The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Virginia Tech is in the fourth year of a large-scale change project called “Revolutionizing Engineering Departments” (NSF RED) (Lord et al., 2018). Our project has three interrelated goals: (1) broaden the range of students entering the department, (2) expand the boundaries on what careers are possible, and (3) provide greater student choice in curricular decisions (Reeping, McNair, Martin, & Ozkan, 2019). We finished phase one of curriculum development last year, the resulting new courses are being taught, and we are collecting baseline data. We expected and experienced resistance, as with any change effort (Hoey IV & Nault, 2008). However, a specific theme of resistance from faculty cut across the project goals during curriculum development: a suspicion that the new program would lack rigor. To better understand how faculty perspectives on rigor might influence change efforts and to identify productive ways to move forward together, we used a systems modeling technique– Causal Loop Diagrams (CLD) – designed to reveal connections in themes across large projects.
AUTHORS
|
|
|
