2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Syllabi Indicators of Learning Community Supports in Civil Engineering Classrooms

Presented at Civil Engineering Division (CIVIL) Technical Session - Effective Teaching 1

Learning communities in formal educational settings act as support systems for students, facilitating increased motivation, student success, and feelings of belonging. Learning communities can be compromised by instructional conditions due to institutional, national, or global disruptions, leaving students vulnerable to being disconnected from their peers and instructors. This study explored the impact of a disruption on instructor facilitation of learning communities. The research question was: “How does a disruption impact instructor facilitation of learning communities, as indicated in civil engineering course syllabi?” The syllabi analyzed in this study were gathered from second- and third-year core courses from Fall 2019 through Spring 2023 in a civil engineering department at an R1 Midwest University. This timeframe captures a significant disruption to instruction that started in mid-Spring 2020. All syllabi were deductively coded using an a priori coding scheme that included the following categories: Instructor-Student Interaction, Peer-to-Peer Interaction, and Institutional Interaction. The impact on learning communities displayed in this analysis is aligned with prior research that indicated students felt isolated during the disruption. There are indications that instructors responded to students’ isolation through an increase in office hours in the subsequent semester following initial reports of student isolation. The trends in the data are used to make recommendations for civil engineering instructors on how to integrate learning communities into the classroom experience during normal and disrupted times.

Authors

Jessica Momanyi William Paterson University [biography]

Jessica Momanyi is a recent graduate of William Paterson University, where she was a Psychology major with a minor in Music - Classical Voice. She was involved in Engineering Education Research during the summer of 2023 as a scholar through an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, in the Engineering Education lab under the supervision of Dr. Grace Panther and Dr. Heidi Diefes-Dux. As an Honors College student at William Paterson, she completed the Cognitive Science Honors Research Track, which resulted in an original qualitative study entitled "Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on University Music Students and Faculty", inspired by her research during her time as an NSF REU scholar. She presented this research at the Eastern Psychological Association Undergraduate Poster Symposium in March of 2024. Her research interests broadly include communities of practice, educational institutions as resilient systems for students in crisis, representation of racially and ethnically minoritized students in gifted education, and strengthening Multitiered Systems of Support (MTSS) in public education systems. She hopes to expand these interests and train to practice as a School Psychologist in the public-school setting, as she pursues a Ph.D. in School Psychology at the University of Maryland - College Park in the fall of 2024.
Dr. Grace Panther University of Nebraska, Lincoln [biography]

Dr. Grace Panther is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln where she conducts discipline-based education research. Her research interests include faculty change, 3D spatial visualization, gender inclusive teamwork, and studying authentic engineering practice. Dr. Panther was awarded an NSF CAREER award in 2024. Dr. Panther has experience conducting workshops at engineering education conferences both nationally and internationally, has been a guest editor for a special issue of European Journal of Engineering Education on inclusive learning environments, and serves on the Australasian Journal of Engineering Education advisory committee. Dr. Panther received both her Ph.D. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Oregon State University.
Prof. Heidi A. Diefes-Dux http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3635-1825 University of Nebraska, Lincoln [biography]

Heidi A. Diefes-Dux is a Professor in Biological Systems Engineering at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln (UNL). She received her B.S. and M.S. in Food Science from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in Food Process Engineering from the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University. She was an inaugural faculty member of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Her current role in the College of Engineering at UNL is to lead the disciplinary-based education research initiative, growing the research enterprise and the engineering education research graduate program. Her research focuses on the development, implementation, and assessment of modeling and design activities with authentic engineering contexts; the design and implementation of learning objective-based grading for transparent and fair assessment; and the integration of reflection to develop self-directed learners.

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