PT Teaching Narrative

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PROMOTION DOSSIERTEACHING NARRATIVE

EDWARD BERGER

1. Teaching Portfolio

My teaching experience spans over 15 years, 14 different courses (3 graduate, 11 under-graduate), the development of four original courses, and experience with different studentpopulations, in different settings, with class sizes ranging from extremely small (10) toenormous (170). I have taught across all content areas within the broad area of mechanics,in addition to several courses well outside that area:

Course (level) Times Taught

Kinematics and Dynamics of Mechanisms (UG) 3Mechanics III (dynamics, UG) 1Machine Design (UG) 6Fundamentals of Tribology (G) 5Nonlinear Vibrations (G) 1Finite Elements I (UG) 1Finite Elements II (UG) 1Automatic Controls (UG) 6Advanced Strength of Materials (G) 1Strength of Materials (UG) 5Statics (UG) 6Dynamics (UG) 2Introduction to Engineering (UG) 2The Panama Canal (UG) 2

indicates a new course constructed by me accompanied by an extensive set of course notes authored by me (over 130 pages)

To really understand how I approach classroom teaching, you should take some time toview one of my course blogs, for instance MAE 2320 Dynamics1 from Spring 2012. Thesalient points about the course blog site:

navigation is easy, access to materials is instant students can discuss issues with each other via the comment threads the tag cloud immediately indicates what is most important in the course the self-contained exam review table quickly summarizes key resources

and most importantly, students make important contributions to the learning ma-terials and support each others learning (see especially the Blog Points page)

1http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/MAE 2320 Dynamics/

1
http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/MAE_2320_Dynamics/http://pages.shanti.virginia.edu/MAE_2320_Dynamics/


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And of course the availability of lecture and problem solutions as recorded videos adds valueto the student experience by allowing them to (i) see good problem solving approaches mod-eled by an expert, and (ii) review authoritative course materials that are exact, portable,and repayable. My teaching certainly did not start with this polished product; rather, this

realization of my Dynamics course represents an evolutionary process involving innovativeideas, intuition, andperhaps most importantlydedicated, funded pedagogical research.This document explains my evolution as a teacher, the role of rigorous research (both myown and that of others) in informing my philosophy and approach, and the innovation andcreativity I bring to this endeavor.

2. Teaching Statement

Teaching in all its forms is arguably the core endeavor of any higher education institution.We educate undergraduate and graduate students, mentor junior colleagues, and otherwiseparticipate in a broad and vigorous educational enterprise. Teaching and learning arenot simple endeavors, however. And perhaps more importantly, they are crucial activitiesworthy of genuine, original scholarship, funded research programs, and wide disseminationof lessons learned. My teaching philosophy therefore encompasses several parts: teachingin a traditional classroom-type environment, teaching in an experiential environment, andthe key role of rigorous research in improving teaching and learning.

2.1. Teaching in a Traditional Classroom-type Environment. Most faculty, myselfincluded, spend the bulk of their teaching time in a fairly traditional classroom or labora-tory setting. The underpinnings of my approach in such settings can be summarized:

Lecture is dead, social constructivism lives. I teach large undergraduate classes withenrollments between 100-180. The accumulated intellectual capital in the room dur-ing an in-person class meeting is enormous. Yet, a lecture in which the instructortalks to the learners, working to explain the subject, is a significant missed oppor-tunity to engage all the intellectual capacity in the room. The flipped classroomis but one example of how to exploit the in-person class meeting as a collabo-rative, community event. I am a firm believer in the tenets of social construc-tivism2, which basically states that the communal construction of knowledge andmeaning is powerful for the learner, and that learning is a social event. Learningthrough engagement with peerscall it peer instruction3, peer learning, commu-nities of practicehas been proven over and over to be an effective and powerfulapproach to teaching and learning.

Technology can mediate pedagogy, but is not itself a pedagogy. I am a strong ad-vocate for appropriate use of technology in higher education, and the social aspectsof technology (e.g., blogging) mesh closely with my social constructivist leanings.

2For a simple description, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social constructivism; for a more scholarly

treatment, see A. S. Palincsar, Social Constructivist Perspectives on Teaching and Learning, AnnualReview of Psychology, 49:345-375, 1998.

3Mazur and colleagues, e.g., C. H. Crouch and E. Mazur, Peer Instruction: Ten Years of Experienceand Results, Am. J. Phys., 69(9):970-977, 2001.


