Continuing Forward

Well, things still seem to be going in the direction I want...It's about time! I have focused my topic to look at the attitudes of engineering faculty with respect to teaching and learning and engineering education. Specifically I will be looking at how the attitudes and teaching strategies/methods of engineering faculty are affected by educationally focused faculty development. What effect does participation in educationally focused workshops, seminars, conferences, etc. have on engineering faculty's attitudes towards engineering education? The intended result is to show the positive(??) effects of faculty development and to make engineering faculty aware of these benefits. Also, to make engineering faculty aware of the importance of having a (strong?) foundation in education in order to become more effective teachers. Show that engineering education is about more than just lecturing and note-taking and that there are more effective teaching strategies available.

I guess that my biggest frustration with engineering education (especially here in Canada) seems to the complete disregard for engineering education! It seems that few engineering faculty care to take the time and effort required to understand what it is that they do - namely teach! And university administrators are little help because the main requirements for hiring, promotion, and tenure are all related to research, i.e. publications, grants, conference presentations and the like. Let's face it, research into engineering education does not bring in the "big bucks" or the high profile as other forms of research, so it is dis-regarded as unimportant. Industry continues to complain about a lack of many skills (communication, team-work, business, etc) in new graduates, but I think they have gotten so used to the fact that this is what they get that they simply incorporate their own training programs/procedures to deal with it. It's like "Ok, this is what we will get, so let's just deal with it" instead of pressuring universities to do something about it. Despite various reports calling for a change (Boyer, NAE) little seems to be being done in Canada. Is it because we are simply waiting to see how things turn out with our neighbour to the south? We seem to be stuck in this mode of following and not innovating in this area. Very frustrating...

Ok, I'll step off my soapbox now...