Conference Agenda

As our classrooms become more and more diverse, the need for cultural competency in engineering faculty is more important than ever. Cross-cultural competency has been named among the 10 most important skills for the future workforce. Historically there is a lack of cultural diversity at X University. The university did not offer any formal training opportunity for faculty and staff in cultural competency. As such, faculty effort in cultural pedagogy is minimal resulting in persistent achievement gaps among culturally diverse students. In this project we have developed and implemented an inclusive excellence cultural competency training program for engineering faculty and staff primarily in the College of Business and Technology. The project aimed to train these faculty and staff in cultural competency so that they can implement inclusive pedagogy and communication in and out of their classrooms. Cross-Cultural Adaptability Inventory and post workshop assessment were used to measure the efficacy of the training program. Assessment data showed that the training program improved faculty and staff’s awareness in wide variety areas of cultural proficiency and provided them with a toolbox of ideas to implement them in their classes and workplaces. Lessons learned are: 1) To make an institution a culturally inclusive institution diversity, equity and inclusion need to be part of the organization DNA and leadership buy-in and advocacy is a must; 2) Whenever possible, create developmental approaches that engage faculty and staff with different levels of content over a period of time and 3) Provide flexibility in training delivery.

Universities are seeking novel ways to strengthen the collective educational competence of their faculty and promote educational merits. In this paper we describe and compare the experiences of two recently started initiatives for teaching excellence, the Program for Future Leaders for Strategic Educational Development at [a Swedish technical university] and the Teaching Fellowship Programme at [a Dutch technical university]. Both programs have recently completed one complete round of implementation. The programmes are similar in that the participants work on a project of their own for an extended time, while also being part of a community with regular meetings and supported by mentors. The main differences are the programme duration, number of participants, and whether the projects are in a specific theme or wholly formulated by the participants. In this study, both programs are evaluated using similar survey questions. We analyse this data, and reflect on the context, conditions and design of the programs and our lessons learned from these first experiences.

Engineering education institutions face a growing demand to provide graduates with adequate skills to respond to the sustainability crisis at hand. One approach to address this is to integrate sustainability as a cross-cutting theme into programmes and courses. At the same time competence development of academic staff is seen as an essential, yet an underdeveloped prerequisite for a sustainability paradigm shift.

Aiming at enhancing sustainability integration to engineering education, this study investigates the impact of a pedagogical training on teachers’ skills and motivations to embed sustainability in their teaching. A new pedagogical course (3 ECTS) on sustainability in teaching was developed and executed at Aalto University four times during 2021-2022. The research data consists of course feedback, written reflection assignments, questionnaires to course participants, and a set of semi-structured interviews of teaching personnel who had completed the training. In the analysis we utilized an application of the four-level Kirkpatrick model of evaluating training impact. Preliminary results indicate that training is effective, especially when providing hands-on and customized support for teachers with different starting points for sustainability integration, and that both interdisciplinary and field specific peer-support and -learning are important elements of an impactful training.

Apart from providing new knowledge on the impact of training on teacher capabilities, the study contributes to the development and improvement of pedagogical support for engineering educators to integrate sustainability in their teaching.

Positioning tests are organized in Flanders for prospective STEM students. They provide a low-stakes opportunity to assess their level of starting competences before enrolment. Predictive validity for subsequent academic achievement is an important quality measure of these positioning tests. However, the content of the tests varies over the years. This could be problematic for making accurate predictions based on data from previous years. Therefore, the objective of this study is to compare the stability over time of the predictions of academic achievement using either criterion-referenced (absolute grading) or norm-referenced (relative grading) positioning test grades of engineering and science students.

Comparisons of classifications over six academic years yielded various results (n=1258). For the engineering students, all predictions where unstable in those academic years when the tests were held online due to Covid-19 measures, and when positioning test participation became obligatory. However, in the years when aforementioned special events were absent, norm-referencing yielded the most stable prediction. For the science students, norm-referencing yielded a stable prediction over all six academic years, and criterion-referencing yielded a stable prediction when the tests were not held online. This clearly suggests that the implementation of norm-referencing in positioning tests may lead to more accurate predictions of academic achievement over time, regardless of changes in test content, despite the current use of criterion-referencing in practice.