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PROMOTION DOSSIERTEACHING NARRATIVE 3

My HigherEd 2.0 project4 was the first formal effort, funded by NSF, to establishbest practices for use of web 2.0 technologies in higher education. The results ofthis work are detailed later, but for now it suffices to say that elements of the High-erEd 2.0 paradigm are fairly pervasive and that my research program was several

years ahead of the national trend. Education is a closed-loop process, and training is not teaching. Despite the so-

cial nature of learning, and despite my advocacy for technology and all its asynchro-nous benefits, the personal relationship between instructor and student remains acentral fixture of my teaching approach. Students need prompt and detailed feed-back about their work, and especially students who struggle need more personalizedattention to scaffold their learning. While massive open online courses (so-calledMOOCs) offer technology-mediated education in a social (web) environment, themissing element of personalized feedback from an actual instructor relegates suchcourses to something more like skill acquisition (i.e., training) than true, deep,authentic learning5.

2.2. Teaching in an Experiential Environment. A residential educational experiencelike the one promoted and valued by UVa necessarily means that students must live inCharlottesville to learn in our community. And as a consequence, we choose to use tra-ditional classrooms and laboratories to deliver many of the courses we offer. However,through my recent experiences teaching on Semester at Sea, and my up-coming J-termcourse, I have become a very strong advocate for an experiential environment for learning.In this context, experiential simply means that I am teaching via an experiencethiscould be Semester at Sea, it could be my mentorship of student senior theses via tripsto Panama, or it could be my up-coming (January 2013) J-term course taught entirely inPanama. All of those experiential circumstances lead to a transformative learning experi-ence and directly connect to the SEAS brand of rigorous engineering education within aliberal education context.

Teaching and Learning in Community. Part of the experiential approach generallymeans that the instructors and the learners spend significant time together outsideof class. On Semester at Sea or through an international J-term course, the studentsand instructor are literally living togetherin addition to learning togetherfor aperiod of time. This structure affords certain advantages for community building,development of a shared understanding of what education means, and studentcollaboration/building of a cohort identity that simply are not available in a moretraditional classroom environment.

Experiencing is Learning by Another Name. When I teach my course on the Panama

Canal6, there is no substitute for visiting the Canal, seeing ships transit the Canalup close, visiting an active construction site, and talking to practicing engineers

4see also http://highered20.wordpress.com5I recently signed up for my first Coursera course (Computing for Data Analysis) because I want to

learn R programming to enable analysis of large datasets.6see also: http://www.semesteratsea.org/2012/06/11/exploring-the-expansion-of-the-panama-canal/


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who work at the Canal. Students experience their education differently when theysee the scale and operation of the Canal close-up, in person, and this experienceclearly adds depth and meaning to the course as compared to learning the samematerial in a classroom in Charlottesville. The scholarly record is replete with

studies that repeatedly and forcefully illustrate the power of experiential learning7. Experiential Learning is a Just Another Form of Social Constructivism. Experien-

tial programs engage students and instructors in the social dimensions of learningin the most intense way. For my J-term course, we will be staying in the same hotel,eating meals together, sharing taxi cabs and buses, and of course participating inthe class meetings and field trips. This shared experienceboth the social and the(what we usually think of as) academictransforms the way students view thecourse and its contents. Their investment in the course is higher, their retention ofmaterial better, and their ability to make connections between other parts of thecurriculum and real-world engineering applications is deepened.

2.3. The Role of Rigorous Research in Improving Teaching and Learning. Let

us not forget that there are two halves to education: teaching and learning. Goodteaching does not always result in good learning, and similarly valuable learning can happendespite sub-optimal teaching. The engineering education literature is quite vast on thisissue8, so there is no shortage of guidance on instructional methods that are known to beeffective. Moreover, NSF cares deeply about STEM education as a workforce developmentimperative and national competitiveness issue; the NSF Directorate for Education andHuman Resources (EHR) funding request for FY2013 is nearly $900M9.

As people passionate about educationwe are, after all, employed at a universitywe oweit to ourselves and our students to strive for continuous improvement in education, the sameway we do with research. Too often we run our academic programs in a largely open-loopway, with only a minimal amount of actionable feedback embedded in the system. We wouldnever run a research program this way; research is driven by evidence, by hypotheses that

are posed and tested in systematic ways, by results that are reported to the community andshared widely, by innovations that add value, and by the continuous cycle of improvement,refinement, and increasing the depth of understanding.

