In search of new learning environments in electrical engineering
K. Keltikangas1 Researcher
Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering Espoo, Finland
H. Kettunen Researcher
Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering Espoo, Finland
J. Korhonen Researcher
Aalto University School of Science Espoo, Finland
Conference Topic: Engineering Education Research
Keywords: electrical engineering, learning and teaching environments
INTRODUCTION
Space and environment have an essential role in teaching and learning [1, 2, 3]. However, this role is claimed under-researched and incompletely understood [4]. In general, engineering education has been taught in relatively traditional environments and buildings. Furthermore, engineering education has been rather teacher-centred and has often taken place in large lecture theatres [5]. Still, it also faces the rapid changes in the knowledge society and the accelerating pace of the changes, which challenge educational development in general [6, 7]. New technologies and pedagogical views challenge teaching, and the academic teaching faculty strives to keep up with this process. This study surveys the faculty’s perceptions, expectations and wishes considering teaching and learning environments at their own university campus.
1 Corresponding Author
1 GENERAL
Teaching and learning environments belong to the everyday life of academic faculty and students. It may be stated that in general the physical environments have been taken as granted. Furthermore, when a university has gone through a renovation in its buildings or a new building has been designed, academic teaching faculty has not got an active role in the process but architects and consulting companies have mainly been involved in the design process. However, in this paper we may state that members of academic faculty in particular belong to the experts when designing new teaching and learning environments. Although students have also expertise when thinking about the learning environments, we have focused on the academic faculty and teachers.
The concept of learning environment in this study is defined as any space where teaching or learning, either formal or informal is taking place at university campus. Furthermore, it means possible means of information and communication technology (ICT) used in teaching, e.g. computer software like MATLAB, basic PowerPoint slide shows, or electrical voting systems, such as clickers. It also consists of basic, preliminary things in space infrastructure which ought to be functioning when teaching takes place.
A prior article studies university teachers’ use and perceptions of ICT in the Netherlands [8]. It is seen that teachers tend to use technologies that they perceive easy to use, and which they believe to bring added value for teaching and learning processes. Another study examined university teachers’ pedagogical awareness through ICT-facilitated teaching [9]. This qualitative study among university teachers’ pedagogical course showed that collaboration as a pedagogical means was significant to facilitate learning. Furthermore, this study supported that teachers were keen on developing their teaching, but there were slight thresholds to use ICT as a means.
The context of this study is electrical engineering education. On Bachelor level the education is based on extensive and rather theoretical courses in mathematics, physics and programming. Teaching mainly consists of mass-lectures and small-group tutorials. Moreover, some of the courses have laboratory and computer exercises, for instance many courses use MATLAB as a way to enhance the teaching.
2 RESEARCH AIMS
The aim of this research paper is to study:
1. How academic teaching faculty in electrical engineering education at the Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering (Aalto ELEC) perceive their teaching environment and the technologies used in teaching.
2. To gain insight into how teachers would like to develop and design the teaching and learning spaces at their university.
3 METHODOLOGY
3.1 Participants
The data for the study were collected with qualitative, semi-structured interviews. Interviews belong to the most common way of collecting qualitative data [10, 11]. The sample of interviewees was gathered with purposeful sampling [12] choosing faculty staff as respondents from different Aalto ELEC departments with teaching experience. Ten teachers, lecturers and professors were interviewed with semi-structured, in-depth interviews. Four out of ten interviewees were non-Finnish, and these interviews were conducted in English. The group of interviewees worked at six different departments at Aalto ELEC (out of overall seven).
3.2 Design of the study and data analysis
The interview questions which consisted of larger thematic questions items were identical for all the respondents. The questions had been tested with an earlier study at another Aalto University School during the summer 2011. Moreover, the questions were pre-tested with two Aalto ELEC professors before the actual interviews.
The interviews were transcribed into contextual data by an external company. Overall amount of data was 52 pages of contextual data. Any references to persons, units or departments mentioned in the interviews were replaced with acronyms. Recurring themes were identified through an iterative process from the transcribed data. Quotations representing and illustrating themes found were selected from the interviews. The translations into English were made for the purpose of this study.
The data were analysed with thematic analysis approach [13]. The researchers went through the data several times and formed categories and common phenomena of the data. Two researchers (of the three) had acquired teaching experience at Aalto ELEC for several years. In the Findings-section, the quotations of the respondents are referred from R1 to R10 according to the succession of the interviewing schedules. The proper names of the respondents have not been used due to the confidentiality reasons.
4 FINDINGS
The respondents interviewed have taught courses of various sizes in various kinds of spaces. Four of them were currently teaching courses which could be considered including actual mass lectures with dozens of students. The majority of the courses taught by the respondents were smaller with approximately 30 students at most. The teaching of these courses mainly took place in classrooms or seminar rooms that normally accommodate 30-40 students. Additionally, three respondents were giving design or measurement exercises in special teaching laboratory facilities, and three mentioned having had teaching in separate computer classes. Most of the teaching given by the respondents has been Bachelor and Master’s level courses in electrical engineering.
