Answering the call for innovation: Three faculty development models to enhance innovation and entrepreneurship education in engineering

Abstract

Amid widespread calls for innovative engineering graduates, faculty development opportunities that focus on integrating invention, entrepreneurship and innovation into the engineering and design curriculum are in high demand. Faculty development activities can help faculty develop new content, teaching strategies, and resources to support students' entrepreneurial and innovation competencies. This paper describes observations and preliminary findings from evaluating three types of faculty development workshops designed to help faculty learn and adopt educational innovations related to engineering entrepreneurship and technology innovation. The first model used brief 90-minute workshops at a professional conference to introduce specific teaching tools and techniques. The second model used a multi-day format to focus on curriculum design, including both course and program development. The second model used a multi-day format to introduce a suite of active teaching methods through attendee observation and active facilitation of instructional activities with actual students. Though each faculty development model had different formats and objectives, all three applied Kirkpatrick's[1] framework for evaluating the outcomes of the workshops. The evaluations examined two levels of outcomes: immediate reactions to the workshops and six to eight months later, self-reported behavior in the workplace to see whether the workshop ideas and information were used by the attendees. Though faculty attendees had primarily positive reactions to the three workshop types, those who attended the longer workshops reported greater use of workshop information and ideas. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.