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The Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois is revolutionizing its curriculum by increasing its focus on teaching students about the societal needs that necessitate bioengineering solutions. In this paper, we provide an overview of the goals of our revolution and the process by which we will create this change. We provide examples of how we are centering our curriculum around addressing society needs through clinical immersion experiences and disease-centered learning tracks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several years, scholars of teaching and learning have demonstrated the potential of collaborative learning strategies for improving student learning. This paper examines the use of computer-mediated communication to promote collaborative learning and student learning in large introductory sociology courses. Specifically, we summarize a project we conducted during the 2000-2001 academic year in which online collaborative learning activities were added to the curriculum of two large sections of introductory sociology. Drawing on the Just-In-Time approach to teaching, the online activities were designed to help prepare students for the subsequent in-class work. However, these activities were also designed to cultivate a sense of group solidarity among the smaller teams within the larger class. The results suggest that student engagement in the online group learning activities was strongly predictive of better student academic achievement on the biweekly quizzes, cumulative final exam, and course paper. These findings highlight the potential value of online group work for fostering collaborative learning environments in large lecture courses as well as for enhancing student learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to emphasize the need to establish a strong first impression in the classroom for students' successful learning experience and their retention in the curriculum. Teaching is an art that every instructor should master in order to help students learn efficiently and apply that knowledge in real world applications. Undergraduate students are very enthusiastic and eager to learn new concepts in a well-structured learning environment. In this paper, the authors investigate a freshman course of "Introduction to Metals and Metallurgy" as a baseline model in order to identify the need for making the connection with students on day one and providing guidelines to new engineering educators to successfully implement teaching practices that include use of modern technology, course redesign, grade distributions, and pedagogical techniques. The authors also report improved student evaluations and performance data, and correlate them to the continually improved teaching practices adopted by a new faculty member, who was mentored by a senior faculty member and the department chair. The percentage of DFW grades earned by students were improved from 60% for Fall 2013 to 24% in Spring 2014 and further to 8% in Summer 2014. The midsemester feedback and suggestions received from the students are also presented in this paper. The outcomes of this study over a period of three semesters emphasize: (1) connecting early with students, (2) using adequate modern technology to assist classroom teaching, (3) giving timely feedback to students, and (4) identifying clear expectations. In addition to the aforementioned measures, the new faculty member made extra efforts by meeting with students struggling in the course and assisted them with one-on-one tutoring. Authors believe that the findings of this study will help new engineering educators identify the Do's and Don'ts of best teaching practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anecdotal evidence suggests that findings of educational research and resulting curricula are, at best, only marginally incorporated into introductory physics courses. Based on interviews with four non-PER physics faculty we investigated why incorporation of research-based curricula is uncommon. Elsewhere, we report that these instructors have PER-compatible beliefs about teaching and learning, but largely traditional instructional practices. In this paper we explore the significant role that systemic influences play in this apparent discrepancy and present a theoretical model to describe the interplay between individual beliefs and systemic influences. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge surveys ask students to report on their confidence that they can perform specific tasks aligned with course learning outcomes instead of asking students to complete said tasks. This approach allows these surveys to cover a broad range of course topics and cognitive levels while requiring a relatively short amount of time to complete. Administering the surveys multiple times during a course offers a context for students to reflect on their own learning progress and provides useful assessment data to the instructor. Knowledge survey applications documented in the science education literature include their use for both formative and summative assessment of student learning, their use by faculty in assessing the effectiveness of teaching methods, and their use by programs and departments in evaluating curriculum. Reporting on the use of these types of self-assessment surveys; however, is generally absent in the engineering education literature. This paper seeks to introduce this potentially useful tool to the engineering education community by reporting on the development and implementation of a knowledge survey for an engineering statics course. The survey consists of 122 specific success criteria mapped to eight course-level learning outcomes. Students completed the survey three times during the term; once during the first week of class; once before the first exam; and once before the second exam. The paper explores several potential uses of the survey data, examines correlation of the survey responses with exam scores, and concludes that these surveys show promise as a tool for engineering educators. Their effectiveness toward multiple teaching goals warrants further development and investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon research aiming at investigating teaching and learning at higher education within the socalled Bologna Process. It discusses the ways in which students learn at Engineering Education and it analyses their implications for redesigning initial training and rethinking teachers' role. Data were gathered through interviews and questionnaires. A questionnaire was designed including both closed and open-ended questions. Four levels of information were included: biographic data (gender, age, initial training, current job position, etc), academic education (reasons for choosing Mechanical Engineering, reasons for selecting University of Minho, expectations about Mechanical Engineering course, etc), transition from University to labor market (difficulties faced, scope and nature of the work, etc) and graduate and post-graduate interests (areas, type and organization for high level courses, specific courses, Masters' and PhD courses). Background characteristics, such as years of experience, academic years of experience at the current job were also included. Overall, findings