Contact Us
The creators of this web site are the principle investigators and research assistants on a multi-year research project at the University of Washington (UW), directed by Dr. Jennifer Turns. The NSF-sponsored grant, "Teaching Challenges of Engineering Faculty," focused on two main goals:
- Learn about the teaching challenges of engineering educators by debriefing the College of Engineering’s instructional developer after consultations with individual faculty and teaching-related groups.
- Develop a web site to help engineering educators, based on the findings from the teaching concerns research.
Please see Origin of Stories to learn more about how this research project resulted in the use of narratives on this web site. Please contact us at next@u.washington.edu if you have any feedback on our site.
Principal investigators
An interdisciplinary team of engineering educators, faculty developers/instructional consultants, and engineering education researchers brought varied perspectives to this research.- Dr. Jennifer Turns, Assistant Professor at the University of Washington's Department of Technical Communication and Affiliate Faculty at the Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching (CELT)
- Dr. Cynthia Atman, Director of University of Washington's Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching (CELT) and Professor of Industrial Engineering
- Dr. Angela Linse, Director of Temple University's Teaching and Learning Center
- Dr. Robin Adams, Assistant Professor at Purdue University 's Department of Engineering Education
Web designers & developers
The research and design of the web site was conducted by Dr. Turns and two graduate students. We brought in additional help for the programming of the site.- Matt Eliot, research assistant and Ph.D. candidate, Department of Technical Communication, University of Washington
- Roxane Neal, usability engineer and former Master's student of the Department of Technical Communication, University of Washington
- Brandon Horn, web programmer, Borderline Web Design
Sponsors
We would like to acknowledge the generosity of the National Science Foundation, who funded this research under grant # EEC-021174. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the web site developers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Advisors
On multiple occasions, we turned to experts in the fields of engineering education researchers and faculty development to evaluate versions of the stories for credibility and realism. Through their extensive experience working with engineering faculty, we were able to create realistic scenarios and to provide engineering-specific resources. We are very grateful for the time and contributions of our external advisors.- Dr. Richard Felder, Hoechst Celanese Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University
- Dr. Rebecca Brendt, President of Education Designs, Inc.
- Dr. Susan Ambrose, Director of Carnegie Mellon University's Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence
- Dr. Wayne Jacobson, Associate Director of University of Washington's Center for Instructional Development and Researcher (CIDR)
- Dr. Jim Borgford-Parnell, Assistant Director of University of Washington's Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching (CELT)
Teaching Advice Providers
We would also like to thank the many people who developed the web sites, articles, research, guides, and other teaching-related resources that we have linked to on this web site. Our site could not exist without their wisdom and hard work.
Others
Thank you to the members of the Lab for User-Centered Engineering Education (LUCEE) for feedback over the course of the research and web site development. We also thank our usability study participants for their feedback on this site and those who allowed us to use the pictures on this site.
More about our research
The following articles describe various aspects of the "Teaching Challenges of Engineering Faculty" research:
Eliot, M., Neal, R., & Turns, J. (2006, June). Empirically derived design principles for engineering
educator resources. Paper presented at the 2006 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition, Chicago, IL.
Eliot, M., Neal, R., & Turns, J. (2005, July). Recognizing need: The analysis of qualitative data
to inform web site design. Paper presented at the International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC 2005), Limerick, Ireland.
Turns, J., Eliot, M., Lappenbusch, S., Yellin, J.M.H., Neal, R., Allen, K., et al. (2005, June).
How can user-centered design help us think about the challenges of engineering education? Paper presented at the 2005 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, OR.
Turns, J. (2003, November). Websites for engineering educators: A benchmark study to identify
best practices. Paper presented at the 33rd ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference, Boulder, CO.
Turns, J., Eliot, M., & Linse, A. (2003, June). Exploring the teaching challenges of engineering
faculty: What do they really want to know? Paper presented at the 2003 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Nashville, TN.