Faculty Focus: Teaching in the STEM

Modern Pedagogy in the STEM Classroom
by: Bret M. Webb, Ph.D., E.I.

Having had no formal training in educational instruction prior to arriving on campus in August 2007, I quickly recognized the STEM dilemma: those of us teaching in the STEM areas are well-versed at communicating with colleagues (horizontally), but rarely have had the opportunity to convey our knowledge to learners (vertically).

I was initially skeptical of the utility of applying traditional and modern pedagogy and instructional design to my undergraduate engineering courses, despite what was preached in our new faculty PETAL seminars; however, attending a weeklong workshop on educational instruction this past summer has changed my opinion.

The ExCEEd workshop—Excellence in Civil Engineering Education—provides practitioners (those teaching engineering) the tools necessary to both develop and improve their craft.  The “tools” are crafted in a manner that fits into the framework of discussing engineering education in the context of traditional educational philosophy and methodology.

For instance, the roots of Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956) may be transformed into course Learning Objectives using appropriate action verbs associated with each of the six levels of cognitive ability (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001): recollection, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

Typically, each fifty-minute lecture will have between two and four learning objectives, but possibly more or less based on the level of detail involved with each.  In general, I try to limit myself to four or five learning objectives for an undergraduate engineering class, with a goal being to cover the spectrum of cognitive abilities during the lecture.  These learning objectives indicate what a student should be able to accomplish after reading the requisite text material, attending lecture, and working example problems.

As crude examples, I may expect students to define terminology (recollection), diagram a process (comprehension and analysis), compute a value (application), derive an equation (synthesis), or recommend alternative design strategies (evaluation). 

Providing students with learning objectives for each lecture has proven helpful when creating quizzes, homework assignments, and exams.  The cognitive ability assigned to each objective allows the student to discern what level of performance will be expected of them during the course, and provides an additional assessment technique for evaluating student performance: each of the six levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy may be assigned a level of “difficulty” ranging from recollection (level 1) to evaluation (level 6).

Student performance on a particular exam problem may then be compared to the level of difficulty, and even further, to whether or not the student has had ample opportunities to practice that type of problem.  In my classes, I have found that student performance tracks more closely with repetition than difficulty.

I have discovered that incorporating both traditional and modern educational pedagogy into my classes has benefited the student and improved instructional content organization.  I suppose, now, that I am a PETAL pusher, notwithstanding previous misconceptions of the utility of such strategies in teaching STEM curricula.

So if you think that innovative teaching techniques don't apply to your discipline, perhaps it is time for you to reconsider what truly IS appropriate for your classroom.

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