To this end, I feel quite strongly about these elements of research and scholarship abouteducation:

7For a thorough, if somewhat dated treatment, see Kolb, D. A.,Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source for Learning and Development, Prentice-Hall:EnglewoodCliffs, NJ, 1984; for a shorter and more recent treatment, see A. J. Conger et al., Experiential LearningPrograms for the Future of Engineering Education, in Transforming Engineering Education: CreatingInterdisciplinary Skills for Complex Global Environments (an engineering education summit co-sponsoredby IEEE and IBM), Dublin, Ireland, April 2010.

8See for instance the guest editorial in the JEE and the references therein: Streveler, R. and K. Smith,

Conducting Rigorous Research in Engineering Education, Journal of Engineering Education, 95(2):103-105, 2006.

9Ferrini-Mundy, J., NSF Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Request, accessed July 17, 2012, URL:http://www.nsf.gov/ehr/2013 Budget Resources.jsp.


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education should be the topic of serious research and scholarship; we should ap-proach engineering education as a (curriculum and course) research and designproblem and use the tools of research and engineering design to create our educa-tional experience

research is required to figure out the most effective ways to provide instructionfor students; the research and evaluation are part of our efforts to get smarterthrough the design process, and they enable use to make good decisions about howto modify the curriculum

having an evidentiary basis for what we do in education seems critical, yet wetypically provide only the thinnest of evidence for teaching quality or effectivenessof learning, and even then we usually only do it under external motivation (i.e.,ABET)

to the extent possible, I believe its important to use research methods to under-stand teaching effectiveness, to experiment and publish about our own educationalinterventions, and to apply a rigorous approach to designing our education

doing anything else betrays our training as professionals, scientists, and engineers,

and undermines our intellectual curiosity about how the academic enterprise doesand should function

3. Defining Excellence in Teaching

What does excellence in teaching look like? This is obviously a different questionthan what do we currently measure? The case for excellence in teaching must recognizethose factors known to positively influence learning, because learning (or, perhaps, theachievement of specific learning outcomes) is, after all, the basic goal of education. Wewant our students to be able to actually do thingsafter theyve engaged with us. But thosethings that students learn how to do are highly variable, context specific, and instructorspecific. For instance, we could write a learning outcome about (i) a very specific skills,such as mastering the solution a fairly narrow type of problem, or (ii) a more general skill,such as applying a particular method to a wider class or problems, or (iii) a very high levelskill, such as being a better student. If fact, we all define and reinforce these explicit(say, problem solving) and implicit (say, being a better student) outcomes in each coursewe teach or in each experiential environment in which we operate.

So defining excellence in teaching necessarily requires a very broad definition of whatstudents and teachers do when they engage with each other. Obviously teachers conveydisciplinary content, in my case engineering mechanics, and they integrate the vast libraryof available information on the subject into a tight corpus of content that students studyand, hopefully, master. In this sense, teachers are the wise masters of the discipline whosee the entire landscape and wisely lead students along a particular path. Teachers play

the role of knowledge gatekeeper.My definition of excellence varies quite a bit from this traditional sage-on-the-stagemodel. Within the social constructivist framework, I view teachers as facilitators, whoconvene conversations among students, drive those discussions in a particular direction, and


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ultimately (hopefully) lead students to experience that moment of individual discovery thatpersonalizes learning in such a powerful way. When students learn by doing (an experientialprinciple), in concert with their peers, led by an expert whose role is to facilitate discovery,that is when teaching is excellent. This is not simply my definition of excellence; rather, a

wide body of literature on active learning, student peer-teaching and collaboration, and thefacilitator role of teachers solidifies this view as a concrete pillar on which an educationalphilosophy can be built.

3.1. Teaching as Skillset Development. Years ago, it was common to think of teach-ing and learning in the context of what students know or understand. Today, we speak interms of what students can do. This subtle shift in rhetoric further emphasizes the evolu-tion from learning-as-listening to learning-as-doing. My goal in any learning environmentis to enable the learner to be able to do something useful at the end of the learning expe-rience. While watching me do something can be helpful, the research clearly shows thatguided exercises, facilitated by a skilled instructor, with increasing difficulty and graduallydecreasing scaffolding10 are a valuable way to help students master specific skills.

