1. Diane Matt
  2. Engineering Inclusive Teaching: Faculty Professional Development Project
  3. Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN)
  1. Gretal Leibnitz
  2. http://advanceaimnetwork.org/
  3. Co-PI & Executive Director
  4. Engineering Inclusive Teaching: Faculty Professional Development Project
  5. ProActualize Consulting, Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN)
Public Discussion

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  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 16, 2016 | 09:44 p.m.

    Are you interested in emerging and promising evidence-based practices in education aimed at supporting the persistence and success of diverse students?

    Do you find it time-consuming to distill the research, let alone translate the research to practice?

    Well, the Engineering Inclusive Teaching (EIT): Faculty Professional Development Project can help!

    Although this work was designed for higher education engineering faculty, we welcome all who are interested. The research that is distilled and translated-to-practice in our webinars is applicable to most educational environments!

    Whether it be about 7 research-based principles for smart teaching, engineering self-efficacy and professional vision, reducing unintended bias, uncivil behavior and/or mitigating social judgement, EIT webinars and resources can help you engineer inclusive education environments.

    We’d love your thoughts!

  • Icon for: Joni Falk

    Joni Falk

    Co-Director of CSR at TERC
    May 17, 2016 | 02:26 p.m.

    This seems like a very important initiative and I bet your webinars are very informative. Can you share a few key strategies to make the culture more supportive of women and more successful in retaining them? You may be interested in connecting to the presenters on a very similar theme. See
    http://videohall.com/p/670 They run workshops on this. May be interesting to compare notes.

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 18, 2016 | 08:45 p.m.

    Hi Joni!
    I just wanted to let you know that your reference to the work of colleagues Eve and Joyce was perfect. I know their work well and took the opportunity to reconnect again. Thanks for the suggestion!

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 17, 2016 | 02:40 p.m.

    Thanks Joni!
    We started our work with a webinar on How Learning Works—7 Research Based Principles for Smart Teaching with Dr. Susan Ambrose, one of the authors of the book with the same name as the webinar. We recognized, and the irony is not lost on us, that most faculty are not specifically trained to teach and so we built our webinar professional development platform from there!

    Subsequent topics for creating an inclusive culture included:
    —Engineering Self-Efficacy;
    —Thriving Vs Surviving: A 4-Stage Model for Promoting Gender Equity;
    —The Power of Personal Vision;
    —Counteracting Stereotype Threat;
    —Active Learning: Live and On-line;
    —STEMming the Confidence Gap: Mitigating Social Judgement
    —Creating a Positive Climate for Learning: Dealing with Incivility and Conflict in the Classroom;
    —Recognizing and Addressing Unintended Bias in Engineering Education

    We just completed a jointly co-sponsored webinar with ENGAGE Engineering on:
    —Spatial Visualization: A Promising Intervention for Promoting Student Equity

    Each of these webinars would be valuable for STEM educators from elementary through university contexts.

    Thanks for your comment and suggestion. I will follow up!

  • Icon for: araina boyd

    araina boyd

    Student
    May 17, 2016 | 02:48 p.m.

    This looks like a much needed program.

    What is your opinion on the impact mentorship programs might have for facilitating a supportive environment?
    Is this a non-profit initiative? Is it member based or open to the public?

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 17, 2016 | 03:00 p.m.

    Hi Araina!
    Thanks for your comment and questions!
    Mentoring means different things to different people and yes, I think that mentoring can serve a variety of beneficial purposes for both students and faculty. Mentoring can build self-efficacy, enhance professional identity, and help mitigate barriers of isolation and marginalization.

    The is an NSF funded project to a non-profit program called the Women in Engineering ProActive Network. Our program, in and of itself, is worth checking out. We have a valuable Women in STEM Knowledge Center with loads of valuable research documents, as well as other professional development webinars.

    The EIT project is open to the public. The WEPAN organizational resources are a mix of member-only and public.

  • Icon for: araina boyd

    araina boyd

    Student
    May 17, 2016 | 03:05 p.m.

    Thank You! I look forward to checking it out.

  • Icon for: Carol Fletcher

    Carol Fletcher

    Deputy Director
    May 17, 2016 | 03:20 p.m.

    There is definitely a need for such programs but I am concerned about the incentives, or lack of incentives, for faculty to participate in webinars and implement the strategies recommended. Do you have examples of programs that have used the info provided by WEPAN to change culture and outcomes in their undergrad engineering programs?

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 18, 2016 | 07:49 p.m.

    For this project we sought faculty who were intrinsically motivated. Our experience is that most faculty are interested in teaching well; using evidence-based, best-practice teaching strategies IF easy to adopt; and are interested in being inclusive, especially when they work in colleges that have tried so hard to recruit underrepresented students.

    That said, we did have some program incentives (e.g., EIT Engineering Inclusive Teaching Award; Webinar Certificates of Participation). We also leveraged contacts with the ASEE Dean’s Diversity Pledge, Professional Partners, and on-site Dissemination Partners from 12 academic institutions.

    Evaluation data from our Dissemination Partners and EIT participants provide us with examples of faculty and/or programs that have used the webinar information to support change. It is too early to say whether the webinar information has changed “culture” and outcomes for undergraduate engineering programs. Indeed, given that this was not a research project, there were too many other influencing variables to determine if, and how much, adoption of a series of webinar strategies would influence engineering culture and undergrad outcomes.

    Yet, our evaluation data do confirm faculty increased topic interest, learning and intention to engage in change. Additional soon-to-come evaluation data promises examples of how faculty have used the materials.

    Thank you for your questions and comments.

  • Icon for: Sarah Gerard

    Sarah Gerard

    Facilitator
    Education Researcher
    May 17, 2016 | 10:40 p.m.

