Search

Contribution: This study identifies the skills required by the faculty to mentor first-year interdisciplinary design projects. The findings are compiled as a set of themes that can act as a guide for engineering educators in mentoring interdisciplinary design projects. Background: The National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) Engineer of 2020 report states that developing solutions to real-world problems requires engineers to possess skills to access, understand, evaluate, synthesize, and apply information and knowledge from multiple disciplines. However, most engineering students possess strong monodisciplinary expertise and skills, which are insufficient when students graduate and work in the industry. In order to equip engineers to solve real-world problems, engineering education should focus on building competencies and bringing the flavor of interdisciplinary education into the undergraduate engineering curriculum. While there is a growing call to introduce interdisciplinary courses to undergraduate engineering students, the ability of the faculty to teach and mentor students from multiple disciplines is a concern. Research Question: This study qualitatively investigates the question, “What skills do engineering faculty consider important to mentor first-year interdisciplinary engineering projects?” Methodology: The study is situated in a project-based learning course offered at first-year engineering at a university in India. It identifies the skills a faculty needs to possess to mentor students working on interdisciplinary (mechatronic) design projects through thematic analysis of faculty and student interviews. Findings: Performing qualitative analysis on the data collected from the two sources, including semistructured interviews with the faculty and students focus group discussion, reveals three dimensions on which the engineering faculty needs to be trained on. It included project management and interpersonal and interdisciplinary skills.

ABSTRACTClassroom observations are valuable tools for facilitating instructional evaluation and professional development. As research into engineering education continues to grow and expand, classroom observation protocols are becoming increasingly prevalent as research instruments. This work describes the development and application of a classroom observation protocol for use in coding video-recorded class meetings of an innovative active, blended and collaborative (ABC) learning environment known as Freeform. Coding these ABC elements in the context of the instructors’ actions allows researchers to empirically describe what occurs in the Freeformclassroom, generating a unique and rich dataset containing information about the duration and sequencing of these ABC instructional elements. These data are then analysed to establish an approximate benchmark for instruction of this kind, as well as to further examine how instruction might evolve over time or differ across instructors. By continuing to explore these data and combining them with performance metrics or other information, these classroom observations will enable researchers to paint a more holistic picture of ABC instruction and its effects within innovative learning environments.Abbreviations:STEM; Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. ABC; Active, Blended, and Collaborative. RTOP; Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol. TDOP; Teaching Dimensions Observation Protocol. COPUS; Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM. DFW; Earned a failing grade (a D or an F) or Withdrew from the course. IRR; Inter-Rater Reliability.