Part of this skillset development necessarily involves the teacher modeling the desiredoutcome. Teachers must demonstrate the attributes we wish to see in students. Wemust model good communication, clear purpose, attention to detail. We must explainour thought process, in addition to a solution procedure. We must be open to constructivecriticism and aware of the intellectual capital present in the classroom. We must conveyhigh expectations and uphold high standards. Later in the document I share some specificexamples of me doing exactly this.

3.2. Teaching as Human Subjects Research. If you have ever done any human sub-jects research, you know that showing teaching effectiveness, demonstrating successfullearning, or proving excellence seems to be a formidable and perhaps even unquan-tifiable task. How do we measure learning? How do we measure student engagement? Itsometimes seems hopeless, especially compared to more scientific research which tends tobe somewhat more quantifiable and sometimes employs indicators that are more directlymeasurable. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, puts it this way when speaking ofsocial sector organizations11:

To throw up your hands and say, But we cannot measure performance inthe social sectors the way you can in a business is simply lack of discipline.All indicators are flawed, whether qualitative or quantitative. Test scoresare flawed, mammograms are flawed, crime rate data are flawed, customerservice data are flawed, patient-outcome data are flawed. What matters

10scaffolding: a temporary instructional support that provides the student just

enough structure so that s/he can successfully learn a new concept or skill; see alsohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional scaffolding

11from pp. 7-8 of Good to Great and the Social Sector (A monograph to accompany Good to Great),

Jim Collins:Boulder Colorado, 2005


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is not finding the perfect indicator, but settling upon a consistent and in-telligent method of assessing your output results, and then tracking yourtrajectory with rigor.

Human subjects research, as I have learned during the past six years of my research collab-orations with faculty in the Curry School, relies upon creating a case, built from variouspieces of evidence collected via different modalities, that substantially validates the hy-pothesis put forth. In human subjects research, the inter-subject variability related tothe richness and diversity of human beings means that there is almost never a smok-ing gun that definitively proves or disproves anything. Moreover, confident conclusionscan generally only be precipitated out of large-sample-size data sets with mixed-methodsapproaches.

Mixed-methods approaches are defined by data collection that spans several differentmodalities. For instance, we can collect objective, quantifiable data, such as the numberof hits on a website, or the number of comments posted on a blog. We can also collectsubjective, quantifiable data, such as responses to surveys in which respondents self-report

data (such as the number of hours they spend studying) or provide their opinion on some-thing (using a Likert-type scale). We can also collect subjective, qualitative data, such asobservations of subjects engaging in a task, or structured interviews with subjects abouttheir experience during the study. Any one piece of data from any one of these modali-ties, by itself, probably does not tell a very persuasive story about the research. It is thecombination of these data which, in the aggregate, reveals something about the hypothesisbeing tested. Human subjects research arguments are generally constructed using multipledata types coalesced in creative ways to support a research argument.

3.3. Recognizing Excellence. Given the complicated nature of teaching and learning,it can be quite difficult to recognize excellence. I can think of a variety of proxies forexcellence, listed in Table 1 and including a checklist to indicate whether I meet those

measures of excellence. Many of these are the usual measures of teaching effectivenesscited widely by academicians in all disciplines. Many of them have an element, or even aprimacy, of peer review. Some of them involve quantitative data, while others are basedupon reputation. Some of them reflect achievements in a single course, while others reflect alonger-term commitmenteven a career-long commitmentto excellence in teaching. Manyinvolve scholarly works, and some are related to pedagogical innovations.

But perhaps you have noticed that none of these measures of excellence has any direct,explicit connection to actual learning. These measures generally capture actions that ateacher does, rather than outcomes that a learner achieves. In fact, none of these measuresis in any direct way linked to what we should care about most: student learning outcomes.

