Response to Project Evaluation Questions on Scholar’s Community

October 7, 2004

The following areas will be answered by each project director on his specific project:

Project Purpose:

  1. What is the purpose of your particular project?

Helping faculty perform their teaching responsibilities with greater efficiency, impact on learning, and professional satisfaction.

  1. What are the specific and measurable goals of your particular project?

Number of entire days spent together in community activities, number of classroom innovations created, depth and breadth of design learning outcomes defined, number of peer-reviewed papers on teaching/learning, number of funded proposals for continuing, size of the campus and national network we create for future ELE leadership

3. What are the particular practices of your project?

Assessment Mindset for Individual & Team Growth (highly developed)

Proposal Writing (highly developed)

Peer Coaching (moderately developed)

Instructional Design (progressing)

Project Management (progressing)

Educational Research (progressing)

Project Infrastructure:

Overarching Question: How well is your project integrated into the culture?

  1. How is your project advertised within the engineering program?

Emails disseminated through Dean’s Office and personalized contact with people we consider to be good candidates for participation in community activities.

  1. How does one gain knowledge of your project?

Skill development through formal, team-based events; one-on-one mentoring between team members; interaction with resources posted on web site

  1. How does one gain membership to your project?

Multiple levels of involvement are possible; anyone who attends a formal event is kept in our database and informed of upcoming activities.

  1. How many people would you hope to participate in your project annually?

8-10 as leaders (40-100 hours/year of professional development/collaboration)
10-15 as contributors (15-20 hours/year of professional development/collaboration)
20-25 as supporters (4-8 hours/year of professional development participation)

5. How do you develop a sense of community within your project?

Shared value of respecting other’s abilities and commitment to growing educator skills through a healthy balance of challenge and intellectual/emotional support; This is cultivated through every increasing proficiency in self- and team-assessment that is done consciously and publicly in our events/planning sessions.

Overarching Question: What is the sustainability of your project beyond the grant?

  1. What is the time commitment to your project for sustainability?

3-4 as leaders (40-100 hours/year of professional development/collaboration)
6-8 as contributors (15-20 hours/year of professional development/collaboration)

  1. How will your project sustain itself after grant funding?

2-3 more ELE proposal efforts will be undertaken before June. Support for some design-related events is possible through the recent ASA grant.

  1. What other programs within the College of Engineering can align/support your project?

Engineering Outreach (especially in the development of curriculum tools and learner centered approaches to instruction); Idaho Engineering Works (especially in design pedagogy and outreach to industry); JEMS (as a model we can expand to freshman orientation); NIATT (related to DOT’s human resource development mission)

  1. What other entities within the University can align with/support the ELE Community?

Teaching Enhancement Committee; Vice-Provost for Academic Affairs; Dean’s Council; Council of Associate Deans

Overarching Question: What is the support of your program from practitioners in the field?

  1. How have you involved engineering practitioners in your project?

Workshops and presentations at FIE and ASEE; informal contact with centers for teaching and learning at University of Washington, Colorado School of Mines, and National Academy for Engineering

  1. How will you sustain involvement of engineering practitioners in your project?

Collaboration on design pedagogy papers & proposals via TIDEE; Collaboration with author’s working on modules for the Faculty Guidebook

  1. How have you obtained support to sustain the ELE program from outside the university?

Excess funds from senior design projects have supported graduate student travel to conferences and local training on lean manufacturing.

4. How will you obtain support to sustain the ELE program from outside the university?

Evaluation:

Overarching Question: What is the role of evaluation within your project?

  1. How do you view evaluation in terms of your particular project?

See framework for personal and community impact in project plan. It would be good for use to figure out how to measure subjective as well as objective elements in the four quadrants.

  1. How have your views about evaluation changed over the course of the ELE grant?

This grant as further clarified the distinction in my mind between assessment and evaluation and the central role that strong measurement systems play in both. See attached module from the Faculty Guidebook.

  1. How do you measure success in your project?

By time spent together using and developing processes for increasing educational efficiency, effectiveness, and teacher/learner satisfaction.

4. How do you validate that your project in successful?

Externally by peer-reviewed products; internally by formalization of teaching/learning tools & practices that work with students and their refinement through repeated use.

5.How is your project transferable to multiple contexts?

By modeling community performance in workshops and design open houses; Through better understanding of the principles underlying community formation and development. I need to write a literature review combined with ELE project insights before the end of the grant.

Results to Date:

(These are summarized in the Project Plan for Scholar’s Community)

1. To date, what are the objective results of your project?

2. To date, what are the subjective results of your project?

3. How many people have participated in your project?

4. What is the return use of people to your project?

5. How have you shared your projects results to date outside your project
and the community of scholars?

6. What measurable pieces to your project have you completed to date?

***********Right now, don’t Answer Questions below this line*****************

The following Questions will be answered by the ELE Program team concerning the overall ELE Program:

ELE Local Community Infrastructure:

1. In your view, what is the purpose of the overall ELE program?

2. How is the ELE Community advertised within the engineering program/College/University?

3. How has your involvement in the ELE Community changed over the three year grant period?

4. How has the ELE Leadership team taken on projects/problems that matter to engineering education?

5. Who are the ultimate end users of the ELE projects?

6. How has the ELE Leadership team created results that will meet the needs of the ultimate end users?

7. How have we created results that have significant benefit to our end users at a reasonable cost?