2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Work in Progress: The Antigua Forum Format: Increasing Information Flow for Increased Pedagogical Innovation

Presented at Faculty Development Division (FDD) Technical Session 8

This Work-in-Progress presentation will detail work in progress as part of an NSF Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) Grant, Teams for Creating Opportunities for Revolutionizing the Preparation of Students (TCORPS). It is an Adaptation and Implementation grant based upon the “Additive innovation” model proposed by Arizona State University. The vision is to focus on faculty development and culture change to reduce the effort and risk experienced by faculty in implementing pedagogical changes and to increase iterative, data-driven changes in teaching. The efforts include annual teaching retreats, faculty development workshops, facilitation of the innovation process, and creating a community of practice for sharing learning.

One of the changes, more specifically, has been initiation and then refinement of an annual departmental teaching retreat. As an Adaptation and Implementation grant, the original intent for the retreat was to follow the learning of the ASU RED team and develop a common vision and mission for teaching in department using the Education Value Canvas [1]. The first retreat was conducted during the Covid 19 pandemic using the Mural co-creation platform. Mural did enable engagement in the process and a vision and education value canvas were developed. As the first cohort of teaching innovators approached the one-year point, however, we realized that the sharing, learning, and frameworks that helped scaffold the innovation process were engaging faculty more than the mission and value canvas. In addition, inspired by Petland’s work showing that increasing and improving information flow can lead to increased innovation and idea generation, in our second year we pursued the Antigua Forum Format to increase and improve information flow in our annual teaching retreats [2]. The Antigua Forum Format, developed by a team at Universidad Francisco Marroquin, is a co-creation version of an unconference [3]. Based upon the idea that the some of the highest value at a conference comes from the technical discussions with colleagues at breaks in between talks, the format emphasizes extremely short presentations and a great deal more time for discussion and collaboration. Space is laid out for collaboration and co-creation. Project owners and facilitators lead stations where purpose driven outcomes are sought and displayed on a project board. Participation within the forum is self-organizing in that people can move from station to station as their interest dictates. Note taking is visual with Post-It Notes on the project boards. Facilitators and “ground rules” encourage listening, building on others’ ideas, sharing the air, and making thinking visible. Our hypothesis is that this format increases interaction and discussion about teaching among the faculty and will therefore increase idea generation. Our study of this format anonymously tracks and records interactions among faculty and includes surveys covering idea generation and participant engagement. As a first look, network maps of interactions show high levels of interaction and decreased centrality. Surveys show high levels of idea generation and engagement.

References
[1] McKenna et al. Instigating a Revolution of Additive Innovation: An Educational Ecosystem of Making and Risk Taking. ASEE’s 123rd Annual Conference and Exposition. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331135800_Instigating_a_Revolution_of_Additive_Innovation_An_Educational_Ecosystem_of_Making_and_Risk_Taking

[2] Pentland, Alex. Social Physics. Penguin Books. 2014

[3] K. Maeyens, personal communication, October 23, 2020.

Authors

Prof. M Cynthia Hipwell http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7500-9785 Texas A&M University [biography]

Dr. Hipwell has been working in the area of technology development based upon nanoscale phenomena for over 20 years. She received her B.S.M.E. from Rice University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Upon graduation, she went to work at Seagate Technology’s Recording Head Division in Bloomington, Minnesota. During her time at Seagate, Dr. Hipwell held various individual and leadership positions in the areas of reliability, product development, and advanced mechanical and electrical technology development. In these various roles, she established new business processes and an organizational culture that focused on developing innovative solutions from root cause understanding, improved pace of learning, and discipline in experimentation and configuration management. She was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering in 2016 for her leadership in the development of technologies to enable areal density and reliability increases in hard disk drives and was elected a National Academy of Inventors Fellow in 2018. Dr. Hipwell is currently the Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr. ’45 Chair II at Texas A&M University, where she has developed new classes on innovation and technology development as part of her leadership of the INVENT (INnoVation tools and Entrepreneurial New Technology) Lab. She is Co-PI on a National Science Foundation engineering education grant to develop a culture of and tools for iterative experimentation and continuous improvement in curriculum development.
Mr. Luis Angel Rodriguez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4679-2739 Texas A&M University
Dr. Astrid Layton http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3790-2916 Texas A&M University [biography]

Astrid Layton is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University in the Mechanical Engineering department and received her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. She is interested in bio-inspired system design problems and is curre
Prof. Arun R Srinivasa Texas A&M University [biography]

Dr Arun Srinivasa is the Holdredge/Paul Professor and associate department head of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University and has been with TAMU since 1997. Prior to that he was a faculty at University of Pittsburgh. He received his undergraduate in mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 1986 and subsequently his PhD from University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include continuum mechanics and thermodynamics, simulations of materials processing, and smart materials modeling and design. His teaching interests include the use of technology for education, especially in the area of engineering mechanics and in effective teaching methodologies and their impact on student progress in mechanical engineering.
Guillermo Aguilar Texas A&M University
Dr. Karan Watson P.E. Texas A&M University [biography]

Karan L. Watson, Ph.D., P.E., is currently a Regents Senior Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, having joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 1983 as an Assistant Professor. She is also serving as the C0-Director of the Institute
Dr. Mindy Bergman [biography]

Dr. Bergman is a Professor in the Department of Psychology and Executive Director of Interdisciplinary Critical Studies at Texas A&M University. She earned her PhD in industrial-organizational psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include workplace safety, occupational health, and fairness and mistreatment in the workplace and in STEM classrooms and programs.
Rujun Gao http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3095-8215 Texas A&M University [biography]

Ph.D. student in Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University.
David Christopher Seets Texas A&M University

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