Oral Presentations: Session G

Over the past several years, competency-based education has been championed and implemented in vocational education, which prepares individuals for work in a variety of fields such as specialized trades, crafts, and as technicians. This new and innovative approach to education offers for-profit and non-profit higher education institutions, alike, opportunities to capitalize on business models that allow students access to self-paced, distance, and online learning for completing vocational education. In these cases, competencies are commonly obtained and demonstrated by watching short videos, completing assignments, and passing online assessments that substantiate students' abilities accomplishing a series of learning objectives. However, little progress has occurred and few resources exist that demonstrate how to incorporate competency-based education into traditional bachelor degree programs. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight Purdue University's innovative approach to learning that goes beyond the proverbial "checking boxes" and provides an approach that engages and evidences the integration of abilities and reflections. This original and experimental program, Transdisciplinary Studies in Technology (TST), offers three unique attributes. First, it is competency-based in that students are required to demonstrate mastery of 20 core competencies through submissions of artifacts ("transdisciplinary-doing") and reflections ("transdisciplinary-thinking"). Second, it is transdisciplinary in that learning experiences integrate the humanities into engineering, design, and technology skill sets. Finally, approximately 1/3 of the required credits are "free credits" in that students are granted agency to individualize their own educational journey. This has allowed growth and transformation to include minors and concentration options within the college and throughout the university.

The original vision of this project was to research how to help a dysfunctional biotechnology internship. In trying to discover a better methodology for one program, a conversation evolved regarding the need to revamp and streamline multiple internships across campus independent of the specificities of curriculum.There are now the beginnings of an evolution into an interdisciplinary collaboration of ideas and goals geared toward a potential transformation in the way Johnson County Community College does internships across campus. This proposed transformation would be independent of curriculum design and the intellectual freedom expressed by individual faculty involved in said internships. It would, instead, focus on the commonalities shared amongst internships such as: student soft skills (resume and cover letter writing, attire for an interview, time management), student internship employer research of mission statement and culture, and student goals (both midterm and final).Several key components came out of the discussion including: the value of student contextualized learning with an emphasis on global understanding of multicultural mentalities, how to reach the online population possibly with a standardized orientation video posted to the JCCC website and website revitalization similar to Maricopa Community College, and to focus on what individual(s) in administration that this message needs to reach.Other issues discussed were the legal ramifications associated with documentation filed with both the college and corporate partners and documentation delivery. Linda Dubar, with employment relations, the internship coordinator, also shared her role as a faculty facilitator by introducing both the students and the corporate entities to the concepts of: job shadowing, internships, and workplace transitioning. This summary was then shared with other interested chairs, to encourage additional collegial collaboration. Additionally, a request was made to offer a session during the January professional development days so that other interested faculty could engage in the conversation face-to-face.

Despite the repeated calls for the widespread use of evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs), faculty cite various barriers to adoption of these practices. Many instructional change initiatives have highlighted the critical role of social networks for the propagation of innovations. To this end, we employed an exploratory mixed methods design to investigate how teaching-specific social networks in science departments relate to the dissemination of EBIPs. We first conducted a survey asking faculty who they speak to about teaching both within and beyond their departments. This survey was administered in geology, biology, and chemistry departments at three research-intensive institutions at varying phases of institutional change initiatives. We further explored the nature of the teaching-focused discussions identified through the survey by conducting semi-structured interviews with a subset of survey respondents. These interviews were conducted with several faculty in each department with a sampling strategy that maximized differences in faculty members' instructional practices and connectedness in the networks. Participants were asked about who they talk to about teaching as well as the context and content of these conversations. We analyzed the interview transcripts using qualitative content analysis considering theories of trust, values creation, and interdependence. Our results will help reveal how change initiatives can leverage faculty social networks to increase dissemination of EBIPs.