Natural disasters (e.g., hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires), public health emergencies (e.g., COVID-19, H1N1 novel influenza), and man-made incidents (e.g., terrorism, war, cyber-attacks) disrupt educational systems locally and globally. Disruptions often require educators to re-think how they deliver instruction and help students learn. When the COVID-19 pandemic sent university students and instructors home, engineering instructors needed to adapt quickly to ensure that engineering students continued to meet learning outcomes. After all, these aspiring engineers needed to be educated to ensure our future safety and wellbeing! The result was that engineering instructors employed new teaching practices and strategies and attended to students’ needs in new ways. Little is known about the nature of the changes engineering instructors made to their teaching practices and whether these changes were sustained into subsequent semesters. An understanding of these changes and whether they were sustained can help us develop the resources instructors need to be successful in the face of disruptions to education. This project will focus on the analysis of engineering course documents pre, during, and post COVID-19.
Advisor Name: | Heidi Diefes-Dux |
Email: | heidi.diefes-dux@unl.edu |
Secondary Contact: | Grace Panther |
Secondary Contact E-mail: | grace.panther@unl.edu |
Website: | https://engineering.unl.edu/DBER/about/ |
Advisor College: | Engineering |
Advisor Department: | Biological Systems Engineering (Engineering Education) |
Potential Student Tasks: | Responsibilities include reading about best teaching practices; analyzing archival data alongside advanced undergraduate graduate student researchers; preparing text, tables, and figures for presentations and publications. Trainees will attend weekly research team meetings and present their progress twice a semester to the engineering education research community. |
Student Qualifications: | • Interested in understanding engineering education and engineering education research • Desire to learn basic research skill • Independent and responsible • Organizational skills • Proactive about seeking resources and help • Basic Microsoft Excel skills • Detail oriented when reading While preference may be given to engineering students, all majors are welcome. This experience may also be suitable to those in science, technology, and math fields as well as the social sciences and education. |
Training, Mentoring, and Workplace Community: |
Trainees will receive systematic foundational instruction on engineering education research and engage in research with a larger research group including faculty, undergraduate, and graduate researchers of varying backgrounds. The aim is to develop independent researchers through involvement in an investigation: understanding research ethics, formulating research questions, conducting data analysis, interpreting results, and documenting findings. The broader engineering education research community meets for professional development and social activities regularly across the semester. Trainees are encouraged and always welcome! Faculty will work individually with trainees to consider next steps in their academic and career paths. The faculty collectively have years of experience working with undergraduate researchers and first-year students. Please visit our website to learn about our current and past successful undergraduate student researchers (https://engineering.unl.edu/DBER/current-undergraduate-students/) Remote work can be accommodated; work schedules are flexible. |
Available Positions | 3 |