1. Active Engagement: A Key to Increasing Retention in Engineering Richard M. Felder Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering North Carolina State University

2. It is clear that an education which is an active discovery of reality is superior to one that consists merely in providing the young with ready made truths. (Jean Piaget)

3. Pressures to improve teaching Applicants  Attrition  Complaints from employers (grads lack critical skills) Research on teaching & learning  traditional methods don’t work Outcomes-based accreditation (ABET, Bologna, Wash. Accord) Competitive on-line programs THE WORLD IS FLAT Changing student demographics

4. The people we’re weeding out are unqualified & don’t belong in engineering! Myth

5. Fact 1 Students who stay Students who leave (GPA) S = (GPA) L (Statistically indistinguishable)

6. Fact 2 Correlate GPA at graduation with career success (starting salaries, rate of advancement, employer evaluations. Average correlation coefficient? 11 0 +1 

7. Fact 3 Some schools have successfully reduced attrition, including of women and minorities. 19902000 2010 55% 60% 75% Clearly, it can be done. So just do it! (J. Bordogna)

8. How? Constructive alignment Effective technology Analysis & synthesis Cooperative learning Inductive teaching Abstraction & experience... Active engagementFaculty development

9. As you enter a classroom ask yourself this question: If there were no students in the room, could I do what I am planning to do? If your answer to the question is yes, don’t do it. (Ruben Cubero)

10. Why use active learning? Full student involvement in class More and better responses to questions Much higher energy level Good for multilingual classes (non-native speakers get chances to catch up with the lecture) Many research studies confirm effectiveness [Prince, 2004], including...

11. Experimental study: Gave 50-minute lecture, tested immediately afterwards. Results: 70% 20% % retained 0 50 t (min) t =time in lecture when information was presented was presented Give active exercises or breaks

12. In-Class Teams Form teams of 2-4, choose recorders. Give teams 30 seconds--3 minutes to –Recall prior material –Answer a question –Start a problem solution –Work out next step in a derivation –Think of an example or application

13. –Explain a concept –Figure out why a given result may be wrong –Brainstorm (object is quantity, not quality) –Generate a question –Summarize a lecture Call on several individuals for responses first. Then take responses from volunteers. This always works, regardless of class size.

14. Think-pair-share More time-consuming, more instructive than immediate group work. Students think of responses Exchange responses in pairs, create better ones Pairs share responses with class

15. Concept Tests with Clickers Ask class a multiple choice question –Conceptual, challenging –Good distractors based on common misconceptions Have students vote individually, then pair to discuss, then revote Discuss why wrong answers were wrong

16. Faculty Development Orient new faculty (teaching, research, & campus culture) Prepare future faculty (workshops, mentoring) Give enrichment experiences to experienced faculty (workshops, learning communities) Mentoring Make some of it STEM-specific Make continuous improvement in teaching an expectation for all faculty

17. More information about the content of this presentation (active learning, engineering faculty development, other topics) can be found at Click on “Education-Related Papers” on the home page and then click on the topic of your choice.