Research and Development in Higher Education: Curriculum Transformation

Volume 40

Refereed papers from the

40th HERDSA Annual International Conference

27-30 June 2017

International Convention Center Sydney, Australia Smith, K., Kehrwald, J., Smith, E., Moulton, D. & Corcoran, P. (2017). Becoming civil engineers: Embedding academic and professional communicative practices in the curriculum. In R.G. Walker & S.B. Bedford (Eds.), Research and Development in Higher Education: Curriculum Transformation, 40 (pp 344-355). Sydney, Australia, 27–30 June 2017. Published 2017 by the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia, Inc PO Box 6106, Hammondville, NSW 2214, Australia www.herdsa.org.au ISSN 1441 001X ISBN 978-0-9945546-6-6 This research paper was reviewed using a double blind peer review process that meets DIISR requirements. Two reviewers were appointed on the basis of their independence and they reviewed the full paper devoid of the authors’ names and institutions in order to ensure objectivity and anonymity. Papers were reviewed according to specified criteria, including relevance to the conference theme and audience, soundness of the research methods and critical analysis, originality and contribution to scholarship, and clear and coherent presentation of the argument.Following review and acceptance, this full paper was presented at the international conference. Copyright © 2017 HERDSA and the authors. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act, 2005, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers at the address above.

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Becoming civil engineers: Embedding academic and professional communicative practices in the curriculum

Kerry Smith University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Kerry.Smith@unisa.edu.au

Jane Kehrwald University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Jane.Kehrwald@unisa.edu.au

Elizabeth Smith University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Elizabeth.Smith@unisa.edu.au

Deb Moulton University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Deb.Moulton@unisa.edu.au

Paul Corcoran University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Paul.Corcoran@unisa.edu.au

A key driver of curriculum transformation is enabling graduates to navigate an uncertain future (CSIRO, 2016), which places greater emphasis on the development of employability skills. Transforming the curriculum involves not only aligning learning, assessment and pedagogy, but also consideration of industry standards, legislation, institution graduate qualities and strategic goals, as well as theoretical and pedagogical approaches. This paper describes a collaborative and systematic process which aimed to enable a sustainable, whole-curriculum alignment of the Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) program at an Australian university. The project was guided by Wilson’s (2009) design principles and those of Design-Based Research (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012), which emphasise collaborative partnerships engaging in an iterative process to find practical and innovative solutions to issues in their local environment. The project began with a facilitated workshop with program staff which explored and identified the communicative practices and employability attributes in Civil Engineering, followed by an analysis of program and course documents to determine alignment of content with Engineers Australia (2013) Stage 1 Competency Standard for Professional Engineer. Data gathered guided peer conversations between the project team and teaching staff. The project is a work in progress and has generated principles and mechanisms that allow for teams from across the university, and beyond, to work in collaborative and sustainable partnerships (Kift, 2009) towards developing an authentic curriculum. The findings provide practical ways to address the complexities of curriculum transformation to contribute broadly to the higher education sector.

