ENGINEERING EDUCATION: ARE EFFORTS IN SOTL REACHING THE ENGINEERING CLASSROOM?

Abstract

If you were to walk into almost any engineering classroom today it would be difficult for you to differentiate it from one in 2000, 1980 or even 1960. The technology and tools may be different, but the delivery largely remains teacher-directed and lecture-based. While the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is widely supported at most post-secondary institutions, there is little evidence that this scholarly work is reaching the engineering classroom. Similar work in Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) also appears to be going unimplemented. This descriptive study examines the level to which engineering faculty at Canadian institutions are accessing and applying the findings of SoTL and DBER work within their classrooms.