I can confidently say that by using best practices from the literature (and developing myown best practices), my students achieve better outcomes than if I did not use such bestpractices. But none of these measures quantifies what a student can do, how well they cando it, how long they remember how to do it, how they internalize how they do it, how they


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Excellence Measure Meets?no yes

consistently earns excellent student/teaching evaluations earns teaching awards at department, school, university levels

earns statewide (SCHEV) award for teaching invited to speak at regional events on teaching invited to speak at national events on teaching funded by NSF for education research recognized as an innovator in educational methods for STEM consistently invited to participate locally with TRC and other on-Grounds

teaching-related activities

hosts workshops on pedagogy locally, regionally, and nationally actively participates in the community of scholars on pedagogy and teaching uses best practices from the STEM education community in constructing

learning experiences

develops best practices for the STEM education community and disseminatesthem widely

inducted into the inaugural class of the University Academy of Teachers(organized by the TRC)

Table 1. Measures of Excellence in Teaching.

apply this skill to similar (or different) situations, or any of a host of other key learningoutcomes.

This is not necessarily a failing of our educational enterpriseas I mentioned earlier:education is a teaching/learning duality. And we must acknowledge that evaluation of

learning outcomes is deeply challenging, requires expertise that we might not possess,resources that we cannot devote, and time that we do not prioritize. Perhaps, in general,the best we can do is celebrate great teaching, identify it when we see it, and use theproxies in Table 1 and others to evaluate it.

In fact, Ken Bain (who visited UVa some years ago at the invitation of the TRC) haspublished the celebrated What the Best College Teachers Do, a seminal book thatsummarizes years of experience and research into what makes good teaching. His broadconclusions, the result of observations of and interviews with renowned teachers, as well asthe synthesis of a vast literature, essentially reflect four basic tenets of great teaching (inaddition to the basic requirement of being a subject matter expert); great teachers:

(1) View preparation as a scholarly endeavor. Preparing to teach requires the same se-

riousness as research, in that we rely upon the literature to guide our activities andapproach, engage in constant self-evaluation and solicitation of useful feedback, arewilling to change, adapt, and evolve, and focus specifically on the outcome to beachieved (i.e., we are learner-centered instead of instructor-centered).


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(2) Expect students to be committed, and treat them with respect. Great teachers con-vey high expectations to their students, but always treat them with respect andbasic decency. We set out clear expectations for students and encourage their in-tellectual development. We expect students to construct knowledge rather than

simply receive it.(3) Create an optimal environment for learning. The best teachers engage students in

a variety of learning experiences that require students to think in different ways,interface with their peers, and challenge their implicit assumptions and biases aboutthe material. We create both in-class and out-of-class activities that encouragestudents to reflect and discuss, debate and even argue, but above all else unleashcritical thinking skills on disciplinary problems.

(4) Evaluate their students and themselves. The best teachers give prompt, detailedfeedback to their students, and continuously monitor the situation within the classto ensure students are making progress toward their goals. We constantly askquestions about our approach and pedagogy, about whether there are better alter-natives to our current practices, and about our success in engaging all students in

the learning.

Bain generally acknowledges the challenges associated with measuring learning outcomes,but provides persuasive evidence that indeed the practices of good teaching correlatestrongly with independent evidence of good learning.

4. My Teaching Evolution, Initiatives, and Personal Excellence

Throughout my career, I have always endeavored to be a serious teacher; that is, one whoengages teaching with vigor and energy, uses the literature and his own scholarship to itsbest advantage, and is not afraid to relinquish some measure of his own control in order toempower students to assume greater control of their own learning. In this section, I brieflydetail my evolution as a teacher and several key initiatives that illustrate my credentials

as an excellent teacher.

4.1. The Evolution of a Teacher. Like most faculty, I had precious little experiencein the classroom when I began my first academic job at the University of Cincinnati atthe age of 26. But what I did have is this: inspiring mentors from my PhD study andenergy to emulate their success. At that point, I had very little knowledge of the educationliterature, and thrived on simple intuition and my role models from Purdue. Early on, mybest credential as a teacher was that I could empathize with students, could put myselfin their place. After all, I was only a few years older than they were, and it seemed verynatural to think back to my own education, emulate the positive elements, and eliminate thenegative ones. But this first approach to teachingalthough successful by the conventionalmeasuresdid not last long. My first tear-down and rebuild of my teaching approach was

about to happen as a result of technology.Toward the end of the 1990s, I quickly embraced a number of educational technologiesand worked to leverage them in the classroom. This idea of technology-mediated learninghas remained with me since that time, and although the technologies have changed, my


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commitment to using them constructively and to their best purpose has not. I was anearly adopter of presentation technologies such as Powerpoint and Keynote, and used themcreatively to engage students in the material and with each other. I was an early adoptedof technology in general, including the iPod12. Applications such as Working Model and

other basic physics engines allowed visualization of engineering problems in new ways, andcould now be shared as networked solutions like Blackboard came online.

