Characterizing the Alignment in Faculty and Student Beliefs

Abstract

of the ASEE Virtual Community of Practice (VCP) for mechanics educators across the country. His current research focuses on student problem-solving processes and use of worked examples, change models and evidence-based teaching practices in engineering curricula, and the role of non-cognitive and affective factors in student academic outcomes and overall success.Mr. Gireesh Guruprasad, Purdue University, West Lafayette (College of Engineering)Gireesh Guruprasad is a graduate student at Purdue University. As part of his research, he explores factors that affect the Professional Formation of Engineers, based on students beliefs and preferences and the beliefs of the faculty who teach them. Gireesh obtained his Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and is currently pursuing his Masters degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering.Mr. Ryan R. Senkpeil, Purdue University, West Lafayette (College of Engineering) Ryan Senkpeil is a Ph.D. student in Engineering Education at Purdue University who's research is focused on non-cognitive factors that impact engineering student performance and developing interventions to improve students' non-cognitive factors.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2017 Characterizing the alignment in faculty and student beliefs Abstract This research paper investigates faculty members' actions in a classroom setting in light of their personal beliefs about teaching and learning, and their relationships to student beliefs. The research question is: to what extent is alignment between faculty and student beliefs about teaching and learning related to faculty pedagogical activities and actions? Very little prior work integrates student-side and instructor-side preferences and actions, and this paper extends our understanding of this alignment. We expect that a clearer understanding of the alignment between faculty and students may help explain student academic performance. This paper focuses on characterizing the alignment, while our future research explores its relationship to student outcomes.Our data analysis reveals the following key insights about our research question. Faculty-student learning styles misalignment is largest along the active-reflective dimension of the ILS. In turn, faculty who are more misaligned with their students (in the ILS sense) tend to lecture more. In our data, faculty learning preferences and teaching preferences do not appear to be strongly correlated. Results suggest that faculty who are more instructor focused than average tend to use active and collaborative learning activities, and formative evaluation to a lesser extent. Conversely, faculty who are more student focused than average use lecture as a teaching tool to a lesser extent. IntroductionFaculty choices about how they teach in undergraduate engineering courses have important impacts on student learning. Past research has found that faculty's implicit beliefs and thoughts influence their behavior in class [1]-[3] . The strategies and actions faculty adopt to teach in class, it ...

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“…Quantitative (questionnaire) #5 Berger, Guruprasad, and Senkpeil (2017). Characterising the Alignment in Faculty and Student Beliefs.…”