A Model for Transforming Engineering Education Through Group Learning

Abstract

WORDS MAX) Electrical engineering educators at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) have successfully implemented pedagogical change. They now use group-based, student-centered and inquiry-driven approaches to teach emerging engineers. The objective of this was to foster students' personal as well as professional skills (i.e., teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, etc.). This paper explores how such change was achieved and provides graphic models that draw from prior phenomenological studies and incorporates aspects of Rogers' (1962) product adoption curve and Lowe's (2012) interpretations of it. In order to understand what happened in this program and describe the change process and why it happened, we conducted a qualitative study that used interpretative methods to explore issues. We sought to understand the experiences of teachers who had caused change to happen in the classroom. In order to understand that phenomenon, we conducted semi-structured interviews with the seven faculty members most active in the change process. Participants in the study represented 27% of the total body of faculty in the program. A detailed description of the study is being published elsewhere (Chance, Duffy, & Bowe, under review). This particular paper summarizes major points and extends the ideas presented in that paper. In the initial paper, we sought to identify crucial factors in the program's shift to group-based, inquiry-driven learning. This paper provides new graphic models to help others who want to implement similar changes in their own programs. In this paper, we also interpret our findings in relation to the product adoption model (Rogers, 1962) and interpretations of this model by Lowe (2012).