This commitment, combined with my energy, creativity, and time, resulted in strongteaching successes as measured by the usual indicators. My teaching evaluations wereuniformly strong, students appreciated my engagement with them, and in general I wasviewed as progressive if not innovative in my approach to teaching. This period culminatedwith several teaching awards from my department and college at Cincinnati, as well askudos from my peers. But new opportunities were awaiting as new technologies matured;the second overhaul of my teaching was about to happen.

4.2. The Game Changes. Shortly thereafter, in 2005, I moved to UVa and rented ahouse in the Forest Lakes neighborhood while my current house was being built. If you

have ever navigated Rt. 29 N during rush hour, you understand the frustration of trafficand the somewhat bleak offerings on local radio. However, around this time a new formof portable media emerged: the podcast. It took just a few days of listening to newsand entertainment podcasts in the car on the way home from work to spark the idea ofusing podcasts for asynchronous education, flipping the classroom, and leveraging theanytime-anywhere nature of this new portable media for education.

But this was an entirely new forum for learning. There were no rules, authoring toolswere relatively primitive, distribution mechanisms existed but were cumbersome to say theleast, the market (among students) for such resources was unknown and highly uncertain,and most importantly there was no pedagogy built up around this new tool. Nobodyknew much of anything about how to use this new medium for education. In 2006, whenI first began using podcasts for teaching, only one thing was certain: this trend was goingto revolutionize education, and somebody needed to figure outquicklythe best practicesassociated with using these tools for education.

Today, we recognize that podcasts belong to the broader class of tools we lump to-gether as social media, because they connect people around topics and interests sharedby the group. They empower groups to create and share information quickly and in aplatform-independent way. They enable collaboration, asynchronous sharing, and produc-tivity anytime-anywhere. In 2006, many (most?) people dismissed these tools as toys forentertainment. To me, these sounded like technology-mediated social constructivism. Thesewere tools for learning.

4.3. The HigherEd 2.0 Project. Based upon my experience using social media tools

experimentally in my classes (back then, these tools were typically called web 2.0 tools),I wroteon a bit of a whima CCLI proposal to NSF requesting funds for the HigherEd

12the one that looked like a white brick and had a 5 GB spinning hard drive inside it
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/p/2006-2/ipod1.gifhttp://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/ne/p/2006-2/ipod1.gif


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2.0 (HED 2.0) project13. The core idea was that these tools were going to radicallychange education by empowering students and faculty to create and share all manner ofinformation, multimedia, and learning resources. I assembled a team of colleagues fromthree other institutions, and I proposed a multi-year, multi-university effort to deploy web

2.0 tools in our engineering mechanics classrooms, evaluate the results, and ultimatelydevelop best practices for use of these tools.

The HigherEd 2.0 project, funded by NSF in 2007, included:

creation of hundreds of multimedia learning resources (mostly lecture and problemvideos), all shared with students

formalization of a framework for using a course blog (instead of a typical coursemanagement system) for course administration andmost importantlyfor studentcommunication

development and execution of evaluation plans that collect data on usage, studentperformance, student attitudes, and a wide range of quantitative and qualitativedata (in conjunction with collaborators in the Curry School of Education)

exposure of well over 2,000 students at four institutions to web 2.0 tools for learningand the HED 2.0 pedagogy

a video series that I authored as a supplement to the Pearson Hibbeler series ofengineering mechanics texts (about 250 videos in all); these videos form the back-bone of Pearsons online learning resources for students and are integrated intotheir MasteringEngineering platform (distribution worldwide is about 50,000 unitsper year)

a variety of conference and journal publications, as well as a book chapter, dissem-inating best practices from the research

Through this work, we have evolved the pedagogy around social media for learning inhigher education, and engineering education in particular.

While technology by its very nature is ephemeral, this work has focused on the two

most-likely-to-endure social media elements: blogging and video. These two technologiesare mature, their authoring tools are powerful and easy to use, and they will be useful,even pervasive, forms of social media for the foreseeable future. While many other researchquestions can be asked about new forms of social media (how do we use Twitter? should Ihave my students check in using foursquare?), these two technologies form the cornerstoneof a maturing body of literature and the foundation of my expertise.

