Characteristics of engineering faculty engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning

Abstract

This research hypothesized that differences in the culture of engineering education as it is practiced a whole, as compared to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in engineering education, would manifest themselves through the characteristics of the faculty engaging in these activities. The research question examined was: To what extent are the faculty who engage in different areas of SoTL research within engineering similar to or different than the engineering faculty at U.S. institutions overall? The research utilized a data mining approach, assuming that the authors of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference papers would characterize engineering faculty engaged in SoTL. The demographic characteristics of the authors of ASEE papers published in 2012–2014 on the topics of Learning Through Service (LTS), engineering ethics, and design were determined, as well as the authors of papers in the civil engineering, environmental engineering, and electrical & computer engineering divisions. The demographic characteristics of engineering faculty nationally were mined from ASEE data sources. The primary differences between engineering faculty active in SoTL compared to overall U.S. engineering faculty were: a higher percentage of assistant professors, a lower percentage of full professors, a higher percentage of women, a higher percentage employed at Baccalaureate or Master's institutions, and a smaller percentage from institutions with very high research activity. Between different engineering education topics, the primary differences were in the engineering disciplines represented, the percentage of women among the authors, and collaboration patterns evident among the paper coauthors. These data indicate the ways in which engineering faculty active in SoTL are different than their engineering faculty peers overall, and also highlights differences among engineering education topics. Further exploration is needed to determine the extent to which these differences are the result of different cultural values within each group.