Keywords: curriculum transformation, communicative practices, civil engineering

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Introduction Increased scrutiny on teaching and learning outcomes and ongoing developments in technology continue to drive curriculum transformation. High expectations are placed on academics and universities to cater to needs of the government, state, business and community (Chan, 2017). More diverse cohorts are attending universities (Bradley, Noonan, Nugent & Scales, 2008), online delivery is making education accessible ‘anytime anywhere’ (Chan, 2017) and legislative requirements as in the Australian Qualities Framework (2013) place greater pressure on teacher quality and maintenance of standards (Biggs & Tang, 2007, p. 2). The focus on optimising quality through quality assurance and accreditation requirements ensures “that students receive the best possible education and that employers can have confidence in the quality of education provided to their current or potential employees” (Bradley et al., 2008, p. 115). However, teaching academics are often exhausted, and sometimes deflated, by the constant need for change presented to them, which often leads to discord. This paper describes a collaborative and systematic process aiming to ensure a sustainable, scalable, whole-curriculum and cross-disciplinary alignment of the Bachelor of Civil Engineering (Honours) program at an Australian University and its subsequent transferability to other programs. The process was guided by principles that emphasise the formation of strategic and collaborative partnerships between interdisciplinary practitioners, seeking to find practical solutions and bring about meaningful change in an authentic educational context (Wilson, 2009). The paper begins with a presentation of the context in which the process of curriculum innovation was situated, including the broader higher education context, current discussions on graduate employability and the increasing focus on transferability of knowledge and skills and theoretical and practical understandings of curriculum transformation. The paper then describes the collaborative process undertaken to map and embed discipline specific communicative practices in the Civil Engineering curriculum. The process was multi-layered and began with the Program Director engaging with Learning and Teaching and Academic Literacies specialists to review industry standards and higher education quality assurance frameworks. A facilitated workshop followed involving Course Coordinators from across the program to identify what they believed were the valued ways of communicating and working in the field of Civil Engineering. The next stage involved an analysis of program and course documents to determine alignment of competencies with Engineers Australia (2013) Stage 1 Competency Standard for Professional Engineer documents. Following this, a series of peer conversations involving Course Coordinators from across the program was convened to facilitate a deeper understanding of how communicative practices were developed at a course level. The iterative process has afforded ongoing curriculum transformation. For example, a Framework for systematic development of core capabilities has been developed. Further collaborations have enabled Program Level Objectives to be reviewed, assessments to be aligned and discussions about rubric development and pre and post moderation to occur. This paper argues that what differentiated this curriculum transformation project from previous attempts was the development of authentic and ongoing partnerships amongst the interdisciplinary collaborators. The process of “listen, link, leverage and then lead” (Scott, 2016, p. 29) allowed the collaborators to engage openly and collegially toward the common goal of curriculum renewal, rather than with “feelings of helplessness, stuckness, resentment and contagious cynicism” (Knight, 2009, p. 1) which often accompany such endeavours. Further, this systematic and transparent approach has afforded opportunities to extend the

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practice across the University to other discipline programs, so that what was initially an interdisciplinary approach to curriculum renewal has become transdisciplinary. Background and context The changing nature of the workforce and the imperative for graduates to develop the necessary skills and dispositions to operate successfully in an uncertain future (CSIRO, 2016) impacts curriculum considerations. The uncertainty requires that individuals move beyond a one dimensional focus on workplace performance to a multidimensional focus on developing personal, interpersonal and cognitive capabilities that afford one to be change implementation savvy, inventive, socially, culturally, globally and economically aware and have a stable sense of self and identity (Fullan & Scott, 2014). This expanding focus is apparent in the current landscape in Engineering (e.g., Adams & Forin, 2014; Crawley, 2001; Reich et al., 2015), whereby becoming an engineer involves recognising the contextual academic, social, professional and discipline practices required of an engineer. The aim of the curriculum transformation project described in this paper was to ‘work strategically’ (Wilson, 2009) to ensure scaffolded, developmental, relevant and authentic learning experiences of academic, social, professional and discipline specific capabilities. Wilson described three elements of working strategically for sustainable and effective change. The first involves effective leadership (p. 2). The leadership model was based on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) ‘Community of Practice’ where stakeholders’ input was sought and valued. The leadership model aligned with Wilson’s (2009) second element of adopting “a system’s orientation… for ensuring shared ownership and contribution” (p. 2). Through adopting a ‘transition pedagogy’ (Kift, 2009) ‘sustainable partnerships’ were formed across the institution between content specialists, program and course coordinators; curriculum specialists, academic developers, language and literacy coordinators; as well as counsellors and careers advisors. The third element or working strategically involved promoting an “agenda of facilitating capability [to ensure] a focus on the development of strengths rather than remediation of problems” (Wilson, 2009, p. 2). Facilitating capability meant that the project aimed to ensure that the identified learning and practices would be embedded and contextualised. However, as Briguglio and Watson (2014) point out, a fully embedded program requires sustained collaborative effort over time, which means that this project has and will involve iterative cycles of development, refinement and reflection. The intent was, and continues to be, to enable “transitional facilitative learning” (Wilson, 2009, p. 11) by way of providing students and teaching staff with explicit detail and clarity about what learning and practices are expected of students as they progress through courses, across year levels and into the workforce. Drawing on Kift, Nelson and Clarke’s (2010) transition pedagogy and whole-of-institution approach to curriculum transformation, the design of this ongoing project was to move beyond a ‘reactive mindset’ to an approach that was reflective, as encouraged by McInnis (2001). It was, and is, important to transform the curriculum in a cohesive way moving beyond a ‘deficit discourse’ model (Arkoudis, 2014; Lawrence, 2003) which might lay blame on the student for being underprepared to participate in the academic discourse or where ‘support’ is provided outside of the core curriculum, risking being ‘piecemeal’ (Kift, 2010; Krause, Hartley, James & McInnis, 2005). The curriculum transformation project evolved from identifying academic literacies (communicative practices). It included scoping the scaffolded development of emerging identities with agency as civil engineers who can think critically, problem solve, and who are responsible, ethical and globally aware, with the emotional intelligence to work