The HED 2.0 project was a success in many dimensions.

(1) It enabled me to improve my teaching. The HED 2.0 project and the related tech-nology truly gave voice to my social constructivist leanings and enabled me torealize my ambitions for constructivist learning. Social media tools are powerfulmediators of learning when deployed the right way, and when integrated into thefabric of a course. One of the great lessons of the HED 2.0 program is that using

technology as an add-on is far less effective than fully buying into an integratedsystem for technology-mediated learning.

13see also the project website
http://highered20.wordpress.com/http://highered20.wordpress.com/


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(2) We established best practices. The culmination of the program is the recent book

chapter14 detailing the main findings of the work. The best practices for bloggingand video production contained therein are the result of careful research that reliedupon mixed-methods data collection including interviews with students. These best

practices are, of course, built upon the literature and inspired by scholarship ininformation design, multimedia learning, pedagogy, and some very specific featuresin the literature such as the worked-example effect15.

(3) I was first. To my knowledge, the HED 2.0 program was the first formal effortfunded by NSF to examine social media as a tool for learning. There has beenmuch interest and research since we started, of course, but it seems clear that I was

first to successfully propose a formal research program to examine these issues and

develop best practices. This is useful because it establishes me as an innovator inthis space, and has enabled networking among other researchers in related areasvia invitations to conferences and other events.

(4) We developed a great deal of experience doing human subjects research. Doing mixed-methods research in a classroom setting, not a more strictly controlled environment,presented formidable challenges but also great opportunities. My team learned atremendous amount about human subjects research in engineering education thatwe can carry forward into new research projects.

Within the first year of using blogs and podcasts and multimedia for my teaching,I earned the All-University Teaching Award. This was followed closely by the SCHEVOutstanding Faculty Award for Teaching with Technology. And subsequently, I receivemedia coverage in the Chronicle and elsewhere for the innovative work I was doing. Also,based upon this program, I have been invited to speak at various conferences, convenedmultiple workshops at different universities, and participated in the first two NAE FOEE(Frontiers of Engineering Education) events in 2009 and 2010.

4.4. The Engineering Genome Project. One key liability of the HED 2.0 project,

one that only became visible after a high-level review of all the multimedia content I hadcreated, was the lack of an organizational backbone for the multimedia content itself. Iwas the only person who truly knew how the content was organized, how it was stored, andhow to access it. I had inadvertently become the information gatekeeper that I had decriedall those years ago! If students wanted to access these materials, I had to give it them.

My teaching narrative takes another turn at this point, this time inspired by Pandora,the online music service. In particular, Pandoras Music Genome Project seeks to categorizemusic according to hundreds of specific genes (i.e. attributes), thus allowing listeners tosee and understand connections between two pieces of music that on the surface appearto be very different and entirely unrelated. It is worth taking a moment to use thePandora service, search on your favorite band or genre, and listen to the playlist Pandoraproduces. You will likely be surprised by some of the connections Pandora makes for you.

14included in my dossier and available online15see also Sweller, J., The Worked-Example Effect and Human Cognition, Learning and Instruction,

16(2):165-169, 2006.
http://www.pandora.com/http://www.pandora.com/about/mgphttp://www.intechopen.com/books/interactive-multimedia/highered-2-0-web-2-0-in-higher-educationhttp://www.intechopen.com/books/interactive-multimedia/highered-2-0-web-2-0-in-higher-educationhttp://www.pandora.com/about/mgphttp://www.pandora.com/


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Now imagine that we could do the same thing with multimedia learning materials. Stu-dents in a calculus class could search on a topicsay, infinite seriesand immediately bepresented with a series of multimedia learning assets that cover all angles of infinite se-ries. Some multimedia files might show derivations from a calculus class. Other might

show application examples in Fourier series analysis. Others yet might show very distantand esoteric applications of infinite series, perhaps a complicated Harmonic Balance so-lution. Nonetheless all these multimedia examples are related to each other through theunderlying genes that characterize what an infinite series is. This is the essence of theThe Engineering Genome Project. It makes explicit all the connections among seemingly

disparate pieces of content that experts know and understand, yet are usually invisible to

novice learners. The genes that describe the underlying structure of the information arethe keys to unlocking these relationships for learners. The Genome will have built into itthe usual social features we have come to take for granted in the past few years, includingthe Amazon-like students who watched this video also watched..., or you might alsolike...

