Paper evaluates Dominican Republic teacher workshops

Ken Reid, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, is coauthor of a paper that reports the initial results of teacher workshops offered for teachers in the Dominican Republic earlier this year.

Reid coauthored the paper with Doug Gorham from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). More than 100 teachers took part in the workshops held last May at schools run by Solid Rock International. The workshops drew on the expertise of Reid, Debra Gallagher, assistant professor of education, Christine North, associate professor of communication arts, and ONU students from engineering, engineering education, social studies and nursing. This paper was a work-in-progress, a short summary of the workshops. More information was presented this July at the First-Year Engineering Experience Conference held in Pittsburgh, Pa. The data showed an overwhelmingly positive response from teachers immediately after the workshops.  Further assessment is planned in the future to see if teachers implemented the activities from the workshop into their classrooms. The FYEE paper can be found through www.fyee.org.  

Dr. Reid also designed and presented a workshop to study the characteristics of first-year engineering programs with Mara Knott, director of first-year engineering from Virginia Tech. The well-attended workshop generated a wealth of data, which is currently being analyzed.  This work was part of a larger NSF study to develop a classification scheme for different "Introduction to Engineering" courses nationwide. Dr. Reid's undergraduate research assistants are currently summarizing results  which are expected to be published early in 2013.

Published: Tue, 10/16/2012 - 2:58pm