History and Vision
Over the past few years, a rigorous, internationally recognized engineering educator certification program has become the primary means of faculty development conducted by IUCEE. As part of the certification, several innovative pedagogical practices are introduced to the participants, who try these out in their classrooms and report their experiences. This has spawned a grass-roots movement of going beyond traditional “chalk and talk” methods of teaching to pedagogical techniques that have been shown in the literature to be more effective. A natural consequence of this movement is to share best practices with colleagues within and across institutions. In January 2019, we decided to launch a pilot online course that would introduce faculty to the basics of research in engineering education, with a strong emphasis on the scholarship of teaching and learning, and on action research.
Our vision for this year-long in-depth course was to create an environment for those seriously interested in taking up engineering education research in India to get access to not only information and tools that would help them, but also to connect with others at other institutions to establish a community that would flourish over the years. Collaboration across institutions in India is almost non-existent. We believed that this course would serve to break those barriers and get people to think about working on research questions that went beyond their classroom or their institution. Finally, one of the potential outcomes for the course was to prepare those who might be interested in pursuing a PhD in Engineering Education to gain enough familiarity with the field to make a well-informed decision.
The first iteration of the course ran from March 2019 to March 2020. Several lessons were learned from this pilot, and a number of enhancements have been made to the design and delivery of the course. One of the primary changes is that we will be offering two separate avenues for faculty to engage in engineering education research- a set of micro-credentials that will be offered throughout the year for those who are completely new to this area of research, and a year-long Engineering Education Researcher Certification for those who are already engaged in EER, but would like to enhance their knowledge.
EER Micro-credentials
EER Certification
Program Goals
- Guide and certify faculty in the area of research in engineering education. These faculty can serve as mentors to others in their institutions, and also work on undertaking studies that investigate effectiveness of institutional policies and initiatives on improving the educational processes.
- Provide well-rounded international exposure and focus on inter-institution collaboration. Research cannot be done in isolation. The certification program is designed to make several connections that will result in long-term collaboration (both international and within India).
Expected Deliverable: Each participant will submit a paper to a SCOPUS-indexed journal at the end of the program. It is expected that papers will have more than one co-author, with a maximum of 5 co-authors.
Please contact Dr. Sohum Sohoni at sohum.iucee@gmail.com for any questions.