The respondents did not off-hand have very dramatic innovations concerning learning environments. For instance, they expected that the basic infrastructure and functionality, such as reasonable lighting, heating and the air-conditioning, of the spaces were taken care of. Nowadays the basic requirements naturally include wireless connection to the Internet and power supplies for laptop computers are often needed as well.
“It has to be ensured that there are enough sockets in teaching spaces so that everybody who wants can connect up their portables to the grid.” (R7)
“I think that it is still possible to make our old lecture halls quite good if.. you do .. something.. install newer technology and improve basic things like ventilation and so on.” (R1)
”[…] a basic lecture situation is not very challenging, what needs be done to make current state better is maybe to improve the air-conditioning and lighting [...]” (R9) “And basic things should work, a wireless network and.. they [wireless networks] are handled quite well nowadays. Maybe there should be also a wired network [...]” (R8)
Several respondents appreciated hands-on approach in learning electrical engineering, that is, the engineering theory should also be tested in practice. Such teaching could include e.g. computer simulations or actual laboratory measurements. Unfortunately, the respondents found the respective facilities currently too small and restricted. The computer classes are inadequate and too small for larger courses. Moreover, they are just rooms with tables and computers, and unsuitable for any other type of teaching.
According to the respondents, the teaching laboratory equipment required updating and modernization. The teaching of two respondents was mostly based on laboratory design and measurement exercises. They had detailed ideas what modern student laboratory should include. One respondent hoped that the students could be inspired to try and build their own projects that expand beyond the scope of the taught courses. The teachers wished more flexibility for the laboratory spaces as well.
Many respondents commented that they had often found classrooms problematic considering their size and arrangement of the furniture. The tables, which were often heavy and permanently fitted to the floor, were usually set in rows placing the teacher in the front of the room making the situation very teacher-centred. Therefore, the respondents were hoping for more flexibility for the teaching spaces to enable different kinds of seating arrangements. This could make the situation more relaxed and student-centred also enhancing the interaction between the participants.
“Yes, like a regular lecture room. But, I wanna have, how do you say, more like a rounded table, and then each student can be relaxed and they listen to [...] what the others are saying [...] I mean, the only thing is that I don't like a lecture, where the professor or the teacher is just standing in front of the very big room and then giving just a lecture and then students are just taking notes and then. I wanna have, how do you say, flexible, I'm inside of the lecture.” (R4)
“Yeah, it’s a big effort to try and reorganize them [tables]. I have tried that. But nowadays I don’t bother. Sometimes I, sometimes, if it’s been a very small group I’ve sometimes done that. One year I did that, more or less just sat down with the students. Yeah, so I’ve taken the lazy option there I think. Okay, a more flexible space, I might use a little bit more creatively or more, you know, push that sort of discussion approach to lecturing, or to learning I should say, try and soften my role as a lecturer. Because I still am doing this traditional type lecturing, at least in several of the lectures.” (R2)
“[…] the tables should be such that you could easily arrange them differently than they are when you arrive [the room] […]
But rather, especially on a smallish course of around twenty people […] then tables arranged in groups and chairs with wheels, that if you need to lecture, then go and lecture, then change the system on the fly […] there is space to move around, and if you need to do group work, then that works out easily as well. […]
It [the space] needs to be flexible, in my opinion, because, anyway you do all kinds of stuff, it’s not just that people sit passively down and listen.” (R7)
ICT was mainly used for presentation purposes, such as viewing PowerPoint slides using data projector. Only one respondent did not explicitly mention using PowerPoint, or corresponding, presentations. Although PowerPoint is widely used, a couple of respondents admitted the possible problems of proceeding too fast or boring the students. Therefore, they
preferred using varying presentation methods. Some SMART Boards (interactive whiteboards) were recently installed in a couple of classrooms, and some of the respondents had already used them. Teachers were not afraid of new gadgets neither reluctant to learn to use them, but the technologies used were normally given in the environment infrastructure by the School.
“ […] if the lecture room would have a SMART Board, I would learn how to use it I guess […]” (R2)
“I never create needs for myself, I check what I’ve got in hand and I’ll go with that […] I didn’t know about any SMART Boards before they appeared here.” (R7)
However, many respondents still highly appreciated using the traditional blackboard.
Additionally, tablet computers or media pads were mentioned for presentation purposes, to be used to complement and animate the slides during the lecture. An idea of recording lectures came up as well. One respondent also suggested that by video-conference methods, as lectures from foreign universities, could be viewed remotely.