The Engineering Genome Project, funded by NSF in late 2011, gives me the opportunity

to develop a potentially transformative tool for categorizing engineering knowledge in theservice of student learning. Once the Genome reaches its full maturity, I expect it toinduce another change in my teaching strategy. Empowering students to actively searchfor and manage their learning resources raises the commitment to a social constructivistframework. It demands that students take more ownership of their learning by requiringthem to actively make choices about what materials to access, when, how often, and where.Students can share these materials via the built-in social features, tag them using languagethat makes sense to them, save playlists of particularly useful resources, and generallytake more control over their learning.

5. Advising and Mentoring

5.1. Undergraduate Students. Given my current position, and my long-standing com-mitment to undergraduate education, I have vast and long experience in advising andmentoring undergraduate students. This includes experiences in undergraduate research,course advising, guidance on graduation school selection and application, and many otherforms of mentorship. Of particular interest is my experience with students who are strug-gling for one reason or another. I refer you to my Service Narrative for a fuller descrip-tion of what my position of Associate Dean entails in this regard, the commitment I havedemonstrated to this form of teaching, and the successes I have achieved.

5.2. Graduate Students. I have supervised four PhD students and many MS students,with three of the four PhD students earning their degrees based upon research in my corearea of mechanics of jointed structures and interfaces. The fourth PhD student earned his

degree based upon biomechanics-inspired work and AFM experimentation. In all cases, mymentorship of these students has been positive and productive; all are gainfully employedin various research and development organizations focusing largely in the automotive andaerospace areas. All earned their degrees in timely ways, and each developed a marketable
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and valuable skill set consistent with their goals and ambitions. Please see my ResearchNarrative for a fuller description of my research areas and how these students participatedin my research programs.

5.3.Junior Faculty.

I have mentored two junior faculty over the past ten years. Whileat Cincinnati, I provided guidance and mentoring to a faculty member hired in 2001, sofor our four years of overlap at Cincinnati I was an informal mentor to this person (whoeventually earned tenure and is still on the faculty at Cincinnati). My department atCincinnati had no formal mentoring program, but I believe quite strongly that I played apositive role in his development as a faculty member.

I am currently, through my association with the University Academy of Teachers, men-toring Patrick Hopkins from the MAE Department in his development as a teacher. Thisformal mentoring program pairs veteran, well-established teachers with recent hires/juniorcolleagues with the goal of technology transfer from one to the other. Of course, the mentorclearly benefits from the ideas of the mentee, and vice versa. The point of the program isto formalize a mechanism for great teachers to train the next generation of UVa faculty for

more than teaching success. Rather, the goal is to institute a culture of commitment toteaching, and to innovation in teaching, within our junior ranks especially, and thereforeensure UVas identity as an institution that takes teaching serious for many years to come.

6. Summary

My teaching philosophy and actions are deeply rooted in the scholarship of teaching,both the scholarship I leverage and the scholarship I create. Research on engineering edu-cation is beginning to take its rightful position next to technical research as a critical andvalued endeavor for academicians and teachers. The existence of several Departments ofEngineering Education (Purdue, Virginia Tech) legitimizes this area of research and schol-arship in indisputable ways. NSFs investment in engineering education research, alongwith the continued rise of ASEE and allied scholarly outlets, further fuels critical exami-

nation of this area. And in fact, operating our education programs more like we operateour research programs (using a scientific method) should be our ultimate goal. Runningour curriculum open-loop or with weak, ABET-inspired feedback just is not good enoughfor professionals committed to continuous improvement and excellence in our mission.

I embody excellence in teaching in myriad ways, but two stand out. First, my com-mitment to engineering education as an active and funded research endeavor conveys aseriousness of thought and action to my students, my colleagues, and myself. By prior-itizing this research activity, and leveraging it to improve the undergraduate experience,I serve as a role model for others who believe, as I do, that our brand as an Engineer-ing school is built on our high-quality undergraduate programs. Second, my commitmentto the specific framework of social constructivism conveys a trust in my students and adeep belief in the intellectual capital aggregated in my class. When students accept theresponsibility for their own education, share their gifts with each other, and participate ina community of learners, student satisfaction rises and deeper learning is possible.

PT Teaching Narrative

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Transcript of PT Teaching Narrative