2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Board 282: Examining the Community of Practice in the NSF RED Program

Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session

Since it’s inception in 2015, the National Science Foundation Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program has supported engineering and computer science educators as they work to transform the preparation of undergraduate students. As part of the program, members of RED teams connect with one another through regular online meetings and an annual consortium meeting. Through these interactions, we see that the RED teams function as a community of practice (CoP), as defined by Wenger:

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. (Wenger 2011)

More than just a collection of individuals who possess a shared interest, a community of practice is defined by several distinct features: they are practitioners; they develop a shared repertoire of resources (such as experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems) that represent their shared practice; and they develop their community over time and as a result of sustained interaction (Wenger 2011). In our research and practice work with RED teams, we have identified aspects of their interactions that suggest that they are operating as a community of practice. We also find that RED team members and their projects benefit from their CoP engagements.

For our poster at ASEE 2023 we plan to focus on three specific elements of the RED CoP. First, adoption and learning in the RED CoP is facilitated by the community interactions, whereby RED teams, located across the country and spanning multiple disciplines, can learn about the work of other teams and adopt new practices into their own projects. Second, the RED CoP has resulted in collaborations and partnerships between teams, thus providing opportunities for teams to leverage their work and expand their influence. For example, one such collaboration resulted in a DEI-focused project. Third, members of the RED CoP conduct their interactions as colleagues with a goal of producing mutual benefit for all members. Overall, our analysis of the RED CoP suggests a way to understand the impact of the RED program on the team members who participate in its CoP.
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Authors

Dr. Julia M. Williams http://orcid.org/https://0000-0002-8367-9463 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Julia M. Williams is the author of Making Changes in STEM Education: The Change Maker's Toolkit (Taylor & Francis, 2023), a research-based, practice-focused guide to achieving change in STEM. Beginning in 2012, she served as a founding team member of the Making Academic Change Happen (MACH) Workshop that serves faculty, administrators, and graduate students as they pursue their change goals. She is Principal Investigator on the NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Participatory Action Research (PAR) project, a practice-research collaboration that provides customized faculty development support for 26 RED project teams. Williams’ publications on academic change, assessment, engineering and professional communication, tablet PCs, and ungrading have appeared in the Journal of Engineering Education and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, among others. She has been awarded grants from Microsoft, HP, the Engineering Communication Foundation, and National Science Foundation. She has received numerous awards, including the 2015 Schlesinger Award (IEEE Professional Communication Society) and 2010 Sterling Olmsted Award (ASEE Liberal Education Division).
Dr. Eva Andrijcic Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Eva Andrijcic serves as an Associate Professor of Engineering Management at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Dr. Sriram Mohan Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology [biography]

Sriram Mohan is a Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Rose-Hulman institute of Technology. Sriram received a B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Madras and M.S and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science f
Dr. Elizabeth Litzler http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0626-8473 University of Washington [biography]

Elizabeth Litzler, Ph.D., is the director of the University of Washington Center for Evaluation and Research for STEM Equity (UW CERSE) and an affiliate assistant professor of sociology. She has been at UW working on STEM Equity issues for more than 17 years. Dr. Litzler is a member of ASEE, 2020-2021 chair of the ASEE Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and a former board member of the Women in Engineering ProActive Network (WEPAN). Her research interests include the educational climate for students, faculty, and staff in science and engineering, assets based approaches to STEM equity, and gender and race stratification in education and the workforce. She was awarded the 2020 WEPAN Founders Award.
Selen Güler University of Washington [biography]

Selen Güler is a PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Washington, and a research assistant at the University of Washington’s Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE). Selen’s research interests include institutional change, social movements, and the cultural foundations of policy-making.

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