Karl A. Smith

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at University of Minnesota

The recent pandemic forced most faculty to move from face-to-face to remote instruction, sometimes necessitating a redesign of content and assessment, as well as the mode of instruction. This opinion piece presents the Content-Assessment-Pedagogy (CAP) triangle, a course design framework adapted from backward design, that parallels the engineering...

Reform of engineering education continues to be a national priority. However, despite strong external support and funding, change has been slow. Recent research suggests that for institutional change to succeed, change agents within an institution need to form and maintain communities of like-minded individuals. This emphasis on community formation...

Biology labs often make use of student teams. However, some students resist working in teams, often based on poor experiences. Although instructors sometimes struggle with student teams, effective teams in biology labs are achievable. We increased student learning and satisfaction when working in research teams by (1) including in the syllabus a te...

The International Association of Conflict Management awarded David Johnson the Jeffrey Rubin Theory‐to‐Practice Award for professional achievement in 2010. To extend this recognition of David, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research invited us to publish this tribute. We begin with Dean Tjosvold's discussion of David's career. Daniel Druckman...

An understanding of statistics and skills in data analysis are becoming more and more essential, yet research consistently shows that students struggle with these concepts at all levels. This case study documents some of the struggles four groups of fifth-grade students encounter as they collect, organize, and interpret data and then ultimately att...

Currently there is a lot of emphasis on engineering education research and innovation. In 2014 NSF funded a pilot implementation of the NSF Innovation Corps for Learning (I-Corps™ L) and additional cohorts have been conducted and are planned. The 7-week I-Corps™ L program uses established strategies for start-ups to scale up and move teaching and l...

Currently there is a lot of emphasis on engineering education research (EER) and engineering education innovation (EEI). In the EER domain, several universities have established or are considering establishing engineering education research centers and PhD programs. In the EEI domain, the National Academy of Engineering launched the Frontiers of En...

Constructive Controversy has been incorporated as part of the preparation of participants in academic programs in engineering since the early 1980’s. It was introduced initially in undergraduate programs and more recently in Masters and Doctorate programs as well as Professional Masters programs and faculty professional development programs. The im...

Introduction. Countries around the world rely on the contributions of engineers to support national interests and maintain economic competitiveness. In the United States, government and industry leaders have long regarded engineers and other members of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce as vital to the nation's e...

The Innovation Corps for Learning (I-Corps-L) is a pilot initiative from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) to study whether the NSF I-Corps model can help to propagate and scale educational innovations. The NSF I-Corps guides teams based on established strategies for business start-ups,...

Recent U.S. national documents have laid the foundation for highlighting the connection between science, technology, engineering and mathematics at the K-12 level. However, there is not a clear definition or a well-established tradition of what constitutes a quality engineering education at the K-12 level. The purpose of the current work has been t...

Engineering education research (EER) has been on the fast track since 2004 with an exponential rise in the number of Ph.D.s awarded and the establishment of new programs, even entire EER departments. The National Research Council’s Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) report (National Research Council, 2012) captures the state-of-the-art adva...

In this paper, five major shifts in engineering education are identified. During the engineering science revolution, curricula moved from hands-on practice to mathematical modeling and scientific analyses. The first shift was initiated by engineering faculty members from Europe; accelerated during World War II, when physicists contributed multiple...

Engineering identity is believed to relate to educational and professional persistence. In particular, a student's sense of belonging to the engineering community is critical to that path. The primary research questions were: 1) which students self-identify as engineers?; and 2) what are the key factors that relate to self-identification? To addres...

The emphasis on Outcome-Based Education (OBE) and student-centered learning is an enormous advance in engineering education. The authors argue in this chapter that an essential element of OBE is aligning content, assessment, and delivery. The objective of this chapter is to provide a model for aligning course content with assessment and delivery th...

