Developing an Observation System to Capture Instructional Differences in Engineering Classrooms

Abstract

Abstract In 1999, bioengineering and learning science faculties at four research universities began collaboration on a National Science Foundation‐supported Engineering Research Center. The Vanderbilt‐Northwestern‐Texas‐Harvard/MIT Engineering Research Center for Bioengineering Education and Technology is the first such Center to have a specific focus on postsecondary education. Within this project, educators, learning scientists, and bioengineers collaborated to develop the VaNTH Observation System, an assessment tool to capture quantitatively teaching and learning experiences of the bioengineering classroom. The four components of the instrument address the professor's interaction with students, students' lesson engagement, narrative notes, and research‐based measures of effective teaching. As professors redesigned lessons to incorporate current learning theory as a guide, observers measured differences in bioengineering classroom experiences resulting from these innovations. Results indicate that the observation instrument captures differences in classroom experiences, and these differences relate to a lesson's incorporation of current learning theory.