Potential minimum viable value propositions for engineering education scholarship

Abstract

While scholarship in engineering education is growing in quality and quantity, the extent to which engineering education scholarship influences practice is hotly debated. Multiple factors influence the extent to which research influences practice in any field. While many highlight the reward system as the pivotal factor, changing the reward structure is difficult and assumes extrinsic motivators are effective for faculty. Therefore, this change alone is unlikely to affect faculty priorities vis-a-vis scholarship and teaching. The paper assumes two premises that provide necessary but not sufficient conditions for engineering education scholarship to influence practice. First, the authors assume that the reward system is at worst neutral and may at best reward faculty members who demonstrate they improve student's attainment of learning outcomes. Second, the authors assume that there are effective channels that provide engineering faculty members with concise, accessible, and effective information that they can use to make informed decisions about their teaching. Starting with these two premises, the authors claim another reason research is not influencing practice sufficiently is that, in the language of entrepreneurship, the engineering education community has not provided sufficiently compelling value propositions for engineering faculty members to adopt research based instructional strategies. While the value proposition of engineering education research is clear to researchers, it may not be clear for the majority of engineering faculty members who do not engage in these knowledge-creation activities. An untested claim of this paper is that research advances in engineering education need to be paired with minimum viable value propositions (MWPs) in order to influence practice in engineering classrooms. Herein the authors offer a set of preliminary adoption-based value propositions intended to stimulate active, substantive conversations.