Currently there is a lot of emphasis on engineering education research (EER) and engineering education innovation (EEI). In the EER domain, several universities have established or are considering establishing engineering education research centers and PhD programs. In the EEI domain, the National Academy of Engineering launched the Frontiers of En...

Innovation according to Denning and Dunham (2010) is “the adoption of a new practice in a community.” I argue that our innovations need to be based on good learning theory and good instructional practice. The Johnson and Johnson conceptual model of cooperative learning is an excellent example of a widely adopted evidence-based practice. I identifie...

The purpose of this workshop is to introduce participants to the integration and alignment of content (or curriculum), assessment, and pedagogy (or instruction) for learning module, course, and program design and provide some essential methods for designing courses and curricula in this way. Rather than treat each of these areas separately, this wo...

Tom Boyle of British Telecom describes our current era as the “age of interdependence;” former U.S. President Bill Clinton asked the question in his 2002 Los Angeles Times editorial, “will interdependence be good or bad for humanity?”; a popular business advertisement states “Collaborate or Die!;” and The World is Flat author Tom Friedman argues th...

This session is intended for engineering faculty and graduate students who are new to engineering education research. This workshop is based on the 2006 Frontiers in Education Special Session: “What IS Rigorous Research in Engineering Education?” winner of the Helen Plants award for best interactive session at FIE. A key objective of this workshop...

Several universities have established or are considering establishing engineering education research centers and PhD programs. The aim of this special session is to provide an opportunity for representatives of established engineering education research programs to network with one another, to welcome representatives from emerging programs, and to...

The social basis of learning is a concept that has been embraced by the higher educating community. Since the 1980s, there has been exciting growth and the development of specific practices that better engage students in academic content.

Engineering professors, like professors in every field, have always experimented with innovative instructional methods, but traditionally little was done to link the innovations to learning theories or to evaluate them beyond anecdotal reports of student satisfaction. More scholarly approaches have become common in the past two decades as a consequ...

The idea that effective reform in engineering and science education should be guided through systematic research and outcomes assessment should be self-evident; however, historically, the educational practices and beliefs held by faculty in higher education have been largely anecdotal and based on personal experience. There is growing acceptance of...

This chapter provides faculty with design principles based on the How People Learn framework, as well as current best practices for designing engaged learning environments in STEM classes in the hope of continuing improvement in STEM education.

This special session provides an opportunity for participants to learn about a cooperative learning strategy through actively engaging in that strategy. Participants will experience Constructive Academic Controversy from the learner perspective and will have an opportunity to reflect on this experience. The combination of experience and reflection...

Constructive academic controversy has been available as part of the repertoire of engineering faculty since the early 1980's. In this paper we strive to update and revitalize the approach through: (1) reviewing the development of academic constructive controversy including the benefits of this type of cooperative learning approach, (2) providing in...

This special session provides an opportunity for participants to engage in a reflective dialogue on the topic of developing student's philosophical inquiry skills. The session will provide participants with a cooperative inquiry environment intended to help engineering educators identify, evaluate, and synthesize a more coherent view of engineering...

The purpose of this special session is to continue the conversation began at FIE 2007 that asked the question “Can philosophy of engineering education improve the practice of engineering education? The session is summarised on http://www.ws. binghamton. edu/PhilEngEd/ It has become clear that this debate fits in with a broader and international deb...

The goal of this special interactive session is to engage attendees in (1) knitting the results of two linked studies (of engineering undergraduates and engineering faculty) into the larger body of engineering education scholarship and (2) developing ways of thinking about these findings that can be used to inform engineering education program plan...

Conversations at the 2002 ASEE Conference in Montreal prompted Karl to write an Academic Bookshelf column on educational philosophy for the July 2003 issue of the Journal of Engineering Education. The column and set of recommended books have been read or browsed by many. Five years have passed and there are many new developments in the area, includ...

Current concerns over reforming engineering education have focused attention on helping students develop skills and an adaptive expertise. Phenomenological guidelines for instruction along these lines can be understood as arising out of an emerging theory of thinking and learning built on results in the neural, cognitive, and behavioral sciences. W...

