Listening and Negotiation

Negotiation is an important skill for faculty at all stages of their career, but one that research suggests is often uncomfortable for women faculty to employ. This paper focuses on the topic of negotiation, with an emphasis on providing practical ideas and strategies relevant to academic professionals at both entry-level and mid-career who find that they need to negotiate a career opportunity. The paper will review negotiation basics, as well as discuss what can be negotiated, how one might proceed to discuss these, and how listening is critical to negotiation. By viewing negotiation as a wise agreement 1 that seeks to meet the needs of both parties to the extent possible, this paper presents several common cases or scenarios that illustrate the importance of understanding the elements involved both from the faculty member’s perspective as well as from the perspective of their department head, dean or provost

CCLI: Model Eliciting Activities: Experiments and Mixed Methods to Assess Student Learning – Part II

As part of a seven university CCLI* Type 3 collaborative effort focused on models and modeling, we have extended the model eliciting activity (MEA) construct to upper division engineering programs. Originally developed and validated by mathematics education researchers, MEAs were found to have significant value as an educational tool. In particular, our overall goal has been to use this construct as a means for enhancing engineering students‟ problem solving and modeling skills as well as their conceptual understanding of certain engineering topics. Specifically,we have pursued two main research avenues: MEAs as teaching tools and MEAs as learning assessment tools. This paper summarizes our results for these two research thrusts as we enter our fourth project year. Particular emphasis is placed on our mixed measurements for student learning and achievement, and an examination of the relative conceptual gain for a series of MEA experiments, including those where a comparison group was available

Blended Vs. Flipped Teaching: One Course - Three Engineering Schools

Blended versus flipped instruction was compared during multiple semesters of a numerical methods course at three engineering schools with very diverse student demographics. This coincides with recent calls by the literature for comparisons of technology-enhanced or active learning pedagogies, versus the usual comparison of these approaches to traditional lecture. Therefore, each institution delivered the course in a blended and flipped format between 2014 and 2016. The blended approach combines technology-rich instruction with face-to-face learning to enhance the lecture. With “flipped” instruction, students “do work” during class after learning the fundamentals before class through videos or readings. The primary investigator had extensive experience teaching in a blended fashion. However, he anticipated that flipped instruction would require students to “dig deeper” and achieve more. Therefore, we conducted a quasi-experimental study to assess whether flipped instruction led to greater achievement, including for particular demographics. In addition, we hypothesized that classroom environment perceptions would differ and that students would perceive benefits with flipped instruction. To directly assess these methods, we compared multiple-choice and free-response exam results. The multiple-choice questions were identical across the schools and for the instructional methods. We made this comparison for demographic segments of interest, including underrepresented minorities, females, Pell grant recipients, and community college transfers, as well as for students as a whole. The students rated their classroom environments using the College and University Classroom Environment Inventory and provided feedback via focus groups and an evaluation survey. Based on combining data from the schools, blended instruction was associated with slightly greater achievement with the multiple-choice questions (i.e., lower-order skills) across multiple demographics, but the differences were not significant and the effects were small. With the free-response questions (i.e., higher-order skills), the combined results were mixed across the demographics, and there were small effects and non-significant differences. Interestingly, the free-response and classroom environment data aligned, with the blended approach showing more promise at two schools based on them, and the flipped approach doing so at the other. Based on the survey, although 48% did not prefer the flipped classroom to usual methods, 54% did prefer in-class problem solving to conventional lecture. The students identified high demands with the flipped classroom but cited benefits. In an open-ended question, the most frequent benefits were enhanced learning or learning processes, preparation and engagement, and active learning and questioning during class. These aligned with our focus group results and instructor interviews. Thus, although there were small differences with the combined exam and classroom environment data, the students qualitatively identified benefits with flipped instruction that were not captured by these assessments. Despite the small differences, there were some large differences in the exam and classroom environment results for the schools individually. This suggests the need for continued research with different demographics. Also, there may be a benefit to considering alternative measures besides exam scores. Our study is believed to be one of the few to rigorously compare technology-enhanced, active-learning approaches in STEM