2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) such as active, problem-based, and case-based learning have widely been shown to improve student learning and success in the classroom. Previous research has found that most engineering faculty have some knowledge or awareness of EBIPs and the benefits of using them in their courses. However, uptake of EBIPs in engineering courses is lagging among engineering faculty, with fewer faculty members reporting the consistent incorporation of these instructional methods in their classrooms. Research has pinpointed challenges to adopting EBIPs in engineering courses such as the perception of lacking evidence to support using instructional practices, requiring too much time to prepare or implement in class, negative reactions from students, or scarce institutional resources or support. While these are common barriers tied to engaging non-traditional forms of pedagogy, a thorough investigation of the challenges frequently associated with individual EBIPs is a distinguishing factor that warrants further exploration within the engineering education setting.

To this end, the present study is guided by the overarching exploratory research question: How do barriers and affordances to adoption of EBIPs by engineering faculty vary between EBIP types? To address this research question and provide contextual insight into variation of adoption approaches between EBIPs, we distributed an online survey to engineering faculty members across the USA that was administered between April and June 2022. The survey was adapted from existing research in EBIP adoption among engineering faculty and gathered information about respondent demographics, teaching practice and experience with EBIPs, and interest in participating in future research activities. For the present study, we focused analysis on responses to an open-ended qualitative question asking respondents to describe factors that have or could prevent them from adopting nine different EBIPs including active learning, case-based teaching, collaborative learning, concept tests, cooperative learning, inquiry learning, just-in-time teaching, peer instruction, and problem-based learning.

We received a total of 400 completed responses to the survey. Of these, 149 respondents answered at least one open-ended question associated with each of the nine EBIPs. The number of responses to each EBIP question ranged from 40 responses about peer instruction to 85 responses about active learning resulting in a data corpus of 10,952 words and a total of 504 coded comments. An inductive approach was used to code the response data with first and second cycle coding methods. Codes were ultimately reduced to themes that illuminated variation in engineering faculty descriptions of barriers that are contextually relevant to each of the nine EBIPs. For example, context specific challenges for adopting case-based teaching involve the substantial time it takes to find cases and assess their utility, as well as adapting them to computation-intensive courses such as engineering statics or thermodynamics. In contrast, some participants described barriers with incorporating concept tests related to student apathy that led to disengagement and a lack of critical thinking. In the forthcoming paper, we will report our findings for each EBIP type along with their associated barriers, which will inform a larger effort to address contextual challenges to EBIP adoption and develop solutions which may be modified to satisfy requirements on a classroom by classroom basis.