“I’m happy they put a blackboard back there after years of these daft whiteboards that kept smudging everywhere. But I have material in PowerPoint. I think I don’t even know that I’m that positive about that. It’s too easy just to flash through the stuff too quickly in a way.”(R2)
“[…] I must say that probably the students like when there's (happening) something. So, if you study from your computer and you show the PowerPoint slides, after a while that gets a little bit boring. So, then I tend to use different things, so one would be the blackboard, so I kind of commute between the blackboard and the slides, and then I have also tried this kind, what's it called, media-pad, so you can draw on top of your slides, sort of to just, make the slides more alive.” (R3)
Whereas many respondents emphasised the communal and social aspect of teaching and learning, which could be affected by more flexible rearrangement of classrooms, a significant finding in the interview data was also the desire for informal learning and meeting spaces. At the moment, in the School’s building, there is poorly room for meeting other people or working in groups and studying together outside the lectures and other formal scheduled teaching sessions. The hallways and corridors are void of students as they do not regard the building cosy enough. Teachers hoped for not only that the students would get more together but also the informal interaction between the students and the faculty should be supported.
“And, then people can relax and it's [Department’s coffee room] a very nice place to have informal teaching, I mean it's not formal but it's also very important that the teachers and the students are communicating with each other, offline, or outside the lecture, so that we could provide personal assistance to them.” (R4)
“And, in a way, it’s pretty important, I think, that even though the courses are usually carried out alone, but there’s something about it, people form groups that puzzle things together and later on good friendships are created, that is, working together is something, I think, that also helps in the real working life when you need to collaborate with people. So, a little bit of social side too, it may be supported better, if we had that kind of comfortable spaces.” (R5)
“[...] could there be a corridor, or something, that could be transformed into a hanging place [...]” (R5)
“Actually, I’m intrigued by this [...] idea of covering the wings [of the building] by a glass roof and, perhaps, walls too, you would get that kind of, at least students would get common space for their use, and they might even find it comfortable. Now we have these narrow corridors, filled with whatever junk, no-one likes it there.” (R7)
“[...] I would aim for spaces that maximise the number of spontaneous meetings. Creating this kind of random discussions. And this, how it is now [...] long corridors, little space to hang around, doesn’t really support that [idea].” (R10)
5 DISCUSSION
Teaching and learning environments belong to the everyday life of academic teachers and affects significantly the quality of education. This study aimed to examine how academic teaching faculty in electrical engineering education at Aalto University perceive their teaching environment and the technologies used in teaching. Furthermore, we aimed to gain insight into how teachers would like to develop and design the teaching and learning spaces at their university. Our prior perception was that university teachers and students are experts of reflecting on best possible teaching and learning environments. However, this study focused on the teachers’ perceptions. Additionally, another prior perception in this study was that academic teachers should be involved into the design processes of the environments as active partners and planners, and use their expertise to enhance overall quality in engineering education. We could divide the findings into two different larger categories. The respondents regarded their environment and its development in physical or material ideas and thoughts, or either in immaterial things, as in form of social interaction.
The results indicated that above all teachers yearned for more social interaction between different groups; teachers, students and others working at the School. Current environment did not enough support this. The respondents indicated that more interaction between different groups, either formally during the courses or informally e.g. meeting people in the corridors or other public spaces, would enhance motivation and better learning in the studies. It is noteworthy that a lot of learning really happens outside of designed class time in social situations and this informal learning can also be supported by purposefully designed spaces [1, 5, 14] For instance, a recent study from Australia reports very positive user feedback of a corresponding informal social learning centre [15].
The arrangement of the space and the readily installed ICT appear to dictate the applied teaching methods and technologies. Traditionally arranged lecture theatres and classrooms mostly support only one-way delivery of information from teacher to students [5]. Heavy tables and other non-movable furniture limit the teaching methods that can be used in the environment. Similar thoughts have also come up in faculty interviews in a recent study [16]. Indeed, the spatial arrangement of the room is found as an important factor for the dynamic of learning [17]. The results of this study indicated that the teachers are interested in the new technologies that can improve teaching. It seems, however, that the teachers very seldom adapt new technologies in teaching on their own. It is possible that adapting successfully new technologies in teaching without prior experience is time-consuming and that reduces the teachers’ interest in taking part of the development process. The development process should start from the pedagogical philosophy and awareness, and then include those technologies which support teaching at best in each course.
Further research is needed to cover this area more widely, in particular in engineering education. Moreover, it will be pivotal to study how students perceive teaching and learning environments as teachers and students together are key elements and experts in their own teaching and learning. New generations of students will enter the corridors of academia, and we claim that teaching and learning environments in engineering education have also a considerable influence how students will progress in their studies. From teachers’ standpoint, we believe that ideal environment do have an effect upon a well-organised and taught engineering course.
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