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productively with others. It was envisaged that the a whole-of-curriculum overview would show students (and staff) where disciplinary concepts are introduced, how and where the learning will be further developed and its relationship to program level outcomes and industry standards, giving students agency in making judgments about their own learning progression: a necessary skill for ‘lifelong learning’ (Boud, 1995, p.11). Theoretical perspective The curriculum transformation approach was underpinned by the notion of ‘constructive alignment’ (Biggs & Tang, 2007). This project took the stance that constructivist and sociocultural epistemologies apply not only to student learning but ways of understanding all stakeholders’ intention of the curriculum; learning, teaching and assessment. Learning is always contextual and does not occur in silos. Knowledge is constructed and meanings are mediated in sociocultural domains (Vygotsky, 1978; Lincoln & Guba, 2000). Every act of speaking, writing or acting is influenced by inherent d/Discourses (Gee, 1990); lower case ‘d’ referring to social language and upper case ‘D’ “a sort of ‘identity kit’…instructions on how to act, talk, and often write, so as to take on a particular social role” (p. 142). Hence, in this project it was important to understand what are the valued ways of communicating and the academic and professional contextual practices, given Gee’s view that learning mostly occurs through immersion into a social practice and that the situated context is not always familiar to the participants. Practices in this sense embody the nuanced ways of knowing, doing and being inherent in any activity. For example, an oral presentation involves several capabilities, spoken, written and performed and hence the term ‘core capabilities’ was used to describe the nuanced details of each practice. The goal to enable sustainable change for staff, students and industry involved explicitly identifying the core capabilities through consultation with key stakeholders including Engineers Australia (2013) Stage 1 Competency Standard for Professional Engineer. Providing what students need is not limited to one person’s responsibility. Greater emphasis needs to be placed on the often ‘invisible’ literacies and capabilities that students are assessed on summatively, yet rarely practised formatively (Goldsmith & Willey, 2016). Arkoudis (2014) found that discipline knowledge is core to the curriculum, as are communicative practices and both need to be embedded into the curriculum. Closer engagement with industry has meant an increase of interest in development of ‘generic skills,’ or what some refer to as ‘employability skills’, ‘transferable skills,’ or ‘soft skills’ (Moore & Morton, 2017). As depicted in Figure 1, below, in reference to the suite of skills, the preferred phrase was ‘core capabilities’ because whilst transferable, they are more than ‘soft’ skills. The term ‘generic skills’ implies that the skills developed are generic across all areas of study, whereas they are best learned and practised within the context of the discipline (Clanchy & Ballard, 1995).

