2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This work-in-progress paper seeks to explore the broader context of faculty involved in engineering education research by performing a faculty-focused landscape scan.

Engineering education is a relatively new field of study and research in Canada. In recent years, several centers or institutes focused on engineering practice and engineering education have been created, several universities began offering graduate programs in engineering education, and there has been a steadily growing number of faculty (and prospective faculty, such as graduate students and postdoctoral scholars) with interests in engineering education research.

With the emergence of this relatively new field in Canada, it is important to understand the context in which faculty involved in engineering education research operate. Faculty may face various challenges, e.g., securing funding, having their research valued or recognized within their institutions, and other systemic or institutional barriers. At the same time, there may be support mechanisms, such as Special Interest Groups in the national association or institutional communities. Understanding this context will allow for identifying opportunities and strategies to support further the researchers and address the specific challenges they face.

The first step in understanding this context is to examine the composition of faculty involved in engineering education research. With this aim, we conducted a study to gather information about engineering faculty available online, e.g., in the ‘Faculty’, ‘Directory’, ‘People’, and ‘Personnel’ sections of Faculty, School, Department, Institute, and Center websites, to determine the following: whether or not they were engaged in engineering education research, their appointment status, i.e., tenure-track or non-tenure track (including titles such as ‘Professor of Practice’ or ‘Professor of Teaching’), and the field of specialization or discipline of their terminal degree.

There are 122 public universities in Canada, 43 of which offer undergraduate (and possibly graduate) degrees in one or more engineering disciplines. We used the data gathered from these 43 universities to obtain the landscape of faculty engaged in engineering education research in terms of their distribution by institution, appointment, and background. This landscape allows us to identify specific social realities and questions for further investigation.

While our study is focused on the Canadian landscape, it can be replicated in other countries where engineering education as a field of study and research is emerging. Moreover, we hope that our findings will lead to specific research questions and topics of exploration that will allow us to better understand the context that engineering education researchers operate in.

The preferred presentation method is a lightning talk.