suggest a positive evaluation of initial training, namely the ways students adapted to university, relationship between students, and length of their practicum. They also highlight a number of issues to be improved: a more hands-on approach, a better pedagogical intervention from lecturers, a more adequate articulation between content knowledge at secondary school and university education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental artifact of any academic research is the data used as the basis of that research effort. A group of researchers, from institutions in multiple territories, has embarked on an ambitious research project that is initially aimed at enhancing the teaching of software engineering in four-year undergraduate programs. The research project details a set of workshops, for which the objective is the capture of data that will be the basis of the research effort. The first of these workshops was held in August 2011, and is reported in this paper. The workshop comprised software engineering educators and representatives from the information technology industry. The data collection task sought to identify a set of topics that are considered suitable for teaching software engineering, along with identification of the years and depth at which these topics should be taught. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beyond Textbook (BT) is an Open Educational Resources (OER) platform that combines an etextbook generation algorithm with a website interface. The frontend allows users to upload lecture notes. Then, given a list of topics, the backend matches each topic with the most relevant lecture notes, merges these lecture notes into one file, and finally generates a customized etextbook for users to view and download. BT is developed to provide instructors and students with an e-textbook that is customized to specific requirements in a course. BT offers a zero-cost avenue to deliver and access curriculum content in a standardized, but collaborative and dynamic manner. The goal is to reduce the financial barrier to education, allow students to have access to up-to-date educational content, and leverage modern technology to improve pedagogy and learning. We proceeded with a trial run of BT involving both instructors and students in a firstyear course and collected their feedback. Survey results identified that all participants found BT to be a useful educational tool and would use it upon its release. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the use of faculty development groups for supporting the instructors' teaching efforts. The groups provided accountability and supported connecting with other teachers interested in interactive teaching. The teachers also had autonomy in choosing their strategies and designing them for their courses.

The emergence of blockchain strikes at the heart of the AMCIS 2018 SIGED call, and also to the heart of the theme for AMICS 2018: Digital Disruption. The aim of this TREO talk is to discuss how we can introduce and integrate the topic of blockchain in the MIS curriculum. I will cover how to introduce the topic to the spectrum of MIS classes, how to unpack the many layers and nuances of blockchain, the depth vs breadth debate on how much and how deep to cover the topic, and finally how to integrate projects as well as the topic of bitcoin into the classroom. The prevalence of media coverage of bitcoin makes it an excellent entry point to a more nuanced discussion of blockchain. In most cases the discussion about bitcoin will start with "what is bitcoin and should I invest in it?" Instead I suggest starting with something that is more familiar for students: the purchase and sale of used cars. Students often understand a large number of the underlying attributes that would make it sensible to purchase a used car. From this I demonstrate that the same is just not true for bitcoin which leads us to the fact that we need to understand what supports bitcoin, which is blockchain. This "shall I invest in bitcoin" discussion can occur in almost every class in the MIS curriculum. To further unpack blockchain for class, we start discussions with the Avital et al. (2016) definition of blockchain, examining each word of the definition in turn and posing a set of directed questions that result from each word for a discussion which can fill one or two class periods. The breadth versus depth discussion will also be discussed. Kursch and Gold (2016) surveyed offerings of FinTech curriculum across several schools and found that there were "overview vs. specialized" offerings. Importantly, the "split between courses that provide a broad overview of the entire FinTech universe versus courses that examine one specialized aspect of FinTech (i.e. [sic], Bitcoin or cryptocurrency) is 50-50". This suggests that there is no one way to present this topic correctly when it comes to blockchain education and the choice should be guided by the vision and strategy of your particular MIS department. To encourage hands-on learning, we suggest students set up in Ethereum as a useful way to help them understand blockchain issues. This setup can be accomplished by providing access to YouTube tutorial videos to help students accomplish this task. We have also found that students need four to five weeks to master concepts like blockchain so that they can effectively help local companies, which leaves too little time to actually work on blockchain projects for those companies. As a result, we do in-class projects to support learning which I will cover in the TREO talk. Finally, we discuss bitcoin and some of the technical aspects of how it works, including cryptomining. In class we discuss headlines such as "Canadian couple pours life savings into bitcoin mine" (CBC 2017). I will discuss my approach in the TREO talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ever since the publication of Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 1989), probability and statistics have been prominent in the K-12 curriculum. A recent summary of research on human judgment and decision-making under uncertainty (Shaughnessy, 2003) addressed how humans rely on certain judgmental heuristics to estimate the likelihood of events. The research shows that children have a subjective approach of playing out hunches, beliefs, and intuitions about probability, yet the school curriculum does not consider subjectivity. In this study, students in grades 4, 5, 6 (n=87) from a small suburban Catholic school, were engaged in a teaching experiment to compare learning traditional probability concepts (n=44) to learning traditional and subjective concepts (n=43). Pretest and posttest scores are analyzed using a dependent samples t-test while researcher observations from classroom lessons, teacher journals and researcher interviews with students are coded for themes. All groups showed significant improvement in probabilistic reasoning (p=.01).The combined fifth and sixth grade experimental group who were exposed to subjective probability concepts improved more than the traditional students (.078), however the gain was not significant. Qualitative data shows that students have beliefs about probabilistic situations based on their past experiences and prior knowledge.. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]