Figure 1: Core capabilities and the relationship to discipline knowledge

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Hence, our aim was to make the implicit explicit and to sequence the learning of core capabilities developmentally across the program for successful transition from introductory activities all the way through to exiting expectations. By making the core capabilities explicit we anticipated that students would be better prepared to move beyond the university boundaries and ready for what many describe as ‘an ever-changing, uncertain world’ (e.g., Barnett, 2012; CSIRO, 2016; Fullan & Scott, 2014; Penn-Edwards & Dennison, 2014; Scott, 2016). Similarly, making the implicit explicit would assist teaching staff to focus on development of knowledge and processes that are core to the curriculum. Methodology The methodological approach was guided by Wilson’s (2009, p. 3) design principles that emphasise working strategically by “convening partnerships, developing coherent practice models, data based planning, employing a complementary suite of strategies and engaging in continuous monitoring and feedback”. Wilson’s principles align with those of design-based research (DBR) which emphasises the creation and extension of knowledge to develop, enact and sustain innovative learning environments (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003, p. 5). DBR as a methodology focuses on practitioners attempting make sense of, and find practical solutions to, issues in their local environment (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012). Figure 2, below, diagrammatically represents the iterative process of curriculum innovation in the Bachelor of Civil Engineering program. At the centre of the process are Wilson’s (2009) design principles involving collaborative partnerships between practitioners (detailed in the next section) from across the university, who were striving to bring about meaningful, informed and sustainable change. The process, curriculum and collaborators were situated in an authentic education context and were enabled, but also at times constrained, by University policies and directives, industry standards and higher education standards and frameworks, represented in the outer ring.

Figure 2: Curriculum transformation design process

University

Industry

Government

Collaborativepartnerships

Practicemodels

Informedbydataandtheory

Complimentarysuiteofactivities

Continuousmonitoringandfeedback

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Process Following the principles detailed above, the process of innovating the Bachelor of Civil Engineering curriculum was borne out of a collaborative partnership between the Program Director (PD), Course Coordinators (CC) and Teaching and Learning (T&L), Language and Literacies (L&L) and Career specialists, all employed by the University. The project emerged from two separate relationships with the PD: one with the T&L specialists who collaboratively had mapped and embedded group skills and inter-cultural awareness in the curriculum and another, newer partnership with the L&L specialists whose focus was on mapping and embedding oral and written communication skills. These relationships remained separate for some time as a result of contextual constraints such as contractual arrangements, staff workloads and time. However, to bring about meaningful change and to ensure the support and participation of specialist staff and teaching staff from across the program, it was essential to leverage a more cohesive approach to curriculum transformation. The risk of not taking a whole-of-curriculum approach and keeping these projects separate was a disjointed and overloaded curriculum, potentially confusing and overwhelming students and teaching staff. Stage 1 – collaborative workshop Using a curriculum mapping process, technical knowledge, group skills and inter-cultural awareness had been developed and implemented. At this point oral and written communication skills had not been mapped and embedded. As a key step in the collaborative process, the PD and L&L Coordinator planned and delivered a workshop with Course Coordinators from across all years of the program. The format and content of the workshop was guided by the following, open-ended questions:

- What do we mean by the term academic literacies? - What are the valued ways of communicating knowledge in Civil Engineering? - Where in the program are these most essential? - How are these taught/developed and assessed?

The rationale for the inclusion of the first question was to establish a shared understanding of terminology. A L&L specialist would understand the term ‘academic literacies’ as being:

concerned with meaning making, identity, power, and authority, and foregrounds the institutional nature of what counts as knowledge in any particular academic context … [and] acquiring appropriate and effective uses of literacy as more complex, dynamic, nuanced, situated, and involving both epistemological issues and social processes, including power relations among people, institutions, and social identities (Lea & Street, 2006, p. 369).

However, such a definition is not necessarily useful to academic staff from a discipline (Arkoudis, 2014), such as Civil Engineering. Through the guided discussion the participants were encouraged to move beyond a study skills model, which focuses on ‘surface features of language form [such as grammar and sentence structure] and presumes that students can transfer their knowledge of writing and literacy unproblematically from one context to another’ (Lea & Street, 2006, p. 368).

