Teaching Techniques and How Faculty Engage the Engineering Classroom

Historically, the concept of learning diversity in the classroom was characterized to an extent by learning styles, which provided insights about teaching and learning [1]. However, the implementation of learning styles seems to have veered towards an emphasis on pigeonholing individuals as certain types of learners. Concerns have been raised about students not being able to learn unless taught in their “preferred” learning style, students overly self-identifying as a particular type of learner, and the lack of evidence of the existence of learning styles in general [2, 3, 4]. More recently research has emphasized using varied teaching techniques to enhance learning [2]. Additionally, discipline and course content play a role in which instructional methods may be most effective [5]. This potential connection between course content, instructional methods, and different techniques to engage students, led the researchers to ask: To what extent do faculty members value and implement a variety of teaching techniques in their classes? The researchers created a survey to answer this question. Participants provided general information about a recent course, how often they taught the course, and information about their institution. Respondents were asked to identify the perceived importance and frequency of use for each of 27 different teaching techniques or activities. To share information about more than one course, participants were given the opportunity to complete the survey multiple times. Almost 400 individuals completed the survey. Respondents included faculty at public and private institutions and serving both graduate and undergraduate populations. A plurality (36%) of respondents were in the civil and environmental engineering disciplines, 33% were from other engineering disciplines, 7% were from outside of engineering, and 24% did not specify a discipline, but provided other data. This paper discusses the results from this study, presents a review of relevant current literature, and explains plans for future work.