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Based on a three-year experience of developing, facilitating, and assessing NSF-funded workshops on Rigorous Research in Engineering Education (RREE), the authors present four repre- sentations of engineering education scholarly work in the United States, specifically teaching and research. Many of the representa- tions describe the relationships b...

Source: Proceedings of 2008 American Society for Engineering Education Conference While engineering educators have engaged in many endeavors aimed at advancing engineering education and practice, much of this work has focused on broad curricular issues. Few studies focus on what it means to be an engineer or the process of what it takes to learn to...

As practitioners of engineering education, reflecting on our profession, we propose the question: Can philosophy of engineering education improve the practice of engineering education? It is intended to seek through discussion answers to such questions as - Is a philosophy of engineering education distinct from a philosophy of education? What are t...

The Academic Pathways Study (APS) is a mixed- methods longitudinal study of engineering students at four institutions. The goals of this special interactive session are to begin the processes of (1) knitting APS knowledge into the larger body of engineering education scholarship, and (2) develop ways of thinking about these findings that inform eng...

Summary form only given. The annals of research on engineering education (AREE) is an experiment in collaborative scholarship linking education researchers across disciplinary boundaries in order to provide access to the latest education research and offer guidance on education research methodology. AREE is a collaborative venture of the Center for...

In The Advancement of Learning, Huber and Hutchings (2005) state that the “scholarship of teaching and learning … is about producing knowledge that is available for others to use and build on” (p. 27). Can viewing the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) as an educational research activity help make SoTL findings more available and easier to...

Modern cooperative learning began in the mid- 1960s (D. W. Johnson & R. Johnson, 1999a). Its use, however, was resisted by advocates of social Darwinism (who believed that students must be taught to survive in a “dog-eat-dog” world) and individualism (who believed in the myth of the “rugged individualist”). Despite the resistance, cooperative learn...

Engineering education is an emerging discipline, and the number of people choosing this career path is increasing. What pathways might we navigate on our way to becoming an engineering education researcher? How can we investigate these pathways and what could we learn? In this paper we explore intersections, extensions, and lessons learned among th...

Abstract Understanding better the experiencesof students pursuing an engineering degree is an important issue for the pedagogy,of engineering programs. This study sought to identify students’ perceptions of their educational experiences and their motivations for and dreams of a career in engineering. The study also provided a snapshot of the curren...

Students working cooperatively in carefully-structured small groups can maximize their own and each other's learning.

The engineering education research community has progressed considerably since the first Frontiers in Education (FIE) conference. The FIE conference was started by the IEEE Education Society in 1971. The FIE conference has helped engineering faculty become more scholarly teachers. Becoming a scholarly teacher means being familiar with the best prac...

This Interactive Session will provide an active learning environment where participants will: Compare and contrast rigorous research in engineering disciplines and rigorous research in engineering education, and Discuss how the six principles described in Scientific Research in Education can be applied to engineering education research.

This paper focuses on the NSF-funded Rigorous Research in Engineering Education (RREE) workshops and how the Community of Practice (CoP) model of Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder was used to create a partnership that produced the RREE workshops. Specifically, the paper will discuss how organizational partnerships were formed, how the RREE workshops we...

Educators, researchers, and policy makers have advocated student involvement for some time as an essential aspect of meaningful learning. In the past twenty years engineering educators have implemented several means of better engaging their undergraduate students, including active and cooperative learning, learning communities, service learning, co...

How do you teach writing effectively when your classes have between 40-80 students? This work addresses the challenges of working in large classroom environments with engineering students in the CE 4101 and CE 4102 classes. We demonstrate WebCT peer review techniques, and feedback techniques for writing that we have been using in large classroom en...

A university is a learning organization in both the traditional academic and contemporary management senses. The social foundation for learning is clearly established, and there are many contexts that support learning formally and informally. This panel will explore the social contexts, or communities, that are in place or have the potential to enr...