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This section of the workshop aimed to build a shared understanding of academic literacies, informed by theoretical understandings of the term and the data which was the captured voices of the program teaching staff: the content specialists. From this point on, the term ‘communicative practices’ was used to refer to the ways of building and communicating knowledge about and in a discipline, the language used and the discipline-specific practices of communicating. For this group of civil engineering teaching staff the valued communicative practices of their discipline were broadly expressed as:

- team work/interpersonal skills - oral communication - writing (particularly reports) - design - mathematics

The participants also agreed that, by taking a discipline specific approach, time needs to be dedicated in the curriculum to bridge students’ development and to acculturate them to the social, academic and professional practices of their discipline. The workshop also produced the unexpected benefit of being a forum to aid the continual improvement of other teaching aspects, such as more consistency between academics in developing uniform writing practices, text types and referencing practices for students to use throughout the program. With a clearer understanding of the valued ways of communicating in Civil Engineering, the discussion turned to identifying where in the curriculum the development of these communicative practices is most essential. It was believed that by identifying and explicitly stating these key points in the curriculum that staff (and eventually students) would be able to identify how their particular courses fit within the program and in relation to each other, and how a particular learning task or assignment is connected to another, within a course and across the program. An outcome of this section of the workshop was the identification of gaps in the program, particularly in the second and third year. For example, in fourth year students are required to include a literature review in their project proposal and final project report. However, prior to this students had little exposure to the purpose of a literature review, nor of the required style and structure of writing. It was concluded that students would benefit from the experience of reading and writing critically article reviews in their third year. It was also revealed that students were being required to do oral presentation in much the same manner throughout the program which did not reflect various ways civil engineers present information orally in ‘real life’, such as design briefings, client consultations and negotiations. Such revelations would likely not have been possible in the absence of the collaborative process. The final section of the workshop provided an opportunity for the participants to share their perspectives on how the communicative practices were developed and assessed throughout the curriculum. Some practices, previously ‘invisible’ in the curriculum, such as critical reading of authoritative texts as a pre-requisite for writing critical reviews, were made more explicit as a result of the discussion. This provided an opportunity to examine the development of communicative practices over the entire program, compared to within a single course. Additionally, the discussion in the workshop afforded the participants an opportunity to identify potentially inconsistent ways by which the valued communicative practices are assessed, and stimulated conversations on, and commitment to, developing more effective marking rubrics. Stage 2 – Document analysis

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At this stage the project team had been expanded to include a newly appointed Teaching and Learning Consultant. Based on an analysis of course outlines and other curriculum documentation, such as assignment specifications and marking criteria the project team began mapping the communicative practices, identified in the workshop, across the program. The mapping document recorded vital information for later analysis, such as course titles, course objectives (cross referenced to program objectives and graduate qualities), assessment tasks (according to genre, purpose, style and literacies, including gaps and overlaps) and details of activities and resources to support the development of the communicative practices reflected in these assessment tasks. It also revealed the interrelationship of core capabilities, content, knowledge and process. For example, in a design report involving team work, thinking critically and problem solving, students used practices such as visual, oral, written and numerical communication to demonstrate their knowledge of engineering design thinking processes. Stage 3 - Peer conversations To facilitate a deeper understanding how communicative practices were developed at the course level, the project team spoke to each course coordinator individually. The meetings were presented to course coordinators as collegial conversations through which it was hoped that practices or approaches to the development of communicative practices could be shared in a non-threatening, supportive manner. To facilitate these conversations/collaborations, the Project Team developed an instrument to discuss and record a course level analysis of the development of core content and core capabilities. The conversations were guided by open-ended questions, such as:

- Can you tell me about why you chose this type of assessment task? - What communicative practices does this task require? - How do you communicate these requirements to students? - How do you make the links between the course objectives, the learning tasks and the

