Implementing Challenge-Based Learning Across Institutional Boundaries

The American energy workforce is evolving. Transformative research and development in energy technologies and their commercialization are pushing the boundaries of the national energy workforce. In this context, STEM-education and workforce development programs are a bridge to evolving workforces in emerging industries. These programs often work across institutional boundaries to attract students from higher education, foster connections with industry, and grow the capabilities of research institutions. At the same time, in higher education challenge-based learning and experiential learning that address real world challenges are areas of interest. Such programs can heighten student learning outcomes and provide direct connections to internships and careers. And yet, their widespread implementation is limited by institutional constraints including existing curriculum, professor time, and limited collaboration between academia and industry. To address this challenge, we designed the JUMP into STEM collegiate building science competition to foster collaboration across institutional boundaries. In practice, the competition brings national scale challenges to individual college and university courses across the country. The program's focus on building science technologies represents a transformation in higher education informed by a national workforce need to evolve the building industry. This focus is enabled by involving national laboratory professionals, industry professionals, and professor participants in curricular development and implementation. In this presentation, we will share learnings from a study that we conducted as a part of the program's implementation. By conducting semi-structured interviews with professors who deployed the program in their classes, we gained insight into how and why professors implement the competition. Our intention is that these insights can serve as an implementation model to foster multi-institutional collaboration across disciplines. Our presentation will give insight into the needs of faculty to implement such programs, show strategies for establishing collaboration across institutional boundaries, and explore institutional structures that best facilitate participation in such programs.