’s a good bet STARS will help them realize their dreams.

Original post:  http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/uws-stars-helps-low-income-students-shine/

Jerry Large’s column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com. Twitter @jerrylarge.

 

news, practices, research

Reflective Learning Prepares Students for the ‘Real World’

by  Elizabeth Lowry, The Graduate School, University of Washington

The concept of reflective learning may spark some initial apprehension on the part of educators and students. But once they try it, they quickly see that it works, according to research and widespread practice.

Students – in fields from engineering to dance – deepen and strengthen their learning when they contemplate the material they have just learned to find its meaning and connections to past courses, lessons or experiences. In other words, reflection helps students connect the dots.

Learning through reflection in college prepares students for the “real world” after graduation.

“Employers are looking for students who are able to retain and make connections across contexts,” said Cindy Atman, director for the UW Center for Engineering Learning & Teaching and professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering.

“No matter how engaging and authentic the context that we as educators teach in, we cannot predict and model every situation that our students would need to demonstrate their knowledge. Reflecting on new information and making connections to prior learning, and diverse contexts is a critically important skill for the 21st century workforce.”

Reflection can support student learning – in any field of study, according to Atman and Betsy Cooper, divisional dean of arts in the College of Arts & Sciences and professor in Dance. Atman and Cooper will give the keynote presentation at 3 p.m., Tuesday, April 14, during the UW Teaching and Learning Symposium in the HUB Ballroom. The symposium begins at 2 p.m. and ends at 4:30 p.m., with the keynote taking place between the two poster sessions.

“Some of the benefits are that students become more meta-cognitive in their approach to learning, moving from novice to expert at an accelerated pace,” Cooper said. “Students become more engaged in their learning as they connect experiences across learning domains. And educators become more responsive.”

The symposium will highlight some of the UW’s most innovative research and practices in teaching and learning as more than 80 faculty, staff, and students from nearly 40 departments and units across all three UW campuses present 42 posters that detail their research methods, results and implications. Interim Provost Gerald J. Baldasty will give the welcoming remarks. Poster presentations range from the impact of active learning spaces on student learning to incorporating art into assignments in social science courses to shortening doctoral students’ time-to-degree by providing writing support.

Hosted by the UW Center for Teaching and Learning, the symposium is open to the entire University, and no reservations are required.

Atman and Jennifer Turns, professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering, direct a consortium comprised of 12 campuses across the country to implement reflection in engineering classrooms. Funded by a grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, the Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education is interviewing educators about the reflection activities they use with engineering students. These activities include short, in-class reflection activities on how students used their day and student portfolios. Another form of reflection is an “exam wrapper,” in which students reflect on how they prepared for exams and how they performed. Then, students identify strategies to improve. The center staff will present a poster at the symposium with a sampling of reflection activities that local engineering educators are using, along with the rationale and benefits.

In the generative and performing arts, the most common means of reflective practice occurs through critique, Cooper noted. “This can mean self-critique, instructor or peer. It is common that all three are interwoven in a process,” she said. Through repetition and revision, based on the critique, an artist refines his or her technique and expressivity.

Other reflection methods in the arts include journaling, reflective essays on class progress and reflective essays on a portfolio. By establishing goal statements at the beginning of a dance course, Cooper’s students can create strategies to meet those goals, as well as revisit and revise the goals throughout the quarter.

The benefits of reflective learning extend throughout students’ professional lives as they can incorporate reflection into their individual work strategies and practices.

“Reflective practice can be a potent means for continued growth, and an antidote to burnout,” Cooper said.

 

View the original post here: http://www.washington.edu/teaching/innovation/teaching-and-learning-symposium/reflective-learning-prepares-students-for-the-real-world/

View Dr. Atman’s slides from her keynote address here: Using Reflection to Support Student Learning

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Clarkson University: Passionate about Research and Teaching

By: Brook Sattler, PhD
CPREE multi-campus coordinator

I had the pleasure of visiting Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. On this campus visit, I met with a number of educators and campus leaders to talk about CPREE.

On my visit to Clarkson University, I hosted a half day workshop—“Reflection in Engineering Education: Creating a Reflection Mindset.” In this workshop, I (1) engaged participants in a rich pictures activity as a way to collectively define reflection; (2) offered our CPREE definition of reflection; (3) explained the goals and activities of CPREE; (4) shared emerging reflection activities; and (5) engaged the participants in developing a reflection activity. In this workshop, reflection seemed to resonate with the educators. This attitude was evident in the way the educators actively engaged in conversation about the topic, readily offered examples from their classroom, and actively engaged in developing a reflection activity to implement in their teaching. When the educators worked in groups to develop a reflection activity, they developed creative reflection activities (e.g., crib sheet preparation as a reflection activity, muddiest point in large lectures, etc.). When the group talked about one specific activity, individuals in the group were able to modify the reflection activity to fit the needs in their course.

What was evident in all my conversations with educators and leaders at Clarkson was a passion for both technical research, as well as engineering education research. As an institution, Clarkson has strived to be student centered, but much of this mindset has come from natural intuition. More recently, they have recognized the importance of grounding their education practice in best practice that is based on the literature. This shift is evident in the types of deep questions educators and campus leaders are asking about teaching and learning. I thoroughly enjoyed helping these educators think about their teaching and learning. I look forward to seeing Clarkson University emerge further as leaders in engineering education research and I hope to continue this partnership that we have started through CPREE.