This paper continues and expands the investigation of findings of a multi-year project that is initiating technology supported, experimental centric approaches within flipped classrooms focused on engineering education. The setting primarily reflects circuit related engineering content with two levels of students (1st year ECE and 2nd – 4th year students from outside of ECE). Comparisons will also be made to other flipped implementations at the same institution. Previous papers have presented student outcomes as reflected by change in pre-requisites to learning, immediate self-reflected learning, and potential long-term impact of personal instrumentation (Mobile Studio and Analog Discovery) use. This presentation will have two goals. First it will expand outcomes of technology supported experimental flipping to include changes in faculty. Findings will include documentation of faculty growth in use, further establishing a developmental pattern of implementation for flipped classrooms that is similar to that found for technology implementation. This hypothesized patter, if found to exist, will provide administrators and novice “flippers” with guidelines and expected patterns of growth as well as areas in which support is needed if implementation is to occur. Suggestions for areas of support, as well as barriers to future growth of faculty use, will be discussed.
The second focal point of the paper will re-examine student outcomes from a group impact. Current educational literature indicates that undergraduate students have varying experiences and practices related to group work. It is hypothesized by the authors that varied patterns of student groupings are initiated and supported by a flipped classroom. Five years of classroom observations of student grouping patterns will be summarized and presented; this paper will present the initial findings of this examination and will document and describe four types of student groups generated by a flipped classroom using experimental methods. Preliminary suggestions for modifying flipped classroom instruction to meet these four patterns will be discussed as well as the need for further research.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4216-763X
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
[biography]
Kenneth Connor is Program Officer at the Inclusive Engineering Consortium (IEC), whose mission is to enable MSI ECE programs to produce more and better prepared graduates from groups that have been historically underrepresented in ECE careers. He is also an emeritus professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering (ECSE) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) where he taught courses on electromagnetics, electronics and instrumentation, plasma physics, electric power, and general engineering. His research involves plasma physics, electromagnetics, photonics, biomedical sensors, engineering education, diversity in the engineering workforce, and technology enhanced learning. He learned problem solving from his father (who ran a gray iron foundry), his mother (a nurse) and grandparents (dairy farmers). He has had the great good fortune to always work with amazing people, most recently the members and leadership of the IEC from HBCU, HSI, and TCU ECE programs and the faculty, staff and students of the Lighting Enabled Systems and Applications (LESA) ERC, where he was Education Director until his retirement in 2018. He was RPI ECSE Department Head from 2001 to 2008 and served on the board of the ECE Department Heads Association (ECEDHA) from 2003 to 2008. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE.
Dr. Dianna Newman is a research professor at the University at Albany/SUNY. Her major areas of study are program evaluation with an emphasis in STEM related programs. She has numerous chapters, articles, and papers on technology-supported teaching and learning as well as systems-change stages pertaining to technology adoption.
Dr. Kathy Gullie has extensive experience as a Senior Evaluator and Research Associate at the University at Albany/SUNY. She is currently the principal investigator in several educational grants including an NSF engineering grant supporting Historically Black University and Colleges; "Building Learning Communities to Improve Student Achievement: Albany City School District” , and “Educational Leadership Program Enhancement Project at Syracuse University” Teacher Leadership Quality Program. She is also the PI on both “Syracuse City School District Title II B Mathematics and Science Partnership: Science Project and Mathematics MSP Grant initiatives.
Dr. Paul Schoch is an Associate Professor in the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His teaching includes the circuits and electronics sequence in his home department as well as an instrumentation course for non-electrical majors and an embedded control course available for all engineering majors. His research is in diagnostics for high temperature plasma. He is the director of the Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education, a K-12 outreach arm at Rensselaer.
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