assessment to industry? The peer conversations extended beyond this initial meeting space to impromptu email and face-to-face conversations that were informal, yet informative. Anecdotal feedback from course coordinators seemed to indicate that an outcome of these peer conversations was a growing sense of collaborative ownership of the program and a consensus of the importance of curriculum review to reshape learning and assessment in light of emerging contextual, social and professional and discipline practices of an engineer. Concluding Discussion Curriculum transformation is integral to quality assurance for all stakeholders, including students. What differentiates this project from previous attempts at curriculum transformation and accounts for why this project is still evolving (in a systematic way) is because it responds to the emergent needs of all stakeholders (Benzie, Pryce & Smith, 2017). Further, the listen, link, leverage and lead approach has contributed to the development of a shared understanding of the communicative practices and ways of thinking, knowing and being that a graduating engineer would be expected to demonstrate and perform. Our view was that by identifying these practices we would be able to assist in making explicit the implicit practices that the student would be expected to develop and demonstrate in becoming an engineer. As such, we adopted a practice-theory perspective that Reich and colleagues (2015) view as a way to “unpack the taken for granted notions of practice and use them to gain new insights on professional learning” (p. 371). As we were seeking to make explicit the implicit aspects of what students needed to

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learn, the information helped clarify pedagogical approaches to enable student learning such as developing communities of practice. This collegiality continues to help develop transparency for all staff involved in the Civil Engineering Program, as well as the students entering, experiencing and exiting the Program. What emerged from the workshops and discussions was a network of collaborators with shared understandings of their contributions and how they intersect with other members. The discussions were formal and informal and reflected a viral leadership theoretical framework like that proposed by Cleuett, Skene and Pegrum (2011) which involves a leadership network that is ‘organic, responsive, and multidirectional’ (p.1). For instance, the conversations were not always planned meetings and sometimes occurred in hallways or as impromptu chats in the staff room leading to a broader network of collaborators. We also realised that the collaborative partnerships were not only with people but with text based resources such as theoretical and pedagogical approaches. For example, extended consultation around innovative approaches helps to understand nuances, such as the technical discourse of problem solving (Reich et al., 2015), or what it means to be an ethical entrepreneur (Fullan & Scott, 2014) in the field of engineering. The project team now meets regularly to actively and collaboratively reflect on curriculum issues and teaching practices, such as designing authentic and aligned assessments, rather than by imposed top-down planning directives.

Figure 3: Reconceptualization of the curriculum transformation process

This ongoing project has enabled authentic and ongoing partnerships across the university with potential to be transferrable to other disciplinary contexts. The expansion of mapping has led

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to the development of a program design website using Scott’s (2016) ‘six keys’ as an organising tool for storing information for future reviewing, evaluating and refining. Subsequently key information can be easily located for internal or external accreditation purposes. The web resource houses the Framework for systematic development of core capabilities with accompanying teaching and learning resources enabling further transparency and cross course fertilisation for staff and students about what is covered, how it is covered and assessed and where to next. The work has been further developed into a Road Map Project (Corcoran, Smith and Moulton, forthcoming), a dynamic website to show staff and students the relationships between learning, assessment, course objectives, program level outcomes and industry standards. Discussions with colleagues across the University, has resulted in another collaborative partnership and transferability of this project’s whole-of-curriculum transformation a Sonography program in the Division of Health Sciences. In reflection, the process of curriculum transformation was more dynamic and ecological in nature than how we had represented it in Figure 2 and perhaps could be represented as Figure 3 depicts, to show that collaborative partnerships are almost always two-way and have the power to share innovative ideas and disseminate processes more widely. Further, while the project began with an interdisciplinary approach, it is evolving in a way that could be defined as transdisciplinary. According to Adams and Forin (2014), transdisciplinary practices transcend disciplinary views of knowledge production through an overarching synthesis and collectively formulate and solve problems in highly heterogeneous environments. Such practices move beyond acquiring interdisciplinary knowledge to “knowledge fusion” (p. 104) through continuous collaboration and elaborations of new “language, logic and concepts that permit genuine dialogue” (p. 104). It is in this way that curriculum transformation at program and course level can have an impact more widely across the institution, or indeed, the sector.

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Copyright © 2017 Kerry Smith, Jane Kehrwald, Elizabeth Smith, Deb Moulton and Paul Corcoran. The authors assign to HERDSA and educational non-profit institutions a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive license to HERDSA to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web (prime site and mirrors) and within the portable electronic format HERDSA 2017 conference proceedings. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the authors.