The Foundation Coalition has been providing leadership in improving engineering teaching and learning in a variety of ways, but especially in active and cooperative learning (ACL). Over 1000 copies of a one-page overview of ACL have been distributed, and it seems to help faculty members get over the activation energy barrier and get started. A CD-R...

Professors can help ensure the success of collaborative projects by preparing students to work effectively in a group. This includes using diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment.

SMET educators have been inundated with pedagogical buzzwords such as constructivism, authentic assessment, active learning, etc. These terms are the outgrowth of various educational theories that suggest that learning can be enhanced if these approaches are adopted for use in the classroom. However, there often seems to be a divide between the the...

Thirteen engineering educators and researchers were each asked to choose a particular aspect of engineering 's future to address. Each of the authors has contributed a short piece that has been edited into a discussion of the future as we collectively see it. Topics include the stimulating change, the changing university, teaching, learning, resear...

Thirteen engineering educators and researchers were each asked to choose a particular aspect of engineering's future to address. Each of the authors has contributed a short piece that has been edited into a discussion of the future as we collectively see it. Topics include the stimulating change, the changing university, teaching, learning, researc...

This brief Work in Progress highlights over 60 interviews with faculty who have implemented active, interactive and cooperative learning, and learning communities in large classes (over 100 students). The presentation will summarize the research case for smallgroup learning and learning communities, describe a variety of approaches for implementing...

Engineering students are increasingly expected to work in teams and participate in projects. These expectations are motivated by employer expectations, ABET EC2000 criteria, and research on the importance of active and cooperative learning. Seldom is there explicit attention paid to helping students develop teamwork and project management skills. T...

Common questions and concerns expressed by faculty members who adopt small-group approaches, and the ways they respond to them, are presented here.

group learning approaches in large classes depends on both institutional initiatives and grassroots efforts. Here we provide a list of resources for further information about small-group learning and learning communities. As we rethink what it will take to change the learning environment of large classes, we need to think about the changing functio...

This chapter describes larger efforts to create formal, intensive small-group activities in large classes as well as several initiatives to redesign courses around small-group learning.

Summary form only given. The article presents a brief work in progress which highlights over 60 interviews with faculty who have implemented active, interactive and cooperative learning and learning communities in large classes (over 100 students). The article summarizes the research case for small-group learning and learning communities, describes...

This volume is a synthesis of interviews conducted with 48 teachers who are infusing their large classes (over 100 students) with small-group activities or are working explicitly to create student communities within large classes. The chapters are: chapter 1, "The Argument for Making Large Classes Seem Small" (James L. Cooper and Pamela Robinson);...

Introduction Civil engineering, the oldest engineering discipline, is facing unprecedented challenges. The world we live in today is vastly different from that of fifty years ago. Information technology has become ubiquitous in our society, new technologies are emerging, and learning paradigms and cognitive psychology are pointing the way to more e...

Results are given of a survey of pedagogy courses in SMET disciplines (predominantly engineering) for graduate students and beginning faculty. Summary of syllabi from numerous courses around the US are given. Elements of a new course designed to focus not only on informing participants but also on transforming them is discussed

Civil engineering, the oldest engineering discipline, is facing unprecedented challenges. The world we live in today is vastly different from that of fifty years ago. Information technology has become ubiquitous in our society, new technologies are emerging, and learning paradigms and cognitive psychology are pointing the way to more effective educ...

This book explains how college faculty can use cooperative learning to increase student achievement, create positive relationships among students, and promote healthy student psychological adjustment to college. The book contains practical strategies toward these ends and presents the conceptual framework needed to create a cooperative learning com...

Evaluating students' collaborative work requires a variety of diagnostic and formative assessments. Successful cooperative group projects require an environment in which the conditions for joint project work and the requirement of a single product are carefully integrated and are seen as fair (and we hope beneficial) by the students. Many students...