    Love how explicitly you spell out the goal of your project and metrics achieved thus far! It helps make the content accessible to a broad audience. Will you have any data collection in the future regarding student outcomes (specifically, women and underrepresented male students)?

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 18, 2016 | 08:05 p.m.

    Hi Sarah!
    Great question and thanks! Our target audience was faculty and so we collected evaluation data on how well our work increased FACULTY AWARENESS, INTEREST, TRIAL and ADOPTION of webinar strategies.

    So, with that in mind, we will not be collecting data regarding student outcome but we are asking faculty about how their adoption of the webinar strategies provided, influenced their student outcomes, especially for women and underrepresented male students! Thanks!

  • Icon for: Jane Strohm

    Jane Strohm

    Engineering Curriculum Lead
    May 18, 2016 | 11:40 a.m.

    Thanks for contributing to this important work! In my current work designing engineering curriculum for middle school students, I finally realized I probably would have loved to pursue a career in engineering, but it was never presented to me as an option. We work very hard to include examples of diverse engineers in our units so that future generations will more likely “see” themselves in careers in engineering. I notice your video makes a significant effort to show a truly diverse population. What else have you learned about increasing and retaining diversity in the engineering fields?

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 18, 2016 | 08:03 p.m.

    Hi Jane,
    I resonate with what you say personally, because I too realize I would have liked to be an engineer. My father was an engineer, I excelled in mathematics…and I ended up being an experimental psychologist! No one ever talked with me about being an engineer either. And, in all honesty, my dad did NOT like engineering culture because of its lack of diversity, so would not have encouraged me to go into the field even if we had discussed it!

    Through sifting through the social science and education literature for evidence-based, inclusive teaching practices, there are some excellent strategies identified (see above response to Joni!)

    Self-efficacy strategies include providing diverse examples of engineers. And there are other barriers that faculty can address, including helping students develop a personal vision of themselves as an engineer; counteracting stereotype threat situations and supporting a growth mindset; providing social learning platforms that help mitigate social isolation and jugement; championing support for brief cognitive skill building programs in spatial visualization (which you can provide to elementary level students!) and more! I encourage you to check out our website! www.WSKC.org/EIT

    Thanks for your comments and question!

  • Icon for: Jane Strohm

    Jane Strohm

    Engineering Curriculum Lead
    May 18, 2016 | 08:23 p.m.

    Thanks for your response!

  • Icon for: Kelly Pudelek

    Kelly Pudelek

    Facilitator
    Survey Specialist
    May 18, 2016 | 10:21 p.m.

    That’s a lot of downloads! How you you advertised the webinars? Do you partner with universities? How would you recommend teachers implement the strategies they learn from the webinars?

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 18, 2016 | 10:53 p.m.

    We did partner with 12 universities AND we utilized the Women in Engineering ProActive Network listserve (4,000+); the ASEE Deans Diversity Pledge contacts; pushed viral marketing through Professional Society contacts; engaged social media—Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin and our website for general public marketing!

    Innate to the webinar and resources on each topic are strategies for how educators can apply evidence-based tactics presented. Teachers simply choose a topic of interest, listen to the webinar (we have them recorded so they are available on demand) and open links to complementary resources. Check it out! www.WSKC.org/EIT!
    Thanks for your comments and questions!

  • Icon for: Rita Karl

    Rita Karl

    Managing Director of STEM Media & Education
    May 19, 2016 | 12:03 p.m.

    Thank you for the great information about your project and all of the strategies for implementing it. You noted self-efficacy strategies that include providing diverse examples of engineers. We know that role modeling and mentoring can take many forms. Have you considered or used media in any of your efforts to encourage young women to persist in engineering? We have recently done a series of short films about women in non-traditional careers (many are young professional engineers) and have taken an explicit approach to the short conversations/profiles. Thank you!
    http://www.tpt.org/scigirls-profiles/

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 20, 2016 | 03:11 a.m.

    Thanks for your thoughts. Our target audience is not young women students but actually faculty educators who shape the learning environments of underrepresented students like women in engineering. We seek to provide faculty with resources they can share with all their students, for creating an inclusive learning environment. Providing faculty with resources like yours, gives them tools they can infuse into their curriculum or extra curricular activities that helps to communicate support for diverse students.

  • Icon for: Marian Pasquale

    Marian Pasquale

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Scientist
    May 19, 2016 | 02:39 p.m.

    This is an important initiative and it seems to be working!
    Gretal, you mention above that “Each of these webinars would be valuable for STEM educators from elementary through university contexts.” Could you share your thinking about how these webinars would support K-12 teachers?

  • Icon for: Gretal Leibnitz

    Gretal Leibnitz

    Co-Presenter
    Co-PI & Executive Director
    May 20, 2016 | 03:06 a.m.

    Sure! Thanks for your question! Each of the webinars share not only the science behind the topic but strategies educators can use. Educational strategies provided can be easily translated to a variety of education contexts. For example, strategies for building engineering self-efficacy include access to diverse models, fostering a growth mindset, scaffolding learning for success…which can occur in higher ed as well as elementary educational contexts.

  • Icon for: Ann Austin

    Ann Austin

    Professor of Higher Education
    May 21, 2016 | 06:29 p.m.

    Hi, Gretal,
    Thank you for such important work! Sandra Laursen and I have felt, over the years of our ADVANCE project on identifying strategies for fostering organizational change in support of more inclusive campuses, that your work is a parallel and highly important project. By providing such well-developed webinars that can be directly accessed by faculty, you are “right in the thick” of encouraging effective change strategies. I especially like the way in which all your work is embedded in research, and links the research to practical strategies.

    I also wanted to tell you how much I like the design of your video. It is so engaging and attractive, it draws in the viewer because of the sense of energy it conveys, and it definitely offers a spirit of inclusiveness and respect for diversity. Great work?

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