Preparing undergraduate learning assistants to teach in design courses

Description: Engineering is not just the application of mathematics and science to address real-world problems and create new products; it involves design thinking, a creative, collaborative, yet systematic process by which engineering teams design products or solutions. For this reason, many undergraduate engineering programs require first-year students to take an Introduction to Engineering Design course in which teams of students work to design a product or solution. Because these courses can be large, universities often employ undergraduate or graduate teaching assistants to help the student teams make progress. However, these teaching assistants often face two major challenges. First, although it is easy to simply tell the student teams what to do, it is much harder for teaching assistants to cultivate their students' design thinking, which can enable students to surmount obstacles and arrive at their own solutions. Second, university engineering programs, reflecting the engineering profession, include disproportionately few women, students from certain minority groups, and students from lower-income backgrounds; and teaching assistants often need to make sure that these underrepresented students (as well as quieter students from all backgrounds) get to participate equitably in the student teams. In this project, researchers and engineering educators at the University of Maryland are testing a new approach to teaching the teaching assistants in engineering design courses. The teaching assistants take a pedagogy course intended to prepare them to foster the student teams' design thinking and equitable participation of all team members. As a result, the students of these teaching assistants become better at engaging in collaborative engineering design, which sets them up to become better engineers once they enter the profession. 

Specifically, the project staff is teaching a 3-credit pedagogy course to undergraduate teaching assistants, based on the Learning Assistant model from the University of Colorado. The pedagogy course integrates topics from general STEM learning-assistant pedagogy courses, such as the cognitive science of learning, facilitation of classroom discourse, and metacognition, with topics targeting engineering design: design reviews, design thinking, expert vs. novice practices in design, engineering epistemology, teamwork and equity. Research on the effects of the pedagogy course addresses two overarching research questions: (1) How do teaching assistants' interactions with Engineering Design students affect the students' immediate actions, and what effects do students think the teaching assistants have on their longer-term growth, with respect to (a) design thinking and (b) enactment of equity as reflected in communication, teamwork, etc. (2) How does the pedagogy course influence teaching assistants' pedagogical beliefs and interactions with students, with respect to how the teaching assistants notice and respond to (a) students' design thinking and (b) threats to equity. The research team is taking a design-based research approach, an iterative cycle of (i) collecting and analyzing data, (ii) forming hypotheses about how and why the teaching assistants did and did not learn specific ideas or enact those ideas in their classroom instruction, and (iii) testing those hypotheses by modifying the next round of the pedagogy course. Data include selected coursework from the pedagogy course; videorecordings of teaching assistants' interactions with student teams and what the teams do after the teaching assistant leaves; post-semester surveys of the videorecorded student teams about their experiences with the teaching assistant; and multiple interviews with the teaching assistants about particular instructional decisions they made. This work informs the creation and improvement of courses and programs that aim to prepare teaching assistants for engineering design courses.

Award Info: 

NSF-EEC1733649: Preparing undergraduate 'learning assistants' to teach in design courses 

PI: Andrew Elby (elby@umd.edu)

Co-PIs: Chandra Turpen, Ayush Gupta

Current Activities:

In 2019-20, much of our analysis and writing has focused on the connections between cultural narratives in engineering and engineering education, such as meritocracy and technocracy, and the ideas put forth by engineering learning assistants when discussing the causes and "treatments" of inequitable participation patterns they observe in design teams. We see the learning assistants' discourse as often (re)producing, but sometimes challenging, the meritocratic stance that "better" students should be rewarded and "worse" students demerited, without taking a systems-based perspective toward diagnosing why a student might be performing better or worse, and the technocratic stance that students with the most technical knowledge are the natural "leaders" of a design group.

Publications:

• C. Turpen, J. Radoff, A. Gupta, H. Sabo, and A. Elby (2020). Examining how engineering educators (re)produce or challenge technocracy in their pedagogical reasoning. 2020 International Conference of the Learning Sciences Conference Proceedings, vol. 4, Virtual. June 19-23, 2020. pp. 2093-2100. 

• C. Turpen, J. Radoff, A. Gupta, H. Sabo, and A. Elby, "Examining how undergraduate engineering educators produce, reproduce, or challenge technocracy in pedagogical reasoning." 2019 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Tampa, FL. June 15-19, 2019. (link)

• H. Sabo, J. Radoff, A. Elby, A. Gupta, and C. Turpen, “Role-playing as a tool for helping LAs sense-make about inequitable team dynamics.” 2018 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings.Washington, DC. August 1-2, 2018. (link)

• C. Turpen, A. Gupta, J. Radoff, A. Elby, H. Sabo, and G. Quan, “Successes and Challenges in Supporting Undergraduate Peer Educators Notice and Respond to Equity Considerations within Design Teams.” 2018 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Salt Lake City, UT. June 23-28, 2018. (link)

• G. Quan, C. Turpen, A. Gupta, and E. D. Tanu, “Designing a course for peer educators in undergraduate engineering design courses.” 2017 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition. Columbus, OH. June 25-28, 2017. **Finalist for Best Student Paper Award in Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)**. (link)

• Tanu, E. D., & Quan, G. M., & Gupta, A., & Turpen, C. A. (2017, June), The Role of Empathy in Supporting Teaching Moves of Engineering Design Peer Educators. Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. (link)

Presentations:

• C. Turpen, J. Radoff, A. Gupta, A. Elby, and H. Sabo, “Examining how LAs produce, reproduce, or challenge technocracy and meritocracy.” National Learning Assistant Alliance Research Symposium. Virtual. Nov. 13, 2020.  
• C. Turpen (with A. Gupta, J. Radoff, A. Elby, and H. Sabo), “Examining how undergraduate engineering educators produce, reproduce, or challenge technocracy in pedagogical reasoning.” Invited seminar at the Center for Computing in Science Education. University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. Oct. 7, 2019. 
• H. C. Sabo, J. Radoff, C. Turpen, A. Gupta, and A. Elby, “How engineering majors reproduce and challenge meritocratic ideologies.” American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) National Summer Meeting. Provo, UT. July 20-24, 2019. [Abstract] [Talk] 
• A. Gupta, C. Turpen, J. Radoff, H. Sabo, and A. Elby, “The reproduction and challenging of technocracy in peer-educators’ discourse.” American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) National Summer Meeting. Provo, UT. July 20-24, 2019. [Abstract] [Talk] 
• C. Turpen, J. Radoff, A. Gupta, H. Sabo, and A. Elby, "Examining how undergraduate engineering educators produce, reproduce, or challenge technocracy in pedagogical reasoning." 2019 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition. Tampa, FL. June 15-19, 2019. [Abstract] [Talk] 
• C. Turpen, (with A. Gupta, J. Radoff, A. Elby, H. Sabo, E. Tanu, and G. Quan), “Supporting undergraduate peer educators in noticing and responding to equity issues in design teams.” Invited Talk. Werklund School of Education University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Sept. 28, 2018. [Invited talk]. 
• H. Sabo, C. Turpen, A. Gupta, J. Radoff, and A. Elby. “Role-playing as a tool for helping LAs sense-make about inequitable team dynamics.” Physics Education Research Conference (PERC). Washington, DC. Aug. 1-2, 2018. [poster] 
• C. Turpen and A. Gupta, “A cultural analysis: An LA program’s life, death, and reincarnation.” American Association of Physics Teachers National Summer Meeting. Washington, DC. July 28 - Aug. 1 2018. [invited talk]. 
• A. Gupta, C. Turpen, J. Radoff, A. Elby, and H. Sabo, “Culture and ideology in how LAs “see” (in)equity in student groups.” American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) National Summer Meeting. Washington, DC. July 28 - Aug. 1 2018. [talk + poster] 
• C. Turpen, A. Gupta, J. Radoff, A. Elby, H. Sabo, and G. Quan, “Successes and Challenges in Supporting Undergraduate Peer Educators Notice and Respond to Equity Considerations within Design Teams.” 2018 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition. Salt Lake City, UT. June 23-28, 2018. [talk] 
• G. Quan, C. Turpen, A. Gupta, and E. D. Tanu, “Designing a course for peer educators in undergraduate engineering design courses.” 2017 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition. Columbus, OH. June 25-28, 2017. *Finalist for Best Student Paper Award in Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED). [talk] 
• E. D. Tanu, G. M. Quan, A. Gupta, and C. Turpen, “The role of empathy in supporting teaching moves of engineering design peer educators.” 2017 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition. Columbus, OH. June 25-28, 2017. [talk] 
• C. Turpen, A. Gupta, G. Quan, and E. Tanu, “Tailoring an LA Pedagogy Seminar for Project-based Engineering Design courses.” International Learning Assistant Conference, Boulder, CO.  Oct. 2016. [poster]

Workshops:

• Regional LA Workshop
• AAPT Panel 

Personnel:

Andrew Elby (UMD-TLPL)

Chandra Turpen (UMD-Physics)

Ayush Gupta (UMD-Physics)

Hannah Sabo (UMD-TLPL)

Jen Radoff (UMD-Physics)

Gina Quan (currently at San Jose State University, Physics)

Emilia Tanu